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 It's a comedy, it's based in high school, and it's sports-focussed. This is not usually a great combination for me (the first two I can work with, the third... less so), but somehow Bamboo Blade seems to mix them just right, and out of the mixer comes a genuinely charming and funny series...
Toraji Ishida, the coach of the Muroe High kendo club, has made a bet with his sempai (and kendo coach at a rival school) Kenzaburo Ishibashi, on the outcome of a kendo match between the two schools. If he wins, Toraji's reward will be an all-you-can-eat pass to Ishibashi's father's sushi restaurant for a full year - but the condition on the match is that the fighters must be five girls, no boys. With only one girl in his kendo club and just a month to get his team together, Toraji's chances are already looking bleak - but then freshman Tamaki Kawazoe shows up, armed with unbelievable talent...
Tamaki's not the first girl to end up on the kendo team - there are two existing female members - but she is by far the most talented and experienced. And adorable. On the outside, she's the most unassuming, sjy and quiet individual you could ever meet, but put her in a kendo suit and you have someone who can - and does - whup the ass of any member of the kendo club, male or female. Including Toraji. The combination is almost 100% lovable, and if Tama-chan was the only person in the show, I'd still watch it. And with that, I'll stop going all fanboy over her.
Fortunately, she's not the only great character in the show. Club captain Kirino is mischevious and determined; her sidekick and long-term rival Sayako is flightly and suffers from a short attention span. With this pair being the club's existing female members, it falls to them to help recruit new members, who appear in the form of Miyako Miyazaki (a girl with a split-personality who you really don't want to piss off) and, eventually, Azuma Satori, the academic failure who's probably the only girl who can even come close to Tamaki in fighting skill. There are boys in the series, too, most notably the club's lead male and all-round nice guy Yuuji, and Miyako's unlikely boyfriend Dan-kun, who looks much like a potatoe and really doesn't strike you as the sort of person who could pull the school babe - which, temper aside, is what Miyako (or Miya-Miya, to Dan) really is.
A well-oiled fighting machine they're not, and with Toraji's laid-back training methods you'd think their chances of becoming one are remote. But never underestimate the motivational power of an all-you-can-eat meal ticket, and the effect that having a prodigy like Tamaki on the team has on the other girls. It's not long before practice matches are being arranged, and the girls are learning the joys of winning and the knockbacks of losing. And that really is all that the show's about.
Which makes it sound considerably less interesting than it really is. The fighting takes up a substantial portion of the show, but what's driving it beneath that (and constantly being referred to) is the relationships between the characters - how they interact with each other, perceive each other, and learn from each other. It's a buddy show, just with a large number of buddies and a thin layer of kendo on top to give it that sports anime feel. A knowledge of kendo isn't really necessary, as during the battle sequences you'll usually have the characters involved giving a voiceover explaining what's going on, so even a complete novice like me won't feel lost in the technical aspect of it. The personalities of the five main girls cover the usual anime archetypes (lampshaded in the show, where Toraji is specifically looking for five girls with personalities to match the five colours you usually see in a sentai series - red, pink, yellow, green and blue, with Miya-Miya pulling double-duty as pink and black, depending on which side of her personality's in charge), so there's someone for everyone - and with matches against other schools being presented in small arcs that give you a chance to meet the opposing team and get to know some of them as well, there's no shortage of people to get to know and, in most cases, love. With no real story underlying the series so far (other than "let's win our next match!"), the scope for confusion is greatly limited.
You could, I suppose, complain about the way the male characters are downplayed compared to the girls, but then the series is about their competitive efforts - the boys play their part when required, and move to the sidelines when not, and that seems entirely appropriate for the show.
I wasn't too sure when I received Bamboo Blade what to make of it - I'm not a huge fan of sports anime in the first place, and the series was doubly handicapped by being based on a sport I knew nothing of. But for the second time in recent months, I've been genuinely surprised by the way that, by focussing on the personalities rather than the sport, the series has turned out to be a joy to watch. Well worth picking up.
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