Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant documents that answer the question.
Query: Is Samus a woman?
Samus was one of the first major female protagonists in a video game. Although Toby Masuyo ("Kissy") from Namco's "Alien Sector" ("Baraduke") predates her by one year as a female protagonist, 2013's "Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition" declared Samus as "the first playable human female character in a mainstream videogame", and as being "enduringly" popular, noting that sales of the "Metroid" series has exceeded 17.44 million copies as of September 2012. As a woman in a male-dominated role, Samus has been widely considered a breakthrough for female characters in video games.
Samus returns to the research center, where she finds the body of the "Deleter", who is revealed to be James Pierce, and the mummified remains of Ridley. She also discovers the survivor Adam mentioned, and defeats a Queen Metroid. Samus pursues the survivor, who reveals herself to be the real Madeline. Madeline explains that the woman Samus met earlier was MB, an android created to establish a relationship with the Metroids. Betrayed by the scientists and Madeline, MB telepathically commanded the Space Pirate special forces to attack those on board and had managed to propagate the Metroids in Sector Zero. Samus and Madeline are then confronted by MB herself. A group of Federation troopers rushes into the room, and MB summons the Bottle Ship's most dangerous creatures to attack. Madeline stops MB, who is then destroyed by Federation soldiers. The colonel compliments Samus's efforts but orders a soldier to escort Samus back to her ship; the soldier reveals himself as Anthony, the only surviving member of the 07th Platoon. Samus, Madeline and Anthony leave for the Galactic Federation headquarters in Samus's gunship.
A month later, Samus awakens aboard "Olympus", where she learns that Dark Samus's Phazon-based attacks have corrupted her. The Federation equips her suit with a Phazon Enhancement Device (PED) that enables her to harness the Phazon energy within herself. She is informed that her fellow bounty hunters, also corrupted with Phazon and equipped with PEDs, have gone missing during their missions to investigate several planets embedded with Leviathan Seeds. Samus is first sent to the planet Bryyo and later Elysia to determine what happened to her missing comrades. She soon discovers that both planets and their inhabitants are slowly being corrupted by the Leviathan Seeds and that she must destroy the seeds to reverse this. Samus encounters heavy resistance from the Space Pirates, Phazon-corrupted monstrosities, and her fellow bounty hunters who have been corrupted by Dark Samus.
Metroid Prime and its alternate form Dark Samus is the main antagonist of the "Prime" subseries. It is a strange, black-carapaced, red-eyed creature with a humanoid face within its shell and the ability to control and horribly mutate anything it attaches to. Metroid Prime appears in "Metroid Prime" as the final boss, and after its defeat, reforms itself by stealing Samus' Phazon Suit to become Dark Samus, a black-colored doppelgänger of Samus.
One of Adam's final missions to Samus is to finish off Ridley, whom Adam fears might be more dangerous than the Metroids if left unchecked, and claims Samus is the only one capable of stopping him. However, Samus later discovers his corpse after he is killed, having had his energy drained by the Queen Metroid on the Bottle Ship. His mummified corpse turns up again in "Metroid Fusion" on the BSL station, after having apparently been removed from the Bottle Ship by the Galactic Federation and placed in a sub-zero storage room for further research (potentially into further bioweapon applications). It is later infected by an X Parasite, allowing it to gain the ability to transform into Ridley's likeness, known as . Samus later defeats the Ridley mimic and absorbs its Core-X, regaining her signature Screw Attack. What was left of the cloned Ridley's remains were destroyed along with the X when the BSL station crashed into SR388.
