New Anime Season Spring 2009: Queen’s Blade

April 22nd, 2009

Watching Queen’s Blade is like trying to have a conversation with someone who won’t stop staring at your tits. Or like trying to converse with a really nice girl, who seems to be pretty interesting, but we keep staring at her tits instead of listening to her.

I would really, really like to notch the service back three steps on this anime. As it stands, I roll my eyes so much I keep losing track of what’s happening. What’s happening is a quest series that stars a bunch of strong women who have been rendered down to the bare minimum of personality and near-identical bodies, all of which have the same nipples.

Oh, yes. Women’s nipples do *not* all look the same. This may come as a shock to a large portion of the Queen’s Blade viewing audience. If this surprised you, I think you need to read more Hustler.

The plot, such as it is, is about a quest by a number of women for the Queen’s Blade – the awarding of which will give them the power and rank they need to do whatever it is that drives them to seek it. Each story is completely worthy, so we are likely supposed to feel remorse that not all of them can fulfill their quests. Since we so fixedly stare at their secondary sexual characteristics, I barely notice they exist as characters. “Blah blah blah,” they say, and I’m sure it means something, but we’re staring in between their legs obsessively and I’m finding it hard to care, because all I can think is, “Metal underwear and no leggings. I bet that chafes something fierce. I wonder if they carry talcum powder in their packs.”

When the characters are attacked by creatures that are stand-ins for tentacles, like snakes and giant frogs’ tongues, I also find myself wandering off thinking that this series is like the Caligula of Six Degrees of Yuri voice actresses. The voice cast is instantly recognizable. Some of them I feel a little bad for, but mostly I assume that they thought, “Hey, it’s a paycheck. As long as there are no live events, I can do this.”

I am not the audience for Queen’s Blade. I would LOVE to see a version of this without all the service. It would be a cool series. But instead, I watch this and wonder if I’ll ever get to watch something this spring that doesn’t have us staring unblinkingly at women’s thighs and breasts.

Yuri in this series is implict – lots of f/f pairs that fanboys will immediately slash because service is the same thing as affection for most. And then there’s the explicit siscon relationship that Reina’s sister has for her. I can’t help but assume that Reina and Listy are already paired in half a dozen doujinshi, as well.

In *my* fan delusion, Queen’s Blade is a classic quest story starring pairs of strong women who bond together as friends and who compete for the Queen’s Blade. In reality, it’s an exhaustingly bad series of nothing but service, held together with a plot thinner than the g-strings they all wear.

Ratings:

Art – 6
Story – 4
Characters – 6
Yuri – 5
Service – 9

Overall – 5

If you watched Xena: Warrior Princess staring fixedly at Callisto’s crotch, you will probably enjoy Queen’s Blade.

12 Responses

  1. Ashrie says:

    Hehehe, sometimes it’s hard to imagine what would happen to these characters if suddenly they were governed by the laws of physics and biology… Chaffing would surely get in the way of their fighting ability…

    Great review. Thanks for the laugh :D

  2. Anonymous says:

    Wow. You actually had nicer things to say about this title than I’d expected – certainly nicer than I would’ve said myself. :P

    Agreed that it would’ve been an interesting show if the women were portrayed with dignity, i.e. not as an excuse for Dead or Alive-style action/service.

  3. Bell says:

    “If you watched Xena: Warrior Princess staring fixedly at Callisto’s crotch, you will probably enjoy Queen’s Blade.”

    loooooooooooooool

  4. Eric says:

    I have no interest in watching this show seriously, but does it have potential to be one of those “So bad/trashy/kitschy, that it’s good” shows? Like the kind you watch with a group of friends and make jokes about throughout?

  5. ajshepherd says:

    I watched the first episode of this purely to see if it was as bad as I’d heard or if it went into “so bad it’s good” territory (which it doesn’t).
    The thing that got me was the ‘armour’ – which seemed to consist of one breastplate (quite literally!), some metal boots, several straps and a thong – but still protected the heroine from devastating exploding breasts that took out a whole building.
    I’ve not wasted time and bandwidth on it since – your fan delusion would be much better, as it is, this series falls squarely in the ‘brass bikini’ category of fantasy.

  6. Hafl says:

    So, it’s kind of like Ikkitousen only much, much worse and without destroying a literary classic?

  7. To be perfectly honest, the most outrageous moment in the first episode was NOT the acid boobs, the next to nothing preference in clothing, the conveniently located camera angles or the random ‘wet yourself’ moments. It was the walk to the gates moment between our main female hero and the bandit.

    I swear, I never laughed out loud at such a stupid sight. Our heroine is being escorted to her home city while she is exposed top to bottom and is tied up like she just got out of a rope bondage session. They’re walking like this in plain site of everyone in the middle of a sunny day like it’s no big deal! This is the type of situation my nightmares would be made of, not my fantasies!

  8. Anonymous says:

    Yeah, this show is…well…

    Shows like this either need to s#!t or get off the pot, in my opinion. Either just make it straight-up Yuri porn or make it a decent story and treat the characters with dignity.

    Or maybe they could have done like Strike Witches did with panty shots when they simply never had anyone wear pants – just have all the characters go topless all the time. It wouldn’t be any less exploitative or tacky, but least it’d be more honest about the show’s appeal.

    What really strikes me is – this is on television!? How much did they bribe the censors to pull that off? I mean, I know censorship laws regarding nudity are looser in most other countries, but this series is basically straight-up softcore porn.

  9. Anonymous says:

    Oh, come on…I think you people enjoy bad mouthing anime that is intended for fun.
    How many times do I have to stress this out to people?
    The anime is fairly good and I can understand the story well without whinging about looking at their body parts. This anime was aimed at “adult audiences” and sorry, won’t contain whimpy pokemon characters for your liking.
    This isn’t the best series in the world but I’d research images before watching this anime.
    Stay clear away from fan-serviced anime and let people like us enjoy it for what it’s worth! =3

  10. Anonymous says:

    Ok, now seriously this isn’t a half bad anime, sure it has it’s floors but so do alot.

    clearly this anime isn’t ment for those who don’t have girlfriends considering your bitching about topless chicks.

    but i havn’t seen them once without panties so i say it’s pretty good.

    it stretches into the extremely soft porn category and lets you whatch anime without making you think, ok i have to look up fan fiction now…

    and still keeps to a story line (better than alot of anime iv’e seen) maybe if you all stopped staring at there tits and listened you’d know that.

  11. Anonymous says:

    Obviously there’s a bigger audience for this series than you realize if it’s getting another season. It’s been around for some time now.

    I don’t understand why prude people would even watch the series without prior research as to exactly what it is. I love those big breasts and thick thighs. Clearly, women will be the most likely to take shots at Queen’s Blade because the creators did not make it for women but for a male 18+ demographic. So why watch it?

    If you googled “Queen’s Blade” you will get tons of images of half-naked large breasted women. If you aren’t a fan of that don’t watch. Plain and simple.

  12. Anonymous says:

    It is extremely interesting for me to read the blog. Thanks the author for it. I like such themes and anything that is connected to this matter. I definitely want to read a bit more soon.

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