Bamboo Blade
You don't need metal to be vicious
Toraji Ishida and Kenzaburou Ishibashi were once students in the same school. They competed against each other in a tornament years in the past.
During their final match, the younger Toraji (now an economics and politics teacher as well as Kendo instructor) managed to beat Kenzaburou and take home the trophy. But Kenzaburou isn’t quite ready to let go of the event. Though they remain friends even today, Kenzaburou wants to see who’s the better instructor. If only to see if he can beat his old opponent now.
The two agree to a bet. If Toraji’s girls can beat Kenzaburou’s Kendo team, he will secure a year’s supply of sushi at his father’s restaurant and the starving Toraji could hardly refuse. If he fails, however, Toraji would hand over his winning trophy from so many years ago. The deal seems straightforward, until he finds out just how fickle the Kendo club is in the school and how erratic each of his girls are in their own way.
This is such a troublesome series… It isn’t one of my favorites, it isn’t spectacular, but it’s also a bit difficult to tear down. After a while the characters do tend to grow on you.
It’s not that it wasn’t enjoyable, but the story lacked anything spectacular that would warrant a second watch. There isn’t that will grab the viewer beyond mediocre drama and funny slapstick, but that may be due to the targetted audience. Memorable moments are few considering the length of the series.
The comedy includes the “ha ha!” variety though the action is reminescent of a toned down and heavily censored title from China. This takes away from the rest of the series as comedy alone can’t seem to carry it that well.
The few saving graces of the series are the animation and audio production. There are a few CGI instances sprinkled here and there, but they’re not intimately tied to the rest of the animation.
This title won’t leave you wanting for more, but I wouldn’t recommend avoiding it altogether either.
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