The Sacred Blacksmith

ThatAnimeSnob Sep 15, 2012

3.5

The Sacred Blacksmith is a generic fantasy take regarding the adventures of Cecily, a girl who is supposed to be a knight but is otherwise dressed like a maid with a breastplate made to look like… well, breasts. Ten minutes into the first episode and it is already established trice that her fighting skills suck and she is in constant need of some uncaring pretty boy to be appearing out of nowhere and saving her with his awesome sword in the last second. Said pretty boy is named Luke. He is very good at crafting swords; thus he can slice in half other common weapons just because his works are quality material. He is also living together with a loli elf which can imbue his sword with extra powers in case conventional methods don’t work. Said loli elf is fascinated with boobs and never misses to mention how it would also want to have gigantic ones instead of a flat chest. Sadly for her later on a whore with another pair of watermelons appears and her jealousy grows even more. There is also some sort of a world threat regarding a demon who wants to destroy the world and turns people to monsters but you will barely notice it because every five minutes you will be getting some boob joke, Luke getting a nosebleed, and Cecily hitting him for that. Hooray for priorities. I understand that Japan has its own way of animating the fantasy genre but they never managed to produce a single well-made epic fantasy anime in their entire history. The closest ones to the “rather good” status still are Record of Lodoss War, followed by Guin Saga. All the rest are nothing but goofball comedies and ecchis, or horribly low-budgeted Middle-Earth imitations. This belong in the former category and all you are offered is an uninspired premise, a generic setting, awful cheery pop songs that are completely off with the genre, and lots of done-to-death softporn jokes that are completely out of fashion after we were plagued with four seasons of Queen’s Blade. The funny thing is, many people expected something good out of this show because it was animated by Manglobe. I have no idea why that is proof of anything since they have made a couple of great shows and a bunch of mediocrities. This one is in fact their worst job yet, both in production values (which are average to bad) and context (which doesn’t exist). The director or the writer didn’t produce anything significant in their whole careers either, so again you have nothing to expect. Even if you try to view this show as a silly comedy in a fantasy setting, it is still bad, since it is hardly as funny or exciting as similar shows from almost two decades ago, such as Slayers and Mahoujin Guruguru. If you want a more specific reason of why it is so bad, all you have to do is to separate the anime into the background part and the foreground part. - The background part is good in terms of creating a generic but otherwise interesting setting. The sceneries are very detailed and indeed make you feel they are part of a medieval world. The BGM is indeed made to sound like it’s a fantasy/action show. The backdrop story is indeed made to appear as the classic tale of a demon trying to take over the world and releasing demons everywhere, while a band of brave adventurers sets out to stop him. These are all very good and dandy. - The foreground part where all the plot and action takes place is a complete mess. The characters are all drawn in a most generic and boring way, with too much focus on boobs, plus their personalities are simple and lack any interesting or meaningful development. The intro and outro songs are completely trash material, full of cheery squeaking singers. The dialogues are all full of retarded softporn jokes and juvenile talking about friendship and compassion. Voice acting is nothing much because of the lack of seriousness that would require from them to sound any better, plus the few loli characters have that annoying pinch in voice I hate so much. The plot is to the most part aimless strolling around with lots of dead time and ecchi moments, plus there are cases where the characters make some really out-of-character decisions, plus the ending is left open. These are all bellow average material. Down to it, this is a terrible anime and I don’t recommend it not even as a time waster. It will forever be known only as Sacred Boobsmith, the worst show made by Manglobe.

