Stripperiffic / Anime & Manga

• To quote the 34th rule in The 100 Rules of Anime (not to be confused with the other Rule 34) known as "Law of Probable Attire":
  Clothing in anime follows certain predictable guidelines: Female characters wear as little clothing as possible, regardless of whether it is socially or meteorologically appropriate.
• Agent Aika is full of it. Granted, it is a ecchi anime, but one has to watch it to believe just how many variations of "half naked" apparently exist. Not even to mention the fact that Aika's weapon is a corset that undresses her, just to form a very striperific... armor.
• Naomi Armitage from Armitage III.
• Parodied in two-episode wonder Assemble Insert: the mad scientist designs a sensible power armor suit, but upon learning that a girl will wear it, he revises the design to expose cleavage, legs, and midriff.
• Justified with Okoi from Basilisk, whose powers allow her to drain blood from her victims with any part of her body. Her power requires skin-to-skin contact, though, so baring as much skin as possible is very helpful.
• In Betterman, where the mech pilots wear see-through, short-sleeved/legged bodysuits that barely cover anything. However, the male pilots wear them, too.
• Bikini Warriors has all of its main female characters wearing super revealing armor.
• Vanessa from Black Clover wears just her underwear in her squad hideout. But even her outfit in public is this, wearing a revealing top and miniskirt that show off her chest, stomach, and thighs.
• Most of the main characters in Black★Rock Shooter are dressed in this fashion, but the titular character earns the spot with an exposed midriff, and revealing legs, making her outfit look like a combination of a swimsuit, boots, and a hooded jacket.
  • She does not wear her jacket in the opening of the OVA, which shows her only wearing bikini.
• Bleach has many examples:
  • The most prominent is the Espada Harribel. In her normal state, she has a shirt so short that it barely covers her breasts, which she can remove to show her Fetish Retardant mask and Hollow remains. Likewise, since her pants have no sides and are kept up by a thick sash. After her Resurrection, she's completely nude, with strategically placed armor, which she justifies by having water-based powers. Meanwhile, out of her Fraccion, Mila Rose's default uniform and battle suit are rather revealing as well. This doesn't hinder them in battle because they're Arrencar and protected more by their Hierro power than their uniforms.
  • Nel is first introduced as a kid wearing an all-covering garb. That garb is torn to pieces, however, when she morphs into an adult (and inexplicably repairs itself when she returns to being a child). In the past, when she wore an actual uniform, she dressed quite modestly.
• In Blue Exorcist, Shura Kirigakure is an exorcist working for the Vatican... who apparently doesn't mind her wearing a skimpy outfit that emphasizes her humongous breasts. Then again, they keep her magic seals easy to get to, while she's also a very powerful and experience exorcist. And she's hardly the most eccentric exorcist they have.
• Bubblegum Crisis for curvy powered armor — with high heels. Though in at least one case, the high heels are justified. The feet of the hardsuits are actually modeled on "ballet boots," meaning that the front of them is almost a straight line down. In the case of Priss' suit, this allows for the proper placement of the explosive caps that go off when she kicks things, since it would be much harder to properly position them with "normal" feet.
• Burst Angel features just about all of the female cast in either bikini with a jacket or clearly visible underboobs.
• Call of the Night: Nazuna usually wears a very short top that has a Cleavage Window, denim shorts and thigh-high boots. It does a very good job of accentuating her figure. Conversely, when she wears more modest clothes, Yamori finds that the contrast turns him on, much to his own confusion.
• Othinus in A Certain Magical Index wears such clothing because her philosophy is that she is extremely powerful, and therefore does not need any excessive clothing for self defense purposes.
• In Chrono Crusade, many of the female and male demons wear revealing outfits that seem rather impractical. Sure, demons can heal, but why would you want to expose your innards to attacks?
• Kallen from Code Geass mainly in the beginning of Season 2, wears a quite revealing bunny-costume.
