Something being absurd doesn't really excuse blatant objectification, especially since not all of the "sexual overtones" are all that absurd and are all about just showing Bayonetta's tits & ass without much to laugh at (like the very beginning of Bayonetta 2, there's no absurd comedy to be found in the way the camera shows a close-up of every nook & cranny of her while time is frozen...).
I don't pretend that you (or anyone else) find it funny, or even like it, again, i'm fine with people disliking the game for whatever reason.
I have a problem with the inability to accept that other may, indeed, find it funny.
And if you don't think that a woman kicking in the air a jet plane, and having her clothes sliced off while doing ridiculously cartoony moans, by centaurs , as she poses like Sailor Moon in the air, isn't at least absurd, we really can't see eye to eye here.
But sure, you can go ahead and tell me what I find or don't find funny though, not gonna change how i feel about it.
I think it's hilarious, in the same way that the horny idiots in Animal House are hilarious.
It's not necessarily the content being sexual that is the problem, it's that it's yet another female character that this gets done to that makes it more problematic. I mean, Kamiya made Devil May Cry. A similar action game with a male protagonist and he didn't feel the need to do such overly sexual content for the game, yet as soon as he & his team make a game with a female protagonist, it just needs to be hyper-sexual. You don't see any problem with that? At least as far as the bigger picture of how women are treated in games goes?
Bayonetta is not "yet another".
The very core of Bayonetta is of sexually themed action comedy.
Quiet is "yet another" (which i mentioned), Cortana is "yet another" (which i mentioned), EDI is "yet another", that lady from Red Faction Armageddon showing cleavage is "yet another"... i could go on.
I never claimed the industry didn't have a problem with female representation (on the contrary, i've stated the opposite countless times), it doesn't mean that any and all examples of female in a sexual context (even absurdly over the top and fun, like Bayonetta) have to grind my gears or iare equal to any other.
Bayonetta is erotic to its core, and i think that's perfectly fine, there's nothing wrong with eroticism.
It's only a design problem when it's out of place (examples above) and it's a social problem when it's so pervasive and out of balance (which it is, in the industry at large) but in that case, the problem isn't Bayonetta, it's the pointless sexual astroturfing caused by the above examples.
While I agree a game with a male protag flaunting their sexuality like Bayo would be out of place
... she still owns it and uses it as a weapon. As a strong intersectional feminist I still love the game and the character.
Also, it should be said that Dante was pretty sexualized for a lead male. Moreso than I've seen before.
I would find a BayonettO equally as great and funny BTW.
I'm one of the few here (going by the reactions in that thread) who was fine with the sexualized design of that Final Fantasy dude, in that one mobile game, for example.
I just think sexualization has to make sense within the design principle of the game, and should have to be (on a larger scale than a single game) balanced between sexes.