Cenimoran Aug 15, 2011

4

Introduction- The Sacred Blacksmith is a relatively short series set in a standard fantasy/medieval setting. Cecily Cambell, the main character, is the daughter of a famous knight and holds the same profession as her father. Throughout the series she works to protect the "Independent Trade Cities of Housmand" and acquire a katana from the Sacred Blacksmith, Luke Ainsworth. Story- Alright, alright, Cecily's breasts are large. I get it. Really, I do. Could you please stop reminding me, writers? No? Oh, you have to joke about it every other episode? That's okay, I understand completely. The Sacred Blacksmith's plot is deeply flawed and squanders what little potential the series may have had. In a series of this length (12 episodes), time is the enemy. It simply isn't possible to provide character development for a large cast, all while introducing the setting and building up towards the climax. This show's writers evidently don't understand that and chose to spend four episodes on a character (Charlotte E. Frobisher) that is otherwise irrelevant to the story. This waste of valuable time does a lot to kill the story. Initially, the series piqued my interest with references to a "Valvanill War" forty years in the past. The concept of soldiers becoming demons to fight, the mysterious mountain in the background, and vaguely religious references were intriguing. Unfortunately, most of this is never explained further. Instead we have a series focusing on the pathetic main characters and their relationships. Cecily's feeble attempts to make Luke forge a sword, feebler attempts to fight, and pitiful crush on the blacksmith prove (surprise!) not to make for riveting entertainment. The ending is incredibly sudden, but at least it provides something resembling a climax. There is a great deal of talk about protecting the city, friends, etc. The villain vows his revenge and disappears. There are some attempts to provide twists in the plot, but these had little effect on me. I also didn't quite understand the explanation of Valvanille, leaving me to wonder why he was mentioned so much and yet had so minimal a role. Animation- Animation is definitely this show's strong point. Colors are strong, characters are relatively distinguishable, and the fights are mostly fluid. The monsters and attacks demonstrate little in the way of creativity. You have your fire creature, water demons, evil birds, so on and so forth. On a side note, I have a problem with Cecily's character design. Her armor--which serves only to emphasize her large rack--robs her of any credibility (in my opinion) as a main character. Was someone horny when they made this? Sound- The opening is a standard JPop theme with good animation. The ending is one of those high-pitched kawaii type songs, but to me it merely comes off as disturbing. Even the pronunciation of the Japanese seems a tad distorted. As for voice actors, I watched the English version. They were pretty good around the table, but even the best VA's cannot overcome poorly written lines. Characters- Cecily Cambell, the main character, is cowardly, clichéd, and boring. Great, huh? Aria (she dresses in green) has a more interesting past but the same "I want to protect others" personality. There are some attempts to provide conflict as she searches for the reason for her existence, but of course they are poorly executed. Luke is a helpless fool. Lisa, the little girl, is eternally happy and quite annoying. By far my favorite character in the series was the crazy old veteran, Jack Strader. His cries of "Where is my salvation?!" were quite charming. Unfortunately, Jack doesn't last too long in the series. It is regrettable that he wasn't the main character instead of Cecily. The villains have essentially zero character development and no redeeming qualities. Overall (4/10, somewhat poor)- The first few episodes show promise, but overall The Sacred Blacksmith is subpar. Watch it only if there is nothing better.

Epimondas Jul 2, 2015

7.5

When you watch enough anime, you start seeing alot of recycled characters.  Erza from Fairy Tail but with Lucy's personality is the main female protagonist.  Her skills center around a similar principle to Erza as well, magical swords.  She is at her best when she is using the magical demon sword from which she appears to have a unique ability to bring out its greatest power potential from among any who could use it.  Her look is almost a total copy of Erza save for the maid like head gear.  In another sense, this anime mirrors Full Metal Alchemy given the way Luke uses his magical forging technique which he got from the demon lord.  It is unique in that it requires two people with complimentary magic skills to work on and create the total magical forge from which he can create short term powerful magical weapons.   It is a bit on the dull side in the way it like many, too many, anime rely on or center around magical or powerful swords.  It differs in a sense because Luke has to create the most powerful sword and is ostensibly the only one capable of doing so.  Cecily is both an amusing character and a fairly strong one at least after she has grown a bit more.  It is a bit of a mystery however, that if she was so far from completed training or minimum skill as a soldier, how she could have been accepted as one.  Luke projects some realistic qualities when forging a real sword but even the actual long lasting swords he makes seem to take too short of time to produce from a realistic amount of time.   There are a number of characters that seem a bit short changed or would need more time to adequately develop.  So in parts the show feels rushed.  It still had a adequately strong enough set of characters and centrally themed story to move the series along at a pleasant pace.  The last few episodes and the ending story arc felt a little rushed though and it could have used a bit more build up before it happened.  It kind of felt like it clashed abit with respect to the other characters when and how it happened.  Lisa seems under developed in a few respects.  It just does not stand up well that she has only one magical skill, creating a magical forge.  So in some ways it gives the impression, the story and world is a bit imbalanced between magical swords and other forms of magic.  This could and I might add, should have been explored a bit more.   Overall, it's greatest weakness is it feels in enough respects either unfinished or rushed and I do not mean it needed more episodes per say but that it did not feel fleshed out enough within the episodes that aired.  The ending and the connection to the position Siegfried had to the other characters left me with a sense of emptiness as if there was or should have been some sort of connection or more involved plot as to how he either got his position or kept it and/or how his collegues were either involved or ignorant.  One reason for this sensation, is that there was a hint of a foreshadowing to that effect but it was left hanging.  We could have understood the characters a little more.  I think only Luke, Lisa, and to a lesser effect the Princess and her guards are the only characters that had much in the way of a back story.