  • Standard attire for Britannia's female Knightmare pilots is basically a leotard. This "feature" of service carries over to the manga Oz of the Reflection, with the female protagonist, Oldrin. The Valkyrie Squad takes this one step further by having belly-depth cleavage, and Anya of the Knights Of The Round wears a really skimpy pilot suit as well.
• Cross Ange has the mecha pilot suits that don't leave much to the imagination at all. They're essentially a bikini outfit that shows off a large amount of cleavage and also the abdomen with the only thing that's actually covered up to an extent is the crotch and butt by a thong. It's Lampshaded in the first few episodes.
  • Salamandinay's outfit shows off the Underboobs and even some cleavage at the same time and she wears a very short skirt that shows off her thighs and legs. It's played for Irony as she's meant to be a princess and therefore shouldn't really be wearing an outfit like that at all.
• All things considered, Cutey Honey's costume is rather tame, not going much beyond some Navel-Deep Neckline (at least when it stays on). Then Re: Cutie Honey rolls along and her outfit becomes fairly skimpy.
• Date A Live has the AST's wire suits which don't really seem designed as functional armor; aside from leaving a large part of the upper chest and legs bare, the portion that covers the midriff is skin-tight to show off the navel. They have nothing on the Yamai twins however, whose Astral Dresses look like BDSM outfits.
• Of the ten members of Mamoru Onodera's Battle Harem in Deadline Summoner, only three are dressed decently. One is a Golem in a mini-dress that, at least, covers her panties (if she even has parts down there); the second is a Centaur who does not wear underwear and has a hard time covering up; the third is a Dullahan who cannot remove her full-body armour.
• Dragon Ball: Chi-Chi is a disturbingly played straight example of this, considering she is only *12 years* old. Though when she gets older she changes to a Kung fu outfit. *She's implied to be 12 as she's Goku's love interest, thought this is never confirmed.
  • Dragon Ball GT applies this to Bulla's outfit (a midriff-baring crop top, miniskirt, fingerless gloves reaching almost to her shoulders, and thigh-high boots)... and she's even younger (confirmed via Dragon Ball Super as nine)
• Digimon Fusion introduced us to Mervamon who wears as little as she can. Lilithmon normally wears an extremely low cut, though still relatively conservative dress. However in Xros Wars as Gattai Lilithmon, this outfit is exchanged for a far more stripperiffic Dominatrix outfit, complete with whip. Justified, since she's the Demon Lord embodying the sin of lust.
• Yuri and Kei from the Dirty Pair. Their original costume was based on WWF female costumes. Not that the later variants were any more modest.
• In Divergence Eve the outfits the cadets wear during training are very revealing, then in Episode 6 of Misaki Chronicles, Lyar wears hot red dress while on a mission in the past. And of course in both seasons there's the pilot outfits Kotoko-01 wears.
• In a Doraemon story, Suneo designs a costume for Shizuka and comes up with this. Shizuka doesn't take it well.
• In Excel♡Saga, the outfits for the girls of ACROSS are all one piece bathing suits that show of their cleavage and have bits of other clothing attached, and huge shoulder pads. Justified a bit in that their boss is a Cloudcuckoolander. The Daitenzin meanwhile, as a parody of Sentai heroes, wear form fitting spandex.
• In Fairy Tail:
  • Natsu Dragneel normally wears a scarf, vest, and pants, and that's about it.
  • Erza's normal armor is fairly all-covering, but many of her magic armor sets are much less so. At least two are specifically for reasons other than fighting.
  • Lucy has shown an increasing tendency to go into fights in very skimpy outfits. One time, she got into a fight in a belly dancer costume. Three of her Star Dresses have bikini tops.
  • Regardless of what she wears for bottoms, Cana is almost always wearing a bikini top or similar.
  • Gray normally wears modest clothing, but his training to master ice magic involved stripping down to his undies in a cold climate. This caused him to pick up the habit of randomly stripping to his underpants when he's not paying attention. Lyon, who studied under the same master, doesn't do this as much but still strips sometimes in battle.
