Queen's Blade Anime

Queen's Blade Anime

Every four years, the current reigning Queen of the Continent holds the "Queen's Blade” tournament to determine who will succeed her to the throne for the next four years. This competition takes place in the capital of the continent Gainos, where many fighters arrive from all over the world to compete for the title of Queen; and all of them dream of becoming the Queen for various different reasons... In Queen's Blade the girls are often naked, or partially naked since it’s the main draw of this ecchi series because Queen's Blade is above all a gallery of female characters, each one more exciting than the other, A real battalion of heroines staged with rigor and respect throughout the episodes that take the time to stop and explore each of them before making them fight like when we observe Cattleya the blacksmith who hopes to succeed to the throne so that her missing husband Owen comes back to his grieving wife and son. Risty the "gentle bandit of the desert" who wants to become queen to save the orphanage in which she grew up from demolition. Some people only see it as "fan service and ecchi" without thinking that it is also about characters with hopes and dreams who fight for something they believe in, which in itself is always moving. So what? The nudity of these characters would "nullify" the nobility of their actions and motivations ? When Tomoe realizes during the fight against melpha that one should not judge a person by the appearance she wins the fight. It seems silly and naive, but isn't she in fact addressing the audience? Let's not judge the Queen's Blade fighters too hastily: they are much less naked than they seem. First of all, beyond the bountiful breasts there is a rich and varied gallery of characters of Queen's Blade, no fighter resembles another, inside or outside. Echidna the sultry elf, Tomoe the priestess, Menace the fallen Cleopatra, Nowa the forest guardian, Nanael the angel with the too-short right wing, Claudette the illegitimate noblewoman. All of them are legitimate participants in the tournament, all of them have good reasons to claim the throne, and their stories and aspirations are such that it is difficult for the viewer to take sides with one or the other. What a wonderful idea to have devoted the first season to the introduction and development of the characters, and to have dedicated the second season only to the various duels! Thus, when a fight takes place, it is much more than a fight, it is the confrontation of two stories, two personalities and two fates that we witness. But also the certainty of an inevitable tragedy, the loser bitterly compromising on her ideals, the ideals that we found so moving a few episodes ago. This scenaristic trick is clever and works wonderfully here, shivers guaranteed. Another thing to note is the hero’s journey of the main character Leina takes, a noblewoman who participates in the tournament in order to understand and explore the world around her and finally know the feeling of freedom away from the lavish and spoiled royal life she was born into. Leina is so inexperienced with the outside world that she urinates herself in terror during her first confrontation in the first few minutes of the series. One scene is important about her: when Echidna trains her, she asks her to coat herself beforehand with a sap with interesting properties: once hardened, it allows her to receive deadly blows from her opponent without risk! The sap absorbs the blow magically; one has the sensation of shock and even that of dying but without the result. On the other hand, this sensation of losing life makes Leina realize what it means to live, and she comes out of this fight grown and changed. The sensual eroticism of the scene (naked girls coated in sap) is not gratuitous and finds an essential justification in the heroine's perception of her own body. the physical fear of feeling her body altered by the fatal blow of an opponent is nevertheless essential to prepare for in a tournament. It is sort of a way to learn how to die (but not really) since a danger-free training will never be really efficient if you can't practice with lethal blows. In the same way, receiving them in the middle of a competition without knowing how to deal with them will certainly turn the fight into a drama. And in this scene, Leina literally learns how to die (but not really). Other passages of nudity serving the narrative run through the series. For example, when the very modest Tomoe is forcibly undressed by Irma, the time is no longer for regressive badonkadonk and the character is clearly shown as violated in her intimacy, while she is only slowly opening the top of her kimono, which is nothing compared to many other outrageous moments in the series. The fact that some of the warriors have no problem showing their breast and buttocks is one thing and being forced to strip under threat is another, and the red line is clearly defined. Similarly for a very beautiful scene when The mighty Risty comes out of a hot shower (of course) in the simplest of clothes (a towel) and receives a letter from the orphanage that she hopes to save by winning the tournament. The content of the letter is so terrible that Listy puts her hand over her eyes and lets a tear escape through her trembling fingers. It is difficult to ignore the symbolic significance of the nudity of this usually loudmouth and rebellious character, it's the first time she appears completely naked, it's also the first time we see her cry. Another example is when Elina, by a misunderstanding during an exchange with her opponent (Tomoe) during a fight, imagines that the latter has slept with Leina. The younger sister of the main heroine Leina, the prideful Elina is a complicated character. Because of her noble upbringing, her mother's death when she was a child and her constant fear of disappointing her tyrannical father, all her feelings have turned towards her older sister Leina, to the point of becoming obsessively in love with