War is Hell. These words famously spoken by Union soldier William Tecumseh Sherman during the American Civil War have lived on ever since and theyve been used on many occasions to describe the bloodshed and rampant loss of life that can happen when nations engage each other in combat. Its probably one of the most apt metaphors ever constructed by man but what if it were to obtain a literal definition as well? What if there was a war that actually involved the forces of hell with actual demons fighting both against and alongside the human race? This is exactly what happened in the Vaalbinill war a conflict where mankind used a powerful magic to turn human sacrifices into powerful demonicallypossessed swords called... Well Demon swords. To do this a human on the verge of death must read the death song that every person has hidden inside them which creates a contract for them to sign... One that binds their souls to a magically enhanced sword... Only a few of which can take human form afterwards. Alas this war ended fortyfour years ago when the warring nations realized the damage these demon swords were causing and reached a peace treaty to prevent the collateral damage from reaching a point of no return. Now in the present day the stories of demons and sacrifice have faded into legend and people are just trying to get by with very few reminders of the conflict left to haunt them. One of these a demented homeless veteran of the war is creating a scene in the middle of the marketplace when Cecily Campbell a third generation knight who has vowed to protect the city and uphold justice in her late fathers name is almost killed by this man before a quiet boy with a strange curved sword saves her from him. Realizing his occupation as a blacksmith Cecily becomes determined to convince him to make her a sword thats just like his... A katana the sort of weapon from a faraway land which she believes will aid her in her quest of heroism. He refuses but shell have to find a way to change his mind as the past has rapidly began to catch up to their land and Cecilys courage will soon be needed more than ever before. Sacred Blacksmith was produced by Media Factory who incidentally are also directly related to MF Bunko J the company who published its light novels. Both companies are located under the umbrella of the Kadokawa Group and from what I could tell from Media Factorys Wikipedia page they mostly do small jobs for other production companies especially to Studio Gonzo and TMS. Out of the titles I actually knew I couldnt find any anime credited to them that had their name listed as their primary producer with the soul exception to this being 2009s The Sacred Blacksmith and if thats indicative of the larger truth then thank God because this show looks a bit on the mediocre side. Maybe thats kind of mean of me because Ive definitely seen a lot worse looking anime than this over the years but its kind of obvious that they had a small budget to work with and it looks like they probably didnt know how to handle such a hindrance in such a way that it wouldnt be too noticeable. I dont know what bothers me more... How cheap this show looks or how commonly cheap it looks as it carries a lot of the same visual problems that an anime from the late 2000s is likely to have. It tries to juggle its budge responsibly with minimal movement being featured whenever possible in order to save more money for action scenes but those stationary scenes look lazy as hell as characters freeze almost right into the background when theyre not talking or reacting to anything and they often do so while just slightly offmodel enough to create an uncanny valley sensation and the action scenes arent great either. Theyre plagued by closeups and zoom effects to make it look like youre not just cutting from one stationary image to the other and while this doesnt always look too bad especially if the villain of said scene is represented by some pretty decent CG animation the amount of cut corners is telling. Backgrounds can be nice and highly detailed especially when taking place in the market but that doesnt save the characters inhabiting them from looking stiff and lifeless. In terms of the visuals the only thing about this show that really gives it any sense of identity is the design of the main character Cecily Campbell who almost seems like she was drawn to catch the eye what with her striking shade of red hair and highly questionable knights armor that looks like it was specifically molded in such a way as to accentuate her breastswell get to that. With the exception of the Demon Sword characters who look like support characters taken from various Final Fantasy games everyone else looks pretty generic from the titular blacksmith whos only real memorable feature is the fact that his left eye is always shaded differently from his right eyetheres a reason for it to the villain who... And I realize this is a spoiler but come on who wouldnt see this coming... Is of course a sinister looking guy with long white hair. This is an anime damn it and you should expect things like that by now. The nonhuman villains look pretty good especially the CG ones but we dont get very many of them. I didnt really notice the music while watching the series but I never had any complaints about it either which I guess is a good thing. The opening is your standard rock anthem with Mayumi Goto belting out lyrics about virtue triumph over evil and the struggle to do so and while its pretty generic it sounds nice. Some of the shows best and worst animation is showcased during the