• Galaxy Angel: Both Ranpha's and Forte's clothes are designed to show as much skin as possible (mainly in the bust area). From the second season of the anime on, Executive Meddling ordered a costume alteration for the two to cover up; the games kept them in their original outfits until Galaxy Angel II.
• Although she starts putting on some clothes in 2nd Gig, for the majority of the first season of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Motoko Kusanagi mostly wears a leotard that exposes her back, boots, belt and a leather jacket. It should be noted however, that she has proper uniforms for combat and official business. Even gets a lampshade in an early episode.
  Major: It's so... sexist!
  Togusa: Look who's talking.
• Godannar has lots of this, coupled with copious breat bounce. At some points, it almost seems that Godannar is Fanservice with incidental mecha rather than a mecha series with lots of fanservice.
• Headhunted to Another World: Justified with the demons. A body that's in good shape is crucial to being able to use magic, so demons like Ulmandra traditionally like to show skin to advertise their magical power. Uchimura unintentionally offends Ulmandra when he suggests she use a weapon instead of magic to fight, which denigrates both her magic power and her looks.
• Idol Angel Yokoso Yoko: Bare legs against frilly skirts, bunny-suit style spandexes with furs, skin-tight costumes that show sideboobs and sexy santa outfits ^note No, really are just SOME of the sort of things the female leads wear.
• History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi does this with nearly every girl. Miu wears a spandex battlesuit that will 'always' get shredded to the bare minimum. Renka also opts to wear very skimpy chinese dresses for every fight.
• The majority of the Powered Armor in Infinite Stratos doesn't provide much actual protective armor. This is because the suits come with nigh-indestructible Deflector Shields; anything that can punch through that isn't going to be slowed down by armor, so the designers use the armor plating more for fashion than protection. There are a few exceptions, such as the White Knight.
• Early episode baddie Yura◊ from Inuyasha. She dresses most skimpily out of any other female villain from the show.
• There's a lot of stripperific characters in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. To name a few: there's Dio,^* In part 3; he dressed more conservatively in Part 1 Joseph, all of the Pillar Men (Santana, Wammu, Esidisi, and Kars), Vanilla Ice, Rohan, Fugo, Diavolo, Risotto Nero, Jolyne, and Anasui. Again, to name a few!
• Ryuko's Senketsu in Kill la Kill, when activated, consist of a pair of thighhighs, a very short skirt, a top that doesn't even cover the whole chest, and a pair of suspenders on the user's breasts. This is constantly lampshaded.
  • In episode 3 this becomes a plot point. Ryuko's embarrassment when wearing Senketsu caused it to draw more of her blood in order to function. When she accepts to wear the uniform's slightly more revealing true form without worrying about its revealing nature, she gains a massive power boost.
  • In Episode 10, Ryuko uses Senketsu to cover a the battlefield arena because Inumuta is invisible, but this ends up using most of Senketsu, causing Ryuko to show off even more skin, to the point where she's not that far off from being entirely naked, with only a thong covering her butt and suspenders covering her breasts.
  • Senketsu is rather modest when you compare it to the standard combat gear of La Résistance, Nudist Beach. Said uniform consists of boots, gloves, a collar, a utility belt... and that's it. It is only by the virtue of conspicuously placed lens flares and the suggestive position of his gun holster that we have yet to see Aikuro's junk.
  • The Elite Four in Episode 19 onwards are this due to joining Nudist Beach. Nonon in particular only wears a utility belt under her breasts, crotch and ass, but quite a bit of those body parts are still shown quite a bit.
  • And the lack of clothing is completely justified since almost all clothing in the world contains Life Fibers. Senketsu and Junketsu in particular are entirely made out of the stuff. If you had to wear something made out of mind-controlling parasitic aliens, wouldn't you want as little of it as possible touching you?
• Both averted and played straight in the Macross universe.
