Lol, those Mortal Combat 9 outfits look pretty ridiculous. I'd wager it's more about eye candy. With the Buffy example, it's also the case that the vast majority of the show is focused on the relationships between the characters.

Exactly. It's like I mentioned above, these MK9 outfits were purely just about eye-candy/wank fodder and not much thought put into most of them. I wouldn't have been annoyed with the guy if he was just upfront about them and just said he likes looking at pornstar looking women. It'd be better than him trying to justify why they looked like that for "practicality" and "empowering" reasons lol.

But yeah, arguing with guys that want to deny why they're interested in the game, not likely to go anywhere.

Yeah you're right. When the MK11 controversy first came out years before the game came out when they revealed the character Skarlet's new look, there was an outcry of MK fanboys whinging and going "they're bringing censorship to the women" and things of that nature and some of the complaints were just so dumb and overly dramatic and the justifications for why they thought the old design method aka pornstar look was better were hilarious (and annoying). I tried to explain from a design perspective as I'm a character designer in training myself about why they most likely did this change and it was just clear they want their porn fantasy. Which okay fine, but at least be honest with it lol.