A Hard Day’s Knight
Publisher: Funimation
Studio: Manglobe
Format: DVD
Genre: Fantasy, Action, Adventure
When Cecily Campbell, a third generation knight from the independent trade city of Housman, is nearly killed by a rampaging demon, salvation comes in the form of a mysterious blacksmith named Luke Ainsworth and his uniquely-styled katana sword. Her meeting with Luke and his young assistant, Lisa, sets off a chain of events which lead to Cecily befriending and becoming the wielder of Aria, a magical demon sword with the power to control wind and transform into a beautiful young woman.
While it’s no Lord of the Rings or Record of Lodoss War, Sacred Blacksmith is a fairly fun romp through a swords and sorcery fantasy world. Manglobe studio does a decent job adapting the early parts of Isao Miura’s light novel series. Solid animation delivers vibrant character designs and highly enjoyable fight scenes. When demons and magic swords clash, the stylishly-kinectic action is a real blast to watch. Although most of the supporting players are little more than NPCs to help move the story along, the main characters all have fairly interesting personalities and motivations which develop over the course of the series, and it’s their interactions which really drive the show. FUNimation’s English dub gives a few lesser known voice actors a chance to strut their stuff, and boy do they. Cherami Leigh leads the cast in a performance full of energy and life, which fits Cecily’s passionate nature extremely well. Blake Shepard does a great job portraying Luke’s stoic attitude with hints of humor peeking through from time to time. Not to be outdone, FUNimation veterans Monica Rial and J. Michael Tatum bring the talent in the smaller, but no less important, roles of chirpy sidekick Lisa and shadowy Siegfried.
Unfortunately, while Sacred Blacksmith is, overall, quite entertaining, several key missteps keep this pretty good show from becoming truly great.
My first real complaint lies in the handling of Cecily’s character. The light novels portray her as a capable swordswoman with great leadership abilities and a passionately noble heart. In the anime, however, they chuck all that competence out the window in favor of a somewhat klutzy girl who believes in justice and honor, but lacks the skills to be a worthy knight. They do advance her abilities somewhat as the series progresses, but she never fully comes into her own the way I feel she should. Instead, they spend a healthy chunk of what could have been character development time on fanservice. While I love the female body just as much as any other straight American man between the ages of 13 and dead, Sacred Blacksmith‘s constant references to boobs started to grate on me after a bit. Is it really necessary to make jokes about Cecily’s endowments every episode? Especially when her “huge gazongas” (yes, someone in this medieval fantasy show actually says that) aren’t really drawn much bigger than Aria’s… or her maid’s… or most other adult women in the city of Housman. Now, I enjoy fanservice in general (I’m a guy) but in Sacred Blacksmith it feels somewhat tacked on to an otherwise decent action show, as if they only added it because of audience expectation.
The other problem I have lies in the resolution of the plot—or rather, lack thereof. Throughout this twelve episode series, we get several hints that something bigger is going on behind the scenes in the world of Sacred Blacksmith. Intermixed with the runaway princesses and fallen knights, a mysterious robed figure is shown to be manipulating events to his own ends. This all comes to a head in the final few episodes, where we learn that one of the characters is far more important than we thought, and a much greater threat is introduced. This previously unknown danger is then decisively not confronted or dealt with whatsoever. I understand that Sacred Blacksmith is an adaption of an ongoing work, but the lack of closure was a real letdown for me.
While those issues may have dimmed my enjoyment of Sacred Blacksmith somewhat, I still had a great deal of fun watching the series. A second season could go a long way to resolving some of my problems by wrapping up plot threads and showing off a more mature, skilled portrayal of Cecily. Considering the ongoing nature of the source material, I’m keeping my fingers crossed for more.
Justin Rose Media Design 