First Date Review: Bamboo Blade Part 1

 

Vital Stats Title: Bamboo Blade Part 1 Format: TV Anime Based On: Masahiro Totsuka's manga Studio: AIC Asta Genre: Moe, Shounen Tournament, Comedy

Release Info Release Date: 11/24/09 US Publisher: FUNimation Length: 13 episodes MSRP: $59.98 Special Features: Textless songs, trailers

Disclosure: This review is based on a review copy courtesy of the publisher.

The Story

Toraji Ishida is a high school kendo instructor, and a completely lame adult who doesn't even have the cash to pay his bills, much less buy food. So when his own high school sempai offers him a bet that could win Toraji a year's supply of free Tokyo-style sushi, the deadbeat professor jumps at it. Unfortunately, in order to win, he needs an all-girls kendo team who can beat his sempai's. And his team only has one student of either gender, the sunny Kirino Chiba.

Toraji and Kirino quickly team up to try and pull together a team, but their first recruits of the year are both boys. But then they discover Tamaki Kawazoe, a kendo whiz who's been studying at her own family dojo since she was little-- but she's not interested in adding more kendo to her plate. Or...is she?

The Review

Warning: I'm already familiar with this story thanks to Yen Press' release of the manga, so this isn't quite as strictly a "first date" as some reviews. It's a pretty faithful adaptation of the manga, also, with strong visuals and animation, although nothing to write home about.

I listened to both the Japanese dub and the English one, and the English dub isn't terrible, but I have some minor complaints. First, Kirino (voiced by Luci Christian) sounds too angry in her first scene-- she's one of those (almost-)always-happy types, so her first jibes need to sound cheerful so that the one legitimate complaint she makes actually has an effect. This doesn't seem to be as much of a problem later in the episode, however, as her voice begins to get more into that chipper sort of mode.

Another voice that I have trouble with is Tamaki Kawazoe's, performed here by Cherami Leigh. There's nothing technically wrong with her performance that I can pinpoint, but it still seems awkward to me. Of course, she's an awkward character-- but I'm starting to wonder if it's just really difficult to bring over a cute girl who speaks in a near-monotone to English.

I will say that Ian Sinclair, who voices Toraji Ishida here, does a really good job. He manages to be really over the top AND natural sounding, no easy feat when you're having to match mouths and whatnot. The character was originally voiced by Katsuyuki "Kamina" Konishi, too, so it's a bit to live up to. Good job there.

I definitely want to find time to watch through the rest of the series so that I talk more about the story, so hopefully I'll find time to give you guys a full review later. In the meantime, the story set up here is basically a moe-girl version of a shounen tournament, which may sound kinda bleh at first glance, but the characters are all endowed with enough depth to make them interesting, not just moe archetypes.