Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.0

Queen's Blade Beautiful Warriors: Complete OVA Collection Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman December 22, 2014

My 2010 Queen's Blade The Exiled Virgin: Complete Series Blu-ray review contained the following introduction which probably serves as an equally apt entrée for this latest Queen’s Blade OVA set:

The world of anime is a self-contained universe that has its own vocabulary which seems positively foreign to outsiders. There are far too many anime-centric terms to ever discuss completely in a review such as this, so today we’ll focus on two somewhat related terms and their implications, at least with regard to the series which is the focus of this review, Queen’s Blade. The first term is hentai, a word which in Japanese more or less refers to sexual perversion but which in its Westernized usage has come to mean animated porn. The second term is fan service, one of my personal favorites, at least with regard to euphemisms whose actual meaning can’t be instantly gleaned from the terminology itself. ‘Fan service’ refers to what might be considered “soft porn,” or at the very least sexually charged, imagery which dots any number of anime offerings. These images might be things along the lines of long, lingering shots of ample busoms, or long, lingering shots of panties, or even the occasional (or more than occasional) scantily clad or even semi-nude female form. When is any given offering hentai and when is it “just” fan service? That seems to be somewhat akin to the Supreme Court’s definition of obscenity, which basically boils down to “I can’t say what it is, but I know it when I see it.” Some people are going to see Queen’s Blade as nothing more than a perhaps overly aggressive form of fan service, while others, perhaps more conservative if not overly prudish in their proclivities, may be shocked and appalled at the lasciviousness almost constantly on display in this series and will in fact probably consider themselves being charitable by terming Queen’s Blade “only” hentai.

And not to put too fine a point on it, it's probably wise to also include this snippet from my 2011 Queen's Blade 2 The Evil Eye: Complete Series Blu- ray review :

Can there really be such a thing as a “happy accident” in animation? The era of the director commentary on home theater DVD and Blu-ray releases have seen a glut of statements about how this shot or that shot (in live action films of course) just kind of happened due to the vagaries of fate. A gorgeous glint of sunrise was caught peeking over the ocean’s horizon. An actor who couldn’t remember the correct line came up with something much more brilliant on the spot and it was kept in the final cut of the film. But animation, and its Eastern cousin anime, are different ani-mals entirely, since so much planning has to go into pre-production with regard to storyboards, initial line drawings, in- betweening and everything else that contributes to the final product. Whether hand drawn or assisted by the superpowered ways of today’s computers, it doesn’t seem possible that things can “just sort of happen” in animated fare, at least not in the same way that they seem to fairly regularly in live action films. And so one must come to the conclusion that the really stupendously varied shots of women’s breasts and crotches that fill up great swaths of the Queen’s Blade series had to have been meticulously thought out. How else to explain such fantastic (if just slightly laugh provoking) framings as a sort of Roman amphitheater, a place of battle, seen through the spread legs of a curvaceous female, a shot which gives ample display of both her posterior and her more private areas? How else to explain the seemingly nonstop array of heaving, jiggling bosoms that seem to become almost totemic after a while, characters in their own right that are frequently mentioned by the various combatants trying to assume the title of Queen, as if this were a bizarre world version of either Queen for a Day or a beauty pageant a la Miss America or Miss Universe, where the “talent” might be battle but the “swimsuit” competition is all about the cleavage? The mere fact that such questions even occur points up the central issue with Queen’s Blade, which is that despite its best efforts to cram a little character and story into its proceedings, it ultimately is all about the pulchritude.

The Queen’s Blade universe is therefore (perhaps self evidently) a lot about the female form and at times at least less about the female character, though to be fair the anime makes fitful attempts at being something more than mere skin deep entertainment. This set of six OVAs is set in the aftermath of Queen’s Blade 2: The Evil Eye, and while newcomers may get the broad outlines of some of the plot dynamics (and admittedly may be more than satisfied by fan service elements alone), those with at least a passing knowledge of the many characters and their backgrounds will probably eke out a bit more entertainment value (beyond that aforementioned fan service).

Various OVA explore issues like the bond between siblings or a recurring nemesis called the Swamp Witch, but it’s all within the broader context of a kind of S&M ambience where incredibly buxom beauties, almost always scantily clad and quite frequently flaunting their naked bodies directly at the screen, are bound and trussed and threatened with torture. The fact that it’s almost always another female doing the capturing and torturing probably only adds a titillating aspect to the proceedings, at least for what may be Queen’s Blade’s chief demographic, younger males.

The major issue with this set of OVAs is that it doesn’t really fulfill any major function. The six episodes seem to want to be a prequel of sorts to Queen's Blade Rebellion: Complete Series which started airing in 2012 (ironically with its own OVAs attached as prequels). And so while this set of OVAs presages some activity in the later series, what mostly happens is brief vignettes featuring various characters as they trundle along to various locations after the Queen’s Blade Tournament. There’s decent enough information imparted about several characters, but a lot of Queen’s Blade Beautiful Warriors feels like filler spewed out into the universe to keep the franchise alive until the next major outing was ready.

Ultimately even that perceived shortcoming is probably largely irrelevant for the reasons enumerated above: namely, Queen’s Blade is mostly about the body, not the soul. In that regard Queen’s Blade Beautiful Warriors continues the franchise’s obsession with the curvaceous female form, offering lots of full frontal (and jiggly) nudity as well as a few peeks between the legs of various female characters. Some may end up feeling like that may provide more “ecch” than ecchi, but fans craving fan service will find more than their fill in this lightweight but harmless set of OVAs.

Queen's Blade Beautiful Warriors: Complete OVA Collection Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Queen's Blade Beautiful Warriors: Complete OVA Collection is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Sentai Filmworks with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. Whatever one may think of the content of any given Queen's Blade outing, it's hard to argue with the franchise's overall visual elegance, one that combines loving looks at the female form with a kind of quasi-medieval setting that frequently provides pops of vivid color and nicely sharp line detail. While those are certainly in evidence here, overall this is a somewhat softer, gauzier looking set of OVAs than was seen in either Queen's Blade The Exiled Virgin: Complete Series or Queen's Blade 2 The Evil Eye: Complete Series. Colors can still pop quite convincingly, with reds and blues especially prominent and vivid looking throughout the series. There are recurrent issues with banding in just about every OVA in this collection, tending to be most noticeable in things like bright skies and the like.

Queen's Blade Beautiful Warriors: Complete OVA Collection Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Queen's Blade Beautiful Warriors: Complete OVA Collection features DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 tracks in both the original Japanese as well as an English dub. The Japanese mix sounds slightly more forceful to my ears, with an incremental though noticeable increase in sound effects. Both tracks offer great fidelity and decent stereo separation, with dialogue, score (which can be quite good at times) and effects all well mixed and prioritized.

Queen's Blade Beautiful Warriors: Complete OVA Collection Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Clean Closing Animations (1080p; 18:37)

Queen's Blade Beautiful Warriors: Complete OVA Collection Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Fan service is by its very definition (not to mention name) for fans, and much the same can be said about Queen's Blade Beautiful Warriors. There's nothing earth shattering going on in any of these OVAs, but they're agreeable enough time killers and they certainly show off their characters' assets (no pun intended) very well indeed. For fans of the franchise if for no one else, Queen's Blade Beautiful Warriors comes Recommended.