Baiken's walk

[Electronic Toaster]

Baiken's walk doesn't make sense to me.

It is quite exaggerated but the purpose of the exaggeration is unclear. Her face is very impassive, but she heavily sways while walking backwards, and seems to have an exaggerated high class woman walk(with very exaggerated swaying and prominent chest) when going forwards.

I discussed it with my brother and we decided it had to do with her using feminine wiles to gain advantage through distracting her opponent.

It differs somewhat from her earlier incarnation from XX, where she seemed completely oblivious to 'feminine modesty'.

Does anyone else have an idea?

[spiric0m]

Many characters have funny\weird walking and attacking animations, there is probably no deep meaning behind them.

[Vassago Rain]

The purpose to show off her newly upgraded uhh, assets.

[Kyuzo]

As someone studying iaido, I may have an idea.
The correct standing position that I was taught consists of walking with shoulders back and both chest and belly out, with the knees lightly bent. Which resembles Baiken's walking. But not as exaggerated.
What I think its pretented with this animation is showing what I explained above plus Baiken's confidence and arrogance.

Or maybe it just has a comical purpose and we are overthinking it.

[匚闩丂丁仨尺]

No $hit, sherlock

[Electronic Toaster]

The Iaido connection seems promising. It would make more sense for Baiken to show confidence and arrogance, I think, than to suddenly be very interested in her body, even if she could use it to her advantage.

It's also the type of thing something a Japanese audience might pick up immediately, but is basically meaningless and odd to another audience. The walk makes no sense to me becaue I have no familiarity with it, nor what it might imply. And Baiken's version of it is meaingless to me, because I don't know what it is supposed to look like.

Baiken is basically a living weapon built through determination, so it makes sense for her walk to be a demonstration of a specific discipline.

[MrPawnch]

Sam from Metal Gear Rising has a similar walk animation (although not as heavily exaggerated) and he is also a badass samurai with Iaido style and laid back personality, I guess it is a japanese cultural thing that they associate with these types of characters.

[Doresh]

Originally posted by Electronic Toaster:

The Iaido connection seems promising. It would make more sense for Baiken to show confidence and arrogance, I think, than to suddenly be very interested in her body, even if she could use it to her advantage.

Unless she's changed a lot from the XX days, she's Punisher-level crazy and cares more about slashing people up than to use her sex appeal.

Also I'm kinda disappointed that she didn't get a rad cyborg arm.

[Vassago Rain]

The archetype for her character is punisher level crazy with a passion for evil. Characters like Sam Jetstream and Johnny are the exception rather than the norm.

[Don Bone]

The other thing is I think..As per Rev 2, they added that classic japanese schoolgirl gangster flair on her. You know, the sukeban? She ever sport that japanese highschool boy's jacket with custom art (in her case, the skull) on it that the sukeban sometimes wear the way she does even.

And with it, the attitude too. Most evident is in her back walk which looks like those delinquents lol. Relating that to her strut, I suppose we can see that as her imposing superiority & looking down on her opponent. Which is, again, a typical sukeban thing (I mean the superiority thing, not specifically talking about the strut).

[Vassago Rain]

Originally posted by Bond of Travolta:

The other thing is I think..As per Rev 2, they added that classic japanese schoolgirl gangster flair on her. You know, the sukeban? She ever sport that japanese highschool boy's jacket with custom art (in her case, the skull) on it that the sukeban sometimes wear the way she does even.

And with it, the attitude too. Most evident is in her back walk which looks like those delinquents lol. Relating that to her strut, I suppose we can see that as her imposing superiority & looking down on her opponent. Which is, again, a typical sukeban thing (I mean the superiority thing, not specifically talking about the strut).

She was always conveying the full weight of her stereotype role, but artistically, they kept her like Kenshin with boobs, because that's how it was, so that's how it's gonna be forever and ever. Now she's got some more oomph, and I'm not even talking about going from 32D to J.

[Electronic Toaster]

Thanks for the responses, everyone. I have learnt alot.

[tsdcs]

A lot of Baiken stuff is based on tropes from old samurai movies etc. (ie. Tatami mat https://www.reddit.com/r/Guiltygear/comments/65qot9/baiken_says_tatami_gaeshi_in_at_least_3_different/dgcjccr/ ) I've heard that the walk in particular is another refernece, but I don't know the genre well enough to name other examples. As you mentioned, these things only make sense if you already know about them.

[Kyle G]

I actually see that style walk in alot of classic samurai fiction. Anime also does it with the highschool delinquent archetype. But yeah it did strike me as being somewhat sexually distracting, even though Baiken has stated to not be interested in using her body for sex appeal. So I might'be just misintepreted it due to cultural differences. And well, also the fact her huge boobs jut like crazy out when she puffs her chest like that. So..