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Lovely Angels

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https://mediaproxy.tvtropes.org/width/1000/https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/battleanglels_1.png
"Good evening. I'm a lizard woman from the dawn of time. And this is my wife."
— Madame Vastra (the wife in question being Jenny Flint), Doctor Who, "The Snowmen"

"Well, it's kind of like James Bond. But instead of Bond, there are these two women..."

The most common Gender Flip of the Bash Brothers trope.

Female buddy-shows are rather widespread, especially in anime. This trope refers to adventure series starring two rather competent women with contrasting personalities — compare with Betty and Veronica, Red Oni, Blue Oni, Tomboy and Girly Girl, Light Feminine and Dark Feminine, and Bifauxnen and Lad-ette. They're usually not romantically involved with each other and generally are Just Friends. Subtext regarding otherwise may be present, though.

In contrast, female buddy movies are extremely rare, probably since Most Writers Are Male.

More than two Lovely Angels eventually become known as an Amazon Brigade. Everything else of the above stays the same.

Not to be confused with Angelic Beauty. Compare Strictly Professional Relationship where it's a man and a woman who work together.

Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime and Manga 
  • Gunsmith Cats: The two main characters are Rally Vincent, a gunsmith and bounty hunter, and her partner Minnie May, an expert bomb-maker.
  • Read or Die, the original OVA version. They also had a third, male team member — he was just completely irrelevant to everything.
  • Heinkel and Yumie are unusual examples from Hellsing, with strong religious connotations, at that. They are Action Girl best friends who were raised by a Holy Hitman and appear numerous times on either side of Father Anderson's shoulders, seeming to represent a figurative version of fallen angels for Iscariot and the Catholic Church.
  • You're Under Arrest!: Natsumi and Miyuki are two police officers who are a pair.
  • Noir and its second Spiritual Successor by the same studio, El Cazador de la Bruja. The first successor, Madlax, avoids this by a large margin despite having a similar setup (unless you ignore the monstrous gap in Madlax and Vanessa's skills and put them in the same league).
  • Carried by the Wind: Tsukikage Ran is a show chronicling the adventures of a pair of young, attractive, asskicking female vagabonds wandering feudal Japan together. Meow is a cheerful Chinese martial artist looking for merriment and goodwill, while Ran is a snarky dark-haired Rōnin going wherever she can find good sake. Much of the show's humour comes from the two distinct personalities clashing and how they deal with the situations that arise each episode.
  • Slayers had OVAs and movies where Lina is adventuring teamed up with a Vain Sorceress Naga, in Red Oni, Blue Oni contrast.
  • A Code Geass radio drama taking place between the two seasons has Kallen and C.C. in this type of relationship. And then there's this piece of artwork.◊
  • The Mazinger series: Mazinger Z and Great Mazinger had Sayaka and Jun (even if it was for a short while). UFO Robo Grendizer has Hikaru and Maria.

