Queen's Blade + Soul Calibur Is So Obvious, But It'll Never Ever Happen

While playing Soul Calibur VI I can't help but think about how similar it is - the female cast, at least - to the Queen's Blade franchise. They share similar cute / sexy anime-style character designs and both feature a cast from all over the world using many unique fighting styles. They were practically made for each other. Certainly, some of the more risque aspects of Queen's Blade will have to be toned down a bit (or a lot), but turning Soul Calibur into Queen's Blade seems fairly straightforward. I know that fanservicey jiggly fighters are going out of vogue these days, especially in the U.S. so this game would probably never get released here but, damn it, I still want it. Continue reading how I'd make a Queen's Blade / Soul Calibur crossover game.

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Amazon.com

Queen's Blade started as a series of visual combat books - sort of D&D-style multiplayer pen and paper RPGs - mostly known for the sexually suggestive artwork of the exclusively female cast. It has been made into multiple manga series, light novels, and anime (along with a ridiculous amount of 18+ figures and other adult oriented items). That last bit is why an official crossover with Soul Calibur will likely never happen, unfortunately. And, just for the record, I'm only really familiar with the anime series and not the other stuff, I swear.

The story is set in a sort of medieval-era world where women are generally much stronger than the men. They are so strong, in fact, that they fight with their boobs hanging out without a second thought and can walk down the street in revealing outfits with little to worry about because they can kick anyone's ass who dares to try anything. The women in Queen's Blade are powerful and confident and awesome. The Queen's Blade title refers to a tournament held every four years where women from all around the continent fight each other to determine who the new queen will be. Characters include European-style knights, an Egyptian queen, a Japanese shrine maiden, ninjas, angels, demons with crazy powers, and many more. 

Honestly, I just really love the Queen's Blade anime and I'm not ashamed to say so. I love the characters and the artwork and the music and the story and genuinely think that it's great. Sure, it's way over the top with fanservice and nudity, and the rest of the franchise outside of the anime itself is definitely way too hot for TV, but the lewdness is honestly way down the list on why I like it. A lot of people are put off by the fanservice and giant bouncing breasts and nudity, which I think is a shame because the rest of anime is great and can stand on its own without it.

A Soul Calibur / Queen's Blade crossover would obviously have to ditch the nudity entirely, but once you do that the foundation is already there. Most of the Soul Calibur cast are already pretty similar designs Queen's Blade characters so all they would have to do is refine the armor a bit to be an exact match. Considering how easy it is to get "close" to the Queen's Blade characters using the Create-A-Soul feature, making official accurate characters doesn't seem like much of a stretch. The gameplay wouldn't have to be changed much at all since, as I mentioned, a lot of the characters share very similar fighting styles and weapons across the two series already. Like I keep saying, most of the work is already done. They just need to make it official.

I keep saying "crossover" but I don't necessarily want a large Soul Calibur presence. This should be a mainly Queen's Blade cast with a couple of Soul Calibur vets thrown in. Ivy Valentine would fit in absolutely perfectly with Queen's Blade as is and I think someone like Tyra would work well since she'd bring a unique move set that no QB characters use. The Queen's Blade cast would have to be Leina, Elina, Risty, Tomoe, Shizuka, Claudette, Echidna, Airi, Menace, Melona, Ymir, Alleyne, Nowa, and Queen Aldra, of course. Throw in Annelotte, Luna Luna, and pirate captain Lilliana from Queen's Blade Rebellion and we'd have a great cast. I think we could skip Melpha and Cattleya because their breasts would probably break the game and collision detection would be a mess ... seriously.

Soul Calibur already has the cute / sexy art style down, so this would totally work! The gameplay is already there and perfectly matched with Queen's Blade. Use the great music from Queen's Blade and the presentation is complete.

Buy Queen's Blade
anime at Amazon.com

Time to come crashing back to reality. The biggest problem, and it's a huge problem, unfortunately, is that I highly doubt Bandai Namco would want to be connected with Queen's Blade. Queen's Blade is just too closely associated with only the pervy aspects of the franchise instead of everything else that it does well and that perception would make it a hard sell for a mainstream company like Bandai Namco. Like I said, it would likely never be released in the USA even if such a dream match-up ever did happen anyway. I'm also unsure how big the audience would actually be. Queen's Blade's reputation would likely scare off people and the current climate of "OMG video game boobs R Bad!" in the USA would pretty much doom it from the start. A smaller publisher - PQube or Degica (who published the all girl Koihime Musou fighter) - could probably get away with it and make enough profit to make it worthwhile, but the whole key to this is that I want it to look and play like Soul Calibur so letting someone else do it won't get me the result I want.

So, I suppose I'll just have to be satisfied with created characters in Soul Calibur VI, but I can dream can't I?