Babette Fontaine has been the woman to beat in the French Southeastern division of the ISO. She lost her very first career sexfight but has been undefeated since. So it’s no wonder that challengers come from all over Europe and even America to challenge her.
Damn was worried we would never see Louise again , but did not expect her to reappear with the ISO
Nice
I forgot about the ISO.
Question, is the ISO like the old NWA where each territory has a champion?.
How are the territories/Leagues set up? (European, Worldwide, Continental)
Hope I’m not being a pest, I’m genuinely interested.
This is a very interesting episode that I would like to give an a bit more elaborate opinion on; consider yourselves warned.
In substance, this is, to my mind, the most creative entry in the ISO series so far (which is quite the achievement in itself, given that the ISO stories have always struck me as more experimental than the regular episodes). It builds on one of the defining traits of Entropy’s style – the importance of text and specifically language to support the intentions of the visual art – and takes it to a new level by making the entire episode bilingual with one character almost exclusively speaking French and the other alternating between spoken English and French and an all-English inner monologue.
Which, in my opinion, is simply awesome.
I have always liked the inventive ways that language is used in the BSF cartoons to flesh out the women’s characters as well as intensify their banter. Before, however, this always happened on a limited scale: the viewer was either given mere dialect which he could understand with a bit of effort (like in Chip’s or Rita’s case), or provided with subtitles for the few non-English words he’d come upon (the prime example being Hani); so in these cases language was primarily used to exoticize the dialogue, but avoided to actually exclude the reader from understanding what was being said.
T h i s story, however, goes one step further: while Louise does hint at the meaning of a few bits of her opponent’s banter in her inner monologue, most of it is not translated at any time. And this gives the use of language two effects that, to my knowledge, we have not seen so far in any prior episode.
First, language itself becomes a tool of psychological battle on a far more fundamental level than before: her challenger tries to intimidate Louise by making her feel like a stranger in a strange land by exclusively speaking French with the exception of one moment just before the beginning of the actual fight; she is rebuffed, however, when Louise reveals that she can speak French perfectly well.
This is a very subtle change, but in my opinion in the viewer’s mind Louise at this moment stops being an intruder who has stumbled into a country she knows nothing about, and becomes an invader who – at least on a verbal level – is already in control of the situation and can now credibly try to prove that she is in control physically as well.
Second, it can be argued that this specific use of language, while clearly enhancing Louise’s agency, at the same time reduces the agency of the viewer (as far as he is not able to speak French). The reason for this is that while the viewer will have no trouble understanding the story per se and roughly piecing together what is probably being said (Entropy made sure of that), he still won’t be able to grasp every nuance and allusion the way he usually is.
And I would argue that this makes the characters appear stronger and far more in control than ever before: instead of being completely transparent on the inside and outside, there is now a thin, but present layer of shieldedness that lets them keep a few secrets to themselves and might even have a slightly humbling effect on the viewer.
In the foreword to his sexfight novel Tribbings, Mass Entropy writes that the fantasies presented in the text are about strong women who “run the show” and even goes as far as to suggest that sexfighting might be the kind of eroticism closest (if, of course, not actually identical) to the ideals of feminism; I would argue that this ISO episode gives a very good idea of what he might mean by this.
On a less speculative note, I also really like this episode’s contribution to worldbuilding, specifically how it makes the ISO feel like a truly international organization.
All in all, to me this is one of the boldest and most creative episodes that I have ever seen on this site. My one, entirely subjective complaint is that I would have probably preferred to keep the BSF and ISO apart from each other, so the ISO fights would have retained their “puristic” charm; but that’s probably just me.
Also, I am now officially volunteering to provide my skills as native speaker, should Entropy ever decide to do an episode involving the German ISO chapter. 😉
Nur weiter so, Monsieur, Sie sind zweifellos auf dem richtigen Weg!
It’s always great to see Louise again I really wanted her to win the fight against Denise and was mad that she lost both of those fights in the pit I’m actually hoping that this leads to a bigger crossover with The Iso characters trying to take on the bwl girls it could give us some closer with Louise and Denise because I wasn’t a fan of that ending also it would be intresting to see Kim Robin or Prudie taking on some of the iso champions