I have actually been watching another Anime series from Netflix while waiting for this one to become available, and I will blog about that series later, but first I wanted to talk about Bamboo Blade, which I finally got to start last weekend...Ohmygoodness was it worth the wait! It's SOO good.
The story's initial nominal protagonist, at first, is hapless High School teacher Toraji Ishida (石田 虎侍 Ishida Toraji?), who is sponsor of the school's fading Kendo club, with currently one member, Club president and High School sophomore Kirino Chiba (千葉 紀梨乃 Chiba Kirino?), voiced by Luci Christian; a character with more enthusiasm than actual skill. They both realize they have to jump start the Kendo club and recruit fresh members or the school will disband them.
Focus soon shifts to the mysterious but amazing Tamaki Kawazoe (川添 珠姫 Kawazoe Tamaki?), who jumps out of nowhere to protect Toraji and Kirino when chaos erupts in the schoolyard. Tama is a natural talent when it comes to Kendo. For her, it is no mere sport but a way of life. Her father runs a Kendo Dojo and she practices every day.
When solicited by Toraji to join the High School Kendo Club, Tama declines, saying she is not interested. She mentions this to her father, who is disappointed and tells her it would be a good opportunity to make new friends.
The other girls that later join the club are interesting, and after Tama-chan, my favorite is probably Sayako Kuwahara (桑原 鞘子 Kuwahara Sayako?), the brooding, artistic one who habitually quits in a huff only to rejoin the Kendo club a week or month later. Rather a diamond in the rough, Saya-chan has a lot of potential as a Kendo athlete but needs focus.
Sayako is voiced by veteran actress Brina Palencia in the English dub.
But my heart beats strongest for Tama. The series does not explicitly say so, but I recognize her as someone probably having mild to moderate Asperger's syndrome. She's cool towards others and a bit emotionally detached. She doesn't have many friends or socialize very much. Like many people with Asperger's, she has a strong sense of justice and believes in fighting for what is true and right, and to protect the weak from the vicious. She keeps to herself, loves anime and manga, draws inspiration from her comic book and cartoon heroes, and has incredible focus and devotion to her Kendo to the exclusion of almost everything else. Her mother apparently died when she was younger, and it left some profound emotional scars on her that only begin to become apparent to the viewer in the last episode of Part One of Volume 1, when she has a PTSD-like flashback of her mother looming over her in the Kendo "high stance". Tama is my hero, and the true hero of the series.
Because of her short stature, her opponents usually underestimate her, but she is lightning fast.
Toraji, the teacher and club sponsor does have an interesting backstory of his own stretching back to High School, but we catch only glimpses of this in flashback. He's kind of pathetic and utterly selfish at first, but teaching Kendo to his female students improves him morally as much as them. It's nice to see this genuine teacher - student bonding, and I'm eager for more of it.
All of the girls have deeper emotional issues they are trying to work out both on and off the Kendo mat; Bamboo Blade is a beautiful coming-of-age story as much as it is an engaging Sports anime focused on a VERY traditional Japanese martial sport. These are the kinds of Anime and Manga stories I go for and fall in love with every time.
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