Bamboo Blade

[Yukimura]

Manga Description:

Kojirou is the kendo instructor at Muro'e High School. He is totally broke. He has agreed to send his team to a competition against his senpai's team. If his all female team can win the competition, he will have free meals for a year! But, the problem is that Kojirou seems unable to find five, gifted girls to form the "dream team"--and time is running out...

Bamboo Blade - 01 - [Star]

I've heard good things about the manga so I figure I might as well try this out. Looks like this season is shaping up to be the season of loli.

[Munsu]

Don't hotlink... change the picture.

[animus]

I don't know about good things, but the comments/reviews for Bamboo Blade on manga-updates are mixed reviews.

[Munsu]

Huzzah-Doremi:
http://huzzah.fansub-torrents.com/%5...5D.mkv.torrent

[oyabun]

I was also surprise when that small geeky guy brought her cute GF. Nice 1st episode..

[SamuraiOdin]

Ep 2
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h264- http://huzzah.fansub-torrents.com/%5...5D.mkv.torrent
XVID- http://a.scarywater.net/doremi/%5BHu...5D.avi.torrent

[SamuraiOdin]

Ep 3
====
h264- http://huzzah.fansub-torrents.com/%5...5D.mkv.torrent
XVID- http://a.scarywater.net/doremi/%5BHu...5D.avi.torrent

No one else watching this? Or nothing good to comment on yet?

[Ryllharu]

I read the first couple volumes of the manga a while back, but I only picked up the anime yesterday.

Kirino and Miya-Miya being my two favorite characters. I just really like Kirino's cloth hair tie and genki outlook on everything. It's a bit too early in the story to say much else, considering Saya has yet to make her way back to the club.

[Kraco]

In my opinion this turned out to be one of the better series of the past season. It's hard to explain why, but it had clear characters with steady individual character development, consistent plot, and it never wavered from its original aim. Although the last aspect could have been a bit less pronounced, because I really hoped something had happened between Tama and Yuuji. Alas, that didn't turn out to be the case, but it can't be helped. The guys were like sidekicks most of the time, anyway.

The last episode felt somewhat strange, because I didn't feel like it concluded things in a meaningful enough manner. I guess it just made a point that things will continue strongly onwards. But I hoped for something more concrete. But then again, that might be just me.

In any case, there was nothing in this series that I didn't like. A jolly good show.

[Ryllharu]

In my opinion this turned out to be one of the better series of the past season. It's hard to explain why, but it had clear characters with steady individual character development, consistent plot, and it never wavered from its original aim.

I definitely agree, but I did not find it so hard to guess why.

It's the characters, hands down. I don't think I disliked a single one of the characters the entire season. Each of the girls in the main club, as well as the two boys and Sensei add together to form a perfect union. You really get the impression they are all friends, even though Miya-Miya pushes Satorin around alot earlier in.

- Kirino (my favorite among them all) has the best attitude. She's light and fluffy all the time, perfectly performed by Megumi Toyoguchi. She's never downtrodden or overly sad. Her perpetual upbeat attitude (the only thing that made her sad was being put in a position to force the two assholes to leave) spreads throughout the cast.

- Tama-chan is of course, the moe factor. Tiny, cute, and priceless expressions.

- Saya is the comedy relief more often than the others, and she also holds the title of fanservice representative, never wearing more than half of her school uniform, and the most well endowed as well.

- In Miya-Miya we have the incredibly girly in-love character (of course being paired with the weakest and least reliable of boyfriends). But she also adds to the humor with her black side. She's the yankee queen of middle school, now reduced to a lovely-dovey princess. Of course her relapses are half her charm.

- Then finally Satorin. The klutz. Compact and cute in her own way, and easily pushed around.

- Round it out with Sensei, the ever present down on his luck guy, and toss in Yuuji to be the "normal" character.

Then there are all the choice "character" characters, from the sentai/anime obsessed Rin Suzuki down to the stereotyped American.

Of course, Bamboo Blade never left off with just that either. It's able to go beyond a simple character based series like Minami-ke (perfectly wonderful in it's own right). They fully fleshed out all the characters. Yes...even Saya. Miya-Miya, probably having never lost a battle in her entire middle school career, is forced to face never winning a single match until the very end of the year. For someone with her pride and inner anger, we really get to see the trial she's forced into. She even has to confront her stalker in order to gain the edge in her rivalry with Carrie.

I had read some of the manga long ago when I chanced upon the series. Of course the group never really got anywhere, barely to the first appearance of the other girls team led by Koujiro, so I was really glad to get as far as the anime went.

Loved it from beginning to end, though I had to wear headphones. This series tended to be a bit shrill. Enough that I didn't want to subject others to it unwillingly.

[Board of Command]

I didn't like Tamaki's screams.

[Kraco]

They did certainly seem out of place sometimes. But in the end it seems like the screams were something the director decided is an integral part of kendo. They all had those, so Tamaki had to have as well. In the last ep when she fought against her dad, it sounded the most unnatural of all times.

[shinta|hikari]

I loved Tamaki's screams. It really felt like Kendo when she does it.

[MFauli]

I also loved Tamaki´s scream, it was just that the picture shown in those scenes was wrong.... :P:P:P

Anyway, yeah, great series, and as always, being the noob i am, i have to ask: Is there going to be another season? Because this ending was anything but an ending.

Also, wtf is with Kirino...that scene with her hugging sensei looked like its something more serious. lol

[complich8]

One of my friends did Kendo in college, and she had some stories about the absolutely bloodcurdling kiai screams of some of the girls both in her club and in the clubs they faced up against. That initial, shrill, guttural scream is sort of viewed as the essence of the sport. As a naturally quiet 5-foot-nothing youngest-child, she had a lot of trouble with that...

But yeah, I definitely loved the series too. The limited character cast gave it a lot of opportunity to make each of the characters pretty strong and multi-dimensional, and the series took advantage of that to a pretty good extent. I think if there was a weak character in the main cast, it was Ishida, but even he had a reasonable amount of development.

On another note, does anyone have any idea who the person was that was talking with Rin and that Tama-chan was sort of cinematically backdropped against in the final post-credit sequence?

[Board of Command]

It seemed like a girl who looked a lot like her mother. Aside from that I didn't really get that part.

[Kraco]

Yeah. I also thought immediately she was there because she looked like Tama's mother. But what sense does that make? For the very last scene? Or perhaps it would make sense if there's going to be a second season but if this is the only season, it was a really bizarre last moment of the last episode.

One of my friends did Kendo in college, and she had some stories about the absolutely bloodcurdling kiai screams of some of the girls both in her club and in the clubs they faced up against. That initial, shrill, guttural scream is sort of viewed as the essence of the sport. As a naturally quiet 5-foot-nothing youngest-child, she had a lot of trouble with that...

I think, if memory serves, the bloodcurdling screams are even mentioned as a special strategy in Musashi's "A Book of Five Rings". So, they certainly are essential for the series. It's just that every time Tama screamed, I flinched a little (though maybe that was a good thing)...

[shinta|hikari]

Im betting there will be a second season, and that she will be Tama's rival.

[David75]

I have seen Ep1 and 2 a month ago. I was quite interrested but had too much of an agenda to watch another show.
The atmosphere was really captivating, even though I'm really not interrested in Kendo.

[MFauli]

even though I'm really not interrested in Kendo.

How is that a criteria? I watched Akagi, a series about Majong...and im the hell not interested in that ^^