Bamboo Blade is such a tease.
With an episode title like, “First Training Camp and First Bath House”, you’d expect fanservice. Right? Well, the episode did indeed provide a bath house scene. It just forgot a few things. Like the kendo girls. And the fanservice. And more than five seconds of animation.
Some viewers might have thrown their TVs out the window, but I fell out of my chair laughing. Talk about a meticulously planned gag.
Then again, Bamboo Blade has been a bait and switch act from the very beginning. What at first blush looks like a generic harem comedy is nothing of the sort. And what looks like a fanservice vehicle is anything but. The show offers far more to the kendo enthusiast than it does the admirer of pretty girls, presence of pretty girls be damned. It’s also a show that’s simultaneously heartwarming, hilarious, and action packed. Bamboo Blade may send mixed signals, but that’s part of what makes it so much fun to watch.
In some ways, the show takes the old school approach. Back in the day (the roaring 90s, that is), it was common for shows to continually maneuver from one genre to the next, trying to be a little bit of everything to everyone watching. The first series that comes to mind is the Tenchi Muyo franchise: was it comedy? Or was it action? Drama? Romance? Sci-fi? Harem? It was all of those, of course, and while the series will always be described in terms of “what could have been”, it’s because it tried to be everything at once that so many anime fans remember it so affectionately. Tenchi Muyo was far from perfect, but it was a lot of fun, for a lot of people, for a lot of different reasons.
Today, however, anime series are more specialized than ever. A moe vehicle here, a slice of life show there, girls with guns sulking in the corner… it’s good stuff, sure, but the more specialized anime gets, the more specialized fans get. It’s oh so easy nowadays for a fan to miss out on good shows simply because they don’t carry the proper labels. Even I’ve fallen victim to that sort of thinking.
It’s because I don’t want to be that sort of anime fan that I gave Bamboo Blade a chance in the first place. And I’m really glad I did.