    Comic Books 
  • Page image features Misty Knight and Colleen Wing, from the second volume of Heroes for Hire. The two of them happen to be so badass, even the Rhino is afraid of them. They are good friends and normally appear together, but the epitome of their Lovely Angels dynamic can be seen in Daughters of the Dragon.
  • Birds of Prey started with a team of Black Canary and Oracle. Later, Huntress joined the team as well. Later, it became a full Amazon Brigade.
  • DC has had Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn team up on occasion during the brief periods when the latter has gotten sick of The Joker. On at least one occasion they were actually shown sharing a bed). They starred, along with Catwoman, in Gotham City Sirens as a trio of attractive, deadly women on the town in Gotham. And then there was that exchange where Harley informed Batgirl that Ivy had given her some kind of treatment so they could "play" together. More than one fan has taken this as outright confirmation of a canon relationship. Paul Dini says it was.
  • Whiteout: Before the changes made to the movie, it starred US Marshal Carrie Stetko and pal solving murders down in Antarctica. Unfortunately, The Movie (For various ridiculous reasons) felt that two female leads was a bad choice for a film, and made one of them a man (and not even one of the already existing men from the comics, but a completely new creation).
  • The Italian comic series Legs Weaver has such a team of the titular character and her sidekick May. The lesbian relationship is overt this time.
  • Patsy and Hedy eventually had Patsy and Hedy in a relationship of this sort when they dropped the mutual romantic interest.
  • Supergirl and Batgirl:
    • Kara Zor-El and Barbara Gordon during the Silver Age. They first teamed up in The Supergirl-Batgirl Plot and they quickly became best friends and an excellent crime-fighting duo.
      Supergirl: "It just took a little teamwork to accomplish our goal, Batgirl"
      Batgirl: "Right, Supergirl! We make a great twosome!"
    • In The Attack of the Annihilator, Kara and Barbara team up to take the Annihilator down. Although Batgirl feels she has little to contribute to the fight, Supergirl is delighted to fight alongside her.
    • In the Post-Crisis continuity, Supergirl teamed up with the third Batgirl, Stephanie Brown. They hit it off from the start and often fight together. Kara goes to Steph's aid whenever she needs her, and doesn't put up with people picking on her friend.
    • In Supergirl (Rebirth)/Batgirl (Rebirth) crossover Escape from the Phantom Zone, Kara and Barbara renew their friendship as battling a particularly sadistic Kryptonian Mad Scientist.
    • In Elseworld's Finest: Supergirl & Batgirl, Kara and Barbara are forced to team up. In spite of their differences, both super-heroines manage to work together and become a very effective crime-fighting duo.
      Bruce: Two cranky girls take down a pillar of society...
    • In the DC Universe Holiday Special 2008: A Day Without Sirens, Oracle and Supergirl team up to stop all crimes in Gotham during one day◊.
    • In Bizarrogirl, Kara and her Bizarro counterpart team up to defeat the godship and save Bizarro-World.
    • Their Earth-Two counterparts Huntress and Power Girl have this dynamic in 2011 series Worlds' Finest. Which is a throwback to their original team-ups on Pre-Crisis Earth-2. Batman's daughter, Superman's female cousin — what could be more obvious than that they'd become a team?
    • Kara and Terra fought together in Power Girl's 2009 book. Usually Kara fights at the forefront as Terra handles group control and attacks from afar with her geokinesis.
  • In Superman vs. Shazam!, while the titular heroes square off, Supergirl and Mary Marvel search for the impersonators who tricked their relatives into fighting each other, discover the real Big Bad and his plan, and set off to stop him.
  • In Superman story The Phantom Zone, the nuclear holocaust schemed by General Zod is averted thanks to Supergirl and Wonder Woman working together and destroying all nuclear warheads.
    "In moments the combined might of the two most powerful women on Earth reduces the missiles to a hail of flaming metal that sizzles and sinks into the icy strait below!"
  • Guardians of the Galaxy has Gamora and Angela, who hit it off after they beat the tar out of each other in their first encounter. They enjoy going on missions together, and generally have each other's backs. There's a bit of a Les Yay vibe as well.
  • During the Golden Age of Comics Wonder Woman, a magical Amazon Princess, almost always teamed up with Etta Candy, a prankster Badass Normal Ladette, for fighting Nazis, gangsters and alien menaces. Sometimes they were joined by members of Etta's Holliday Girls or Steve Trevor but Di and Etta made a solid team of two very contrasting ladies. In the modern age, Diana frequently teams up with her fellow Amazon, Artemis, either of the Wonder Girls or other female superheroes like Power Girl and Black Canary.
  • Batgirls (2021) sees the batgirls Stephanie Brown and Cassandra Cain team up to fight crime, under the watchful eye of Barbara Gordon as Oracle.

