Afterthought: Queen’s Blade: Rurou no Senshi

Before the anime, what I know about Queen’s Blade was confined to Megahouse’s line of Excellent Core Model figures which in turn are based on Hobby Japan’s original illustrations. They were to me a series of high quality figures and being an avid figures collector, I have amongst my collection quite a few of them. So given my involvement with Queen’s Blade figures, I was naturally very interested when the anime series was announced.

 

The first season of the anime series is titled Queen’s Blade: Rurou no Senshi and practically follows the path of Reina, on her journey to seek her true destiny. She is eventually led to Gainos, the Queen’s capital to participate in Queen’s Blade. Queen’s Blade is a tournament to decide the strongest warrior in the country who will then succeed the Queen’s throne and rule the country.

For a start, it must be said that the anime was made to be ecchi. So one can expect a more than generous amount of skin exposure, which literally translates to loads of exposed tits and ass.  This was to be expected actually, given the character designs and the fact that the figures themselves came with full castoff options. But while I have come to expect high quality from Megahouse’s (and Alpha x Omega’s) Queen’s Blade figures, I wasn’t expecting much from the anime series. I mean I don’t expect an anime that overloads on ecchiness to be seriously good. But I was at least expecting the anime to feature the actual Queen’s Blade tournament. So I was a little disappointed that the series turned out to be an introduction of the many different characters with random fightings.

While the anime did try to follow a storyline, the overall execution of the series and the animation quality is average at best. Almost the entire series is dedicated to the monotonous routine of introducing new characters in each episode. Some of them borders on the ream of being boring to me. And most of the fighting in the anime could be better in my opinion. The last two episodes were slightly better but not by much. One of the things that I do like about the anime is the colorful array of characters in the series, which of course originated from the illustrations.

One thing the anime did help me to achieve is to learn more about each of the characters’ background and personalities, especially those whose figures I owned. So now there is more meaning to my figures on top of them being excellent sculptures. Most characters in the animes are fine for me, even the likes of Melona and Menace, but I do find myself favoring the likes of Tomoe, Shizuka and Reina.

If you like Ikkitousen, then Queen’s Blade might be of interest to you. For me, I was actually on the verge of dropping the series at one point but manage to finish it in the end. Having said that, there is plenty of promise in the sequel, titled Gyokuza wo Tsugu mono. For one, it promises to feature the actual Queen’s Blade tournament. Based on MyAnimeList, the sequel is already set for airing in October later this year. So I am still likely going to watch the sequel.

 

 

Synopsis (from MyAnimeList):

A competition to decide the next Queen. The strongest warrior will rule the country and expand it. The contestants need to be older than 12. They need not be human, intelligent or even of that country. The rules for the tournament: murder is allowed. Any weapon can be chosen.

This is based on a series of visual combat books published by Hobby Japan which based on the licensed works from Lost Worlds. First published in 2005, it features only female characters.

[ Official site ]