Queen's Blade: Rebellion

It's safe to say that the first thing that comes to mind when talking about the Queen's Blade franchise isn't the characters or story but rather the well animated "plot". Seeing how much fanservice they can stuff into a 20 minute time span always seem to be the creators goal. Given the audience and fanbase that support this franchise that is to be expected but for some reason excessive fanservice just isn't enough for Rebellion.
You see as much as fans of the series love the "plot" it was also a plus that the characters and story had a decent sense of direction or focus to ... keep things going. QB is far from well written but the writers atleast bothered to have a somewhat fleshed out cast so that we as viewers can understand what they wanted to accomplish. And with a simple battle royal premise to bring all these separate ideals together we can, for the most part, understand why the milk jugs with legs are fighting. But with Rebellion it seems like they just said "fuck a plot" and threw all the so-so writing out the window and just figured no one would notice or care. The fanservice is still there but everything else is lacking. The story is aimless, the characters no longer have a well grounded reason for being there and the previous cast all go through a cheap character reset. Again taking into note that the fanbase will be pleased as long as there's enough "plot" to get fap happy about they won't mind, but this sequel just seem below standards even for a obvious cash grab. They kept talking about a rebellion going on but none of it was shown or properly explored, it was just lazy exposition without any visual representation. Just a few minor squabbles among walking tits and lolis that lacks any tension. No large uprising, no grandiose scale battle, nothing. Just tensionless encounters that led to no real change.
Take into account our main protagonist for example. In previous installments she was resilient and naive but slowly grew as a character through various encounters. We were given a decent conflicting dynamic with her sister and an understanding as to why she fights. But with our new MC Annelotte we are given little to nothing regarding her character. In fact she's closer to a side character than anything else and lacks any proper backstory or ideals. She's simply a chivalrous female warrior with no dimensions to her. The same can be said for all other side characters in the line up. It's like they drew their breast size then decide what they'll be like. They're cheaply written and simply have a personality quirk to separate them.

Also:
"what was up with that crappy ending?" - Melona
No need to address it since the show does it for me.

Overall: 2.5/10

If you want more talking milk jugs battling it out then proceed, as Rebellion offers more boob exposing swordplay, more tentacle rape and more crotch shots to fill any man child's desire. But if you want more than that then don't bother as they place little not no effort on every other aspect of the show. As a fanservice filled sequel it excels but other than that there's nothing here to look forward to.

Ok to be fair i actually enjoyed the previous seasons a great deal not just because a bunch of voluptuous babes were running around losing clothes but because the show honestly had a good story and I felt the individuality in every character. The character development in the previous seasons is what kept me watching this show so I expected a bit more from this season but it just falls flat. Honestly i feel like the people who wrote this were just getting lazy. They bring these characters together but I don't care about a single one of them. No one is developing at all ... and if anything it feels like they are losing their personalities and just falling in love with the main character :/. the show seems like its progressing so quickly I don't feel a sense of adventure it seems like they just cut it all out and skipped to the end.This show is pitiable in its current state and is nothing but a strip-fest.

Was fairly disappointed with this season. For whatever reasons you enjoyed the first 2 season of Queens Blade, Rebellion just doesn't live up to it on nearly all aspects.

Story: 3 - It feels like they tried to shove what story and character development they had in both seasons 1 and 2 into new characters in a single season. It feels like a hurried jumbled mess, that at the end leaves you saying "what?" Without a second season the story was just poor to me.

Character: 3 - A lot of people say there was no connection/development to Queens Blade characters but I found ... myself attached to them, even so far as finding myself wondering about their lives after the tournament. With Rebellion I honestly can't say I feel the same, even for the MC. I barely finished the series 30 minutes ago and I can't even remember half of the characters names.

Sound: 6 - I watched the english dub version. Some of the voices grew a bit annoying but overall it was enjoyable.

Art: 4 - Lets face it, as bad a rap Queens Blade got, it had amazingly drawn Characters. Not quite the same with rebellion. Even tho I am fairly new to anime I could still notice an abundance of low quality animations in Rebellion. There were some good shots tho (mostly being the fan service shots) but a large portion of the movement scenes felt like they took too many shortcuts.