After returning to the Pyrosphere to follow the reptilian creature, Samus discovers that it is actually a juvenile stage of the dragon-like Ridley. Anthony draws Ridley's attention and challenges him, but is seemingly killed. Unable to save Anthony, Samus battles Ridley, who subsequently escapes. As Samus leaves the Pyrosphere, she realizes she cannot contact Adam. Samus pursues the "Deleter" to the Bioweapon Research Center, where she meets the young woman from before, who introduces herself as "Madeline Bergman." Madeline reveals that the scientists were propagating the Metroids in the Bottle Ship, reproduced from the remnants of the infant Metroid found on Samus's power suit after her return from Zebes. Madeline also explains that an artificial intelligence named "MB", based on Mother Brain, was created to control the Metroids, harbored in a secret area known as Sector Zero, a recreation of Tourian. Samus heads to Sector Zero, but Adam stops her from entering, warning her that the Metroids in Sector Zero cannot be frozen. Adam states his intention to enter Sector Zero to set off its self-destruct mechanism and cause it to detach from the Bottle Ship. Before leaving, Adam commands Samus to defeat Ridley and secure the safety of a survivor in "Room MW" of the Bioweapon Research Center. Despite her pleas, Adam leaves Samus for Sector Zero, sacrificing himself in the process.
The Metroid larva is chronologically the last Metroid of its race following the events of "" and "". Samus describes how a Metroid larva hatched from an egg and immediately imprinted upon her, believing her to be its mother. She brought the larva to Ceres Space Colony, where scientists learned that they could harness its power. Just after she left the colony, she received a distress call and returned to find the scientists dead and the larva stolen. The Baby Metroid is used as the driving theme of the game as Samus tirelessly searches through Zebes and eventually the Space Pirate's base on Tourian for her Metroid hatchling. Once encountering the enlarged Baby Metroid in Space Pirate clutches, it attacks Samus and nearly drains all her energy. During the final battle against Mother Brain, the Baby Metroid comes to aid of Samus by recharging her energy, but Mother Brain destroys it in retaliation. Samus avenges its death by destroying Mother Brain with an extremely powerful weapon given to her by the Metroid. After a planet-wide self-destruction, Samus for once mourns the death of a Metroid.
The Game Boy's black-and-white graphics resulted in changes to Samus's gear that eventually became permanent. In the original "Metroid", color was used to differentiate between Samus's Power Suit and her Varia Suitan upgraded version. However, without color on the Game Boy, the two suits would have appeared similar, requiring the developers to develop a visual indicator for players to determine which suit Samus is wearing. They also updated her Varia Suit, adding round metal shoulders that have been a part of the suit in every game in the series since then. Nintendo R&D1 was also involved in developing the Game Boy Color, a successor to the original Game Boy with a color screen. Nintendo of America's Dan Owsen noted that Nintendo R&D1 included a special ""Metroid" palette" in the Game Boy Color's hardware, which "makes "Metroid II" look really, really nice on Game Boy Color", remarking that this made the game's graphics comparable to the original "Metroid" on the Nintendo Entertainment System.
The first known female superhero is writer-artist Fletcher Hanks's minor character Fantomah, an ageless, ancient Egyptian woman in the modern day who could transform into a skull-faced creature with superpowers to fight evil; she debuted in 1940 in Fiction Houses "Jungle Comics".
Ridley returns in his Meta form once again in "", where he, along with the Space Pirate legion under his command, are corrupted by Dark Samus. He encounters and battles Samus on Norion, a Galactic Federation-occupied world, and the two fight while free-falling down an air shaft. Ridley is later supercharged with Phazon, becoming "Omega Ridley", and is charged with guarding the Leviathan Seed on the Space Pirate homeworld. He is confronted once again by Samus, and despite being defeated, he survives the fight and is later cured of his corruption after Dark Samus' defeat later on. Between the "Prime" trilogy and "", the Space Pirates reorganize on Zebes and hatch another plan to clone and weaponize the Metroids, while Ridley gradually begins to regenerate from his past injuries, gradually shedding his cybernetics. In the remake of the second game, "", Ridley, in his semi-regenerated form of "Proteus Ridley", attacks Samus on SR388 to steal the last remaining Metroid. Samus and the baby Metroid work together to defeat Ridley.
