Fan: "So what's the deal about Samira?" Riot: "Well.. remember Sivir?" Fan: No? Riot: (OhThankGod) "She's this badass mercenary coming from Shurima that..."

Logical brain: ah yes Skyen you make some great points about sexualization in the media and I think it's very big of you to say it's primarily for women to decide whether or not the sexualization goes too far Lesbian brain: hnng hot lady buff arms

Samira is a thirst trap but for sapphics this time lmao

She’s a rare case of a female character whom I find sexy. Others are just default sexy, which is boring, but I want Samira to keep me safe in her beautiful arms so I could admire her tattoos from up close.

RE battle scars: Although it's not something that's an explicit fact for this character, I would like to note that a common way for some people to hide their scars is with tattoos. And Samira happens to be someone who likes to casually get tattoos to represent her conquests, while also being dangerous enough to get a bunch of scars. So you could very easily claim that Samira's scars are hidden beneath her tattoos, possibly even commemorating those same scars by turning them into bodyartwork.

T B Skyen: "Samira being half naked and with sexy makeup makes sense because it's reflected in her character and isn't out of place" Samiras designer who just likes sexy women: "Oh ah yes, that's exactly what I was thought while creating her"

Hi, Skyen, just wanted to note that she also has cool animation detail with her W. When she is negating projectiles between her 2 slashes she shoots down EVERY SINGLE projectile with her gun.

Tbh I'd take Samira over half the recent champs in terms of lore. It's clean, doesn't add random new conflicts and "mechanics" into the world when there are plenty of unexplored ones already. And as a woman I also feel like she's dressed very appropriately, even a bit overdressed in terms of being an extremely agile athlete that has to do stunts 24/7. About scars- wouldn't it be cool if she covered them up with tattoos? Like all those before and after pics of people making the best out of unfortunate damage by getting beautiful tats on top. She is already a very visually complicated champ so Riot probably didn't want to oversaturate her, which could be avoided with this method and would also match her lore perfectly.

if I were an animator at Riot, I would fucking love Skyen because he always appreciates EVERY. SINGLE. LITTLE DETAIL that the animators add in

Skyen: "please riot not another champion at least for a few months" Riot: "We shall still release a noxian support tank untill the end of the year, aka in at least two months"

You can really tell Riot put a lot of effort into her... Every time you play her in the game, the animations are just smooth as butter, and her voice lines are so witty and badass, even when you die you feel kinda awesome. This is probably my favorite champ design in the entire roster.

In my opinion, the lengthy hair with tons of jewelry might make hard to move around, do tricks and actively fight someone comfortably. I do appreciate the braid though, Riot is slowly solving every problem in Kai'sa's design... Just on other characters.

Can't wait for Skyen to drag Seraphine through the mud once again.

I would love to see Samira hunting down Jhin, of course he's kinda already captured, but a cat and mouse game with an extremely skilled mercenary and the most atrocious killer in the lore would be something to behold, one of the two is sure to come out humbled by the end

I really like her as a character, only wish she had scars to show off or something of the like. And her gameplay fits her and completes the fantasy! She's a contrast in personality and design to the other shuriman mercenary in Sivir, she'd be the flashy daredevil one while Sivir would be the quiet "gets the job done" one. Give me a story of them meeting trying to do the same job and having some conflict/banter/anything, please Riot. Gives hope that if they ever give Sivir a visual update/rework they can incorporate what they did right with Samira. .... Also let's hope riot gives you some time before the next unknown champion! Since in a few days there's also their new music video coming out 🤯

Samira has been one of my fav character in league. Personally i think her character design is pretty good. I love her eyepatch she wears and i see she is really strong with her muscles. She has muscles similar to akali maybe even a little more but not to the extend of illaoi. She doesnt look like she has big breast and doesnt seem overly curvy and she isnt thin or skinny in the splash art that to me sells the idea of her having more muscles. I dont find her body sexy or sexualized but her face seem like the sexy part of her with the birth mark above her lip and that curvy braided hair that makes her sexy without the sexualized body like evelynn. I do agree she should have a lot more battle scars around her arm but I think the fact her arms are covered in tattoos is the reason why they didnt add it or maybe her tattoos are covering the battle scars i dont know. Forgot to mention about that her animation especially the dance animation is one of my favorite because again showing off her muscle strength. She is able to hold her entire body up against gravity and make it look like she is walking up. That takes a lot of muscle strength to even hold it long enough and to even move upward. When i saw that I was like "i gotta go to the gym I want to be like her". I am a super skinny girl and everyone around me makes fun of me that I look like a starving children even though i eat well. So samira has really made her way into my heart because she is a women i wish to be. She is strong and confident with style.

