World of Action Girls (TV Tropes)

Basic Trope: When the Action Girls are more numerous than badass men (In short, a World of Badass combined with Improbably Female Cast).

Straight: In Lady Land (Not related to the trope), the rate of badass is 3/4 female and 1/4 male. Exaggerated: The population of Lady Land is 99% female, and absolutely all of them are skilled martial artists, soldiers, swordfighters, spies, etc. School teachers are Badass Teachers who work in girl-only schools, and train their students in martial arts; Tomboy and Girly Girl are, respectively, the Cute Bruiser and Girly Bruiser; The old librarian was a Badass Bookworm at her best age, now although she's an old lady, she knows the secrets of magic and trains Magical Girl Warriors; The Ojou is a graceful and elegant Kick Chick who is always smiling, and an expert swordfighter who won't hesitate to take down any man with wrong intentions by any means necessary, and she has a brigade of Ninja Maids to help her protect her territory; Even the police force is conformed exclusively by women who are distributed in pairs; and in the Air Force, Army, Navy, etc, the highest ranked members are all women. All females are extremely manly. Downplayed: The badass ratio is 51% female and 49% male, so the badass women are still barely more than the men. Justified: For cultural reasons: in Lady Land, women are trained and encouraged to take part in such professions from a certain age; the Acceptable Feminine Goals consist of being graceful and feminine on their swordplay, the ability to pilot tanks at the age of 8, being named captain or lieutenant at the age of 16, and just go up the rankings from there. Due to the Forever War with Troperia, Lady Land lost the majority of its adult male population in the fighting. Due to Gender Rarity Value, men are definitely not the expendable gender and are discouraged from combat. Lady Land actually is as its name implies. Men are (barring a few notable exceptions) considered just useless drones only fit for breeding and working down t'mines, not for the noble arts of combat. The female inhabitants of Lady Land have one or more forms of Gender-Restricted Ability which make them more badass than the males. Inverted: No Action Girls to speak of. The women of Lady Land are delicate, gentle, or just unable to hold their own in a fight. Gender Flipped: Lady Land is an outdated place where the rate of badass is predominantly male. Subverted: The women of Lady Land turned out to be Faux Action Girls, so they rely on the more skilled men to do the work. Double Subverted: ... Or so they make other countries think. Turns out that the women are Obfuscating Stupidity, and they're actually a massive Amazon Brigade, reserved as a last resort. Parodied: The most badass females engage in cat fights, wimp fights, and other girly like duels where they slap, pull their opponent's hair, scratch with their nails, etc. And surprisingly enough, the males are unable to react to such demonstrations of "girly manners". Zig Zagged: Whether or not the badass women are more numerous than the male depends on several factors, such as: the occasion (A war, a martial arts tournament or a sports competence) or their specialties (the most proficient people at a certain area is chosen regardless of gender.) Averted: The amount of Badass in Lady Land is fairly distributed, or the male are slightly more numerous than the female. Lady Land is just your average everyday city, with no badass to speak of. Enforced: The executives stepped in and told the writers to depict a world where the gender discrimination is no more, and actually the women caught up and overcame men in such professions. That way, the show can attract more female viewers. The executives had less noble intentions / believed that Sex Sells. They persuaded the writers to make an exploitation flick that has many Chainmail Bikini-clad Amazonian Beauty characters kicking each others' asses for the sake of Fanservice. Lampshaded: "Sounds like all girls in this place can kick serious amounts of ass, right?". "Wow Alice, you're really a very skilled fighter... just like Amy, Betty, Emily, Rachel, Sophie, or almost any other girl I know" Defied: The Hero is an old-fashioned patron who thinks that women should Stay in the Kitchen, and refuse to allow any of his more competent female companions to go with him. So, he prefers to look for male partners, or at worse, just do it alone. Discussed: "Welcome To Lady Land, a world of Magical Girls, graceful and elegant sword women, cute girls who can punch like a truck... you make your choice". Conversed: "Lady Land, this special place where the more skilled fighters are all female, while the men are far less common... Yeah, I've heard about it!" Deconstructed: Due to women engaging in such dangerous professions, they have become the expendable gender in Lady Land, and the female population has been drastically reduced, forcing the men to move somewhere else. Alternatively, the women are chaste heroines too focused on their activities to even have love interests, so, the male population has to look somewhere else to have girlfriends, form families, etc. In the very worst cases, the badass women die alone. Reconstructed: The female population in Lady Land is kept under constant checking, and women are allowed (and sometimes, encouraged) to retire from their dangerous professions at a certain age. The badass women have boyfriends, love interests, etc. and work in Battle Couples. Sometimes being drawn into the battles comes before the couple and sometimes not. In either case, many of the action girls become Action Moms. When the time comes to shift to Retired Badass, they either focus on their families or begin working as instructors for the new generations of powerful, yet very feminine fighters. Played For Drama: Alice is afraid to be out-shined by other female fighters, whether allies or enemies, so she undergoes Training from Hell so she catches up with them in terms of power and speed, learns magic and studies super-science, so she becomes massive combination of Omnidisciplinary Scientist, Badass Bookworm and Lady of Black Magic.

