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R2 DVD Reviews
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Friday, 02 December 2011 00:00 |
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Page 1 of 2
 Fanservice, demons, magic, and evil. Almost the perfect combination for a fantasy series, really. Which makes it all the more annoying that Sacred Blacksmith doesn't quite manage to pull it all off...
Cecily Cambell's a blushing knight in shining armour. Unfortunately, it seems most battles end with her as the damsel in distress. Her lack of skill and distaste for violence make her an unlikely heroine - until the brooding blacksmith Luke comes to her aid, using his powerful magic to forge blades of supernatural strength. Cecily wields this sacred steel and charges forth to face a dangerous new threat; a cloaked fiend is unleashing demons upon the land, and though he lurks in shadows, the villain is much closer than Cecily can imagine...
It's fairly clear from the start that Cecily's not really cut out for this Knight business - but she's from a noble family who made their name protecting Housman, an independent trade city, and with the rest of the family now dead she's the only one left to carry on their proud tradition. What she lacks in ability she just about makes up for with enthusiasm, but when Luke - who under normal circumstances is very much a loner - has to rescue her twice in the space of one episode you do wonder why she bothers.
Luke, meanwhile, hides a Dark Secret™ (part of the reason he's so withdrawn from other people), and lives with cute elf-like girl Lisa, who helps him run his blacksmith business - and also assists with the magical side of things. Luke, you see, doesn't only make blades in the old-fashioned fire-and-hammer blacksmith way; with Lisa's help, he's capable of using magic to forge far more deadly blades, albeit with the disadvantage that they tend to be single-use items. Still, they're very useful when you're in a spot of bother, as Cecily soon finds out. (As for why villains are happy to stand around for the 3-minute incantation it takes to create anything? I can only assume that Hammer Time is at work...) Luke's blades aren't the only ones in town, though, and Cecily soon comes into possession of Aria: most of the time an attractive and playful young woman, but in reality a Demon Blade, as powerful as that tag might suggest. And she's not the only Demon Blade around.
Lots of neat ideas in there, and there are some others that could have been a hook for the series to go in some really dark directions if it had chosen to do so. It doesn't, though - a shame, perhaps. The blade-in-human-form thing is just a gimmick to give us a few more cute girls to watch, and there's a surprising number of females who carry them - the series does like its fanservice, and isn't adverse to flashing a few well-endowed and unclothed breasts about from time to time. It does seem like a case of fanservice to make up for failings in other departments, though - while there's an underlying story, covering the shenanigans of evil lord Siegfried on the one hand and Luke's Dark Past™ on the other, there's a lot of time wasted messing around with other things that really don't serve a lot of purpose in story terms.
Depending what you're looking to get out of the series, though, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Mindless fanservice has its place, and while Sacred Blacksmith isn't as OTT as some shows there's enough going on to keep you entertained on that side alone. Story-wise, what there is isn't that deep or meaningful, so even though the series doesn't devote a hell of a lot of time to it, it gets tied up as well as the source material allows (Sacred Blacksmith, like so many other shows these days, is based on a series of light novels, and the fate of the villain of the piece is left open to allow him to create further havoc).
Nothing too impressive, then, and if you're looking for epic fantasy then this isn't it. But it's an easy, low-effort way to pass a few hours, and there's enough fun to be had with the characters that you probably won't feel like you wasted the time. Just don't expect much else from it.
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