Also, while the fan service might have been a deciding factor for me starting this series, it is not why i stuck with earlier seasons. Rebellion definitely has less all around. Keep in mind tho that while there is less, what's there is a bit more.... kinky? Not entirely sure how to put it, but there is more grinding, groping, etc.

Summary: If you watch this expecting to get more of what season 1&2 had, you will be disappointed on all counts. If you approach this as its own entity then it is simply - an OK anime.

When you look at something like Queen’s Blade Rebellion at face value, you do not immediately think “cash grab.” Or at least you hope to god that it is not. Then while you are watching it, it is very clear that the situation's reality is clear; it is exactly what you feared it might be. A complete, nothing cash grab with no soul or style to speak of.

As I have said before in my previous reviews of the series, Queen’s Blade is not what many perceive it to be: A completely dumb titty anime with no plot or characters to care about. While the dumb ... titty anime part is not exactly far from the truth, I found the story and characters to be better than your average ecchi series to the degree of Queen’s Blade. It is not brilliant, but for what they are, they are fun and entertaining in their own right. However, after watching Queen’s Blade Rebellion, I feel like all of those accusations could fit with this season more than any others. It’s almost as if they hired the writers who have never watched the previous seasons and only know it vaguely and wrote a story that they feel would fit the show to a T.

Halfway through watching Rebellion, it hurt. Like it was almost like watching a completely different anime series. For one, this season feels like the one with the least comedy and more drama. This might be an okay sign with other anime, but not with Queen’s Blade. I never anticipate the drama, and boy, does it not work with this one. It does not help the fact that this story is completely incomprehensible and not focused in the slightest. It is similar to the criticisms I had with the first season being unfocused in completely different subplots I did not care for. At the very least, with Rurou no Senshi, the plot was simply a battle royale between other female fighters to achieve being the Queen’s Blade. In Rebellion, it is a literal rebellion against a tyrannical queen that wants to control everything. Yet, the uprising does not feel like anything grand or sophisticated at all. It feels like many adventurers farting around with their own common goal.

The new characters in Rebellion are an absolute atrocity to the Queen’s Blade series. No memorability or soul to speak of within any of their character archetypes. The only hope I had with a character being memorable was Mirim because her story was sympathetic enough for me to gravitate towards. That, of course, was immediately cut once Luna Luna erased her troubles, and there was no point in her being the story in the 2nd half. The “main protagonist,” Annelotte, has to be the most nothing anime protagonist I have ever witnessed in quite some time. She has no personality to make her interesting, no interesting motivation for the conflict, and her interactions with the other characters are banal at best. Luna Luna could have at least been a nice sexy cutie for me to look at with her magical codpiece. Still, good god, she was an absolute annoyance to the show halfway through, and that pains me to say to a character voiced by Harumi Sakurai (Ryouko from Anejiru).

The rest of the characters are already too forgettable for me to even comment about. However, I can comment on the characters they decided to bring back from the previous seasons. First off, no Menace, no buys. Sorry but that is just inexcusable in my eyes. Secondly, what is the point of even bringing these characters back? Why is Ymir all of a sudden serving the Queen and turning bad? What was the end of getting Melona back in the last two episodes? Why is Elina now bad? No convincing explanation for any of these situations. If I were in a writer's position, I would make this into its own self-contained story that has nothing to do with the previous seasons. It would feel less of a complete cash grab to try to entice old fans into watching this.

Nothing has changed in the technical aspects from previous seasons regarding the action set-pieces and character designs. They still look nice, and the action is still fun to look at even though they got a little samey after a while. Thanks to this, this show does not get a completely horrendous score on my grading scale.

If this was one way to kill a franchise, this was the perfect way to do it. Not that this will since Hobby Japan still makes tons of merch for this show, even though they have only released small OVAs since this season from 2012 with no new tv series on the horizon as of writing this review. I do not know what the future will hold for another season, whether they will go back to the original characters, try to do another new cast, or, god forbid, try to continue this story, considering how cop-out the ending was. It can only get better from here, but I am not holding my breath.

Grade: D