There's just something about a woman who could squish you. Sylvia and Chris run down (up?) some of the giantesses of anime.
Disclaimer:The views and opinions expressed by the participants in this chatlog are not the views of Anime News Network. Spoiler Warning for discussion of the series ahead.
Sylvia
Chris, it's not too often we get to do a column with a theme song, so I think it's important to put it at the top here for our audience. To get the optimal TWIA experience, please play this on repeat as you read the remainder of the article. Thank you.
Chris
It's important to get the hits out right in front, since otherwise folks would be filling up the comments section with it. And that's because today's subject calls for it. With the imminent premiere of Kaiju Girl Caramelise, it's time we tackled a titanic topic.
That's right, we're talkin' big mamas. Large ladies. Grande gals.
Giant women, indeed. These colossal members of the sisterhood have graced many an anime, and much more beyond that. The Greeks imagined them in their mythology. Many figures in Hinduism are women of a prodigious size. And our cultural understanding of B-movies was never the same after this film dropped. Humankind, it seems, is endlessly fascinated with the question of "what if a very tall lady?"
It's worth noting that size fetishists of the macro persuasion do have their own powerfully personal dedication to the niche. But it's definitely worth reviewing how even the most mainstream viewers seem to agree there's something compelling about a massive missus. It pops up everywhere.
I mean, classic DC villain Giganta just made her appearance in everyone's favorite superhero anime My Adventures With Superman, and my timeline's been nothing but reactions of white-hot jealousy toward smushable little Jimmy Olsen.
See, it's not just anime fans who are perverts. Comic book fans can be just as depraved! (Please conveniently ignore the point that My Adventures With Superman is very obviously made by a bunch of anime nerds, which is also why it's so good.)
Also! Fun bit of last-minute Pride month trivia to do with Giganta that I happened to stumble onto when I was browsing Bluesky this morning: the first actress to portray her in live action was Aleshia Brevard, a trans woman! Evidently, the casting director was looking for a tall, hot lady, and may I just say: many such cases.
This casting was so right for this.
Image via bsky.app
This was in 1979, which really goes to show how enduring the appeal of this idea is. Now, to be sure, Kaiju Girl Caramelise is its own unique spin on the subject, where the girl doesn't just get kaiju-sized; she transforms into an actual monstrous kaiju!
Which still fits into the interplay of femininity and monstrosity that often accompanies the depiction of giant women, to say nothing of entries in the daikaiju genre itself!
Everyone knows Mothra is a pretty lady with big, gorgeous eyes, so she could and should be included in the conversation.
Additionally, be careful not to confuse Kaiju Girl Caramelise with Kaiju Girls, a gag anime about kaiju gijinka. Which is relevant to the conversation as well, of course.
The Ultra series, and its spin-offs, of course, are no strangers to the appeal of giant things. Including, naturally, the occasional lady.
...you know, we're up to three examples already where the big girls are wearing skirts, which I guess explains some of the baser appeal.
I mean...it is difficult to divorce this phenomenon from its fetishistic aspect. And the giantess fetish in particular tends to be one of the easier ones to make fun of, precisely because of its—if you'll forgive the pun—oversized visibility. "Normal" people see this stuff all over in "normal" media, so they will be aware of it at the very least. The overlap between giantess and vore, another common fetish pariah, is also very interesting, if you ask me. But all of this is a challenging conversation to have in public without people making a lot of assumptions about what gets you off.
Which is why I'm going to immediately bring up Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid next.
Instead of judging people in the size-fetish community for their preferences, y'all can instead judge Sylvia and me for the fact that we both immediately whipped over to Valkyrie Drive's legendary giant-size episode as soon as writing about this subject came up.
This is how I found out that Crunchyroll now stocks the uncensored airing of this show. But yeah, this is Valkyrie Drive. The show is a multi-course meal of fetishini alfredo, of course, they would go galaxy-brain with this giga-sized entry.
It's one of my favorite episodes of a show I appreciate quite unironically. It just freaking goes for it. There's an entire scene of a girl interacting with a nipple bigger than her head. It's full of the cheesecake low-angle shots, except the giantess in question is completely nude, so there is no skirt to worry about. And the giant boobs have visible giant boob veins. This is sophisticated perversion.
