Thigh-High Boots



Shoes, usually boots, which rise knee-high or higher, often giving them Zettai Ryouiki appeal, and qualifying under its grades. These kinds of shoes have a certain Impossibly Cool Clothes factor because it is pretty uncommon, and usually pretty impractical and expensive, for shoes to reach any higher than calf length. These shoes may have straps, buckles, zippers or laces that may go all the way up, to emphasize their length and the fact that the character wearing them has some sexy legs.

Nicknamed Go-Go Boots, Thigh-High Boots tend to double as Combat Stilettos on Action Girls, though Dominatrices and Real Life prostitutes wear these rather liberally, qualifying the latter as the Ur Example, and the former as the Trope Codifier.

Compare Zettai Ryouiki and Nice Shoes—this is a subtrope of both. See Opera Gloves for the upper-limb equivalent.

Anime and Manga

 * Loly Aivirrne and Riruka Dokugamine from Bleach, both of whom have Girlish Pigtails.
 * In Code Geass R2, Kallen sports thigh-high boots as part of her Custom Uniform with the Black Knights.
 * D Gray Man has Lenalee Lee with her Dark Boots; they're her Empathic Weapon. No, really. Also Tyki Mikk, in later chapters.
 * Jun the Swan from Science Ninja Team Gatchaman.
 * Usami Masamune in Mayo Chiki.
 * Every Pretty Cure series has at least one Cure wearing them, with the exception of the the first two continuities, which instead used leg warmers for a similar effect.
 * Yes! Pretty Cure 5: Cure Dream and Cure Rouge get these while Cure Lemonade gets standard Zettai Ryouiki and Cure Mint and Cure Aqua get normal boots.
 * In The Movie the Dark Pretty Cure 5 all get this.
 * Fresh Pretty Cure: Cure Peach and Cure Berry both get these, and the latter combines these with Zettai Ryouiki, making an awkward combination.
 * Heartcatch Pretty Cure: It's easier to list the one member that doesn't sport this: Cure Marine, who gets standard Zettai Ryouiki fitting her Genki Girl persona.
 * Suite Pretty Cure: Like with Heartcatch, one of the members is left out and given standard Zettai Ryouiki instead. This time it's Cure Melody.
 * Smile Pretty Cure: Cure Sunny is the only member of the team whose footwear actualy qualifies as this. Cure Happy has knee-length boots while all the others have ankle-length boots.
 * Jessie from Pokémon.
 * Robin from One Piece, prior to the Time Skip.
 * Mew Zakuro from Tokyo Mew Mew.
 * Practically almost every male character in Axis Powers Hetalia, especially the Power Trio Italy, Germany, and Japan.
 * Yoko of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann sports a pair post-timeskip.
 * Mai Valentine wore these while she was Brainwashed by Dartz during the Doma arc of Yu-Gi-Oh.
 * Blue of Wolfs Rain with a Mini-Dress of Power and Scarf of Asskicking.
 * Male example: Mukuro from Katekyo Hitman Reborn has worn these as part of certain outfits of his.
 * Casca from Berserk.
 * Momose from Bloody Cross wears thigh high boots in the first few chapters. Tsukimiya also wears them once or twice.
 * The Familiar of Zero's Agnes, Chevalier de Milan, wears these with hot pants.
 * A villain in one arc of Gunsmith Cats had a retracting blade built into hers. Putting her knee into Bean Bandit's gut, she gloated about how the knife was leading the way. Only she overestimated how deep it'd penetrate when he tightened up his muscles....

Comic Books

 * Supergirl, in her New 52 costume.
 * Starfire of the Teen Titans. She even wears a different pair in her street clothes in Red Hood and the Outlaws.
 * Green Lantern: Jade when she was a member of the Darkstars.
 * X-Men
 * Storm.
 * Jean Grey wore a pair of yellow thigh-highs with one of her older costumes.
 * Also, Phoenix costumes go right into the spandex this way.
 * Psylocke (but not before Magic Plastic Surgery had made her Asian).
 * Mary Marvel, during Final Crisis, wore boots like these.
 * Alexandra in Dungeon: The Early Years. Used as an Aw, Look -- They Really Do Love Each Other moment: During Hyacinthe's Heroic BSOD following, he's shown to be  . Her response on learning this is to start crying.
 * Whatever Love Means play this trope for dark comedy, joking about how some filmmakers seem to be obsessed with having prostitutes wear such boots, incorrectly believing themselves to be radical when they put screentime focus on the boots.
 * Umbra of the Legion of Super-Heroes.
 * Scarlet Witch, during her first couple of decades.

