Hello everyone,
Here we are for another review of a manga/anime series that aired some years ago. This is one of the few sport series (and if you watch my category list you'll notice there's no other series related to sport in any way) that I actually liked and is named Bamboo Blade!
Let's start with a synopsis :
Toraji Ishida is a high school kendo teacher. His friend and fellow kendo teacher makes him a bet: if Ishida can assemble a girls' kendo team that can defeat his girls' team in a practice match, he'll treat Ishida to free meals at his father's sushi restaurant for a whole year. Now Ishida must find five girls to join the team.
Yeah, the premise is quite stupid, but that's one of the nice point of this series. The always present comedy relief in all episodes!
The story of this series is not anything original to be honest, but the execution is so well done that you'll rarely notice about it.
One of the most important, but often forgotten thing in many series is the backstory of the characters. Well this series does give some space to flesh out the backstory of our heroines and their internal conflict, I loved especially the Tamaki backstory that is the main theme of the series.
The only problem that I can see with this series is likely that it end up with a rather big cliffhanger and not a real conclusion (probably because the manga series was still running at that time), but we can always hop up to read the manga ending or wait for a possible second season in the future.
The story revolves around few main characters, but much care is given to the personality and backstory of these characters. They are mostly likable, even thought you'll need some time and episodes to understand better their personality.
My favourite characters by far is the energetic president of the Kendo club Kirino Chiba. Her cheerful personality is for me by far the most attractive and funny at the same time of all the characters of the series.
The visual quality is top notch and all the girls are nicely drawed. The animation was mostly consistent even thought you'll be able to spot some little problem with some action scene.
The opening of the series was quite focused on the Kendo concept (well nothing to object here, it's the focus of the series) and I didn't like it much, instead the ending with the dusk concept and the various girls showing up in the dojo was quite cool and nostalgic.
The sound quality is top notch with many famous seiyuu and some that I particularly love like Ryou Hirohashi (I probably talked about her infinite time in several post, so just do a quick search on the blog to see the other anime she worked on) in Tamaki's role!
Another thing I loved is the ending song "STAR RISE" sung by the seiyuu of the five main heroines.
Concluding, this is a nice series to watch. Don't get turned off by the sport setting as the execution is wonderful and there is plenty of comedy to get your load of fun between the various matches!
See you soon,
feal87