It's also refreshing to see all of this laid bare in the weird lesbian softcore show that makes allusions to Utena (women who turn into vehicles, gay swordfighting powered by kisses, etc.). Too often, people reduce fetishes to manifestations of the male gaze—and I'm sure people will make that argument about Valkyrie Drive too—but I know in my heart that this is for the ladies. And hi, I am a lady.
Valkyrie Drive is one with a lot to it and could easily fill up a column by itself. But its heart is that ability to take its on-the-face absurdity and make it genuinely compelling rather than poisoned by irony (there's a character whose expression of self-love within the systems of the story is so outlandish it makes them one of my favorites). So it goes for the story of the adorably named Minimi Nimi and her regular-sized girlfriend. It's all about being able to accept who you are because the person you love already does.
I can't post screencaps of this whole sequence without necessitating an age gate on this column, but trust me, it's spectacular.
That's the only downside of bringing up Valkyrie Drive in this column. I'm shocked this is still streaming on Crunchyroll over 10 years after its debut. We cannot take that kind of serendipity for granted anymore. Please do not miss out on this opportunity to watch a queer anime classic. It's peak, and I'm not just saying that because Minimi's breasts resemble mountains.
I hope we can compel some new audiences to check out Valkyrie Drive. Lord knows there's plenty of audience crossover with similarly minded festishy lesbian fanservice anime that are somewhat more recent.
I get the feeling that Valkyrie Drive would also appeal to fans of Gushing Over Magical Girls. And not just because they both understand the appeal of a multi-meter madame.
It just stands to reason that the most significant anime adaptation of the decade would touch upon such a hugely important topic.
I know for a fact that this isn't the first series to have a character near-lethally crushed under a giant woman's giant bosom, but this was never an anime to let anything stop it.
It also makes apparent why Gushing Over Magical Girls would be so dedicated to its several stories' worth of colossal craft that it would go back to the subject in a separate, unrelated instance before the anime was over.
It's amazing what can be accomplished when the writer stops trying to barely disguise their fetish. Particularly when it's so huge that there's no point in trying.
Even if you're not a foot fellow, I think you should nonetheless be able to look at this screenshot and respect the commitment to the bit.
But as previously discussed, you don't have to dredge the ecchi mines to locate the large ladies you may seek. There are wildly popular "respectable" options if that is more your speed. But if you open your mind and heart, you may find more similarities than differences when you compare them to the more...honest examples.
"Female Titan," there are multiple female Titans. Is the statute of limitations on spoilers up? Can we call her Annie now?
I think we're in the clear. Although if we're looking at the gamut of Titan designs, this big little freak is my favorite. I appreciate that it's a lot weirder than just "what if Titan but girl?"
Granted, there is a purposefulness to Annie Titan's design when first glimpsed in the series. She's the first noticeably ladylike Titan seen, so it makes her stand out as Different, while also tapping into the thus-discussed visual power of a giant woman.
In doing so, it highlights how this specific trope stands apart from the more genericized fifty-foot fighting beasties, or just regular giant guys.
I am very pro-Annie at the end of the day. A shame they put her in the crystal for multiple seasons of the anime. The price a woman must pay for exuding too much aura.
As you alluded to in the lead-up to her, the spacious scene of shonen can make a fair amount of room for more standardized sizable sisters. Diane in The Seven Deadly Sins. Mt. Lady in My Hero Academia. Examples portrayed with less outright fetishism than those straight-up softcore examples.
I wouldn't dare do Kōhei Horikoshi the dishonor of accusing him of not being horny. He put Mt. Lady in the first goddamned chapter. That's prime worldbuilding real estate dedicated to two panels on the same page showing off her buttcrack. That is a mangaka who knows what his priorities are.
It is possible to have your novelty giant cheesecake and eat it too. Eiichiro Oda is...Eiichiro Oda, so while he's known for drawing a lot of women in one particular way, he has shaken things up with several gigantic lady characters like Big Mom.
And now One Piece is ankle-deep in a whole arc featuring a land of actual, literal giants, so gargantuan gals are running the gamut, including Ange and Ripley.