Films -- Animation

 * How to Train Your Dragon: Astrid definitely qualifies for the Thigh-High Boots, but it is quite impossible to tell what, if any, degree of Zettai Ryouiki she qualifies for, since those boots practically cover her thigh.
 * Helen's and Violet's superhero costumes in The Incredibles.
 * Captain Amelia from Treasure Planet.

Films -- Live-Action

 * Blade Runner: Zhora wears boots like this during her chase/fight scene with Deckard.
 * Felicity Shagwell in Austin Powers The Spy Who Shagged Me.

Live-Action TV

 * Avon from Blakes Seven occasionally wore a pair of leather boots that went up past mid-thigh, combined with a silver lamé top that made him look like some kind of disco space hooker.
 * Kalinda from The Good Wife pretty much lives in them.

Music

 * In 1964 Patrick MacNee and Honor Blackman recorded and released a song entitled "Kinky Boots", which while not exclusively about thigh-high boots makes more than sufficient mention of them.
 * Vocaloid Hatsune Miku wears these, in fact, she's basically a Grade S Zettai Ryouiki (minus the Tsundere part... sometimes... depending on the song or the story). Some of the newer characters also have mega-boots, probably due to Miku's popularity.
 * Filk composer/performer Tom Smith's Harry Potter song "Hey, It's Can(n)on!", about Hermione Granger becoming a Pirate Girl (because her birthday is also Talk Like a Pirate Day), mentions the sexiness of "those boots half up her thighs."

Video Games

 * Adventure Quest Worlds has plenty of this combined with leotards.
 * Luxa and the Twi'lek dancers, from Knights of the Old Republic.
 * Bloody Roar: Primal Fury: The secret boss character, Uranus, sports a sleek pair of thigh highs as part of her body armor.
 * Soul Series
 * As of Soul Calibur IV, Cassandra now sports a pair as part of her default attire. Interesting side note: it's actually her player 2 costume, from part 2, with a different color scheme.
 * Ivy as well, at least in the fifth game.
 * Also June, from Capcom's little known Star Gladiator. Not only does her outfit include thigh-highs, but killer knee pads as well!
 * Cammy's alternate outfit in Street Fighter IV, which counts as a Gendered Outfit that copies M. Bison's uniform.
 * It's practically the dominant fashion in Mortal Kombat: Kitana, Mileena, Jade, Khameleon, Skarlet, Sindel, Tanya, Sareena, Nitara, and Li Mei all wear them at some point.
 * The third Valkyria Chronicles game has Riela Marcellis.
 * Fire Emblem
 * Most of the Pegasus Knights wear those.
 * Eirika from Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones as well. In fact, looking at character artworks reveals that these are relatively common on characters in the Fire Emblem world.
 * Guilty Gear has Dizzy, I-No and Valentine.
 * Isabela from Dragon Age wears leather boots that go all the way up. Presumably, this has something to do in her being a Pirate Girl. When Isabela suggests Merrill get a similar pair, Merrill remarks that she feels like she'd get lost in those boots since they're so big.
 * Ultima Online has them as one of the standard footwear you can use. For some reason, it's compatible with plate armor leggings—the plate simply lose its graphic in favor of the boots, but still give full protection. The boots are unisex, but the female characters can combine it with corset-like torso armors and leather armor miniskirts. Oh, and you can dye the boots and the leather armor in any color you please.
 * The Succubus boss in Mabinogi.

Web Original

 * Used quite a lot in Soundscape, where Thigh-High Boots often overlap with Combat Stilettos. Half of the girls wear them, while the other half goes for actual Zettai Ryouiki or Stocking Filler. Although it's far from the Trope Namer, Amylase brutally lampshades the entire thing while explaining that she went with Thigh-High Boots as a substitute to actual stockings. Word-for-word, she describes the expensive nature in getting any boots above calf-length; the (near-)impracticality in using them for anything other than modeling; the exoticism in having laces, straps, zippers or belts to emphasize the design; their uncommon usage; the question of their origins, either from prostitutes or dominatrices; and the advantage to using them as weapons for kicking.

Western Animation

 * Evangelyne from Wakfu.
 * Starfire from the animated Teen Titans show.
 * Him from The Powerpuff Girls wears the high-heeled version of these. They do a marvelous job of adding to his creep factor.
 * From Star Wars: The Clone Wars Asajj Ventress's Nightsister attire includes these.
 * Also, Ahsoka's vision of her future self.

Literature

 * Several of Andre Norton's works mention spaceship crews wearing boots of a design distinctive enough that anyone seeing them knows he/she is looking at a spacer. At least once, these are stated to be fastened with buckles or latches on the thighs.