Review for Bamboo Blade: Series 1 - Part 2

Introduction

It's heartening to know that I can still be surprised by anime. There is a lot of it out there to be sure, which you would think would make surprises a regular occurrence. But when you have seen as much of the stuff as I have, you begin to tailor your expectations accordingly. The really popular shows will come surfing a wave of word of mouth, and I'll have a good idea of what to expect long before they are even licensed. On the other hand, those shows that get no fanfare and just sneak out when no one is looking are unsurprisingly the proverbial runt of the litter. As for those that lie in between the two extremes, there usually is sufficient material and opinion on the Interwebs to at least give me an idea of what to expect. I had no idea at all what Bamboo Blade would be about, and the amount of fanfare and hoopla that surrounded its release, or lack of, had me thinking that it would be just one more runt. Imagine my delight with Part 1, to find 2010's hidden gem, a delightful sports/slice of life anime that has positively the cutest characters imaginable, and with a delicious, wry sense of humour. Imagine further my delight, when Part 2 came around for reviewing.


Toraji 'Kojiro' Ishida is a layabout and loser teacher at Muroe Private High School, and it's usually his pay packet that he loses. He can barely afford to feed himself, and is reduced to scrounging off his students. He also half-heartedly coaches the school's kendo team after school hours, not made easier by the new school year meaning the departure of the old team, and the few remaining members intimidated by a couple of bullies who like waving big sticks around. But a night out with an old friend, and coach of a rival school's kendo team changes all that when he makes a bet. If his girls' kendo team can beat Ishibashi's kendo team, then he'll be able to eat for free for a year. Now all he needs is to recruit a girls' kendo team. The ideal recruit would be Tamaki Kawazoe, daughter of a kendo master who grew up in a kendo dojo, but she would rather watch anime instead.


The bet turned out to be a short lived affair in the previous volume, but Kojiro started an unstoppable juggernaut of enthusiasm when he recruited Tamaki Kawazoe, and built a surprisingly good kendo team around her unique talents. Pretty soon they are winning matches, and entering tournaments. But Kojiro put the wrong nose out of joint when he had a fateful encounter with the crabby wife of a school governor's next door neighbour. Now if he wants to keep his job at Muroe High School, he'll have to take his team all the way to the Nationals. That's easier said than done, as real life keeps getting in the way of kendo for the girls in the team. The stakes have never been higher.


This 2-disc collection presents the concluding half of Bamboo Blade, thirteen episodes in all as follows.

Disc 1

14. Satorin's Resolve and Nomming
15. First Training Camp and First Public Bath
16. Kirino's Absence and the Preliminary Tournament
17. Light and Shadow
18. The Tournament and Muroe High After That
19. The Armadillo and the Pangolin
20. Braver and Shinaider

Disc 2

21. Tamaki Kawazoe and Rin Suzuki
22. Winners and Losers
23. Lies and Silence
24. The Sword and The Way
25. Kendo and What it Brings About
26. "Since Then" and "From Here On Out"

Picture

Bamboo Blade gets a 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer, which is the usual NTSC-PAL standards conversion, although it isn't particularly cursed with indications of such. The image is mostly clear, there is a deliberate haze and brightness to the animation that goes well with the light and entertaining tone of the show, and the colours follow a soft pastel palette that also reflects this. The character designs are simplistic, but distinctive, and the world design is similarly appealing. Where the show excels is in the animation, particularly of the kendo sequences, which have had a lot of effort and time spent on them to imbue them with style and energy. The show has a cute conceit of fading out the facemasks during the match sequences, allowing you to see the characters. All in all, Bamboo Blade is a very appealing animation, quirky yet familiar.

Sound

You have the usual options, DD 5.1 English and DD 2.0 Japanese, with optional translated subtitles or a signs only track. You won't be surprised to hear that I went with the Japanese audio, and was very happy with that. I really adore the cute voice that Tamaki gets in the Japanese audio, and that contrasts with my brief experience of the English dub, where they attempted to emulate that, but she winds up sounding like a frail old woman to my ears. The English dub has that perennial problem of older actresses trying to sound like teenaged girls, and it sounds more and more awkward as the years pass. But, the surround sound does have an impact when it comes to the matches and the kendo sequences, as well as bringing out the catchy theme songs.

Extras

The discs get static menus and jacket pictures. The only extras are on disc 2, and they are the usual textless credit sequences. Unfortunately, you don't get the endless credits sequence from the final episode, as it's different from the usual episodes, and also has a fair bit of story and epilogue happening behind the credits text.

Conclusion

I had my doubts about Bamboo Blade for a brief moment there. As so often happens with anime adapted from a manga source, Bamboo Blade's anime caught up to the manga, leaving the creators in the unenviable position of having to make up an ending of their own to fulfil the requirements of the broadcast schedule. On a rare occasion that can result in a conclusion that surpasses, or at least equals what the manga would eventually go on to deliver, but more often than not, the anime falls flat, delivering something demonstrably inferior. Sometimes, the anime creators don't even bother with creating an ending, and just leave things open-ended and unfulfilling. At least with Bamboo Blade, they signpost in the next episode preview after the end of episode 18 that what follows is original material, and it does give you the option of switching off and going to the library to look up the manga instead. For a stretch of around three episodes, I was sorely tempted to do just that, as I felt that what had turned out to be the surprise delight of the winter DVD schedules, was quickly turning sour. Fortunately, Bamboo Blade does pick itself up for the final stretch, and delivers an ending that is emotionally satisfying, and true to the overall story and characters. But it was a close thing for a while.