    Fan Works 
  • A Crown of Stars: During the military campaign to overthrow the warlords ruling the post-Third Impact world Asuka bonded with several of her female comrades like Ching or Misato. They fought effectively in tandem during several battles.
  • Advice and Trust: Asuka and Rei. When they start to spend time together their bond grows and they learn to fight together more effectively. Also, Asuka and Hikari. When they fought Zeruel, Hikari was stuck inside Unit 03, and Shinji used her bond with Hikari to move it around and fight.
  • The Child of Love: Asuka and Rei were war mecha pilots and teammates, but due to Asuka being pregnant for most of the history they did not fight a lot together. Still they coordinated their attacks to fight an Eldritch Abomination in chapter 3, Asuka came up with a strategy to fight their enemy in chapter 7 and Rei followed it, and in the sequel they fought together like Arael and Armisael.
  • Children of an Elder God: In this crossover Asuka and Rei team up to destroy Eldritch Abominations... but not of the usual kind.
  • Doing It Right This Time: Asuka and Rei combine it with Battle Couple. In the altered timeline Asuka comes along early and she and Rei start training together (and hooking up with each other AND Shinji) and fighting in tandem. Her first success was taking down Ramiel.
  • Evangelion 303: The Evas (advanced war planes in this Alternate Universe) are two-seaters aircrafts. All female pilots are aided by female weapon officers. Asuka is Unit-02's pilot and Hikari is her weapons officer. Mari and Kelly pilot other of the war planes together.
  • HERZ: Asuka and Rei were teammates and fought together during the Angel War, but their giant robots were destroyed at the end of the conflict. However the organization HERZ rebuilds Unit-02 and builds a new Unit-00 during the history, and Asuka and Rei face and fight the Final Battle together (with Shinji).
  • Higher Learning: Asuka and Rei were part of a squad of Humongous Mecha pilots. Asuka was more focused on physical combat whereas Rei was a sniper, and both had undergone a decade of training. However their teamwork was poor due to their clashing personalities. Then they got a new teacher taught them to open up to others, and their combat effectiveness improved.
  • Last Child of Krypton: Unlike in the original series, Shinji did not become a pilot, so Asuka and Rei fought most of battles together in their war mechas. Asuka also went through a synch training with Rei (instead of Shinji) to fight Israfel coordinately.
  • In Neon Genesis Evangelion: Genocide, Asuka, Rei and later Keiko are a female combat team.
  • Once More with Feeling: An involuntary but welcome consequence of Shinji meddling with the timeline was Asuka and Rei becoming friends and a better fighting team. As Shinji thought: "And woe to the enemies of humanity if this fragile new friendship grew into the simultaneously awesome and terrible weapon it could become..."
  • The One I Love Is...: Asuka and Rei were part of a team of Humongous Mecha pilots. Unfortunately, due to their different personalities and being fighting over the same boy their teamwork was pretty ineffective.
  • The Second Try: After returning to the past Asuka no loger is jealous of Rei and afraid of being replaced, so they fight together better. They teamed up successfully against Bardiel and fought coordinately against Zeruel (Asuka fought it hand to hand as rei provided cover fire).
  • Superwomen of Eva 2: Lone Heir of Krypton: In this crossover Asuka and Rei piloted giant robots and fought giant alien monsters together... and in their secret identities of Supergirl and Wonder Girl -respectively- they fought some super-villains together, like the Parasite. It was in that battle in which they cooperated and fought back-to-back where Asuka gained a newfound respect by Wonder Girl.
  • Thousand Shinji: Thanks to Shinji's mentoring in this crossover Asuka and Rei developed a better teamwork and new abilities (the former became a Super-Soldier and the latter a living factory of bio-weapons of mass destruction) turned them into a very dangerous team-up... until Rei tried to seduce Asuka's boyfriend (Shinji). After that point they were angry with each other and their teamwork suffered.
  • Atonement: Tether and Vista. After training together for a while they become a very effective combat unit.
  • Intrepid: Emma and Lisa fight together as members of the Undersiders.
  • Wonderful (Mazinja): Taylor with Sophia or with Emma when they fight together. In chapter 13, Taylor and Emma teamed up to save their squad from a tank.
  • In Power Girl story A Force of Four, Power Girl and Huntress are a scarily effective crime-fighting duo. Power also fights alongside Fury, Wonder Woman's daughter.
  • In Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Supergirl crossover The Vampire of Steel, Buffy and Kara are a surprisingly good fighting team. Supergirl provides the muscle and sheer power and Buffy the fighting skills and expertise to deal with magic-based monsters.
  • Misty and Iris seem to be developing this dynamic in Pokémon Reset Bloodlines, as they're often paired together in tournaments.
  • Golden Threads Tie Us has Severa and Lucina. Both women trust and like each other, and find their fighting styles match well with each other.
    Severa: Are there any more of them creeping around?
    Lucina: Most likely. I wouldn't be surprised if more were coming as we speak.
    Severa: Right. Well, we'll just have to take them together.
    Lucina: Of course. I'm lucky to be paired up with you.
    Severa: Yeah, we have similar fighting styles. And I guess you're not Owain or Inigo.
    Lucina: You're right, of course. But moreover, I'm glad you're with me. There are few I'd rather have by my side in battle.
    Severa: Same goes for me. The princess is surprisingly handy with a sword.
  • Aldonza and Zapana in Zero Context: Taking Out the Trash are best friends who were part of the same crimefighting organization for decades, know each others' combat styles forwards and backwards, and are at their best when they're fighting an opponent together. Aldonza herself is very free-spirited and personable, worries (sometimes needlessly) about her friends when they're in trouble, and specializes in wind attacks and martial arts; in contrast Zapana is laidback and mellow, and is well-versed in fire and straight-up punching enemies into oblivion.

