Guilty Gear Strive Boosts Baiken’s Boobs For Unknowable Reasons

Image: The arc system works

Even in a franchise as full of brilliant characters as Guilty Gear, Baiken rules. The screwed up samurai, despite missing both an eye and an arm, is canonically one of the strongest people in the fighting game universe, and it’s hard not to be charmed by the impetuous bluster she brings to every battle. But one thing about Baiken still confuses me after all these years: Why do her boobs keep getting bigger with every Arc System Works release of the Guilty Gear game?

Baiken debuted in the very first Guilty Gear game, subtitled The Missing Link, in 1998. Since then, she has been playable in all major games except 2014’s Guilty Gear Xrd -Sign-, the ranking among the most consistent fighters on the franchise’s roster aside from the likes of Sol Badguy and Ky Kiske. Baiken’s regular appearances also contribute to his massive popularity among Guilty Gear leaders, with more vocal supporters jokingly adopting a “no Baiken, no buy-ken” policy.

It wasn’t until she appeared in Guilty Gear Xrd Rev 2 in 2017 that a series layman like me began to notice another curious aspect of Baiken’s character design. Sure, the samurai’s clothes still hung around her body, often giving players a quick glimpse of private parts suitable for more mature games, but it seemed like her breasts suddenly became just as important to her aesthetic as her eye patch. or his missing arm.

I mean, the animators went out of their way to make Baiken’s breasts cushion her fall after a sweep. It can’t do any good!

With Baiken’s Imminent arrival on January 28 in Guilty Gear Strive, it’s becoming increasingly clear that his chest is just going to keep getting bigger every time a new game in the franchise hits the market. After being prompted to go back and look at some Guilty Gear prior art by a random Twitter user, I realized it was almost comical how much Baiken had changed since its debut 24 years ago, even compared to his contemporaries.

Check out this illustration of the first Guilty Gear. She almost looks like an entirely different person, at least when it comes to her chest.

I really like the classic Japanese style of this illustration of the first Guilty Gear. Image: Arc System Works

Changes to Baiken’s design came slowly at first. Here she is in Guilty Gear X from the 2000s…

This is the iteration that looks the most “Baiken” to me. Image: Arc System Works

… 2002’s Guilty Gear XX and its Guilty Gear XX Accent Core update…

The Guilty Gear XX Accent Core artwork doesn’t even show Baiken’s front. Image: Arc System Works

…and the 2003 spin-off Guilty Gear Isuka.

Don’t ask Baiken what’s going on with his good eye here. Sensitive subject. Image: Arc System Works

As you can see, things really took off with Baiken in Guilty Gear Xrd Rev 2, and then his design entered the realm of absurdity with Guilty Gear Strive, pictured at the top of this blog.

Baiken gets more and more pissed off over time. Image: Arc System Works

The weather is changing. Whereas once Baiken was a character so bent on revenge that she seemingly laughed at her risque wardrobe risking an errant pinch, she has since gone pseudo-Flanders with a design that mainly focuses on having breasts as big as your head. And while that’s not to say Baiken still doesn’t play a vital role in Guilty Gear’s overall story or that having tig ol’ bitties means she can’t be a serious multi-faceted character. , where does it end? Even Bandai Namco backed off a little after pushing Ivy’s voluptuousness near human anatomical boundaries in Soulcalibur IV, but it’s unclear if anyone at Arc System Works possesses a similar sense of self-control.

That said, I’ve become surprisingly addicted to mayhem over the past few years, so in the interest of sowing as much talk as possible, I just have a message for the Arc System Works madman who’s in charge of designing Baiken :