Annon-Guy: Fighting Stances
Out of the returning characters in StrIVe, how come Ramlethal, Anji, Jack-O', Baiken, Sin, Johnny and Venom are the only fighters to not change their Fighting stances between Xrd and StrIVe?
I discussed part of this in the Battle+Stance+Evolution tag, which most certainly covered Baiken.
And in Baiken’s case, she did change her stance, you probably simply forgot.
Covering other characters, I prefer to address each by generation of game (first appearances) moving forwards.
Anji, Johnny, Venom, (Robo Ky and Jam) all made their first time debuts in Guilty Gear X when it came out in Japanese Arcades.
At that time, their sprites had only just freshly been drawn and animated. Even Testament was given a completely different battle stance and sprite animations. Though this information does not account for sprite draw errors and color mistakes that happened between GGX, GGXPlus, and standard GGXX games.
It would take a video documentary or equivalent to cover the specific differences between versions in minutia.
Characters like Anji and Testament made a massive leap from GGXX to Strive because they had not been in the Xrd games at all, so their stances were redone from scratch with Strive camera angle presentation in mind.
That being said, Anji’s stance only had some minor adjustments, though this was also adjusted with his clothes and hairstyle change in mind as well.
Johnny has been in nearly all of GGX, GGXPlus, GGXX, with exception to Xrd Sign which he only cameos in, but returned in XrdRev2 and Strive.
His stance is not too particularly altered, just a few adjustments in hand positions and movements, clothes animations, and idle animations really.
Why change perfection?
Venom’s battle stance is pretty simple to begin with. If anything changed it was clothes adjustments, particularly in Strive.
Moving on to Sin, you actually have to take his GG2 Overture battle stance in to account in the history of his design.
He actually has a bit of flair to his animations in GG2, particularly when he flips and spins his flag around in victory poses and intros. Sadly you don’t see much of this in later games because of dynamic camera zooms and other limitations.
I will also state that Testament used to spin his scythe in GG1 but it wasn’t nearly as animated in later games, if at all.
With Sin, you also must notice that the camera angles they used for Xrd and Strive also reflect the difference in how a character looks, which is why they changed Sol and Ky from their original stances to facing their bodies towards the camera instead of a side view.
Unfortunately for Sin, when he appears in Xrd, his flag is rolled up and even his hair is somewhat not as spikey as it originally was in GG2, and his side stance barely reveals how long his flag pole actually is until he uses his attacks.
Whether this was a style choice or budget limitation I couldn’t tell you the specific reasons for why Sin ended up that way, but at least in Strive his flag is unfurled once more and actually reflects his original GG2 energy a bit more.
Ramlethal’s design is something typical of boss characters, though she ends up with a few clothing adjustments later on. A powerful floating boss doesn’t really need much of a battle stance to speak of, though if you compared Ramlethal with a boss like Algol in Soul Calibur or Orochi in KOF or Magneto perhaps, she could have used more hand animations, if I am being a critic.
That just leaves Jack-O’.
Her battle stance is somewhat enigmatic, in that she presents herself almost like an angelic savior, though unlike Ramlethal she isn’t floating, nor does she have Wings like Dizzy.
Dizzy’s Strive battle stance is actually not all that different from Jack-O’s actually, so part of the idea comes from her appearance with a Halo along with how she was presented to Sol in her first encounter with him as an Anti-Justice deterrent.
History aside, Jack-O’s acrobatic movement is reminiscent of capoeira, which usually has a rhythm movement to it, like Eddie Gordo in Tekken or Elena in Street Fighter.
The fact she can have such a strange stance and shift her body in to such dynamic positions is telling of her superhuman athleticism and reflexes. She’s been known to disarm a group of soldiers with guns with just her feet and a lollipop, after all!
As for why her battle stance hasn’t changed, that’s something of a mystery too.
Unlike Tira, her battle stance does not change when her alternate personality emerges (from Jolly to Gloomy, or in this case from Adult to Child), so her stance has no impact on her dominant personality, or at least that seems to be the current case.
Even her hair, though it has changed color somewhat, does not appear to reflect any internal or external changes. All we really know is that Jack-O’ has matured and only very rarely does she allow her childish side to emerge, even if it is infrequently present in her mind.
(Side note: Nagoriyuki said he can sense both personalities within her, and that alone has yet to be explained.)
Outside of that, there’s still the possibility of Jack-O’ transforming in to her true purpose: a vessel for the restored soul of Aria Hale.
Unlikely though this is to happen, it still could, which leaves it as something of a mystery, or if something could trigger it.
But again, her Battle Stance alone has not changed since her debut, though outside of camera adjustments and other minute details, there hasn’t been a solid explanation or reason for it.