Anime: Seiken no Blacksmith

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.

If someone gives you this show for your birthday you really should question the friendship – or the taste of the other party.

Seiken no Blacksmith starts off on the wrong foot by giving the impression that it is not quite the series you hoped to see. The bad thing here is that the rest of the series confirms that first impression, resulting in a sour aftertaste as the show is simply nowhere near enjoyable.

Animation: Remarkably good backgrounds.

The characters have a fairly simplistic design, which means that the characters generally look simple and would fit in more in a setting where the fantasy aspect isn't so heavy. At first sight I wanted to dismiss the animation part as ‘simple’, but decided to skip through the anime again to see if I was right.

I was wrong.

While the characters indeed look simplistic (perhaps bland and uninspired fits better), many of the backgrounds are done extremely well. As long as it doesn't move, it is detailed and it breathes atmosphere into the series. They might either be CG or not, but generally it looks a lot better in comparison to most tv-shows which I would rate above average. Grass isn't simply a green blur with some stripes, but it is actually recognizable as grass and trees in the background are actual trees, rather than a brown stick with a bush of green above. But as soon as it comes to the characters and the objects they interact with, the animation is way below average and simply looks cheap. It makes me wonder how it is possible that the front layer is so lousy while the backgrounds are excellent.

Sound: Not remarkable.

I don't have much to say about the sound section. There is some music and BGM, but I didn't think it stood out and at times I felt the BGM was misplaced, or badly timed. The OP/ED are somewhat below average in my personal opinion although I didn't fast forward when they came on, so I guess they aren't bad.

Voices are also not quite remarkable, but that might be because the characters themselves didn't stand out enough to let a voice actor make an impression. At least none of them made the series better, so there isn't much to praise either. Lisa 's voice was fairly annoying though, but that is also the only one which I disliked.

Story: Simple, yet they falter big time.

The story is by far not that complicated, but in the 12 episodes the series consist of the show never manages to fulfill its role of telling a fair tale of fantasy. While all ingredients are there to get the show going, it never gets moving. The big minus here is the choice of dialogue, combined with a stuttering flow of the story where characters never seem to be intelligent enough to pick the right choice. Of course you can have a thickheaded character, but it occurred to me that half the time they were simply running around in circles, getting nowhere in terms of character development or story. After all, you do have the idea that when a character is handed a hint, they actually do something with it rather than look past it.

Considering the anime is based on a novel series, I had expected at least a coherent plot with characters who have at least some substance, but even there it lacks plenty, followed by uncomprehendable decisions by either minor or major players in the series.
Let me give an example: in a group of knights who are supposedly guarding a man, one of them attacks the man. And what happens? That particular knight is requested to attend the meeting where the man is participating in, fully equipped with sword and all. These kind of silly decisions often occur in the series, making you wonder who the hell came up with this kind of storyline.

The story also doesn't end as there are plenty of loose ends and an inconclusive ending sequence, so I'm betting that they imagine there'll be a second season of the show. I'm eager to see how the plot unravels as I do see the potential, but I'm extremely worried about how bad the show's pace and flow will be. If it's even remotely similar, it might be better to call off the second season as a whole and focus on something better.

Characters: Bland characters.

Many of the characters have a bland design but their personality is fairly simplistic as well. The dumb ethical protagonist, the grumpy yet skilled (teenage?) blacksmith and the childlike helpful servant-girl Lisa all manage to play their own particular roles without breaking out of their particular borders.

The blacksmith Luke manages to get some character development after half the series, only to be dropped back into his role due to the plot moving and needing a grumpy blacksmith. The protagonist gets also developed, but it is almost painful to see how many hints they need to drop her in order to see her getting something. Clouded by ethics and morals there is virtually nothing that she is capable of adapting to, effectively reducing her appearances to indecisive bickering most of the time. And that is, especially for a protagonist, really bad.

The only one who actually seems to be contributing anything is Aria, both in appearance as in intelligence. Most of the decent dialogues come from her mouth or are spoken whenever she is involved and that is especially painful, considering how often she isn't there to speak.

So, is it worth watching?

The show is lacking in many, many parts and despite the plot having a fair potential, the show never manages to get up and going. Perhaps if another season is added it can speed up a bit, but considering the characters at its disposal I'm worried that the show might never even become average. And while I can live with slightly bad pacing and crappy dialogues, this show's biggest disappointment is that it never manages to become enjoyable and that is mostly due to the characters this show offers.