MEDIA EXAMPLE

Action Heroine Cheer Fruits is about Tokusatsu stage shows, most of which feature female heroes. It's mentioned that male heroes exist, but so far none have been shown. Akame ga Kill! has plenty of badass men, but membership in Night Raid always leaned female (at one point the protagonist was one of only two men left). Their Evil Counterparts, the Jaegers, are technically mostly male at the beginning, but the girls were generally stronger and lasted a bit longer. Akuma no Riddle is about an all girl class with one Ordinary High-School Student and the rest are high school assassins going after her. The ladies of Black Lagoon provide the page image. While Mr. Chang and Dutch certainly are no slouches, compared to Revy, Balalaika, Roberta, Eda, Fabiola, Sawyer, not to mention Yolanda and others, they might as well just toss their guns up and kick back. In Blade & Soul, virtually all of the main female characters are one. Lesser capable ones, along with many men are killed regularly throughout the show. In Case Closed, if you are born a woman seems to be a requirement that you are a badass. Ran, Sera, Assistant Inspector Sato,Kir/Mizunashi Rena/Hondou Hidemi, Eri Kisaki, Mary, Shizuka Hattori are only a few examples of this. In Change 123, the focus is mostly on female-on-male (with female usually being more skillful) or female-on-female fights, with the latter ones being more prevalent from the chapter 20 onwards. (And, on top of that, there is also an all-female ninja clan!) This creates an interesting situation during the sport festival, when the teachers insist that girls should be the "riders" on the "battle on horses", believing that they would be less aggressive than boys, not knowing that there is a badass girl in each of the three teams, one of them being also a Blood Knight. Claymore tries to justify this trope. Women inherently make better Claymores than men, because men are more likely to become Awakened Beings. Cross Ange is a deconstruction of this trope. The Amazon Brigade are little more than Cannon Fodder who live in a Penal Colony and there often are casualties everyday. Moreover, a few of these girls used to be normal until their capture and exile as Norma warped them into different people. This trope later becomes reconstructed following the game-changing mid-series escape from Arzenal to restart Libertus. Dog Days plays with this: while The Hero is a male, there are more named female warriors. Dual! Parallel Trouble Adventure has the male main character transported to an alternate dimension caught up in a war with mecha which can only be piloted by women. His ability to not only be able to pilot said mechs, but also able to make them do stuff they couldn't before is a tip off that there's something special about him. El-Hazard: The Magnificent World features nearly an entire cast of magically empowered females: There's the three great priestesses of Mt. Moldune for starters: Shayla Shayla, Afura Mann, and Miz Mishtal. Each of whom wields immense elemental power. Then there are the "Demon Dolls," Ifurita (who's a biological super weapon) and Kalia, who's easily the most powerful being in all El Hazard. In addition, both of the key positions of power are held by women: with Rune Venus as Roshtaria's benevolent ruler, and Diva as the enigmatic queen of the Buggrom Empire. Even the Eye of God, which floats above El Hazard, can only be activated by the two princesses of the royal house of Roshtaria. In Freezing, the only combatants are females, with the paired males limited to wielding support powers. Girls und Panzer. The title's translation, "Girls and Tanks", says all that you need to know to get the premise. Every single Tankery team shown in the series consists entirely of girls, the first episode features a recruitment video that advertises tankery as the ultimate feminine competitive sport, and it's remarked in-universe that the idea of a boy being interested in tanks would be weird. Gunslinger Girl is like this. Not only are all the characters young girls, but all of them have been trained to take advantage of how they're young girls. Highschool of the Dead: While not all of its female cast are fighters, the majority of the named ones are with Rei and Saeko, being the two foremost examples among them. Rei was a member of her school's Sojutsu Club ("spear fighting") and had years of additional training at home, from her father. She can also hold her own when unarmed, due to years of study in martial arts. Saeko is her dark counterpart, who was the former captain of their school's Kendo Club, who also happens to be an Ax-Crazy Blood Knight. So she's perfectly content to find herself in the midst of a Zombie Apocalypse, since it allows her to indulge her violent impulses without restraint. Saya begins the series as the group planner, but eventually becomes their second gunner. While her mom took