Both major publishers began introducing new superheroines with a more distinct feminist theme as part of their origin stories or character development. Examples include Big Barda, Power Girl, and the Huntress by DC comics; and from Marvel, the second Black Widow, Shanna the She-Devil, and The Cat. Female supporting characters who were successful professionals or hold positions of authority in their own right also debuted in the pages of several popular superhero titles from the late 1950s onward: Hal Jordan's love interest Carol Ferris was introduced as the Vice-President of Ferris Aircraft and later took over the company from her father; Medusa, who was first introduced in the "Fantastic Four" series, is a member of the Inhuman Royal Family and a prominent statesperson within her people's quasi-feudal society; and Carol Danvers, a decorated officer in the United States Air Force who would become a costumed superhero herself years later.
In 1975, a two-part episode entitled "The Bionic Woman", written for television by Kenneth Johnson, introduced the lead character Jaime Sommers (played by Lindsay Wagner), a professional tennis player who rekindled an old romance with Austin, only to experience a parachuting accident that resulted in her being given bionic parts similar to Austin. Ultimately, her body "rejected" her bionic hardware and she died. The character was very popular, however, and the following season it was revealed that she had actually survived, having been saved by an experimental cryogenic procedure, and she was given her own spin-off series, "The Bionic Woman". This spin-off ran until 1978 when both it and "The Six Million Dollar Man" were simultaneously cancelled, though the two series were on different networks when their final seasons aired.
Buffy Summers (played by Sarah Michelle Gellar) is the "Slayer", one in a long line of young women chosen by fate to battle evil forces. This mystical calling endows her with powers that dramatically increase physical strength, endurance, agility, accelerated healing, intuition, and a limited degree of clairvoyance, usually in the form of prophetic dreams. She has returned from death twice and is known as a reluctant hero who wants to live a normal life. However, she learns to embrace her destiny as the vampire slayer.
His early TV work includes "The Six Million Dollar Man", "The Bionic Woman" and "The Incredible Hulk". Johnson created the character of Jaime Sommers and "The Bionic Woman", an American television series starring Lindsay Wagner that aired for three seasons between 1976 and 1978 as a spin-off from "The Six Million Dollar Man".
Lady Shiva (real name Sandra Woosan, or more recently Sandra Wu-San) is a fictional supervillainess and antiheroine appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. The character was co-created by Dennis O'Neil and Ric Estrada, and first appeared in "Richard Dragon, Kung Fu Fighter". Over time, she has become more closely associated with Batman and related characters, both as an enemy and an ally. She is a martial arts grandmaster and one of the most skilled combatants in the DC Universe. She is an assassin-for-hire, who specializes in killing her targets with her bare hands, and is the mother of Cassandra Cain, a.k.a. Orphan.
The Bionic Woman is an American television science fiction action series starring Lindsay Wagner that aired between 1976 and 1978. "The Bionic Woman" series features Jaime Sommers, who takes on special high-risk government missions using her superhuman bionic powers. "The Bionic Woman" series is a spin-off from the 1970s "The Six Million Dollar Man" television science fiction action series.