As I mentioned in the review for Part 1, Bamboo Blade may be a sports anime, one of the rare such beasts in the UK anime market, but it's really the slice of life aspects of the show that give it such an appeal. The intricacies of the sport aren't really the focus of the story; it certainly doesn't dwell on the tournament aspects of the combat to any degree approaching that of certain shonen anime, and a typical Rocky style 'underdog does good' tale just wouldn't stretch to 26 episodes. The sport here is a framework, around which a tale of friendships and rivalries, the gathering of a diverse set of characters with a common goal, is all of more interest. So it's no surprise here that while the various tournaments that the Muroe High team enter do play a part, they aren't a central part, and it isn't even all that important for the main, just who wins and who loses. It's far more important to see how the characters deal with their wins and losses, and how they grow from the adversities they face, and the friendships that they make along the way.


Bamboo Blade continues on the same, strong keel that the first part established, a run of strong character episodes, with a touch of drama, a fair amount of comedy, and a warm helping of heart and sentiment, all the ingredients that so enamoured me of the show. If there are two strong threads in this part, it's Miya-Miya's frustration with her lack of progress in training, and Tama's lack of a strong enough opponent, and her unfamiliarity with losing. For both, it's a matter of lack of confidence, but they both come at it from different angles. For Miya, the length of time that passes without her scoring a point off any opponent makes her question why she is even in the kendo club. But for Tama, the longer that she goes without a loss, the more devastating a loss will be when it inevitably comes. And she will also have to question just why she practices kendo. She's good at it because her father runs a dojo, and she's been swinging a Shinai since before she could walk, but while she enjoys being in the kendo club, and making new friends, she is yet to learn that the kendo itself can be fun.


We then reach episode 19, and the start of the material original to the anime, and the creators decide to address these plot lines by introducing suitable rivals for Tama and Miya, only they do so in perhaps the three most disappointing and lacklustre episodes of the series, picking on the most ridiculous aspects of the characters as motivation, rather than letting something develop naturally. For Miya, it's by introducing a rival to her affections for Dan, the little Easter Egg shaped kendo Jedi that she's in love with. Carrie is a foreigner living in Japan, who likes to practice her kendo by swinging two blades rather than just one. She's a fan of Samurai movies who takes a liking to Dan because he reminds her of her pet armadillo. For Miya, such a person is particularly annoying, as Dan more obviously looks like a pangolin. Yes, from such comic witticisms do whole episodes arise.


If that isn't enough, episode 20 reveals the series rival to Tamaki Kawazoe, and once again they delve into the most trivial aspects of her personality, her love of anime, to generate a suitable opponent. Tama loves a show called Blade Braver, whose central hero can do no wrong. Yet 10 years previously, a run of episodes where the heroes faced a noble villain called Shinaider had an effect on another kendo loving schoolgirl, Rin Suzuki. Their first encounter takes place during a special live event celebrating the series, where Rin and Tama wind up head to head in a quiz competing for some plushie toys. At the event, it is announced that there is a live action Blade Braver movie in production, and not long after, the Kawazoe dojo plays host to the stunt team (as usually happens in these things). With the stunt team is Rin Suzuki, and the two renew their rivalry, and develop a friendship debating old Braver episodes late into the night. They even get roles in the movie, although Tama forgets herself during filming and gets into the kendo sequence for real. Such a rivalry can only be resolved in tournament play.


These three episodes are really quite silly, and while they are entertaining enough, they fall far short of the standards of the other episodes, not least because they deal with characters in isolation, when it's the interactions between the members of the kendo team that are the whole point of the show. As introductions to the rivals, they are pretty lacklustre, but once that is done, the series picks back up again for the final five episodes, we get back to the tournaments and the training, and more importantly the other characters come back into the frame as well. Kojiro faces his toughest challenge yet as teacher in charge of the kendo club, indeed all of the characters face their most difficult moments as the climax of the series approaches. The climax of the show is gripping and emotionally satisfying, and certainly makes investing in this series well worthwhile. It is hard to wrap a slice of life show up with a neat little bow, so the creators have taken the wisest choice of using the final episode as an epilogue, set six months later than episode 25, and we get to catch up with the characters and see how they have dealt with their issues as the time has passed, and a new school year arrives with new prospective inductees in the kendo club. There are more than a few surprises thrown up in this episode, but it's a good note to end the series on.


Of course there are disappointments in the show, I felt that certain characters and plot lines were short-changed. I would have liked the show to devote a little more time to Yuuji's crisis of confidence, which just sort of waxed and waned during the episodes, rather than having any definitive impact, and Miya's issues with her stalker Reimi, as well as Kojiro's issues with the crazy hag from the supermarket car park, all seemed to be solved off screen. But on the whole, Bamboo Blade has been a wholly gratifying experience, and I have savoured every light-hearted and fluffy episode. The end credits of the final episode even hint at potential storylines should the series ever get a continuation. I certainly hope that it does.