YMMV / Queen's Blade

• Adaptation Displacement: Played with: As is already explained, the franchise is based in the American Lost Worlds gamebooks, who previously were barely known even in their native U.S., much less outside of it. And while QB is still more known than LW, on the other hand, the unusual success of Queen's Blade in both Japan and the U.S. helped to revive the interest on the older Lost Worlds books who's the characters are based of. It does help Firelight Company (the actual owners of the Lost Worlds franchise) and also Flying Buffalo (the former publishers of the franchise) know that Hobby Japan is a bigger and more powerful company in Japan and HJ also acknowledge the fact their own franchise is based in a foreign one.^note Possibly because they are legally forced to do so. Jill Leonardi, the daughter of Alfred Leonardi (the original designer of the Lost Worlds books) is actually working closely with Hobby Japan designing new matrices for the QB gamebooks, and her name appears in the copyright disclaimer of the Hobby Japan's homepage about QB.
• Anti-Climax Boss: Claudette in the Illustrated Stories. Mirim defeats her very easily with the help of her Ultra-Vibrating Armor, since it deflects her lightning attacks. Averted in the animated adaptation, where she curb-stomps Mirim and the rest of the Rebellion Army by herself.
• Awesome Music: Several themes shines towards others, such as the Queen's Blade Theme, played when something important is going to happen, normally almost at the end of the episode.
• Badass Decay:
  • Nanael, who goes from beating the Swamp Witch Trio single-handedly in episode 7, to having a hard time against even one of them in the tournament. Justified, in that her powers are tied to the amount of Holy Milk she has left, and she had spilled a fair amount before the fight, and lost enough during that fight that she couldn't use her telepathic sword.
  • Aldra, in her Vanquished Queens incarnation. The change since being freed of Delmore is so drastic, that she's almost unrecognizable. The once stoic, iron-willed, queen having been replaced by a cutesy, overly apologetic, girl who can barely defend herself.
• Best Known for the Fanservice: Most outsiders pretty much know of this game thanks to it's very provocative and scantily-clad female characters. With Ensemble Dark Horse Cattleya getting most of the spotlight from the fandom and even those who aren't familiar with the series.
• Broken Base: As expected, the redesigns of the Unlimited reboot left the fandom fractured. Some think the new designs are okay, while others have hit the They Changed It, Now It Sucks! trope full force.
• Canon Fodder: Hobby Japan is infamous for not giving straight answers to anything not related to the characters ^note Like the Continent, the war that happened 100 years previously between the Vances versus everyone in the Continent, Melona and Airi's origins, Nowa's biological family, Claudette's biological mother, etc. They did answer some questions in an FAQ on their homepage in 2007, as an interview from the fans with the characters and also with Hans (Hobby Japan's collective Word of God). Although while some questions were answered, at the same time, Hans berated, in a very Japanese way, those who asked personal questions, like the characters' ages.
• Cliché Storm: Played with: While the whole series uses many clichés from the Heroic Fantasy genre, it also avoids others like Elves Versus Dwarves and the Dark Elves are evil cliché (Echidna for example can be a big jerk, at worst, but isn't really evil).
• Complete Monster: Werbellia the Swamp Witch is a mysterious entity who developed a resentment towards other living things. To display her full power, the Swamp Witch bodyjacks several innocent people until she sights her eye towards a beautiful, high-ranking demon named Werbellia. Unable to control Werbellia due to the latter's strong love for her husband, Pope Stephan, the Swamp Witch banished Stephan into the netherworld forever. Managing to overtake Werbellia, the Swamp Witch then orders her minions to sabotage the Queen's Blade tournament, which would result in the continent and heaven becoming nothing but a barren wasteland. Failed to stop the tournament, when one of her minions, Menace, refused to come back to her, the Swamp Witch then tortures her other two minions for their own failures. Seemingly defeated after the archangel Nanael destroyed the swamp, the Swamp Witch still continues her reign of terror as she inflicts several horrific curses towards several previous Queen's Blade contestants. At one point, she made the protagonist, Leina, her slave, with a parasite that could increase her pleasure serving her, and when Leina attempts to escape her clutches, she then revives the undead army of one of her minions and has said army face off against Leina. Possessing the current Queen's Blade champion, Claudette, she turns her into a warmongering tyrant. She was also responsible for the genocide of the Elves and forced slaves to fight against each other. Seemingly defeated in the final battle, she attempts to bodyjack Werbellia's two daughters as a last resort.
