It's surprising the amount of insight Bamboo Blade's silly, gag oriented characters provide on the passion for and the meaning of Kendo. Even more unthinkable is the lack of ecchi in a high school girl oriented cast clearly aimed at males. Bamboo Blade is full of wonderful surprises, but the repetitive comedy and weak action elements do nothing to fill in for its uneventful plot.
Synopsis
An unambitious teacher is the supervisor for Murota school's Kendo club. Throughout the years, his club has been whittled down to one hard working and devoted girl, Kirino, who loves the sport but is miffed that her teacher is always so lazy. A drunken wager with the teacher's former classmate stakes a full year of free sushi on an exhibition girl's Kendo match, and with this, he is suddenly gung ho about whipping his club into tournament shape, to the delight of Kirino. He pursues ex-members and a new child prodigy, Tamaki, to fill the ranks, and in the process, revives his old flame for Kendo.
Story & Characters
The most striking element of Bamboo Blade is how realistic and poignant, yet varied the characters' feelings towards Kendo are. Azuma, a member of the home Kendo club, adores it as a part of herself and a passion she's held since youth while Kirino enjoys the camaraderie it builds. Each of the main characters find a unique and believable relationship with Kendo, and even some of the minor characters shed words of wisdom. Most of the action elements also follow in this vein of realism. Even though many of the characters improve their skills, it's far from a "powerup" scenario. For instance, one of the home members has markedly wonderful aggression, but little skill and focus. Instead of taking the typical shounen route that would have transformed her into an unconventionally powerful prodigy, her lack of focus is a crippling handicap throughout, rendering her unable to win any matches. Just as in real life, the focus and skill is only be attained through painstaking practice along with multiple frustrating failures.
It's a little too bad that the series revolves around the tiny prodigy, Tamaki. She's a robotic character with her desire to emulate the naive heroism of her favorite Anime characters as her only displayed emotion throughout most of the series. Though she does undergo trials towards the end that expand her emotional range, her completely inhuman nature for the rest of the series had already sabotaged any possible empathy from the viewer. Unlike the other characters, Tamaki's Kendo skill goes beyond the bounds of believability; she is essentially invincible. To a lesser degree, the other characters are similarly simple caricatures for a majority of their screen time, but when Kendo gets involved, their genuine elements come through. Only when they reveal their relationship to Kendo are they not generic, run of the mill anime characters.
Many of their gags are funny for the first time, but each character has no more than 1 or 2 that repeat, and by the end they become clockwork. Interestingly, the action is often skipped over, either with a simple still screen, or just an announcement of a winner with no visuals at all. The tantalizing bit of Kendo we see animated ranges from excessive still screen usage to beautiful and accurate animation that captures the explosive, almost spastic nature of the matches. Still, even when the matches are just glanced over, we get the primary reward we desire in the reaction of the characters. Their genuine passion for the sport makes me feel their elation when they win, and their heartbreak or frustration when they lose. Watching the characters express themselves in the context of Kendo is compelling, but I didn't care a lick for the rest of the plot. All the minutia that's supposed to give added weight to the results of the matches, which is the free sushi at first, and then eventually the teacher's job, is a boring filler of screen time
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Bamboo Blade is certainly far from a generic, power up sports Anime, but that novelty alone doesn't make it compelling. It's a drag to sit through at times, but the unmatched insight into Kendo, or perhaps competitive sports in general is worth wading through the other junk.