her. Crazy with jealousy, imagining another one tasting Leina's delicious body that she considers as her property, she gets carried away, loses her focus and thus loses the fight. For her who used to fight almost only by destabilizing her opponent with harsh and cruel words, she got a taste of her own medicine. The misunderstanding allows for a very brief naughty scene and says a lot about Elina's personality. Thus, there is a kind of hierarchy of fan service in Queen's Blade. A skillful way of staging nudity that sometimes serves the story, sometimes not, without ever doing a disservice. But as soon as this nudity is used as a dramatic spring or a narrative element, can we continue to affirm that it is indeed totally gratuitous ? There's no sensual display of affection or sexuality in Queen's Blade, just nudity. And above all else nudity is presented in a striptease-like fashion that the fights are staged on, the suspense of a duel residing as much in its dramatic potential as in the way in which the stripping of the heroines will be carried out. It's sometimes very silly but most of the time quite funny, this juvenile humor is always more inventive and creative over the runtime of the episodes defusing the serious moments with burlesque comedy. This lewd comical feel is very erotic and is an integral part of the of the show’s identity, and there are many sequences where the series makes us go “WooooH ” distracted from the moving exchange that two fighters had the moment before. Besides that, when Listy falls into the treacherous trap of Queen Aldra, we are afraid for her, we cross our fingers that she comes out of it without too many injuries. When Tomoé explains how much the corruption of her government disgusts her and that access to the throne is the only tangible way for her to make her people safe, how can we not be touched by her words ? When Leina cries of envy to her sisters in battle for having such noble ideals, she who has never known anything and feels so empty since her birth, protected in the cocoon-prison of her castle, how can we not want to see her win the tournament, then to see her travel and discover the Continent ? And what about the tragic Nyx, a young girl of such kindness who seems to live a toxic relationship (that's an understatement) with her weapon, a kind of slimy creature that forcibly infiltrates her to make her powerful but also aggressive and disfigured with anger ? Or the broken-hearted of Shizuka, who lies to the love of her life tomoe in order to make her irrevocably hate her, just so that she learns to fight by putting aside her kind feelings towards others, and thus give her an extra chance to win ? Or the blacksmith Cattleya who fights with one arm while carrying her very young son with the other arm, just because he wanted to accompany his mother in her journey to find her missing husband. There are such examples for each warrior, each of them having their own history, their own motivations, their own character. Some are full of arrogance (Echidna, Elina, Menace, Aldra) or rigor (Claudette, Tomoe), while others are of a limitless kindness (Tomoe, Leina, Cattleya). Some think only of feasting (Listy, Nanaël), others of praying from night to morning (Melpha) or still others of simply putting obstacles in the way of their competitors (Melona, Airi, Menace). The nudity of Queen's Blade, finally, becomes secondary, the characters never being defined by it. It is only one element among many others, which seems to take up space when it is not: in the end, only the way the fights, the different adventures they live and the interactions they have with each other will make the heroines of the story grow, to better take them where their hearts and personalities want, it's brilliant. Unfortunately, the rebellion sequel series does not reach the same level of quality as the original series and suffers from uninspired writing that seems to make the story move forward at random, despite some memorable characters (Yuit and Vante, a little elf journalist accompanied by a touching bodyguard-automaton that it is better not to anger. At the same time, it is difficult to repeat the same scenario with better results. The story is simple and the continuity of time-place-action is respected to the letter: 1) A tournament every four years 2) female fighters on their way to the Capital 3) duels to elect a queen. But no matter how bad the sequels are, these two seasons stand on their own and are like a small world in themselves. Carried by a dazzling soundtrack that gives the warriors an almost divine dimension, the series, sometimes breathtaking, sometimes poetic, sometimes avant-garde, never ceases to be light and amusing while succeeding in the incredible challenge of proposing an ambitious show through a short runtime of only two seasons of 12 episodes each plus OVAs. Under the cover of a sexy series, and sometimes even within some really limited funny scenes, Queen's Blade achieves the feat of showing a delicate finesse, and allows itself, despite the imposed duration of the program, a meticulous world building, to better make its multitude of heroines grow, each one as much as the others; each one with as much attention; each one with the same love, the same respect and the same consideration. Shakespearean heroines, Dantean battles, legendary weapons, faraway lands, tragic fates, fearsome foes, titanic monsters and epic adventures that is all Queen's Blade. Invoking as much from the universe of Tolkien as that of Hentai, borrowing as much from chambara films as from Sword-and-sandal films, alternating with a confounding fluidity of the bawdy vaudeville, Greek myths and colosseum arena fights in a metal concert atmosphere. The epic scale of Queen's Blade is proof of its authentic prowess, a grandiose show that honors with all its heart its uninhibited promise of an exclusively feminine Heroic-Fantasy. So hats off to QB, it is simply formidable, and in many ways, Queen's Blade is a masterpiece, a breathtaking timeless masterpiece!