video clumsily moving between stiff characters in the middle of breathtakingly beautiful backgrounds to characters awkwardly trying to move against said backgrounds. A lot of the same could be said for the ending song miracle happy day which is also nice but generic. I like how each song is meant to represent a different character with the opening representing Cecily and the ending representing little Lisa but the latter has the added benefit of also being the characters actual voice actor. As for the rest of the score it was composed by Terashima Tamaya and its pretty cool overall especially the epic Kishi no Hokori. The sound is appropriately medieval with a lot of drums and wind instruments at play. While the music and animation may not be quite good enough to make an impression on you the English dub is another story entirely. Funimation did a fantastic job on this one to the point that even at some of its worst moments the quality of the acting can still get you through. While these titles are by no means her first starring roles it wasnt until Strike Witches that she started to become a big name in the industry and her role in The Sacred Blacksmith came right on the heels of that and if anything it proved that she could carry a series while moving away from more diminutive characters. It combines her likeability strength and sincerity in such a way that it feels almost like a precursor to some of her future roles like Lucy in Fairy Tail Asuna in Sword Art Online and Ilia in RWBY. From what Ive read the character of Cecily was a really unpopular one in the original sub with fans reacting negatively to her due to her big grandiose talk and seeming inability to back it up but Cheramis performance does a lot to alleviate that issue and saves the character even at her worst in the early episodes. Im normally not a huge fan of Blake Shephard but he does a pretty damn good job as the titular Blacksmith Luke Ainsworth. The character is supposed to be really cynical and blase which Blake captures really well with his lack of intonation and devilmaycare attitude adding in just enough hopeful or longsuffering vibes whenever necessary. Monica Rial plays his assistant a cheerful little girl character whos generally happygolucky and annoyingly obsessed with his love life and while this may sound like the kind of role Monica normally gets typecast into... And it is... Her casting was NOT a frivolous decision nor was it justanotherpaycheck for her. She does a lot with this character and deserves praise for it. Anastacia Munoz plays the demon sword Ilia and she does a great job but oh what the hell Im just glad to see her. Im a huge fan and she doesnt get enough work. The rest of Funimations usual squad of regulars show up at some point or another with some highlights including Alexis Tipton as a spurned princess Brina Palencia as a tragic victim of fate and Colleen Clinkenbeard and J Michael Tatum as probably the only choices that could have made the boring villains more interesting. And speaking of making things more interesting thats exactly the kind of task that Funimation had in front of them when they acquired this anime which is probably why when they announced the upcoming release they were not the slightest bit coy about the fact that thered be nudity in the release that wasnt there in the original TV run. I dont know if that nudity was censored on TV or if Funi just edited it in but whatever the case its really telling that they went to such great lengths to advertise the presence of some unobscured boobs although as many forumdwellers noted back then it was probably due to the lack of interest that people had for the title. Its true that nudity can be used well and be an essential or at least acceptable part of a story but in this case it was very obviously being used as a crutch in order to help sales of the title much like they wound up doing years later when they accidentally released the censored version of Sankarea Undying love a few years later. Now at first glance if youre coming in blind and just looking up the plot synopsis and descriptions of the series it looks like youd be in for something awesome. Its a show about knights and demons in a feudal setting starring a cute and wellendowed female protagonist and it deals with the introduction of katanas into a western society. Theres a lot of potential there and you could be excused for going in with some pretty high expectations even to the point that youd probably be willing to look past the subpar animation quality. The katana worship kind of suggests that thered be some element of eastern influence creeping into the shows western setting or that Luke would have some kind of foreign background that could be explored or hell even the plot about the war that took place decades prior to the events of the series could have amounted to some kind of interesting intrigue. What Im saying here is that there was a lot of room for cool ideas and while they may have possibly been exploited to some extent in the source material they werent here. Right off the bat this series shows signs of disappointment from pretty much all corners from the bullshit about swords cutting through other swords to the fact that anything cool about the art of blacksmithing would be largely glossed over in favor of magical weapon creation. The plot and setting are extremely derivative and offer nothing new or unique to stand out against the thousands of feudaltype anime out there and the villain is about as boring as you can get. I dont even remember what his plan was and I seriously