self-defense, while working on Wallstreet, and is said to be a better shot than her father. Simply put: aside from Takashi, Hirano, and Saya's dad (Souichiro), all of the ass kickers are female. Katana Maidens has the Toji, girls who wield mystical katanas and fight against otherworldly creatures known as aradama (who themselves are led by Princess Tagitsu). In Kill la Kill, you've got the female protagonist Ryuko Matoi, her female best friend Mako Mankanshoku, her female rival and Big Bad Satsuki Kiryuin, the female member of the Elite Four Nonon Jakuzure, the female Greater-Scope Villain/true Big Bad Ragyo Kiryuin, and her female Co-Dragons Nui Harime and Rei Hououmaru. The former two and latter two are the most powerful characters in the series, and the others are just as strong as their male counterparts. The only notable male fighters are the two main members of Nudist Beach and three of the Elite Four. Mid-Childa from the Lyrical Nanoha series. To the point where the local Acceptable Feminine Goals and Traits seem to begin with "become a Special Forces Captain" and go up the badass ladder from there. By the time of ViVid, it's become a joke among the fans that any girl who cannot beat up a grown man by the age of ten is disowned by her parents. Maken-ki! is named for Tenbi Academy's student council, whose job is to enforce discipline at the school and protect it from external threats, such as Kamigari. Takeru seems to think they need his help. They don't. Haruko is both the heroine of the series and vice-president of the student council, so she's the series' most action oriented character by default. She also wields the legendary Murakumo and has been acknowledged by Himegami as, "Tenbi's strongest maiden". A fact made evident when she soundly defeated near the end of the Venus arc. Himegami's Orochi blood imbues her with the power to cast high-level spells and summons, along with the ability to use Yasakani: a Maken with the power of the Original 8 combined! Akaya was stunned when he saw she was evenly matched with Minerva when they fought. Meaning, Himegami's ability exceeds SS-class. Minori co-founded the original Maken-ki, along with Gen, back when they were in highschool. Since then, she's retired and now serves as the academy's principal/PE teacher. But don't think she's lost her edge, because her element is freakishly strong and she has the physical strength to match it - as Ouken Yamato found out the hard way. As student council president, Takaki Furan is the de facto head of administration and the Big Good of the series, since Minori has left her in charge of the school and trusts her judgement. Takaki also has the distinction of being chosen to wield Habaya, an enchanted bow which is one of the 8 Original Maken. And, finally, there's the Venus Unit: an elite all-girl military team of foreign exchange students, all of whom are high-ranking ability users, ranging from S to SS-classnote . Their abilities are so story breaking, that they're effectively kept out of the plot by having them investigate Kamigari behind-the-scenes. Master of Martial Hearts, though it manages to be really, really terrible about it (so terrible that series whose female cast are mostly Damsels in Distress and/or Faux Action Girls usually look less sexist by comparison). The My-HiME series is a Magical Girl Genre Deconstruction, and as such the main heroes are all action girls. In the original series, with the exception of the Big Bad and his assistant, the major male characters barely do anything until the finale. In Noir, not is only almost every member of the cast some kind of badass assassin, but most of the cast is also female. To put things to perspective, the entire series has only one male character who meets the protagonists and lives for more than two episodes afterwards. Pretty Cure: The main protagonists and their allies are usually superpowered ass-kicking girls who primarily fight barehanded. Heroic men are mentors or supporting, non-combat roles. Male villains are a force to be reckoned with though. Puella Magi Madoka Magica. Kyubey has only ever contracted teenage girls to hunt Witches, going as far back as the stone age. Cleopatra, Queen Himiko, and Joan of Arc were revealed to have been Magical Girls. Queen's Blade is a series narrating how a bunch of hot women fight each other in order to become ruler of the kingdom. There are some males, but they are, at most, secondary characters and not geared towards kicking ass like the females. The titular Sekirei are nearly a One Gender Proud Warrior Race, with only four known males out of the 108 alien beings. The human women in the series are likewise quite intimidating, with Yukari becoming known as the "Devil Ashikabi" for her tendency to kick the crap out of her rivals. Strike Witches is essentially about teenage action girls with magical power who tends to use guns as big as themselves to fight