Queen's Quality Vol. 1 (Review)
By: v.o.lynnImagine the power to control anyone, but in that control, you feed into the darkest impulses within you. Welcome to Queen’s Quality by Kyousuke Motomi, the continuation of QQ Sweeper, the prequel trilogy that sets up the relationship between Fumi and those around her.[arve url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC8x29hJ2Yc" /]Queen's Quality promises to be a deep ride with head trips, power plays, mixed in with teen blushing and heartthrobs. Don't miss out on this new adventure from Viz!
Mild Spoilers
Volume one of Queen’s Quality does a lot of strategic housekeeping to get you up to speed on the story, introducing the sweepers (Kyutaro Horikita and his household), Fumi and Kyutaro’s school and club life, and the introduction of Queens. For those not familiar with the original series, sweepers are tasked with removing “bugs” which are representative of negative thoughts or energy. If enough negative energy builds up, then a more powerful creature may emerge. These thoughts gather around doorways to people’s minds. At the opening of Queen’s Quality, Fumi is still living with Kyutaro as a sweeper in training.Chess motifs are very present throughout the story, Queens being the most powerful and dangerous piece on the board: moving however far it wants to, in any direction. Imagine the power to control a person nearby, forcing them verbally to obey your commands against their will. This is the power that Fumi has within her, locked away with memories of her life before QQ Sweeper. Beyond her, there are opposing forces ready to awaken and set it free on a path to light and power, or darkness and destruction.It’s a lot for a teen girl to take in! From her angle, Kyutaro seems further from her than ever at the top of the volume – despite shoujou-romance closeness and obvious tense feelings between the two of them left over from the previous series (that they’re both working through). She thinks he’s in love with someone else – the only one he has eyes for is her.Thanks to the set-up in Volume 1, it’s pretty clear that the author and editor want you to feel comfortable reading the prequels, but don’t want you to quit reading volume one of Queen’s Quality to go do it. It’s completely fine to get entrenched with Volume 1 of Queen’s Quality and ready to go forward into the new adventure for Fumi and Kyutaro – with their obvious feelings for each other established by the end of chapter 1, and then reinforced various times throughout the volume: just not directly at each other.