• Contested Sequel: The animated adaptation of Rebellion is this: While the TV series improved on some aspects of the first two anime series, many aspects of the plot from the Illustrated Stories were either changed or removed, and the epic battles from the novels were replaced by only Annelotte and every named heroic character against the Queen's Army. The plot was all but concluded in the last three episodes, as the series ends on an unsolved Cliffhanger.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Kaguya for Grimoire, as her Combat Book sold out within a couple of hours (and this is after the constant delay of her character).
  • Melona is so insanely popular that the first version of the second season's ED is sung from her perspective, describing how erotic she is. Needless to say, the fact that she gets a substantially small amount of screentime in the second season and Rebellion caused a bit of a stir in the fanbase.
  • Cattleya, for a character that has a relatively small role in the franchise in general, gets a surprising amount of fanart. Possibly due to her character design and story beats covering a large amount of fetishes.
  • Lamica is possibly one of the most popular characters from the enemy side of QB Spiral Chaos, judging with the amount of fanart about her in Japan.
  • Arane is one of the more recognizable gal-monsters of the series. She and the aforementioned Lamica are both drawn by the same artist and look similar in appearance.
• Fandom Rivalry: With the Senran Kagura fanbase nonetheless. One point of contention is that the Queen's Blade anime eventually succumbed to Seasonal Rot and Schedule Slip, while the Senran Kagura video game series was still able to disambiguate between its own story and ecchi elements and was still relatively popular until its abrupt death^note or suicide; it’s unclear as to whether Marvelous killed it because of loyalty to Sony (rather than moving to Nintendo, who ironically are fine with the highly sexualized series) in spite of the new CEO of Sony Japan not liking fanservice-filled games, or if Sony themselves had a say in it..
• Fandom-Specific Plot:
  • Many fanfics includes male characters participating in the titular tournament, despite the rules forbid men on participating, albeit it's heavily implied that the rule is not set in stone, as the ruling queen (or the gods) can change the rules depending on their taste. This is more evident in the animated adaptation, as Aldra, the ruling queen, alter the rules of the tournament just to allow team-battles in the tournament, more specifically between Echidna and Irma vs Alleyne and Nowa.
  • Including a male crossover character (Naruto or the Elric brothers are the usual main targets) to participate in the Queen's Blade tournament or just to pick a fight against a named character. In the case of Fullmetal Alchemist, it's normally Melona making fun of Ed about his height.
  • While this is almost exclusive to fanart or fan-made gamebooks, Lina Inverse participating is a popular choice. Due to the fact in the Queen's Blade universe magic is seen as a taboo subject for everyone who is not an angel or a demon and the fact many of Lina's magic spells are too powerful, she's normally depowered or refuse to use her powers for the sake of balance.
• Fanfic Fuel: Due of the many gaps in the characters' characterization and plot, especially anything related about the past of the Vances and how the tournament came to be, not to mention the rest of the named cast, etc.
• Fan Nickname: Hyumina is the Scopedog Girl, due to being a walking Shout-Out to Votoms.
• Fetish Repellent: Since 2022, the ads for its gacha game spinoff, Limit Break, has been widely mocked online not just for their oversaturation across the internet, but also for the fact that these ads are trying way too hard to be suggestive. Most of these ads also have the characters featured do rather suggestive poses, which simply border onto Squick instead.
• Friendly Fandoms: With Naruto, of all things, thanks to its character designs. Ino Yamanaka, Tsunade, Hinata Hyuga wouldn't be too out of place in the Queen's Blade universe by any stretch.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Nanael's Reverse Harem-seeking tendencies can be really heart-wrenching if you know what happened to her voice actress for doing precisely that, to the degree that she was black-listed from her former agency and possibly from the franchise as default, hence why she doesn't appear in Rebellion and Laila replaces her.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • A voice acting related one: Remember when Saber complains about not being beautiful and having Muscle Angst? Cue Leina (who shares the same voice actress with Saber) who is everything Saber hates about herself.
  • Takako Honda's role as the Head Archangel is even more hilarious if you know she is the dub voice of Nightmare Moon and also Olga.
  • Akira Ishida's role as Delmore (at least in the anime series) is even funnier if you know he voiced Kaworu Nagisa, an angel, and Delmore is an Evangelion-style Angel.
  • In the English dub: Dan Green (Count Vance) got demoted from being the King of Games to be the Count of them.
