One of the major complaints about Queen's Blade is its hard to get attached to the characters. This wasn't the case for me, and because of that it was hard to stomach watching Vanquished Queens. While ever so closely balancing the line between hentai or not, they don't show anything overly explicit or any gore. Vanquished Queens takes some of the characters from the original series and subject them to abuse, torture, and rape. If you enjoy that sort of thing or would define them overcoming these difficulties as "character development" - this is the show for you. I understand there weresimilar situations in the original series but they were far and beyond "light" compared to Vanquished Queens serious manner.

As far as art/sound/characters - they very closely match the original series of Queen's Blade and were done fairly well. I did notice a couple scenes with lower quality animation, but not enough to detract from my overall enjoyment. The only thing that kept my overall rating from being a 2.

One other positive note, if you are a fan of Airi - one of the Vanquished Queens specials will be enjoyable.