Having never played the game (make a goddamn port Sega!), i found this and thought it would be a decent topic for discussion

Bayonetta is about a woman with full agency over her sexuality, kicking ass in unstoppable ways, is constantly the rescuer and not the rescuee, and it’s a narrative dominated by female characters, female interaction, and female rivalry. Where Bayonetta is the sexualised one, her foil Jeanne is the classy one, so there’s even a variety of how a woman can be empowered by her own sexual identity. The male lead in the game is the resident damsel in distress and even he gets to be pro-active at times despite how he is also occasionally saved by a five-year-old girl.

Bayonetta’s sexuality exists for herself. She’s basking in her own female pleasure like a cat in a sunbeam. This is amazing. Hideki Kamiya argues that if he didn’t give the character’s identity that extreme sexual agency, she’d just be a generic male protagonist with tits. He wanted the protagonist to be fully and undeniably a woman, and a woman that kicks ass in all the ridiculous ways a man can in any other game.

Everything about the game, from the battle system to the music to the style, is girly girl girl and this is treated as uncompromisingly powerful and invincible. It’s treating the feminine as a strength. Bayonetta is treated as a flagrant idealised power fantasy for women in how most action games are power fantasies for men. Even her titillating fanservicey moves was made by the developers with the “fanservice” being a bonus—they wanted the hair-bodysuit to be a functional mechanic first and foremost. The fact that it leaves the heroine mostly naked in some of her super finishers is nothing but icing on the cake. The creator also is on record publicly reviling that hentai doujinshi exists of Bayonetta, feeling that it ruins the point of her character. While it’s a bit ridiculous to expect any sort of class from the porn doujin circles, that stuck with me.

Put on top of how it’s just a REALLY GOOD GAME and one of the most fun things I’ve ever played and re-played, it’s basically the thesis of the exact sort of game the industry is claiming won’t ever sell.

Not to say that Bayonetta is above criticism, but if you are dismissing the game because it’s shamelessly fanservicey (in the same way that it’s shamelessly campy, shamelessly fun, shamelessly over the top motherfucking INSANE) and never actually played it… wow you are missing out. It’s not a shallow, vapid sexist mess. It’s the exact opposite.

http://unbadger.tumblr.com/post/52017494039/yes-i-consider-bayonetta-a-feminist-game

I like the read; however, I criticise the game because of how easy it is, in comparison to other hack n' slashs.

Good read. Yeah, I played it and I can say it's all that and more :D

What about Lollipop Chainsaw?

I missunderstood the the thread tittle...oh well...I have Bayonetta..should go back and finish that game

While everything he said about feminism is most likely correct, I never noticed it while playing Bayonetta...

The game is just so awesome that you can't waste time looking for socially conscious statements like that. You may miss something important if you do...

The whole feminist vibe really turned me off in this game and caused me to really not like it. I noticed it from the second i started playing. That's just me though, everybody has a different taste(though i didn't find it suprising that the game didn't sell very well although having solid gameplay).

I liked it, but I only got half way. I'll definitely buy it again soon and finish it.

I don't really care either way, to be honest. The way people analyze and rationalize games into sexist/not-sexist sometimes annoys me. Why does a damsel in distress have to MEAN something? Can't she just be someone who needs saving? Can't it just be a plot device for the goddamn story?

Beyond that, I think western people trying to pigeonhole Japanese games to meet western ideals are fooling themselves a bit. It's a different culture and I see people misunderstanding certain elements a lot. Bayonetta definitely represents a male Japanese fetish. If people want to call that feminist, fine, but it feels a bit silly. It's like trying to argue that football is a finesse game, not a power game, when anyone with eyes can see that it's both.

Sometimes the need to group and sort and then argue about what you've grouped and sorted creates a false dichotomy.

It's actualy quite a valid point. Kamiya could have been trying to play to a stereotype, and yet subvert it by making Bayonetta competent and efficacious without qualification, or he could even have just been going for "teh sexy" without trying anything else, and yet created a competent, efficacious woman in the process.

It's an interesting side-effect you see of the need to moe or ecchi-up anime and manga, they end being forced to add more women who get more screentime, or make casts that are either exclusively female or have females be the only characters who matter (for an ecchi example: Queen's Blade, for a moe: Girls und Panzer). In both cases the simple need to create a diverse cast of characters with a worthwhile story, and the side-need to have them be all or mostly girls and women, they then end up having to make girls and women who are diverse and independent.