  • Leina has a little sister called Elina, whose name is an obvious anagram of "Leina". Later, Leina's VA voiced Erina Pendleton in the new TV series.
  • Delmore became female in the English version, years later Delmore is a female demon in Unlimited.
• Ho Yay: Melona seems to have an obsession with Leina, due to how she constantly gets defeated by her and wants to face her personally herself.
• Inferred Holocaust: At the end of Rebellion, (at least in the Illustrated Stories novelization, since the anime adaptation ends in a Cliffhanger), The Swamp Witch (or the evil spirit who manipulated Werbellia) is defeated and Claudette returns to her older self after being defeated by Mirim, but is never explained what happened with all the returning characters (excluding Alleyne, whose fate is already implied in the novelization, but make it explicit in the OVAs) who were cursed by her, since she wasn't killed at the end, and she's still on large thanks to Airi, meaning that everyone who was cursed, minus Claudette, are still cursed. And even Claudette herself is not safe of this, since thanks to her conquering antics and the Rebellion War because of her while being under the Witch's control means that she needs to defend her title as the queen in the next 4 years.
  • Leina got an even worse one, at least in the Vanquished Queens OVAs: According to The Swamp Witch herself, her vital energy is being drained out from Leina's body and her remaining days she has to sleep at random times. Since the real Swamp Witch (not Werbellia) is still alive and well at the end of Rebellion, that means, unless Leina asks Werbellia to remove the curse or kills the real Swamp Witch, that means the curse on her will possibly end her kill her sooner or later. Assuming the events of the animated adaptation doesn't Retcon the ones from the gamebooks, this is a stark contrast from what happens to her as the curse the Witch puts on Leina only make her sleep, but it did not drain her life.
• Jerkass Woobie: Nanael. She can come off as racist toward the human race, has a really bad ego, and won't hesitate to leave people in need behind. You can't help but feel something for her, especially when you find out in episode 7 that she's ostracized by the other angels for not being able to fit in with them because of her wings (her attitude was probably developed from being isolated and only having one friend). Besides, her personality is justified given that the majority of angels have the same view as her and come off as hypocritical in comparison.
• Just Here for Godzilla: "Just here for the plot", more like. Queen's Blade is one of the few series of its ilk to focus more on character-driven story rather than fanservice. Doesn't mean the fanservice itself, which borders on softcore porn, won't draw this reaction either.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Illustrated Stories only: The novel implies Ymir (or Melona impersonating her) basically raped Mirim when she tries to improve her Ultra-Vibrating Armor putting a dildo-like device in her nether parts. For obvious reasons, the anime adaptation avoids this, and she uses the Magical stones in Mirim's armor breastplate and crotch zones instead.
  • The manga adaptation is even worse: While the rape scene was skipped, on the other hand she forces Mirim to kill innocent people just because she wanted it and she brokes Mirim really hard in the process.
• Never Live It Down: Leina is left with lingering feelings of shame and humiliation by the end of the third "Vanquished Queens" OVA, where, after being captured by Werebella, she was subjected to Rape as Drama. See the related entry in her character section.
• Replacement Scrappy: Played a bit with Laila from Rebellion: While she's not exactly unpopular, the fact she was originally planned as Nanael's partner and later ascended as a titular character, while Nanael was Demoted to Extra possibly due to Aya Hirano's sex scandal caused her to become an almost flat character with very few motivations, other than following someone else's orders and having an almost non-existent backstory (other than being half-angel half-human, and that fact is never exploited anywhere). Hobby Japan seems to be aware of this fact, and that's the reason why Nanael returns in the Vanquished Queens OVAs.
• Seasonal Rot: It's generally agreed upon by the fandom that the Beautiful Warriors OVAs and Rebellion are when the anime series devolved into another generic fanservice show. The Bittersweet Ending Override of the former, the increasingly dark tone of later anime, and the very nature of the Vanquished Warriors OVAs are in heavy contrast to the first two anime seasons' tone and their approach to fanservice. The main canon would be abandoned for a short-lived OVA series based on the ElseWorld Grimoire game books, while the Continuity Reboot Unlimited OVA series has suffered from Schedule Slip.
• Sequelitis: Rebellion has noticeably lower production values than the first two seasons, as well as significantly less development put into the characterization. This could possibly be due to them planning on saving the best material for the fourth season which never materialized due to Rebellion's middling reception.
