In this blog post I proceed to contradict myself since nobody did in a compelling way.

Revealing attires are usual in many games, even Nintendo joined the party with the Zero suit Samus, to some extent revealing attires seem to be a must in fighting games and the smashing bros. were lacking that.

In RPGs this is shocking sometimes, we all know armors are heavy and they are not so relevant for ranged casters that rely on magic, maybe the could even use a spell to create some barrier. But despite of that, wearing a bikini to a swordfight doesn't look like a wise decision. The point is, it could!

In the same way chainmail bikinis may be shocking, I was socked by this picture:

Angels are fairly unrealistic on their own, it doesn't make much sense to wear a heavy armor, specially when you are not going to take an arrow in the knee because odds say most arrows will hit the wings, and using the wings to fly is going to be even more impossible with the added weight of the armor.

Is this an isolated case? Not really. Samurais weared very heavy armors, but that's not the case for ninjas, they used swords (and still use them, but the golden age for ninjas is over AFAIK), so an armor is not always the best option. If armors were so great, people would be using them on wars nowadays, but they use ballistic vests, which are probably not that useful in a swordfight, and they are not bikinis, but ninjas don't wear any of those two anyway.

When wearing a cybernetic body as Motoko Kusanagi the joints in this body may move in ways not possible for human (flesh and bones) bodies. The clothes may need to bend in unsual ways, and she may tear intentionally her dress, which makes sense.

When being an elf, or other mythological entity, cultural dressing codes may be radically different, there are still tribes around the Amazon that don't use clothes at all, so that is not that hard to imagine. Casting a magical shield may be easier when clothes are not messing around and making everything more complex.

For Norns it may be hard to find clothes that fit their differen sizes, and considering they are evolved to live in cold weather hot weather becomes overwhelmingly hot.

In a wide range of situations, being comfortable is more important than an armor, we have seen Jackie Chan fighting against people with swords, had he worn an armor the movie would have been more boring, and more important than that, he could not have used the advantage provided by his arts, with precise and effective movements. In the Olympic games of the ancient Greece men would be naked, as that was the most comfortable clothing for sports at that time. As we have seen, a chainmail bikini may be comfortable in a wide range of situations and comfort may be preferable in a wide range of situations as well, including swordfights.

Despite of that, chainmail bikinis are more often than not just fanservice. If you are a fan and enjoy this service: congratulations. If you don't like it I'm sorry for you, but there for sure there are plenty of games that you can enjoy with or without it. All I hope is there will be a great variety of games with and without all kinds of stuff so that everybody can get their cups of tea and enjoy whatever they prefer. There is no need to forbid others what they like as far as they cause no harm or to point and critisize what they like and enjoy, the times of the Inquisition are well over and if there was any God going to get angry with us that would be about what we do in real life, not in games, I think we all can agree on that.

PS: I have made a somewhat short list, basically the post was motivated by the angels, but then I continued, if you can think of more examples where the less clothes the better during a battle please share them with us all.