By Christopher Troy
As much as I love reviewing toys and Gunpla, occasionally this gig can make a guy feel weird. No, it isn’t the fact that I’m an “adult” talking about toys. Much to my parents regret, I have no problem with that. No sometimes what I review gets to me. Taking pictures of an underage Mari awhile about made me feel like a creeper, but man, I felt all sort of weird with today’s subject: Queen’s Blade.
Queen’s Blade, much like Fate/Stay Night originates from a slightly more perverted background. The now-hit franchise started off as a series of visual combat books from Hobby Japan. Translation: Think of those “Choose your own Adventure books” you may have had as a kid, only way more adult. And just like F/S Night, it exploded in popularity over in Japan, expanding into an hit anime (Now be released state wise by Media Blasters), video game (Published by Bandai Namco and handle by a Super Robot Wars team) , and the focus of today’s article: A series of their own Revoltechs that are proving to be super popular. Also for the record, while F/S Night shed it’s perverted origins for mainstream success, Queen’s Blade continues to embrace them for profit. I’m looking at the 3 initial figures from the Queen’s Blade series, which proved to be so popular that variant colors versions were reissued.
From left to right, these are the first 3 characters released from the series. There’s Leina, the princess heroine of the franchise, ghost maid Airi, and elven mercenary Echdina. Yes that sentence felt extremely weird for me to type, despite the fact that I can look up at the top of my PC desk and cont not less than 30 import toys.
The Queen’s Blade line from Revoltech should be noted as the first female-heavy line that didn’t completely suck in terms of articulation, sculpt or built. Many of the pre-Queen’s Blade female figures from the Fraudelin line were poorly made, noted for having limbs fall off, horribly visual joints, and more or less being awkward figures. One way the Queen’s Blade figures differ is that they’re smaller than the previous figures, so while it feels like you’re getting less for your dollar, more accessories were packaged with the figure, and the figure themselves are just better overall. The sculpts are great, the articulation is more on par with the Revoltech mecha releases, and they come with an awesome gimmick.
You see each figure comes with an S and an M mode (think about it for a second.) In S mode, the figures are in their default costumes and can be posed and displayed for to your liking. Slightly risque yes, but hey, there’s plenty of other stuff from Japan that looks just as bad in comparison. It’s the M mode that you’ll have company giving you dirty looks over. You see, according to Queen’s Blade lore, the female cast much fight each other in order to determine the next queen. This is involves the females ending up in several stage of undress. You can reenact this with these figures, something I will not show any photos of if I wish to keep this gig. So yes, M mode consists of said character more or less bare-ass naked in some for or another, complete with embarrassed faces. Yikes.
So are the QB’s revoltech’s worth the money? Retailing for about 30-40 per figure, they are great Revoltechs in terms of value. The real question is do you want Grandma asking you why you have a half naked elf on your bookshelf. My suggestion: Don’t have company over. EVER. Works out well enough for me. Anyway, we have Reina’s sister in stock on the FP web store (http://www.fpnyc.com/store/product/68688/Queen%27s-Blade-Elina-Revoltech-Figure/) and if you swing by the store itself, we have several more figures in stock not listed on the website, including Airi and Echdina.
