3 Episode Taste Test: Bamboo Blade
Bamboo Blade seems, upon first glance, a very ambivalent series at least in its introductory episodes. It never seems to know whether to settle in as a light-hearted school drama with kendo or a straight-faced kendo drama with school fluff (or a kendo face school with light fluff drama). On the one hand is the irredeemable captain who's only current goal is to win a bet and subsequently obtain free food for a year, and on the other is a sadistic and despicable antagonist whose callous disregard for fair-play and sanity is cause for discomfort. The twenty six episode series could swing either way however if the series retains its indecisiveness, it may very well even out at wearisome.
Bamboo Blade eschews common first episode clichés by maintaining a languid and predictable pace that carries over to the subsequent two. Favouring character development over ground-breaking story, the first episodes have yet to introduce all the members of the five girl kendo team; instead there are solid introductions to the eclectic group. The characters are neatly skewed from their apparent archetypes: the quiet introvert harbours a naive and childish sense of justice ordinarily championed by sentai characters; the supposedly prim and proper looker of the group is girlfriend to the most unlikely of boys and has a mean vigilante streak to her; while the enigmatic fourth member seems interminably insane. The most tiresome of characters, a blonde firecracker, is thankfully the one also given the least attention while instead the cookie-cutter teacher (whose likeness to Yuuichi Tate from Mai-HiME is uncanny) is left to propel events along.