Queen's Blade: Rurou no Senshi

Girls in armored bikinis? Showing enough skin to show off several weak points to the enemy? What is this a schlock exploitation film from the 80s? Ah, nope, it’s the infamous Queen’s Blade. Many things have been said about this anime since its inception. Scorn for its negligent fetishistic debauchery and unwillingness to give any damns what prudes both in and outside the anime community think about it. I always admire this approach when making an ecchi series fun and exciting to watch, at least in comedy form. When it comes to making it into a dramatic series that involves adventure and action, it can bevery hit or miss. Unfortunately, they mostly fall into the latter category with a look back in history. Ecchi is typically a genre that people want to chill and laugh at while simultaneously aroused by the cute pantsu and sexy bodies of the show’s massive amount of cuties. You try to put this into a setting or situation that we’re supposed to take seriously, but that dynamic shift can adversely affect both aspects. Does Queen’s Blade overcome this difficult task? For the most part, yes, it does. While the action side of things isn’t anything remarkable, the lewd situations the girls get themselves into are fun and gorgeous to look at. The ecchi parts predominate the action, which kind of sours the action side of things. Art-wise, the girls look great with nicely drawn curves, and all of them have nice colors that make them look distinct and unique from each other. Same with the animation both in the action sequences and outside of them. Although I would not say that it was great compared to anime with way bigger budgets than Queen’s Blade, it didn’t garner any disdain on my end. And yes, certain ecchi scenes can be a bit excessive. Right from the first episode, we have a female antagonist that shoots acid milk from her nipples. If that sentence made you cringe from the mental image it gave you, then I don’t think you will want to provide Queen’s Blade a shot. Unless you want to watch it for the insane hilarity of it, which I think Queen’s Blade’s intention was. I mentioned before how this seemed like it was influenced by the tongue-in-cheek exploitation sword and sorcery films of the 80s. Those films, just like Queen’s Blade, were serious in tone for the most part, yet they had this sense of camp to them that felt charming to watch. When you watch Queen’s Blade from that context, it makes it a better viewing without feeling alienated on the purpose of its mix of ecchi and drama. Now with all of that being said. There is a story that does tie all of these together. Everyone always jokes about how there is no story to Queen’s Blade. That is not necessarily the case. There is a story to the show. However, it is not told very well. The narrative is all over the place. There are plot points involving our main heroine, Leina, introduced in one episode that ends on a cliffhanger that is quickly forgotten about in the next episode and reintroduced around six or seven episodes in. Instead, they put her in other situations that had nothing to do with the previous because they had to introduce the other girls somehow. As a result, the narrative feels unfocused until the end when all the character plot points tie together, albeit in an anti-climatic way. I will give Queen’s Blade credit that some of the stories are pretty interesting, Menace’s story, in particular, being a big highlight. While not particularly original, the lore itself was engaging for what it was. I can only hope that the next season can expand it more, including the character arcs that we’ve been shown. A few characters were not given enough screen time compared to others, but I will hold on to that criticism once I’ve gone through the rest of the seasons. As the first impression of Queen’s Blade, this season does a decent job of showing you what you will be expecting from the series. If you want an engaging story that further explores “the Hero’s Journey” trope, this will be a disappointment for you. This was a nice bit of hedonistic escapism as a campy, action, lewd anime to have fun with. Queen’s Blade at least prides itself with more booty service than oppai, unlike other ecchi anime like it. That should account for something. Grade: B-