  • In the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross (and hence the Macross part of Robotech), female Zentradi soldiers wore uniforms essentially identical to the male ones, which covered the entire body except for the head and hands. However, the females' pilot suits for their Powered Armor were originally skintight, though fairly non-Stripperiffic otherwise... but these were soon redesigned to play up the fanservice in later installments (though even the redesigns don't show much in the way of actual skin). However, in all incarnations the Zentradi female powered armour itself is very bulky and only roughly humanoid.
  • The non-canon Robotech II: The Sentinels comics briefly depict natural-sized female Zentraedi in redesigned uniforms with miniskirts... when around a bunch of normal-sized humans.
  • Macross II: The standard costume of the Marduk (Mardook) Emulators is a skin-tight outfit with a golden Chainmail Bikini and black fishnet for the rest of the body.
  • Macross Frontier plays this trope blatantly straight with Sheryl Nome, whose entire shtick (well, besides being a good singer) is to flaunt her body in front of everyone in incredibly revealing outfits (with special emphasis placed on her all natural breasts, of which she is very proud).
• In the opening episode of Madlax, the titular character changes into a slinky red cocktail dress before wiping out an entire military convoy, tank and a helicopter. Not very practical for jungle combat.
• Magic Knight Rayearth has a number of these outfits. Sorceress Alcyone wears a Leotard of Power that's cut low, high, and in the middle. Caldina the dancer is a Shameless Fanservice Girl. Chizetan princesses Tarta and Tatra bare their midriffs and Show Some Leg, and in the anime they dress Umi in similar clothes, then Tatra does a Battle Strip.
• Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha:
  • Fate Testarossa, though she dressed up conservatively during the third season. Her Sonic Form is still quite revealing though. Lampshaded in-universe. Opponents who catch a glimpse of the Sonic Form note how little defense it grants, and that Fate could be killed by a single solid hit. In the end it doesn't change the fact that Fate usually kicks their asses.
  • Her mother Precia also wore a dress with both Navel-Deep Neckline and Vapor Wear. It must be genetic.
  • Fate's Familiar Arf dressed with Cleavage Window and short shorts that exposed her panty. And Precia's familiar Rynith had also a Cleavage Window. It must run in the entire Testarossa family.
  • Speaking of Testarossa family, in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha INNOCENT, Alicia wears several costumes, including a bunny outfit. It really runs in the family.
• Michiko from Michiko & Hatchin usually dresses in shorts, while leaving her tattoed stomach bare. And she's supposed to be hiding from the police.
• Mobile Fighter G Gundam has a giant robot in sailor fuku. However it also inverts it as it has a mostly male cast, and the suits that are needed to connect to the robots are incredibly skin tight. Said robot in a sailor fuku and its female pilot were probably added (and Rain became a temporary pilot a few times) because male fans were getting uncomfortable. Also highly rumored to be a Take That! by Sunrise to rival Toei (consider the time period the show aired—1994-95—and what was pretty much Toei's headliner then).
  • Some 20 years later, Gundam Build Fighters Try brings Fumina Hoshino, a example of this trope being played completely straight. Odd considering the kind of franchise Gundam usually is. And for how blatant it is? Fumina's casual clothes are a pair of skintight shorts and a matching sports bra
• In My Hero Academia, Midnight gives an interview discussing skimpy hero outfits in which she notes that for many heroes, this is actually practical, as a lot of quirks depend on exposed skin. Midnight's first outfit (A trenchcoat and a couple of strategically placed pouches, which prompted legislation about skimpy costumes) worked for her because her Knockout Gas is released from her skin, so the more she shows the more powerful she is. Momo Yaoyorozu and Toru Hagakure also fall into this category- Momo's hero costume is a Navel-Deep Neckline and Midriff-baring leotard, but her Quirk is creating objects from her body and she needs to expose large swathes of skin to make big stuff like cannons. Toru's hero costume is a set of gloves and shoes, but she's permanently invisible so there isn't really anything to show and she needs nudity to take full advantage of her quirk.
• Midori Sugiura from My-HiME only wears a denim jacket and a miniskirt. Even at school.
• Anko Mitarashi from Naruto has very short short-shorts, and wears only fishnets as a shirt. She does wear a Badass Longcoat however.
