| Animation: | Fair |
|---|---|
| Depth: | Weak |
| Design: | Fair |
| Characters: | Weak |
| Story: | Bad |
Type: TV (12 episodes)
Vintage: 2009
Category:
Reviews @ Archen's Anime Page
Queen's Blade
Summary: >
Every four years a tournament is held known as the Queen's Blade. Only the strongest and most beautiful stand a chance of victory. The last woman standing is awarded the power to rule over the entire continent. Women from many walks of life and from far away places have started to gather and journey to the tournament grounds. Each of them has a reason to fight, but resolve alone won't carry them. They'll also need a fair amount of skill, and perhaps a bit of luck to survive.
Leina was already the daughter of a noblemen, but decides to become a warrior and wander the land. While not set on entering the tournament, she continuously keeps ending up encountering those who are. She may end up fighting in the Queen's Blade whether she wants to or not.
Thoughts: >
Where to start on this one. Naked boobs and fan service don't score points with me. What I do require is a good story, or cool action, or SOMETHING. Queens Blade has none of that. It's dumb, it's dull and really tasteless. Although at times it's tacky in a way that adds a novelty factor (wearing a living snake as a thong comes to mind), I still wouldn't say that is reason enough to watch this.
What you might expect from Queens Blade is scantily clad females fighting it out in a barely passable setup, but it doesn't even get that far. The best this anime ever achieves with action is fighting that is merely adequate, and most sequences are totally pathetic. The clothing coming off is to be expected in any fight in this anime, either from a direct attack or from some substance which dissolves clothing. The zenith coming from a girl who squirts acidic milk from her breasts to defeat opponents. She is eventually vanquished by basically plugging her nipples until the back pressure makes her boobs explode. This seriously happens in Queen's Blade.
The dialog is absolutely terrible, which isn't surprsing as I hated nearly everyone in the show. In particular, I wish the annoying angel who's an overseer of the tournament would be put to death painfully, but there's a few others who end up pretty close to that level of loathing. Even the "better" characters aren't very good. Some of the story follows the foreigner Tomoe from distant Asia like lands, but even though she's not obnoxious like many of the characters, she's pretty drab. Leina is the other focus character, but annoying in her own right. She wanders the land as a warrior but basically fumbles with anything even resembling combat. She also latches on to others like a lost puppy, which got very tiresome.
Where Queen's Blade does finally emerge to something passable is with the character Claudette: the central character around the single good episode (11) in Queen's Blade. Claudette is the illegitimate child of a count, and sister to Leina. As said before Leina has a tendency to attach herself to people, and has a blind adoration towards people including her sister. Annoying as that is, when contrasted with Claudette who feels only jealousy and contempt towards Leina, it becomes a good story. I was really floored by Claudette's temperament and started to think, "man this woman is really freaking cold.. and awesome!" As expected however, it dissolves into the same tired and predictable resolution, and gimps one of the few parts of this crap fest that didn't suck.
And speaking of suckage, the way this all turned out was absolutely terrible. Leina had proven herself absolutely inept at combat for nearly the entire duration of this anime. She had been trying to follow around Risty for a while, who gets fed up and finally kicks Leina's ass. It then dawns on Leina that she really is bad. So then she starts training with snake-thong girl for three days. "What could she possibly learn in three days"? Tomoe asks. I thought to myself that there is no way this anime would be THAT stupid to presume that Leina could magically become some great warrior in that amount of time, and yet I have to remind myself of what I'm watching. Leina goes from incompetent swordsman, to amazing duelist in under three days. Then with no rest or sleep goes on to challenge Claudette who has honed her abilities all her life and is known to be one of the best swordsmen in the land. Did I mention Claudette's sword also shoots fucking lightning? And yes Leina manages to hold her own and nearly win until there is some completely illogical collapse of the ground beneath them.
After this there is some giant demon woman drawn forth from a river near by who starts smashing stuff. Leina is then carried by an angel and lands on giant demon woman's cheek, Sits there for a few seconds, then stabs her in the eye. I'm not sure how demons operate, but in human terms if something the size of a tarantula landed on my cheek, I can assure you I'd freak out or at least REACT and swat it away. I don't see how demon giant girl would simply not react to something IN FRONT OF HER EYE, holding a big pointy object.
So basically it comes down to a title that is lacking in every department except fan service. The premise is dumb, the characters are unoriginal, the story is poor. It manages to gather together these meager scraps to make about one and a half fair episodes, but the rest is pretty much garbage. And this isn't even the end of the series! Nothing is actually resolved, it's just starting. I have no idea why people bother defending this show - and there are some that do. Out of the hundreds of anime titles you could be watching, few of them are as poor in quality as this. Even mediocre titles surpass this anime easily. As such I can't even give this a weak rating because it's seriously a waste of time.
Quote: >
Nanel: Well there's a surprise. Even more absurdly huge tits.
Screen Caps: >