invading aliens. Tenchi Muyo!, with a full cast of super powered heroines... and only two males, Tenchi and his grandfather the legendary Juraian prince, Yosho, worth mentioning. He and the others often have to rely on Washuu's reality warping scientific genius, Ryoko's raw power and tenacity, and Ayeka's Juraian powers to save them. Then there's the spiritual embodiment of Jurai's greatest battleship Tsunami, empress of Jurai, Funaho, and captain of the royal guard Misaki. With women like these running the show, who needs Tenchi, indeed. An odd example, since Tenchi is the main character and eventually becomes the most powerful of them all, but aside from him, his Grandfather, and a handful of villains, everyone with power lacks a Y chromosome. Tenchi Muyo: War on Geminar has a literal and justified case in Geminar: the power to use the planet's Humongous Mecha is hereditary and apparently recessive (i.e. usually both parents must possess it for their children to inherit it), but there's only one male with the power for every ten females, making the men a rare commodity seldom allowed to risk their lives on the battlefield. Or at least, that's the Watsonian explanation; the Doylist explanation would be that it's a series starring a male relative of Harem Genre Trope Codifier Tenchi who just happens to have the power. Variable Geo centers around a women's-only MMA competition for waitresses. As such, the cast is predominantly female and all of them are trained in a broad range of fighting skills. The only noteworthy males are Damian and the mysterious dirty-minded Old Master, who offers Yuka advice.

While the Birds of Prey (themselves an Amazon Brigade) have gone up against male villains, they're usually dangerous primarily due to their super powers or their resources and intellect. If someone is shown to be able to go toe-to-toe with the heroines - especially Black Canary - in hand-to-hand combat, ten-to-one says it's a woman. In fact, there are a surprising number of women out there who live only to prove themselves against worthy foes in personal combat. The DCU has a number of female-focussed alternate universes. Several of the most recent are Earth-11 of the main DC multiverse, which is basically "Earth-Gender Flip"; the Ame-Comi Girls universe, based on a statue line featuring DC female characters and Gender Flipped versions of male characters in an anime-influenced style; the DC Comics Bombshells universe, a Weird Historical War alternate version of World War II featuring versions of various female DC heroes and villains, which was derived from a series of variant covers and statues reimagining them in a 1940s-pin-up art style; and the Gotham City Garage universe, a post-apocalyptic alternate dimension where Supergirl, Batgirl, Wonder Woman and other female heroes fight back against Lex Luthor's tyrannical rule. An older and never fully realized one due to cancellation after a single comic was Wonder Woman and the Star Riders, where every single character is a magical action girl. Future Foundation: Given this is a superhero comic, all the women are skilled fighters, whether or not they have superpowers. In Jaime Hernandez's graphic novel "God And Science", which is set in a superhero universe featuring many alternate versions of characters from his main Love and Rockets series, almost all of the superheroes are female, and it's explicitly stated in the novel that women naturally have superpowers whereas men have to use technology. The 2006 version of Heroes for Hire was filled of girls: Misty Knight, Colleen Wing, Black Cat and Tarantula. And none of them plays it soft, they all kick ass. Y: The Last Man: This is a natural result of all but one of the men in the world dying, and that man not being particularly badass to begin with.

The 14 Amazons, being set in the aftermath of a war where an entire family of noble heroes were killed, had their spouses, sisters, and daughters - all of them capable warriors - taking up arms and continuing the fight to avenge their loved ones. Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny: All named female characters are fighters and ass-kickers, including Michelle Yeoh's Yu Shu-lien, the new heroine Snow Vase, one of the wandering warriors Silver Dart Shi, the Blind Enchantress who is a competent fighter in her own right, Dark Action Girl Mantis and the restaurant's cook who happens to know kung fu, which she use to expertly beat up mooks during both minutes of her screentime. In Kill Bill, most of the female characters do some major ass kicking. Notably, Bill's old assassination squad was majority women; the only other man aside from Bill on the team was his brother Budd. In Sucker Punch, the fantasy worlds Baby Doll dreams up are certainly this. Given that they're made to reflect the desire of her and the other female inmates to fight back, it makes sense they'd be badass soldiers.