Pretty late but at 25:03,that's actually a thing that me and alot of my mates who do parkour loves to do in our daily life,spinning. Because while we are doing tricks,it looks way better if we do it in a flowy and fluid way and one of the easiest ways to make it fluid is to incorporate spinning into the tricks. That's probably a very poor analysis but hey it found it pretty cool that you mentioned that

I really love Samira's character. Whenever I saw her splash art I never really thought that she was another sexy character like Kai'sa. She's really cool and you can definitely tell that riot put a lot of time and effort on her. Samira is one of the few new character designs that I have recently enjoyed from riot and I hope that they continue to make more unique champions in the future

i honestly love the happy laugh TB gives whenever he sees a good stretch on the models, it brings him so much joy, no wonder he decided to work with this.

can t wait to see "what s the deal with seraphine" it ll be sooo bloody for her about the brackern and the 0 personnality champ

As a woman and a poc, I think all your thoughts on her design were very on point to mine. I'm very fond of it, especially the noticeable arms, tattoos, thick hair and colour scheme. Definitely falls victim to the "women have to look perfect" thing always pushed in any sort of media with the lack of visible 'damage' or anything, but it's something. It certainly gets into hard territory with like the 'choice feminism' debate; you can say basically anything and follow it up with "It's fine because she wanted to/was empowered in doing it" which often gets ridiculous when it's down to nitpicky things barely any women actually want to do but feel expected to from everyone else. Also I wish her nose was bigger. Anyway, just dropping some thoughts. Awesome video as always and as an aspiring animator the animation part always makes me very happy :)

Something I've been thinking about in regards to the thing about scars you talk about: Do you think Riot avoids putting scars on champions because they're hard to make read clearly on the character model? Champions are designed first and foremost for the rift, which is probably why Pyke's cool bandana pattern was way simpler on the model than it was in the splash art, the model was made first and then that detail was spiced up when it came time to sell the concept of the character. On that note, Pyke is actually, as far as I know, the only champion *with* scars on his model at all, and they show up on his splash art as a result. On a similar note there really isn't a single dude in League with body hair, is there? I wouldn't be surprised if that's simply because making it look good on a small model is simply not worth the effort. None of this is meant to defend Riot's decision in this department, of course. Samira should *absolutely* have some sexy scars, but looking at the design trends I think we can spot a pattern that indicates that Riot doesn't want to bother with these kinds of small details with Pyke being the exception, probably on account of being a bit dead. EDIT: Actually, I forgot one. Darius has a large scar over his eye, too, which is not only visible on his model but is actually a part of almost *every single one of his skins.*

I would kill to see a cinematic fight of jhin vs samira. that would be the most beautiful thing anyone has ever seen. like, ever

Samira in her backstory: What are we? Some kinda suicide squad?

"can we have devil may cry?" "we have devil may cry at home" Devil may cry at home:

how did riot go from such an amazing well-thought out melee AND ranged champ, to some soul-stealing unfitting popstar wannabe who has literally the worst lore in the entire game because they came up with her money-grab lore before her actual game lore

As a part-time Actual Woman, I probably could’ve found a character like this empowering if it weren’t for the fact that I already know how Riot usually deals with female character design. Like, Samira is really cool, but the context of Riot’s track record with this is just....bad. That being said I’m still gay for her, landing my final grade at “Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made A Great Point”

I really like Samiras character design and visuals and I just think she would stand out more as the sexy daredevil femme fatale archetype in league if that concept was unique to her in the roster and it wasn't utilized by so many other female characters already.