• Princess Theodora in Negima! Magister Negi Magi has an outfit with a Navel-Deep Neckline that goes down to her pelvis.
• Lampshaded in "After The End", a parody audio drama from the creators of Neon Genesis Evangelion. In order to bring in more viewers for season 2 of Evangelion, Rei and Asuka are forced to wear redesigned Plugsuits that show off their nipples and...other sensitive areas. Asuka is mortified. Shinji has a decidedly different reaction.
• Occult Academy has Mikaze wearing a revealing outfit when she transforms.
• While the Magical Girl outfit in Oku-sama wa Mahou Shoujo isn't exactly modest by any standards, Ureshiko's adult figure makes it even less so, and she's quite embarrassed when it's pointed out.
• Adette Kistler's outfit as a member of the Siberian Railroad in Overman King Gainer once she defects she wears the same winter coat as everyone else.
• For a shoujo Magical Girl franchise, Pretty Cure has a lot of examples. Cures Black, Dream, Milky Rose, Melody, Mermaid, Cure Berry, Yell, Cure Summer, Cure Flamingo and Laura all sport (or used to sport, in Black and Dream's cases) battle attire that bares their midriffs.
• Pixy Misa's outfit in the Pretty Sammy series gets commented on by other characters as being gaudy.
• Puella Magi Kazumi Magica has both Kazumi and Yuuri, who wear Cute Witch outfits where the majority of fabric seems to have gone into their hats. Given that most other Puella Magi Madoka Magica-based series tend to avert this, it can be a little incongruous to go from the poofy dresses, understated uniforms, and billowy longcoats and capes to... well, this.
  • Played straight in the third movie for Homura's demon outfit.
• Just about everyone in Queen's Blade. The more obvious examples are Melona and Menace, who may as well not be wearing anything. Couple this with the massive amounts of Clothing Damage that a Panty Fighter series brings.
• Rebuild World: There are two Running Gags about this, one more direct than the other.
  • The Old World Precursors whose Lost Technology many of the cast make their livings scavenging, have this as their hat, with their clothes (almost) always being extremely lewd, even their Powered Armor (being Future Spandex), which is advanced enough for it not to impede its functionality. This helps excuse Akira's Virtual Sidekick Alpha being a Shameless Fanservice Girl, as she's The Remnant of that civilization in A.I. form. High level female hunters often have imitation armor sets, and Akira himself eventually gets some male-equivalent underwear and armor that emphasizes the outline of his body.
  • The extensive Running Gag discussions of how Ninja Maid themed armor is out of place may count as Lampshade Hanging this. As the two most prominent wearers Shiori and Kanae get their Mid-Season Upgrade armor sets, their outfits look less and less maid-like to prioritize functionality. They get those from their MegaCorp which traces back to aforementioned Old World.
• Reign: The Conqueror has a male example, where quite a few men seem to go off to battle just wearing a fancy jeweled codpiece, boots, and chest plates.
• The Sailor Starlights in Sailor Moon SailorStars are essentially dressed in leather S&M fetishwear, with thigh-high boots, a bikini bottom covered by the shortest skirts in the franchise, long black gloves and an upper part that is barely a bra with a star brooch in front and a piece of leather in the back to fulfill the 'Sailor' requirement, connected to the bikini bottom by thin straps that run across the rest of their torso, with fetishy chokers to match. If the Super Gender-Bender wouldn't've been enough to get the series out of being distributed in the US, those uniforms would've done the trick.
• While the Silver and Bronze Cloths of Saint Seiya can hardly be said to cover a body properly, the few female Cloths have Chainmail Bikinis, cover even less for added Fanservice.
• In a male example, Marco's clothes in his final battle against Luchist, in Shaman King, are an opened vest, boots, and a really low-waisted, really short shorts. Hiroyuki Takei clearly wanted to attract the female public with this, and the republication only made it clearer.
• Several of the Character Transformations from Shugo Chara! fall into this category. They involve revealing miniskirts and shorts.
