As I feared, they’re setting up the Amada arc to finish out the season, and the final scene makes it clear that they’ve merged it with the plot of book 1. They now have four episodes left to bring it all together, and while I appreciate the eye-candy and the culturally-acclimated evil genius that is Lamdimia do Aximimor, I wonder if they can finish the story properly, or if they’re too busy setting up “buy the BluRay” scenes.

The revelation of how the Demon Lord was defeated should still be worthwhile, but I worry that the actual resolution will be over-shadowed by the cheesecake. I think they’re going to try to have all the girls there for the big finish, particularly Lore and Lam. That will involve some rather contrived plotting unless they move it to the Leon store.

Not that the novels are short on cheesecake…

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Queen’s Blade, the ecchi anime, was based on a set of game books featuring art by popular character designers, with rules from the old Lost Worlds game books.

To attract a new audience, the latest set features photos of popular cheesecake models such as Ayaka Sayama, who takes the role of Captain Liliana.

No Bodacious Space Pirates were harmed in the production of these books.

After looking at both manga (which I’ll just call Straight and Ecchi, to keep it clear), I think I know where the anime is going, and how they’re going to get there. They seem to be mostly following Ecchi, and usually toning it down a bit (manga: Nova trips and plants her crotch in Raul’s face, Lam flips up Elza’s skirt to show Raul her sexy panties, tentacles are very ecchi, etc; anime: magical bukkake). Character design is pretty consistent across all three versions:

Both manga follow more or less the same path so far, with volume one ending soon after the Witch’s Arms incident. There’s some young Fino flashbacks in Straight that set up the big reveal in volume 2, but nothing comparable in Ecchi.

The big reveal in Straight comes less than halfway into volume 2, before Amada appears on the scene. Volume 2 of Ecchi isn’t out for another six weeks or so, but I’m guessing they do the same.

I think the order of those events is what they’re changing for the anime. Speculations and spoilers below:

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[Update: I just bought the second volume of the straight adaptation. I hope they do this properly in the anime, because there’s a real story going on, and I quite enjoyed the revelation of how the Demon Lord was defeated.]

So I picked up the Kindle editions of the first volume from both of the Yuu-shibu manga. The one that’s actually called Yuu-shibu is the extra-ecchi version that adds Elza, Lam, Nova, and a lot more fan-service, while the one that shares the novels’ full ridiculous title looks like a more direct adaptation. The anime is using a lot of material from the ecchi manga.

The simplest way to explain the difference is to show the Witch’s Arms… (NSFW!)

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Crunchyroll reports that they’ll be simulcasting the Sword Art Online Extra Edition special episode, in which sister/cousin/haremette Leafa/Suguha learns to swim in the real world, so they can do an underwater quest in the virtual world.

No doubt the next special episode will send the girls to an onsen so Liz can overcome her fear of steam.

They could have animated the one-and-only story with Asuna as the protagonist, but no, they went for the fan-service.

Apparently the number one problem with the show was that there wasn’t enough fan-service in the opening and end credits.

They fixed that.

[Update: speaking of fan-service, Nova, Lore, Elza, and Lam are not in the novels. Lore is anime-original, and the other three were added in the manga. Actually, it looks like there are two different manga running, one a straight adaptation of the novels, and the other with extra service. Airi’s bunny-suit is straight from the books, though, and “somehow” Fino and Sara both end up in them as well.]

Via the never-safe-for-work Sankaku Complex. It would be nice if they could skip the jarring tone shifts of the first one. Our Hero deserves a break, and his new home could use some more exploring. If they pick up after the end of the first series, I suspect they’ll try for something like Watt-Evans’ The Wizard and the War Machine.

While checking up on Mouretsu Pirates movie news, I happened to spot director Sato’s twitter profile pic.