Bayonetta the character constantly breaks the fourth wall.
This short trailer was the first glimpse of her Platinum released to the public. The first thing she says, looking straight out at the camera, is, "You want to touch me?" And when the camera does the pervy slow mo, panning undercarriage shot, she strikes a pose and purrs, "Bad boy." In the actual game, the first time you see her in her costume, she hangs in the sky in a messianic pose while spotlights appear from nowhere to illuminate her. She constantly cuts her eyes at the camera in cinematics and blows kisses at the screen. She knows she's got an audience and she's hamming it up for their entertainment. That has always been the conception of the character, from the very beginning.
People getting bent out of shape over the sexuality are not reading the context properly. Bayonetta is burlesque, in both senses of the word. The saucy, hyper-sexualized stuff shares about equal time with ridiculous physical comedy, callbacks and references to previous games the devs have worked on, and superhuman action scenes.
Bayonetta's proportions go straight past idealized into the absurd. She's seven feet tall, has a pin head, legs longer than a normal woman's entire body, and hips wider than her shoulders. She looks deliberately comical when she crouches down to wield a katana or a slide trombone and is a ridiculous jumble of legs when you make her breakdance. Bayonetta's more about being outrageous on every possible level than actually trying to get you off.
It's completely high camp. Like others, Bayonetta reminds me more of a drag queen than an agent of my personal fantasies. Her persona is larger than life, she's doing exactly what she wants at all times, and she's pretty damn funny. Rather than asking a bunch of unknown female devs, half of whom have refused to even engage with the material due to their own preconceptions, what they think of Bayonetta and her game, I'd be more interested in what John Waters has to say.