I'm gonna be honest-Samira's made this game so much more fun for me. I don't know if it's the combo of her kit, personality, and the fact that I'm just really in love with Dante Devil May Cry, but she's oddly a breath of fresh air for me? She's confident, but she's also...really upbeat and fun. Her animations are really smooth and cool. I love the hints in her voicelines that show that her confidence is somewhat exaggerated-just, she's such a good champion. I love her.

16:55 It's good to see Francis Drake getting into this video. With the whole scar thing, if they wanted to narratively justify it they could say the tattoos are over the scar but Samira seems like the character who would brag about her scar telling how she survived this that or whatever.

Thank you for mentioning the lack of scars. Its like, my biggest problem. It makes no sense for her not to have them The only reason I can think of is "scars aren't sexy on women" which is incorrect.

Overall another great video! I would have liked to hear an elaboration on her tattoos vs her lack of scars, based on the lore her tattoos serves the purpose that scars would to tell of her experiences. Also you literally took the words out of my mouth with the Ichigo reference.

Oh my gosh, that Q animation is so freaking dope! Her catching the slik-thingy that her sword has and swinging it is so cool!

🎵🎵🎵 "WAIT SO LOOOOOOONGGGG!" 🎵🎵🎵

So one of my favorite animations for Samira is her gun auto attack into 180 walk (I'm not sure what the actual name for it would be) but sometimes when you auto attack as samira, if you then put a movement command in to walk behind her, instead of just kinda snapping around like most other characters do, Samira will sometimes just do a back flip and land facing the right direction to start walking, which is again that amazing flavor for who she is as a character and such an amazing thing for riot to have added in.

I like Samira’s look but I hadn’t had a chance to check out her lore, thank you for the summary!

I just love when tbskyen talks about squash and stretch his laugh is so intoxicating I love it.

Just a thought on the scars thing, aside from having to make it visible on the model which not many people will see, maybe she has covered up her scars with tattoos? It's certainly a thing I've seen, whether to transform it into something cool looking or to forget. I feel that following that logic, Samira doesn't seem the type to care and maybe she just wants tattoos because maybe they just look cool. Certainly, she doesn't seem the type with the need to show she has something to prove because if anyone says otherwise she would have the showmanship and skill to demonstrate. Sure, it might deny her a few stories to brag about if that's her kind of thing but if anything I'm sure her reputation and stories that come up around her will do far more to exaggerate it unless asked.

I agree 100% on the scars department,and to be completly honest,it would show and correlate with one of her ingame phrases("Thrilling! Ha! Maybe ill get a tattoo to celebrate the occasion) if she got tattoos over those scars,as a way to permeate them,decorate them and make them stylish to flaunt them over their enemies. It would just show a lot better how much of a badass she is and just HOW MUCH experience she has on her job.

Hey T B! Just wanna let you know you're awesome, thank you for your edjutaining videos! 😊👍🏻 Referring to the tablet video, I forwarded it to a friend of mine, and thanks to your review, he's gonna buy one of them!

I love this serie of yours so much!!!!!! You did great!!! Wishing you good luck for the terrible week of Riot animations release, you're gonna need that

hey! i just wanted to tell you that her taunt when she's pulling out her revolver, opens the cylinder and empty shells are falling out for eternity is little easter egg(?) or more like reference to animator who's channel is named Hyper where he uploaded short clip named "completely normal revolver" great video, i love to watch and learn something new about league of legend's lore :)

and in this we learn that tb skyen is really attracted to women with battle scars

Can you actually put a scar in Samira and make it noticiable from the model ? Im agree that they are needed in her context and... well, actually pretty hot. But in the same vein of the sweetheart Xayah and BM Evelyn fix. Wouldn't those details get lost ?.

Wonderful video as always! Thank you for keep going, Skyen. I appreciate your efforts :)

Again a fantastic video. Really learned alot. And the start was just to funny😆

Strangely enough I'd love to see a cinematic fight between her and Yasuo. Seems like it would be an interesting fight and a real clash of characters and fighting styles. While they both use swords they are so very different and unique from one another. Wind against bullets. Acrobat vs martial artist. One who is quiet, more cautious and haunted vs one who is loud, incredibly cocky and thrill seeking. I think that would be interesting.