Queen’s Blade is a really moronic, asinine boob show. So, if you don’t enjoy series like that, don’t expect to like this series. This series is actually really hilarious though: the juvenile sexual humor, the epic music while ridiculous boob flopping or camel toe is happening is glorious, the implied lesbian relationships or maid girl with little boy pairings (?), and the girls, who admittedly, are well-designedーcoalesce to make the Queen’s Blade franchise, BUY THE FIGURES! • The plot is nothing special, the first season is pretty much written like a light novel, a sexy princess is abducted from her kingdom and falls from glory tobe put into numerous, humiliating situations that are so ridiculous that you would only see it in a really bad hentai. In the first few minutes of the very first episode, a gelatin bunny girl (Melona) shoots acid milk out of her nipples and melts the main girl’s clothing off. • No, it doesn’t burn her skin. Nope, the series just has to get her naked. The first season focuses on the princess, Laina, and her two incestuous sisters. Because, this show will use any excuse possible to get characters in sexual situations. The second season of Queen’s Blade introduces many more colorful characters, including a loli with an piece of armor on her crotch that is not a penis. Nope, not phallic looking at all! • The second part of this, uh, masterpiece, is pretty much any generic tournament arc that you would see in a Shounen Jump series but the fat tits and pussy edition. It improves in the momentum and the ridiculousness from the first season, which is good, because it’s a lot more entertaining and epic. If you thought that the angel girl from the first season that was voiced by Aya Hirano and spilled suspicious looking milk on herself all of the time was ridiculous, I am completely ecstatic to reveal the Holy Pose. • There’s a nun character that literally prays to God and shoots a light beam from her spread legs. Surprisingly, the OVA after the second season (there are two separate onesーfor some reason), but the only one of note is Utsukushiki Toushitachi, translated to Beautiful Warriors. The only downside to this six-episode OVA is that the first two or three are the only memorable ones, but they actually had a bit of character development. • It’s weird that Queen’s Blade has anything akin to character development, but I actually really liked the Elina and Alleyne arcs. I wanted to like the third episode more than the first two, because Airi is best girl, but it just emphasized more of the creepy relationship that she had with Cattleya’s family, yes, that’s actually her nameーbecause she’s the size of a cow. • So, let’s talk about the Vanquished Queens OVA. I didn’t like it at all. It was the worst edition of the franchise, by far. It was bordering more on a rape hentai than a ecchi fighting show like the other series. It made me feel filthy to watch it. It was gross and unwatchable, not as much as Violence Jack, but really, really bad. • Queen’s Blade: Rebellion was awful and made me feel like I should be flagged by the FBIーbecause of the sheer volume of loli characters. I usually don’t mind two or three of them, but when the entire cast is just underaged-looking girls. I’m not into it and I can’t find it funny. Rebellion definitely wasn’t as campy as I would have liked it to be. • Queen’s Blade Grimoire, the latest edition, was a lot of fun. It takes a lot of fictional characters like Alice in Wonderland and Little Red Riding Hood and makes it a trippy, ecchi fighting romp. There’s also little cameos from the original series, which was enjoyable, but overall the franchise doesn’t care about the quality of the anime. They just want you to buy pretty girl figures. • Overall, Queen’s Blade is horrible, but it can be entertaining to watch if you want to laugh at the absurd sexual humor, like the anime: My Girlfriend is a Shobitch; just tune in to something incredibly moronic and it can repel rainy moods like an expensive umbrella! I would say that these series are more for stoners than people who are actually attracted to the characters, because it is so freaking bizarre. I rate the first season a 2/10, the second season a 3/10, the Beautiful Warriors OVA a 3/10, all of the other OVAs (like, the prequel to Rebellion) a 2/10, Vanquished Queen’s is a 1/10, Rebellion is a 1/10, and Grimoire is a 3/10.