And again, series like One Piece, My Hero Academia, and Attack on Titan are some of the most popular of all time. Read and watched by millions. So it's a guarantee that, for a certain percentage of those viewers, seeing a dame (or multiple dames) the size of an apartment building is going to awaken something in them.
The artsier side of anime is not exempt either. If you had to choose some of the most iconic imagery in the medium, these shots would be in the running, and they contain one of the largest of ladies. With Rei functioning as both an avatar for Mother Earth and a manifestation of cosmic, alien horror.
It's definitely fueled by the fact that Rei as a character can serve as a multitudinous representation of a lot of Big Ideas in the Evangelion story (plus the fact that there are, canonically, a lot of her). A larger-than-life concept of a person who, both in and out of the universe, ends up eclipsing a lot else of Evangelion.
And also, not for nothin', Anno was partly responsible for Big Asami in Shin Ultraman I mentioned a little while back.
And Anno himself was influenced by stuff like the original Ultraman, and I mean, the main premise of that one is a guy who gets really big so he can fight equally big bad guys. I have to imagine there was at least one giant female-coded villain in there.
Hey, tangential Ultra spinoff SSSS.Gridman had a couple of its own moments of big girls.
Exactly! Plus, as a renowned creator himself, Anno too has a legacy of influence. As a sequel to his GunbusterOVA, the titular Diebuster in Diebuster is—you guessed it—a giant planet-sized (robot) woman.
If we're getting into the mecha weeds, that means contemplating how many of the female examples of my fave Transformers technically fall into this category. There are plenty of straightforward examples, but I've got to give a special shout-out to the case of Minerva, who merges with a robot body to do the "regular-size-to-giant" version of this trope.
It's adjacent to piloted mecha, but still! And there are plenty of other girl-shaped robots that play the idea straight. The Nobel Gundam being a giant robot Sailor Moon is an obvious one, but there are also cases like DARLING in the FRANXX's mecha—genuinely cool designs playing with this idea! That's something I'll actually give DARLING in the FRANXX credit for, so of course it's an aspect that little "fandom" is left for that show barely pays any mind to.
I'm glad I can always count on you to school me on Transformers. And I guess, if we're talking robots, Aerial from Witch from Mercury counts in an admittedly morbid stretch of the definition.
I'd also be remiss not to bring up the Fate series' long-running fascination with giant women, perhaps best exemplified by everything the evil nun Sesshoin Kiara has going on. Just watch her Noble Phantasm from Fate/Extra CCC.
Very normal stuff. Also, yes, she was one of my favorite units in Fate/Grand Order, thank you for asking.
Really putting the 'Earth' in unbirth there.
For whatever reason, Kingprotea is the one who always first comes to mind for me. Not on the level of Kiara, but the tenor is still inherently there.
Admittedly, I'm not as much of an FGO-head, but this sort of thing even pops up in the further corners of the Nasuverse. Melty Blood gave us Giant Akiha, after all!
Nasu thinks it's neat when a girl is big. And the culture is richer for it. I haven't touched FGO in a good while myself, but I'm pretty sure at this point you could populate an entire party with Servants who either are or become gigantic women.
Please also enjoy this promotional illustration of Kingprotea in repose.
There's simply something serene about a giant woman being able to chill out overlooking the clouds themselves. Indeed, for all the fetishy swerves this subject invariably takes, there's still plenty of material that can embrace its naturally sweet, simple appeal. In talking with some folks for recommendations regarding this column, I learned of Wataru Mitogawa's manga My Girlfriend is 8 Meters Tall, which seems to be...exactly what it says.
This actually netted an official English release over here, so I could buy and read the full thing at some point. But from what I've sampled, it seems to be an appreciably adorable romance about a guy and his childhood friend who grew (a lot) in the interim. And also the tribulations of an 8-meter-tall gyaru trying to source cute, coordinated accessories.
Geez, and I thought I had it bad trying to find nice shoes in my size.
Goes to show that I don't think there's a wrong way to tackle or appreciate the subject of giant women. Whether you're getting your rocks off, having fun playing with the concept, writing a song about it, or using it to address the struggles of being a nonstandard-sized woman in modern society, there's always something interesting going on beneath the surface. And the more colossal the woman, the more surface there is to explore.
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