The first season of Queen's Blade was underwhelming, beyond the initial deviance on display it went only slightly further than many of the other fighting-fanservice genre shows and exploited none of the opportunities a guaranteed late night, paid channel slot offers. Season two does nothing to change this status quo and, if anything, regresses by reducing the rampant titillation and dialling up the poorly choreographed fights. It still exists in the penumbra between unabashed pornography and cheeky teenage lasciviousness but whereas its forebear had a streak of deviance, there is a laughable attempt at characterisation which transforms the plot from background noise to utter drivel. Scant recommendations can be made when the series wholly fails to elicit any response, emotional or lustful, other than pitying indifference.
the disrobing becomes an afterthought to dead-pan serious problems
At the end of the last season Reina had made her way to Gainos and - after a brief scuffle with an avatar of the oft alluded Swamp Witch - the current reigning champion of Queen's Blade, Aldra announced that the Queen's Blade tournament could now begin. All of the previously introduced combatants take part for reasons best ignored lest they crumble under scrutiny, and after the more insipid ones are knocked out, the protagonists Reina and Tomoe once again take centre stage. With nefarious whimsy Aldra pits friend against friend and master against pupil, however it becomes increasingly apparent she has an ulterior motive to the battles and that her power to petrify the living is not borne from human magicks. As the contestants are whittled down, deaths follow and harsh realities are brought into acute focus leaving all but the most stalwart able to survive.
Please note: the remainder of this post contains images of nudity, if you are offended by these or are otherwise unable to view these images within your municipality due to laws or moral obligations, please do not proceed.
The production of a Queen's Blade anime builds on the fighting-fanservice genre championed by titles such as Ikkitousen and Tenjou Tenge and takes it to the most logical next step. The series, like the "visual combat books" preceding it, is a cynical marketing ploy, a multifaceted brothel catering to every fetish and deviance able to be safely sold to lonely, lewd or lascivious males. Discarding the comparatively coy allusions to naughtiness used in other series, Queen's Blade takes every opportunity to disrobe it's bevy of disproportionately curved females with frequent trips to hot springs, dunkings in hot oil or scattering any other liquid liberally on their persons.
This cavalcade of banality permeates the series from characters to plot
The series is perverse at it's best and represents the most saleable pornography possible: only just restraining itself from full-frontal nudity or explicit sex acts, still hiding behind outlandish situations or judiciously angled shots to retain the microscopic shred of dignity the protagonists may have. Eager not to be branded as cheap smut, there is a certain grotesque inventiveness to just how far character designs and scenes will be taken in order to eke out the most obvious innuendos or exploitive implications.
Please note: the remainder of this post contains images of nudity, if you are offended by these or are otherwise unable to view these images within your municipality due to laws or moral obligations, please do not proceed.
The opening says all it needs to about the first three episodes of Needless: loud, brash, and utter nonsense. The plot, flimsy as it is, concerns a nefarious corporation called "Simeon" who are brazenly chopping up the "Needless": a group of super powered twits cluttering up the Japanese post World War 3 landscape. One of these happens to be the sister of a small, annoying child who is saved by an outlandishly dressed, wood carving of a man known as "Blade". From there all semblance of continuity is lost and the episodes devolve into poorly animated fights with contenders announcing their attacks after which the names are emblazoned on screen, usually with flames coming off them.
While ludicrously oddball, the characters are stripped of any kind of detail or nuance
To call Needless silly would be doing it an injustice: it is so outwardly ridiculous that at times it feels like it's trying to be po-faced serious but failing miserably. The cast balloons outward to incorporate a number of noisy and paper-thin characters including: a scantily dressed brawler with a penchant for changing people's names and whose breasts are unsure of what shape or consistency to take; and a short-on words antagonist that has a collar so freakishly huge that one could hang glide with it. The character designs are fresh up to a point - obviously there are mixes of other similar characters, Blade for instance has a healthy dose of Vash the Stampede mixed in with some generic masculinity from the likes of Heat Guy J or Fist of the North Star. Unfortunately they are entirely wasted when given such protracted and atrocious dialogue that it becomes painful to listen, exacerbated by the typical shounen budget-saver of extending every scrap of action with an ongoing diatribe by each character on the vagaries of their fighting style.
Bamboo Blade seems, upon first glance, a very ambivalent series at least in its introductory episodes. It never seems to know whether to settle in as a light-hearted school drama with kendo or a straight-faced kendo drama with school fluff (or a kendo face school with light fluff drama). On the one hand is the irredeemable captain who's only current goal is to win a bet and subsequently obtain free food for a year, and on the other is a sadistic and despicable antagonist whose callous disregard for fair-play and sanity is cause for discomfort. The twenty six episode series could swing either way however if the series retains its indecisiveness, it may very well even out at wearisome.
it is hard to shake the feeling that this is simply a by-the-numbers seinen show that is willing to run its course
Bamboo Blade eschews common first episode clichés by maintaining a languid and predictable pace that carries over to the subsequent two. Favouring character development over ground-breaking story, the first episodes have yet to introduce all the members of the five girl kendo team; instead there are solid introductions to the eclectic group. The characters are neatly skewed from their apparent archetypes: the quiet introvert harbours a naive and childish sense of justice ordinarily championed by sentai characters; the supposedly prim and proper looker of the group is girlfriend to the most unlikely of boys and has a mean vigilante streak to her; while the enigmatic fourth member seems interminably insane. The most tiresome of characters, a blonde firecracker, is thankfully the one also given the least attention while instead the cookie-cutter teacher (whose likeness to Yuuichi Tate from Mai-HiME is uncanny) is left to propel events along.