Extraordinary! It seems that studio ARMS have outdone themselves by providing some hot (and I mean hot) garbage for some amateur English voice actors to come and dismantle further. The result of this perfect storm is Queen's Blade: The Exiled Virgin. Watch as Leina: The Wandering Warrior proceeds to befriend Risty: The Benevolant Bandit of The Wild in the most perculiar love-hate relationship since Disney bought Star Wars. As for story, I'm afraid there's not much here chaps, not that it matters of course! This show was never intended to have a competent story, merely to act as a bridge between breast and bystander. InQueen's Blade we follow our sheltered protagonist Leina as she seeks life away from riches and royalty. How will she do this? By becoming queen of course! In order to do this she must win the Queen's Blade competition, collecting copious comrads along the way. This show seeks to break the anime clichés by featuring never-before-seen training montages that involve the self-application of tree sap and a single day of swinging a sword to become the most powerful warrior on the continent. Also hugging boob explosions (you'll know what we mean when you get there ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ). Not much to say with regards to the animation and sound fellas. In order to spice things up and really get the most bang for our yen, we decided to undertake this adventure with an English dub. What a splendid idea indeed ! The English dub for this show alone is bad enough to boost our sound rating by two whole points! Who could forget the half hearted "Thiiief~" that a single guard seemingly says to himself as some valuable jewels are stolen from a castle! Extraordinary! If you're going to experience this art, do it in the best way and watch the English dub. You may have gathered what are thoughts are regarding the characters in this masterpiece (a word I do not throw around lightly) from our previous statements. Here, however, I shall elaborate. Our main cast of characters are a strange lot! Ranging from angel to angry, blind to blacksmith and Raina to rapist. (Especially that snake one!) While this could make for some interesting interactions, characters seem to lose their own personality when interacting with others, making conversations feel like they are between cardbourd cutouts. How disappointing! The only exceptions to this are the servents of the Swamp Witch who seem to be the only characters capable of retaining their personality in their dialogue. Overall this anime is a jolly old time! It's flaws perfectly combine together to create the ultimate anime viewing experience, featuring suprisingly few clichés. It draws you in with promises of boobs and then delivers while providing nothing else. A good time when watched with friends. 5/10.

Story: 5 (what you end up getting is a half hearted attempt at putting a script together.) Art: 8 (high artistic accuracy to the original artwork is very rare especially at this high of detail.) Sound: 7 (Excellent voice work is somewhat hindered to a sub-par manuscript.) Character: 9 (Sure it might not sound all that original on paper, but...) Enjoyment: 10 (Pure proof that sex sells, why mess with an age old secret.)OVERALL: 39/50 = 7.8 (Love it or hate it, this is just an anime made strictly for the fans.) According to MAL users via word of mouth, this anime is pure 'crap' because it appears to have no story. To be technical in accordance to MAL's scoring system, the 'story' only counts as 20% of the 'overall' score. That is if the 'reviewer' consideres a non-wieighted scoring system. So that means a VERY poorly told story can still amount to mounds of fun and entertainment if the other elements of the show are in good standing. Such is the case for Queens Blade: Rurou no Senshi. ___What Is Queens Blade___ Before we go in to great detail about the show, a LARGE majority of the viewing audience have no idea what the hell they are watching. Queens Blade is basically an expansion to the Lost Worlds universe. Lost Worlds is a pen and paper game designed by Alfred Leonardi and originally published in 1983 by Nova Game Designs. Currently, Flying Buffalo owns the rights to the Lost Worlds universe and is based in Arizona. The most current series of books, of all female fighter-types, under the title of Queen's Blade, published from late 2005 by Hobby Japan. These 19 books, have generally proved to be just new ecchi illustrations for existing combat matrices (from other Lost World books), rather than "new" characters. As of December 2007 a second series, Queen's Gate, was introduced, featuring characters from Japanese visual media, and in October 2008 Hobby Japan announced four further characters in a sub-set of the original series. (source: Wiki) Each character book consists of 50 illustrations with the specific character in various positions according to the context of the text (i.e. dodge, thrust, uppercut, receive damage, etc). Needless, to say there's a lot of clothes shredding and exposure in the artwork. ___Story___ The story in the anime is loosely based on the campaign book: "Queens Blade Beautiful Fighter Retsuden [Adventure Record of Nomadic Soldier]" (in japanese クイーンズブレイド 美闘士列伝 「流浪の戦士冒険記」) The campaign is basically an alternate rule set and conditions from the normal Lost Worlds books. The show tries to follow over a dozen different girls on their attempt at becoming the queen of the land. That itself is a recipe for disaster as there are so many characters to introduce