    Film — Live-Action 

    Literature 
  • Dirty Pair: Trope Namers Kei and Yuri are a female team of detectives-for-hire. While "Lovely Angels" is their official code name, they're more often known as the "Dirty Pair" for all the destruction they cause in their wake, much to their frustration. They are the inspiration for all of the Manga and Anime pairs, above.
  • Mercedes Lackey's Heralds of Valdemar books have Tarma and Kethry, a swordswoman and a mage, traveling the country as a team of mercenaries. (Tarma is a celibate priestess and Kethry eventually marries, but their relationship outlasts her marriage when Kethry's husband eventually passes on.)
  • Despite their differences, Angua and Sally of the City Watch appear to be on their way to this trope in the Discworld books.
  • Nancy Drew and her two best friends, cousins Bess Marvin and George Fayne. George and Bess are Nancy's most frequent companions in helping her solve mysteries and bring down the bad guys.
  • In the Vlad Taltos books, Norathar and Cawti, aka The Sword and Dagger of the Jhereg, were a two-woman assassin team, and for a long time they only had each other to rely on. After their lives changed radically, they continue to be the best of friends. In Tiassa, the two briefly resume their old partnership, to the enjoyment of both.
  • The light and dark sisters in Jane Yolen's Great Alta Saga. Every light sister calls up a dark sister to be her lifelong companion in battle.
  • In The Echo Case Files, Sara Ramirez and Maggie Tycho.
  • In the psycho world of espionage set in MARZENA, Marian and Livia are this.
  • The princess and barbarian duo of Sparrow and Bright fit this description.

    Live-Action TV 

    Manhwa 
  • Yureka (translated as ID_Entity) features a pair of Idol Singer minor characters actually called The Lovely Angels.

    Professional Wrestling 
  • While Jungle Jack and Double Kong (and its variants) are Aja Kong's most successful tag teams, her pairing in Oz Academy with Hiroyo Matsumoto is likely her most successful team that qualifies for this trope. Aja Kong is a large, often overly brutal, no selling, face painted, delinquent haired, trash talking monster who is also prone to dirty cheats involving folding chairs and nunchucks. Hiroyo Matsumoto is well made up, almost always smiling and much smaller. Her wrestling style is much more traditional and her cheats slide more toward experimental pranks than unfair advantages or intent to cause unnecessary harm.
  • The eponymous duo from Dirty Pair were inspired by the 1970s tag team wrestlers "The Beauty Pair".