• Pretty much the entire point of Naga's outfit from Slayers - what she can't obtain with a spell, she gets through sheer sex appeal. Martina wears a similar-looking outfit, albeit with a different color scheme and added hose.
• Sisters Chocolat and Tira Misu's from Sorcerer Hunters quite literally for their combat outfits. While Tira can easily hide her dominatrix outfits under her oversized cloak and dress, with the skimpy outfit she already wears, it's a mystery how Chocolat gets those jodhpurs on. How she manages to keep those thin pair of suspenders in place while she fights is another mystery in itself. Oh, did I mention she has no other top on? The anime censors her slightly with a cropped sleeveless jacket, though it still barely covers her.
• Space Adventure Cobra has every (attractive) female wearing an outfit ranging from skimpy to pretty much non-existent. An all-female guerilla organization operating on an arctic planet would be the exception with wearing a protective suit (helmet and all) being regulation everywhere but in the training room except most of the suit in question might as well have been painted on.
• Sumomo Mo Momo Mo's Sanae/Uma Kamen wears such an outfit. It even gets more powerful the less she wears. It actually gets powered by her embarrassment.
• Suzuka has Miki always wear her "sprinter outfit" during track meets, which resembles a bra-and-panties ensemble, or rather, more appropriate for beach volleyball than track and field. It's not necessarily impractical for running, but it's worth pointing out that no other female on the track team dresses that way.
• Morgan from Tears to Tiara. Her outfit consists a tube top, a jacket and a loincloth. Somewhat justified in that she's from a feudal-based "barbarian" tribe, but all the other women in her tribe wear much more concealing dresses and robes.
• Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann gives us Yoko Littner. Flame pattern bikini, shorts, thigh-high stockings, Scarf Of Ass Kicking, and nothing else. At all times. Except for the beach episode, when she opted for a swimsuit... which was actually more covering than her regular clothes. Several (read: most) male characters expressed their disappointment.
  • Granted, they are in a desert for the first half of the series, and Yoko tries justifying such by saying that clothing restricts her movement in combat (despite wearing thigh-high stocking).
• In Tiger & Bunny, Blue Rose's superiors designed her costume less for functionality and more for including as many fanservice tropes as possible. The impracticality of such a costume is touched upon — When her boss chews her out for failing to catch a criminal, she helpfully points out that he pointed a machine gun at her and, unlike the other superheroes', her suit isn't exactly bulletproof.
• Torture Princess: Fremd Torturchen: Both Torture Princesses have questionable choices in fashion. Elisabeth Le Fanu◊ customarily wears Combat Stilettos, black thigh-highs, and a Little Black Dress resembling dominatrix garb that leaves her chest bare but for strategically placed straps. Jeanne de Rais shows even more skin,◊ wearing little more than two white ribbons in a cross pattern over her naughty bits: one runs in a vertical loop from her crotch to her collar, the other acts as a bandeau.
• No, the skin-colored things along the sides of Gaap's (from Umineko: When They Cry) dress are not fabric. It's a miracle she can even move without having a Wardrobe Malfunction.
• Most of the female space pirates in Vandread wear really tight uniforms, some of them being extremely revealing.
• World's End Harem deals with billions of men dying, leaving women to stand for themselves to recreate a society that has collapsed as a result, 4 years into a women society apparently prompted them to wear extremely fetishistic clothing, women considered to be of civilized upbringing and still sane to boot, poor women who couldn’t cope with men dying turned insane and were dropped in ghettos, to be left wearing rags.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! avoids this for the most part with human characters (Mai and Aki had outfits with some short skirts and cleavage, and there were a few female Duel Academy students wearing bikinis - while at the beach - and that's pretty much all) but there are a few female monsters that fit, like Mai's Harpie Ladies◊ (who wear suspender-strap bikinis), Asuka's Cyber Angel Idaten◊ (with a brief bikini) and Judai's Burst Lady/Burstinatrix (whose skimpy outfit◊ is... hard to describe). The dub tends to cover them and reduce cup size.

---