Is horny-posting misogynist? Bayonetta is so overtly sexual and goofy that seeing it as anything other than the creators wanking is silly. Nobody reads it as normal, so at worst it’s normalising its aesthetics and sensibilities in porn. It’s not fair to compare it to DMC, because DMC does present itself as normal*.
Then the question goes back to if horny-posting is misogynist, if the context which allows a horny-post to become a huge multi-year hundred-person endeavour and have that be a viable product is misogynist. If the acceptance and normalisation of having the porn-woman in Smash Brothers is misogynist, etc. Personally I think it’s okay. Though probably if they had made the same product for women it wouldn’t have worked. Contrast it with something like Chou Aniki where the sexualisation can’t be played straight and have the product be viable. Though the culture has changed since Bayonetta came out. Baldur’s Gate 3 is even more heavily marketed as a sexy sex game, and their poster-boy is a boy.
[1] DMC is still goofy, but it’s presented as cool+. ‘We overdid it to the point of absurdity’, rather than being anything orthogonal to “cool”.
The metacritic score is something like 80% but it was a 7/10 for me.
Right, but that’s very close to the average opinion you quoted too.
80%. You liking it 70% is consistent with the average (metacritic aggregate) being 80%. It’s ± 10%, you’re basically fully aligned with the reviewers.