Throughout the history of the "Metroid" series, Ridley has received positive reception as the series antagonist. He is widely considered one of the most renowned and best Nintendo villains of all time and is regarded as a favorite amongst both the "Metroid" fandom and the series's developers. Nintendo Power listed him as their sixth favorite Nintendo villain, citing both his involvement in the death of Samus's parents as well as his determination, dying at Samus' hands many times yet always coming back. Computer and Video Games editor Mike Jackson described Ridley as a "fan favorite." GameDaily called him the 16th greatest Nintendo character, commenting that he "beats Mother Brain by a mile as the coolest Metroid villain." IGN editor Jesse Schedeen called Ridley the real villain of the "Metroid" series, commenting that he would have to be included in a "Metroid" film if one were made due to him being too important to leave out. 1UP.com editor Nadia Oxford described the Nintendo Comics System version of Ridley as being more of a "squashed bug" than a "fearsome reptile." WatchMojo.com ranked Ridley at #3 in their Top 10 Nintendo Villains list. The 1UP.com staff listed the battle with Ridley in "Super Metroid" as among the most iconic in Nintendo history. They stated that his appearance in "Super Metroid" is more memorable than any other appearance in the "Metroid" series, and that his return from the original game added some familiarity to "Metroid" fans. GamesRadar listed him third on their list of video game villains who will never stay dead, calling him Samus's "great white whale" that, even while he has tormented her throughout her life, she just cannot seem to kill. Gaming Nexus criticized the lack of fellow "Metroid" villain Kraid in "", but stated that the developers made up for it by adding the best Ridley battle in the series's history. IGN editors Phil Pirrello and Richard George listed Ridley as the second most deserving Nintendo character for inclusion in "Super Smash Bros. Brawl", stating that Samus was the only playable character in the game to represent the "Metroid" series (despite it being one of Nintendo's most famous and revered), and that the inclusion of Ridley would broaden the series's range. Overall, he is seen as one of the best Nintendo characters in general. In 2018, Watchmojo.com ranked him #1 on their "Top 10 Most Anticipated New Characters In Smash Ultimate" list.
The first known female superhero is writer-artist Fletcher Hanks's minor character Fantomah, an ageless, ancient Egyptian woman in the modern day who could transform into a skull-faced creature with superpowers to fight evil; she debuted in Fiction House's "Jungle Comics" #2 (Feb. 1940), credited to the pseudonymous "Barclay Flagg". The first widely recognizable female superhero is "Wonder Woman", from All-American Publications, one of three companies that would merge to form DC Comics. In an October 25, 1940, interview conducted by former student Olive Byrne (under the pseudonym 'Olive Richard') and published in "Family Circle", titled "Don't Laugh at the Comics", William Moulton Marston described what he saw as the great educational potential of comic books (a follow up article was published two years later in 1942.) This article caught the attention of comics publisher Max Gaines, who hired Marston as an educational consultant for National Periodicals and All-American Publications, two of the companies that would merge to form the future DC Comics. At that time, Marston decided to develop a new superhero. In the early 1940s the DC line was dominated by superpowered male characters such as the Green Lantern, Batman, and its flagship character, Superman. According to the Fall 2001 issue of the Boston University alumni magazine, it was his wife Elizabeth Hollowy's idea to create a female superhero. Marston introduced the idea to Max Gaines, cofounder (along with Jack Liebowitz) of All-American Publications. Given the go-ahead, Marston developed "Wonder Woman" with Elizabeth (whom Marston believed to be a model of that era's unconventional, liberated woman). In creating Wonder Woman, Marston was also inspired by Olive Byrne, who lived with the couple in a polygamous/polyamorous relationship. In a 1943 issue of "The American Scholar", Marston wrote:
As superheroes began to fade out of fashion in the post-World War II era, comic-book publishers scrambled to explore new types of stories, characters, and audiences. In an attempt to appeal to young female readers, comics companies began introducing some of the first significant female superheroes since Wonder Woman in 1941. These new female leads would include Timely's Blonde Phantom, Golden Girl, Namora, Sun Girl, and Venus, and its teen-humor star Millie the Model; Fox Comics' revival of Quality Comics' Phantom Lady; and DC's Black Canary.
Ursula the Sea Goddess appears in Season 3, where she is voiced by Yvette Nicole Brown. In the episode "Ariel", Ursula is described as a sea goddess whom no one has seen for a thousand years. According to Ariel, Ursula gave merfolk the ability to gain legs once a year, when the tide is highest. Ariel uses this ability to visit Prince Eric at his castle, where he is having a ball honoring Ursula. Later, the Evil Queen (Lana Parrilla) disguises herself as Ursula in order to make a deal with Ariel and trick her into capturing Snow White. This physical disguise includes short white hair and tentacles, similar to Ursula's animated appearance. Although the Queen considers Ursula to be "a long-dead octopus", she is shocked when the real Ursula possesses a statue and warns the queen not to impersonate her again.