Have you seen Subjectively's video giving Zyra a proper redesign? I think it's overall really good, though many actual Zyra fans didn't like it because it looked so different from Zyra.

I like the idea of Samira being a sort of perpetual miniboss in a lot of different places in other characters' lore. Like when she shows up you know Noxus, and perhaps more quasi-directly the Black Rose, has an interest in what's going on and they're sending their most effective lone wolf to go cause trouble. She's a fun character, its been a while since we've had a character that is just straight up 'we really like this media so we're just lifting it and making our own' like 90% of the OG champs.

I love you so much for the beginning of the video, right as i thought pls keep the joke with bayonetta, there it was

also her musical theme is absolutely incredible. gives me witcher vibes

Wait worth it for the intro

Something curious. When you shot, or slash in early game, the movement that samira makes (Spin the pistol, put his sword on his back) is his cooldown for make another AA

Oh no, long Samira will haunt my dreams.

Skyen, are you going to do an art analysis on the new cards in LoR like soraka and TK?

Even her style grade icons are very similar to that of DMC 5s though, especially the ults "S" rank imo.

Got here just in time! TB I LOVE YOUR VOICE PLEASE SING ME TO SLEEP EVERY NIGHT

Reguarding Samira's presenting sexily... It's fine. If you flipped it and she was male, she would still totally run around with pecs and abs out and show off. If Kaisa had been male... Her story suggests she'd be a grizzled, rough survivalist type first, and if there was any power fantasy sexyness added into the mix, it would be much more like rambo than a popstar diva.

A cool idea for Samira's design would be if her arm tatoos actually hid her scars, or if the two were intertwined with each other to the point that you couldn't distinguish it from a distance. It would communicate that to her, even her own trauma and damage from battles is only a canvas for her to paint her personality and come out the other side even stronger, even more confident.

sir, my friend is asking where is that scene from @16:56 he says it's very urgent for his studies.

Something to note as well is that she still resents the Ascended (Xerath and Azir). Her voice lines make it so that's obvious. It's likely that if Shimura becomes relevant again she may show up for revenge and style points. While getting paid is her thing, she mostly just wants a thrill, but getting a chance to wack a "demi-god" for revenge, because it might be a thrill for her, and it involves her homeland, she may get involved in that for free. Also, her tattoos are to memorize her thrills, but scars def would've been better

*Sees the taunt animation* So Samira is a better performer than Seraphine, got it. Yeah Seraphine also lives in my head rent-free :(

So does anyone know where the forth image is from. Please I’m actually serious

She is quite the great character and she feels like a fine break from other stuff, but like, RIot have been releasing so much champions that she feels mostly just like "another one", despite her mechanics being quite fun. And her character being a fun reference overall.

2:47 this imagery ages weirdly.

"Scars are hot as hell" Amen my guy-- also the using a character from Baccano as an example is much appreciated, love that series

Ngl I expected you to scrutinize buff gun mommy's design but I did not expect it to be this nuanced. Love it. Also ok did not expect Fate's Drake is what you into, my dude.

I've been playing samira since the day she came out and never seen those jumping sword autos though, even in early game when animation is longer due to low attack speed

16:45 I literally said “GERALT FROM THE WITCHER” when you mentioned this.

Incredible video as always- thank you :)

I think the reason she doesn’t have any scars is because not only is she’s designed to be a thrill seeker who throws herself into dangerous situations, but because she’s designed to be an extremely skilled thrill seeker who throws herself into dangerous situations and is skilled enough to almost always come out unscathed. This is why her missing eye is important to her, and why it’s referenced pretty frequently in her voice lines. If she had tons of scars, having lost her eye would feel less like a misstep (to her, it’s important to her story and character), and more of Another Scar That Doesn’t Really Need Mentioning But We Did It Anyway.

tb, are you planning to review new LOR cards or you will wait for complete set?

Skyen you better have gotten the ad revenue from my phone making me watch 5 unskipable ads

Excellent video., excellent analysis!