in only 12 short episodes. It tries its best to get everyone up to date with the players but it ultimately falls short as people come and go in a blink of an eye. So what you end up getting is a half hearted attempt at putting a script together. And for a rushed script, it isn't completely terrible. It just lacks the proper back story to get new viewers up to date to the Queens Blade universe. So it all just looks like alot of tits and ass and no fluff. A best way to approach the storyline is to not compare it with other anime of the genre, but instead, compare it to those silly ending cut scenes in any fighting game. The main emphasis of the fighting game, is the mechanics, entertainment, and addictiveness. Such is the case of Queens Blade. ___Art___ The characters art books were all designed and created by well known Doujin Artists (Mibu Natsuki), Key Animators (Kaneko Hiraku), and Character Artists (HIsayuki Hirokazu). Over a dozen artists conglomerated to make this series a sucess. And it shows very well through the various merchandising and even through the television series. Each character is drawn in painstaking detail thanks to the experienced artists of ARMS. You can't help but give props to the minimal loss of detail to the characters. Sure they show alot of skin but their outfits are very elaborate compared to the typical full body armor that most viewers are used to. Observing the high artistic accuracy to the original artwork is very rare especially at this high of detail. The backgrounds, and static environments are just as good as well. You can actually experience their improvement over the years from Mezzo, to Elfen Lied, to Ikkitousen, and now Queens Blade. Even the background characters like soldiers and citizens have a high amount of detail, only a close minded fool would find flaws in it. Mad props, but my only gripe with the art value of this show is that some of the action scenes appear to be hindered by limited frame rates and 'skippy' attacks. You will know what i mean when you see it. It doesn't happen a lot, but it happens enough to notice it. Another obvious visual effect is the gratuitous use of oppai (boob exposure). Its really there for fanservice and does its job very thoroughly. They show you alot right away and before you know it, if you were like me, it will most likely become second nature and doesn't feel obtrusive after a while. If you have a fear of boobs and/or get agitated when you see them in your tv shows, this is a good vice to get you accustomed to seeing massive use of oppai. I mean, what is so bad about boobs that would entice people to get angry and pull out their pitchforks and torches? This is the 21st century AND it's japan, oppai isn't going to go away. If you want to rage over a set of tits go watch EIKEN.... ___Sound____ It appears that they tried to spare no expense with this anime, from top name anime production (ARMS is a member of Association of Japanese Animations), they also enlist an A-list cast of seiyū. Rie Tanaka, Mamiko Noto, Aya Hirano, and the list goes on. Their experience really shows in how they fit their voices fit their characters perfectly. Of course, with some of the more monotone seiyū (Rie Kugimiya and Yuko Goto specifically), its hard to visualize the characters when all you can think of is Shana or Mikuru. Bet that as it may, their excellent voice work is somewhat hindered to a sub-par manuscript. Its not the voice actors fault really so that is more of a story issue more than a sound issue. Music and sound effects are of course top notch and really associate to the scenes very well. A lot of orchestral overtures and dramatic music to fill the fight scenes and such. Each battle rumbled with ferocity and battle cries echoed throughout my house. This is truly a show that is best viewed on a big screen tv with your 5.1 booming at a level 11. ___Characters___ Throughout my review, I've been harking over the great quality of the characters on all levels. Artistic quality is 2nd to none. The voice cast is something one can only describe as "a true all-star cast." And the originality can only come from the best minds of the anime/doujin world. It's amazing how they can take a simple super power (like shape shifting or super strength) and completely sex it up. Sure it might not sound all that original on paper, but to recognize the complexities of drawing 50 illustrations of the same character, incorporating 20+ special moves with strengths and weaknesses, heights, speeds, movement and many other things to fully make a character its own and have it balanced enough to have anyone win any fight(in reference to the combat books), really adds depth and detail to these relatively static characters. ___Overall___ The aren't just some pair of boobs that just became popular overnight, it's been a steady, increasing fanbase that has been building for the past FOUR years. From an extremely simple pen and paper game that any one can play (just as long as they can read), to the 100's of Queens Blade merchandise (including artbooks, doujins, over 50 figures, etc), to an anime series. Those who still cant understand how people can like this show, go look at all the anime merchandising websites and observe how many Queens Blade items are constantly sold out. Some people don't know there are as much (if not more) Queens Blade fans than there are Touhou or K-On! fans. Love it or hate it, this is just an anime made strictly for the fans.

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