The eighty-eight chapters of the science-fiction manga series "Chobits" are written and illustrated by Clamp. "Chobits" appeared as a serial in the Japanese manga magazine "Young Magazine" from the 43rd issue for 2000 to the 48th issue for 2002. Kodansha collected the chapters in eight bound volumes from February 14, 2001 to November 29, 2002. The series centers on Hideki Motosuwa, who finds an abandoned persocom—a personal computer in human form—which he names "Chi" after the only word that she initially can speak. As he forms a relationship with Chi, he gradually learns about her mysterious past and the relationships between humans and persocoms.
The series' co-creator Yoshio Sakamoto recalled, "We were partway through the development process when one of the staff members said 'Hey, wouldn't that be kind of cool if it turned out that this person inside the suit was a woman?'" The developers voted on the concept, and it passed. The game's instruction manual refers to Samus as if she were male to obscure her real sex until the end of the game. Sakamoto noted that during the course of the "Metroid" series, developers constantly try to express Samus' femininity without sexually objectifying her. Samus' image was based on actress Sigourney Weaver in her role as Ellen Ripley from "Aliens", and actress Kim Basinger from "9½ Weeks" and "My Stepmother Is an Alien". Sakamoto and Kiyotake said that the character's last name "Aran" was taken from Edson "Aran"tes do Nascimento, the birth name of the famous football player Pelé.
Instances of Samus appearing without the Power Suit occur mainly in cutscenes, most notably post-game screenshots featuring her in more revealing clothing, which are unlocked depending on difficulty level, game completion, and/or play time. "" introduced the Zero Suit, a form-fitting jumpsuit that she dons beneath the Power Suit. In "", the Zero Suit is revealed to be capable of almost instantly materializing the Power Suit from within itself. Although the "Super Metroid Player's Guide" describes Samus as a muscular woman who is tall and weighs without her Power Suit, her height and weight were slightly mistranslated. In actuality, these measurements are while she is wearing her Power Suit, as confirmed by an official Nintendo page detailing her Power Suit's capabilities. Other games that feature Samus without her Power Suit, such as "Metroid Fusion", "", and "Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS" and "Wii U", reaffirm her aforementioned musculature, albeit lean instead of bulky.
In 2002, Justin Hoeger of "The Sacramento Bee" opined that "unlike most other female video game characters, Samus isn't some husky-voiced bimbo in tight leather included only for sex appeal. Samus is tough, silent, heavily armed and spends most of her time in a bulky suit of high-tech Power Armor." That same year, however, an article in the "Toronto Star" retorted that the "sexual politics" surrounding Samus and the "Metroid" series needed to stop, arguing that the original "big crazy shock to the gaming public" was "some seriously misspent energy" as she "is not a woman for the benefit of the sweaty/excited crowd, and neither is she a standard-bearer nor a courageous leader in the struggle for video game civil rights. She is a supremely talented action figure, and in the closeups on her helmet you can kind of see that she wears mascara, but that is all."
Paul O'Connor, the lead game designer for Sammy Studios and a fan of the "Metroid" series, remarked that players empathize and identify with Samus because she is often rewarded for indulging in her curiosity. The book "Videogames and Art" noted that in the original "Metroid" the player is not briefed on Samus's past or future; the only interaction that they have with the character is by being her through gameplay, while bits of information can be gleaned from the handbook and through concept art, adding, "Samus is very rare for the character intimacy gained solely through game play and for her stasis and then drastic change," referring to the revelation that she is a woman. Former mixed martial artist and actress Ronda Rousey told GameSpot in a 2016 interview that she "always wanted to be Samus" if a live-action "Metroid" film is made.