One nitpick i have is that her basic attacks feel slow for her character. dare-devil style shooter and she only fires one bullet at a time? I think they coulda taken a note from jinx and have her throw multiple bullets per attack.

She reminds me of Revy from Black lagoon... without the depression and sad back story.(arguably sad, but she doesn't live in the past/avoid it). (I wonder if it's more easy to get in her pants, or harder because of her personality? 🤔)

9:12 can someone pls tell me where is this theme from?

During the intro the DMC part actually made me think she had a brother named Vergil for a moment-

LMAO the devil may cry and bayonetta at the start

I'd love to see what's the deal with Zoe !! I love her animations :D

it’s so disappointing to see that the newer characters with such amazing design are always the ones who get the least build up and respect from riots marketing team.

Hoenstly Riot has weird thing for me. When i like the lore and Character Design i dislike the kit and playing the Champ bit if i hoenstly hate the Lore and Design i like the kit and it is fun to play the champ

what the name of the song at 9:12? (btw nice video)

honestly, I dislike the way she's oversexualized because even if it's for empowerment and makes sense, it makes her victim of the "sexy women are only empowered if they are sexy badass rude in a masculine way". We never get characters like idk Elle Woods

Me: See Skyen open League of Legend through timebar Me: OMG This man has sacrificed too much

Swinging the sword from the cloth looks cool but makes the atack almost worthless , it would just give her horrible edge alignement and at worst just make the blade bounce off her target right back at her. Still looks cool as a flourish.

@T B Skyen please tell me ur gonna say that samira is just Esmerlada from the hunch back of Notre-Dame

I just really love your little gremlin laugh

That intro is absolutely on-fucking-point

I want to listen to him talking about Evelynn!!

I dont know why, but I really want to read a comic/history of samira where she interacts with ryze. Like they both can be anywhere in the world, for different reasons of course, and oth work great as a secondary character, so it could be a history where we start with her searching for a old rune that some rich arcane eccentric researcher sent her there to find, and then ryze appears also searching for the rune that turns out to be a world rune. This could be a cliche history that starts with them fight/racing to get the rune, end up being trapped at the ruins or whatever, and ends either like, Ryze becomes her enemy, just cause he was the cause that she didn't finished the job, or they become allies and she simply give the world rune after understanding what that thing really is. Even as a cliche history this has a lot of potential to be a good one, especially if in a comic. But we know wouldn't something good like this unless it's to promote another thing, like rework or something.

Yeah the ult animation is kinda an exact copy of Reaper in Overwatch, which is also a copy of other stuff from example The Matrix. I'm sure there's a tvtropes.org page about it

Damn, no one in the world loves League's squishes and stretches more than Skyen, it's so lovely

On the feminism/empowerment point; its really good to note how a woman is made "powerful" because the root of sexism isnt what genitals you have, its the notions of masculinity being good and femininity as bad (this flows on to effect men as well). Often times in media, a strong woman is shown as a woman who is masculine and then they are put on a pedestal, only further perpetuating masculine good, feminine bad. I feel like sexualisation is used to counter that to remind men that this is still a woman and distinguish masculine women from just being like every other buff guy. With all this being said, I like Samira and I think there are elements that make her strong that aren't masculine, I just think the perception of Samira is like "feminist icon, so powerful and so badass" where like the same perception isn't given to a character like Lux who is very feminine.

How long is this thing? I gotta leave for work in half an hour and if it's the usual hour+, I'm not gonna have time.

Lol my duo adc is already a samira m6 and I love it is so fun to play as her support

What champion ended up having to do with the weapon ?

TBSkyen: female champs are over-sexualized Riot: ok we'll just make hot boys too you happy now?

so samira would do anything if you say it's dangerous or if you pay her right? Would she go stab Aurelion Sol?

Oh my god she even has twosome time (the weird all-round shooty thingie) and a taunt that does minute damage for maximum style. I thought people weee calling her Runeterra’s Dante just because of the sword and guns lmao Edit: Just got to that part of the video, the all-round shooty thingie is her ult!