    Tabletop Games 
  • Double or Nothing is a two-player RPG designed around pairings of this type, especially infulenced by the Trope Namer. Any combination of sexes is game legal, but the example characters from the rulebook are both women.

    Video Games 
  • Bayonetta and Jeanne from Bayonetta go from being rivals to being this by the end of the game, with both women willing to go through hell and high water for each other. Hell, in Bayonetta 2, Bayonetta goes on an out-and-out Rescue from the Underworld after one of her demons goes rogue and Jeanne is Dragged Off to Hell.
  • Asuka and Hitomi Kaga, the pilots of the PC Engine Shoot 'Em Up Burning Angels. They wear identical Stripperiffic outfits.
  • Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls stars Komaru Naegi, a friendly but emotionally fragile Ordinary High-School Student, and one of the first game’s survivors, Toko Fukawa, the Ultimate Writing Prodigy who is a Sour Outside, Sad Inside loner but is stronger than Komaru.
  • Fate/Grand Order:
    • Mary Read & Anne Bonney are a pair of Servants that share a single Spirit Origin and therefore are summoned as a duo and are almost inseparable. This pirate duo will always fight together and die together and their Noble Phantasm is a combination attack. The two also frequently flirt with their Master (especially Anne) and are very into the idea of a threesome. They also hate the same type of men. While the two have basically the same likes and dislikes, the two are differentiated by their appearance and personalities: Mary is short, flat and a Bokukko and Tomboy whereas Anne is a Statuesque Stunner with huge boobs and acts very feminine.
    • In the "Saber Wars II" event, Space Ishtar and Calamity Jane have this dynamic, being a pair of space bounty hunters that aren't so dissimilar to the Dirty Pair above. Unusual for this trope, they are joined by The Protagonist and Mysterious Heroine X in the second chapter of the story and the team stays as a quartet for the rest of it, with the bounty hunter duo and X-san forming a trio of Action Girls. That said, the team is made of two different parties that share a common goal, and the story focuses more on SpIshtar and Jane due to them being new Servants that haven't been seen before. Unlike other pairings, there's a huge age gap between the two. SpIshtar is still a teenager and is noted to be physically younger than Ishtar and Ereshkigal, whereas Jane has been around since ancient times.
    • Ax-Crazy Genki Girl Mysterious Heroine X (simply X-san) and Kuudere Mysterious Heroine X Alter (simply Ecchan) used to be this trope when they were still in their academy, but they eventually went separate ways after Ecchan recovered her memories.
  • Fear Effect with Hana Tsu-Vachel and Rain Qin, who are the Tomboy and Girly Girl, respectively. There is a strong implication that they are lovers, and other sources indicate that both of them are attracted to men as well.
  • Crystal and Madison in the Sega Genesis game Trouble Shooter.
  • Claire Redfield and Moira Burton end up becoming this in Resident Evil: Revelations 2.
  • Chun-Li and Cammy White have a scene like this in the intro for Super Street Fighter IV, then fully embrace the trope in Street Fighter X Tekken. They're preceeded by Juni and Juli in Street Fighter Alpha.
  • Touhou Eiyashou ~ Imperishable Night has the option of playing as four teams of these: Reimu and Yukari, Marisa and Alice, Sakuya and Remilia, and Youmu and Yuyuko.

    Webcomics 

    Web Original 
  • This trope is spoofed in the webseries 3Way, with Ladycops, an homage to creator Nancylee Myatt's unaired show Nikki & Nora. The characters in Ladycops are played by the same actresses from the Nikki & Nora pilot.

    Western Animation 
  • The Legend of Korra gives off this vibe with Korra and Asami in Book 3, who have more missions together apart from the other members of their team.
  • Totally Spies! invokes the Power Trio version of this trope.
  • Pre-teen version with the Codename: Kids Next Door episode "Operation: M.U.N.C.H.I.E.S.", the only story to focus solely on Numbuhs Three and Five.
  • What If? Has Captain Carter quickly falls into this with Black Widow with the Guardians of the Multiverse. In the second season, we see that she's normally like this with the Natasha of her own timeline.

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