The battle bikini is one of the most stereotypical tropes in fantasy art but if you ask me, it doesn’t get nearly as much appreciation these days as it should. For example, when Sega resurrected the Golden Axe franchise, they did the right thing in selecting Tyris Flare as the heroine but then they revealed an appallingly lowbrow taste by giving her pants. To be fair, her famous battle bikini is unlockable, and since the game seems to have been quite awful I doubt anybody else cares, but the mere option of pants still demonstrates the disrespect this timeless battle uniform receives. Also, when Wrath of the Lich King was released, Blizzard inexplicably made all of the armor sets as puritanical as could be, despite having gone entirely the other way when they designed The Burning Crusade. Now, one could argue that a battle bikini might provide inadequate protection in a frozen wasteland, but I have my doubts that a heavy suit of full plate is any more practical for trudging about in the arctic. Furthermore, if realism were really the name of the game, all of the characters would be wearing fur coats and mukluks, as even a full-body cast iron tuxedo ain’t going to protect nobody when a hundred foot-long dragon decides to step on you.
Fortunately, the beauty, utility, and elegance of this piece of equipment is still apparent and to that end, we have here an homage to the battle bikini in the form of Wind Goddess Rafale. I don’t see anything here that validates her divinity, but I will take the manufacturer’s claim for what it is worth.
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