• Squick: Michel, the new character from Unlimited, has Vague Age like most characters in the franchise, but his appearance implies he is much younger than most of the girls, probably having just entered puberty. And he gets involved in the Fanservice the franchise is famous for together with them. Even longtime fans have trouble seeing the all-female cast, most of them being young adults, doing anything remotely seen as sexual to a boy who is barely a teenager.
• Stoic Woobie: Claudette. Her plebeian mother died young and instead of raising her like a daughter, her father raised her like a servant. And her two younger sisters, who do care about her? One ran away from home, the other goes searching for the former, leaving Claudette behind with their neglectful father. And despite all that, she is still one of the most stoic characters in the series.
• Retroactive Recognition: For Masaru Yokoyama, the music composer, as years later he hits big doing the soundtrack of Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans.
• Tear Jerker:
  • On top of delicious and well-served Elvish-beach-fanservice though OVA 2 may be, we get a genuinely emotional and heartwarming farewell between Nowa and her teacher/adoptive-mother Alleyne.
  • Episode 4 when Claudette lets go of Leina's hand.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Initial reception to Unlimited wasn't all smiles. The redesigns for all of the characters, as well as the choice in the new focus character (a boy much younger than the girls) has made fans on both sides of the pond very angry before it even premiered.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Basically, we never find out what happened with the rest of the cursed returning characters after The Swamp Witch is defeated, and it's very possible, even with Werbellia being defeated, the real Swamp Witch and her goons are still at large, and the cursed heroines will probably remain cursed for the rest of their lives. The only character who managed to break her curse was, ironically, Claudette and she remains the queen, albeit with her previous personality she had before being one.
• Too Cool to Live: Shizuka.
• Unexpected Character:
  • After all the crap Aya Hirano endured due to her sex scandal, nobody expected to see Nanael in an anime or a drama CD ever again. However, Aya eventually returned to voice acting and so Nanael also returned in the Vanquished Queens OVAs.
  • You didn't expect The Swamp Witch to be a playable character in Rebellion and not a simple NPC with a backstory behind her like Delmore, did you?
  • Grimoire may top all other examples. You don't expect The Winter Demon, Big Bad of the whole story, to be friggin' Cinderella!
• Unpopular Popular Character: While Nanael is widely considered by many characters to be an annoyance, the fans seem to think otherwise.
• The Un-Twist: As the plot of Rebellion advance, many of the most "mysterious" stuff surrounding some of the main characters are pretty obvious to deduce by just looking closely:
  • Aldra and Annelotte being sisters: Both having the same hair color, both being half-demons and both having their names beginning with the letter "A".
  • The Swamp Witch being Aldra and Annelotte's real mother: After reading Aldra's backstory, we know her mother was a demon and her father was a human, and Werbellia fits the description given by Aldra.
  • The Rebellion's version of Ymir is NOT the real one: Even if she was a greedy jerk in the prequel, she still has morals, and she never falls too low, like raping Mirim in the Illustrated Stories, not to mention her personality doesn't match with her previous self. The twist is Melona was the one impersonating her and imprisoning the real one.
• Values Dissonance: While not as notable as other series, there's a notable point of contention about some plot points in both the gamebooks and also the TV series regarding the Vances, especially Leina, at least for some Western viewers: Most of the drama and tragedy from Rebellion could be avoided if Leina had a bit of common sense regarding her own family, since it's very clear she already knows her sisters aren't exactly the nicest or the most stable people around. Especially Claudette, as she already knows all the crap her sister has to endure due to the fact she's an illegitimate daughter. Her reasoning for trusting the entire Continent to her anyway is similar to the motivation of Sasuke Uchiha, albeit not as harsh: It's due to her filial piety towards her own family, even if it is NOT perfect in any way, something even her own mother acknowledges in a flashback scene in the second season. In Japan, the concept of filial piety is given much more importance than in the West.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: GONG's official YouTube uploads of the show are only rated TV-PG, except for the third episode which somehow managed to get rated TV-Y!
• The Woobie:
  • As a child, Nyx was abused and humiliated by Elina. In fact, her reason for entering Queen's Blade is partly to get revenge. She also subjects herself to a creepy, borderline-rape relationship with her sentient weapon, Funikura, because she thinks it's the only way she can win. And then she loses.
  • Florelle was an orphan who grew up in the streets until Claudette saved him. Despite his tough childhood, he still puts on a cheerful smile.
  • Tomoe has her friend slaughter in front of her, is forced to kill her friend who doesn't get revived and she gets cursed and loses her eyesight.

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