Subculture Anime Blog

I was inspired by the Purple Haze!

Summary:

Sayako attempts to write down her recalling of Miyako, but with little luck. Finding that it feels wrong, she wonders to herself what she really wants to do. On her desk is a picture of herself and Kirino in the kendo club. While looking over Danjuro and Miyako’s practice, Ishida suggests that Kirino help them. However, he and Kirino find that Tamaki does much better. While letting Tamaki take care of practice, Ishida remembers Sayako’s membership in the club. She could not beat Kirino in a match, which caused her to blame Ishida for this. Kirino and Ishida had already noticed her great potential, but she ended up leaving on her own. She did come back, but continued to leave under various circumstances. Because of an interruption, the kendo club is forced to leave the building and quit practice for the day. Elsewhere, the team’s competition is brought forth in the form of a group of troublesome girls. The five girls that are chosen to beat Ishida’s team are named Nishiyama, Yoko, Ando, harada, and Asakawa. Sayako sends Kirino a text message about the realization of her true desires, but Kirino doesn’t finish it because it is too long.

Ishida convinces Miyako to practice when she arrives early in the morning, as she expresses her distaste to herself. Kirino prepares to practice with her, but they are interrupted by the arrival of Sayako. Recognizing her from the previous day, Miyako quickly hides. Sayako reveals that she has been inspired to play guitar, but Kirino and Ishida ignore her. Sayako is introduced to the club’s new members when they arrive, but she finds that Miyako is in her full kendo outfit. Miyako is quickly put to practice against Kirino, as the team notices that she isn’t bad at all. After a quick break, Miyako quickly changes pace while finding fighting fun. She starts to believe that kendo might be enjoyable, before she is let off.

Miyako finally reveals what happened between herself and Sayako to Ishida after practice, so he suggests that she should just apologize. Miyako believes that she will stay in the club, but she still doesn’t see a need to apologize to Sayako. Being reminded of Tamaki, Ishida asks Miyako if she has ever seen hero shows. He explains that the characters are powerful because they fight for what is right, and courage comes from that. He suggests that apologizing is the right thing to do, and that she should be true to herself. This makes her express that Ishida actually looked like a teacher then, and she sees Danjuro waiting for her a bit further. Danjuro shows her that his injuries are gone, and not to worry about it. Miyako finally apologizes to Sayako, and finds that she has saved her sword for her. Later in club, the two have a heated fight together.

Preview: Tamaki answers a fan letter while the preview shows in the background. Anime banzai!

Impression:

This is a bit late for a Monday show as well, but I can’t even complain about it anymore. My blogging schedule has become more fluid and week based now anyways. Anyways, Bamboo Blade is definitely keeping its place as one of the season’s most pleasant surprises for me. I’m really liking each episode. This episode focused on Miyako and Sayako as expected from last week’s preview, and we got quite a bit of development. Sayako looks like she will bringing a lot of humor to the show, and she already has some chemistry with Miyako. I am still very interested in seeing more of Miyako’s background and why she is so attached to Danjuro, but I guess I’ll just have to wait for that. At a scheduled 26 episodes, there’s probably plenty of time.

I love it when shows can pull off a nice mix of drama and humor at the same time. This is the first time in awhile that I’ve seen it done so well. I’m going to have to say that Kojiro’s power ranger talk to Miyako was pretty awesome, and Danjuro has to the the dumbest person ever for not realizing what Miyako’s true personality is. I’m honestly surprised that the team saw through this so quickly. I thought it was going to be more of a running joke thing. I guess that would create a lot of borders in the story later though. I really don’t know what to expect from the next episode because I was paying too much attention to a cute Tamaki, but I’m sure it’ll be fun either way.