Fighting Angels

"I'll show you the true power of a gravure idol!"

Fighting Angels (The Catfight: Joneko Densetsu in Japan) is a relatively obscure, all-female 2005 Fighting Game released for the Play Station 2. The game is mostly known for having incredibly cheap-looking graphics, no plot to speak of and very questionable Jiggle Physics, though it apparently centers around some kind of battle tournament where all competitors are female and wear swimsuits for some reason. The characters are...


 * Kaori Hirose, a high school student who enjoys cosplaying and intends to spend the prize money on new costumes.
 * Misuzu Niiyama, another high school student who is apparently very shy. Her reasons for fighting are unknown.
 * Mei Ling Miao, a Chinese Girl who dreams of starting her own line of designer eyeglasses.
 * Lisa Blanchett, an American girl who is fighting just for the hell of it.
 * Riho Futaba, a famous-ish model who joined the tournament in order to lose weight.
 * Mona, a nurse robot who is very emotional and apparently clumsy and shy. Why she's fighting is anybody's guess.
 * Reiko Mizusaki, a mathematics teacher. She started fighting and cosplaying to become more popular among her students.
 * Serina Kanzaki, a manager of a "small place in the city center". What kind of "place" it is is left up to the player's imagination.
 * Eriko Shiratori, a well known advertising model. She's in it for the publicity.
 * Moe Mk-II, the final boss and a robot designed for gymnastics, whatever that means. She's there to examine the other fighters for some unexplained reason.

Truly one of the more memorable fighters of recent years.

This interactive art experience provides examples of:

 * All There in the Manual: The, er, "plot" is completely confined to the (itself very brief) manual of the game.
 * And Your Reward Is Clothes: Beating the story mode will unlock more costumes. So, yeah.
 * Battle Intro: Reduced to scrolling text in the PAL version.
 * Beauty Is Never Tarnished: No one shows any signs of injuries. Even after getting repeatedly shot at with a machine gun.
 * Big Bad: Moe Mk-II, supposedly.
 * Bloodless Carnage: The characters can use a variety of weapons, including spiked bats, katanas and machine guns. The results should be obvious.
 * Cosplay Otaku Girl: Kaori and Reiko.
 * Cut and Paste Environments: Three of the four stages in the game are the beach stage at different times of day. The fourth is the beach stage with a city backdrop.
 * Fighting Game: May be putting it a little generously.
 * Flat Character: Everyone.
 * Flawless Victory: Excellent!!
 * Gainaxing: Taken to horrifying levels. See for yourself.
 * Gratuitous English: Lound wan! Leady, go!
 * Weapon on fight to the death!!
 * Everything Lisa says.
 * Life Meter: Called "hurt points" in the manual.
 * Jiggle Physics: May be Nightmare Fuel for some.
 * Meganekko: Mei Ling and Reiko.
 * No Ending: After you beat Moe Mk-II, the game just... ends. You win, credits roll, the end.
 * No Export for You: The game got no American release.
 * Only Six Faces: Everyone looks pretty much exactly the same, save for hairstyles and eye colour.
 * Ridiculously-Human Robots: Mona and Moe Mk-II are robots, but you wouldn't be able to tell by looking at them.
 * Stripperiffic: The default outfits (bikinis) and most of the unlockable costumes.
 * Victory Pose: Often recycled between characters.
 * You Gotta Have Blue Hair: The two robots. Mona has green hair and Moe Mk-II has purple hair. The human characters all have realistic hair colours, with the exception of Misuzu, who has pink hair.

"Impossible! None of my students ever behaved like this."