didnt care about any scenes dealing with the effects of said plan. It takes a special kind of failure to make small demons popping out of peoples mouths boring but thats where we are here and the main characters arent much better. Cecily and Luke are trapped in a willtheywontthey dynamic that never goes anywhere not that youd WANT it to you just want it to go literally anywhere else so you dont have to listen to their inane bickering and cliched nonsense. Part of this is of course Cecily herself who appears to be some kind of joke character preaching idealistic virtues like justice and compassion selfsacrifice and heroism all while proving herself to be ridiculously incompetent having to be saved at every turn and not being taken seriously by just about anyone. She kind of reminds me of the protagonist of Now and Then Here and There but taken completely out of context to her own detriment. Her relationship with Luke is full of pure cringe as she plays the rough brutish tsundere to his asexual jerk flashing boob and berating him for accidentally seeing it blushing and fervently denying any feelings for him when called out and most insulting of all trying to weasel out of paying for the katana she wants him to make. Cap all of this off with a little girl obsessed with playing matchmaker and pointing out how generously wellendowed Cecily is youve got what looks on the surface to be a jumbled mess of bland cliched elements that nobody was asking for all merged into one show. So is there anything in this show that makes it worth watching? I think so but this is the part where things are going to get a bit uncertain. If theres anything interesting about this series then its not in the text but in the subtext or at least out of what I could read into it. Now keep in mind that this is an entirely speculative interpretation of the material so take it with a grain of salt because theres quite a bit to unload here. I didnt start to pick apart any kind of deeper meaning to this series until the character ilia was introducedat which point the series does manage to get quite a bit better assuming you were able to make it that far in the first place but when I did I started noticing some very specific subtext from which I managed to work backwards and figure out the overall theme of the story and Im actually quite confidant about this part of itmy interpretation gets a little shakier later on where the main unifying idea of the Sacred blacksmith seems to be the importance of selfidentity especially when compared to the indentities placed upon you by others. This idea is explored in some surprisingly diverse ways with the most obvious being the storyline between Luke and Lisa but thats kinda of heavy with the spoilers so Id instead like to start off with Charlotte a young girl who begins to make trouble for our heroes halfway through the series. She declares that shes a princess the bastard daughter of the king and demands her rightful place for the sake of her late mother. She instead gets refused by her father and at the end of her arcmild spoiler alert she instead abandons her royal lineage and defects to another nation. This may sound like defeat but think about what she was trying to do... She was trying to fulfill the dreams of her mother and gain the approval of her father but was either of those goals what she wanted? What would avenging her deceased mother or proving herself to her father have done for her? I mean theres obviously the idea of attaining wealth and status as royalty but she doesnt show any interest in that. Instead she dropped the Royal title from her name and started over on her own terms choosing to define herself as an individual. Theres also the demon swords three of which can turn into humans... Well four but we only spend any time with three of them... And they all seem to fall into the same category as characters who are burdened with the identities thrust upon them by their creators. Even the chant that they use to change form explicitly states that their purpose is to slay God which could be read in exactly that way. While two of them are also heavily rooted in spoilers I think we can talk about the first one ilia the demon sword who possesses the power of wind. Ilia has been around since the great war where she was born on the battlefield and shes been responsible for countless deaths the lives of which were taken by her wielders as well as by people wanting to become her wielder killing said wielder and taking their place. Shes sick of being used as a tool of murder which is why her life changes so drastically when she forges a partnership with the idealistic Cecily who... Oh dear its time to start talking about her now. Okay so this is the part where it really becomes a stretch so bear with me. The idea of selfidentity gets a lot more complicated with Cecily as it also starts to creep into the territory of sexual identity and gender identity yeah its that kind of show. Cecily is a character whos trying really hard to find out where she belongs inbetween the masculine and feminine aspects of her personality. Unlike Charlotte who wants to become a princess for the sake of her mother Cecily becomes a knight for the sake of her father even though such an occupation is explicitly shown to be maledominated and shes never taken seriously as a member of their ranks facing both condescension and open resentment for trying to do whats considered a mans job. Id even go as far as to assume that her breast plate was molded specifically for the purpose of accentuating the shape of her bosom as the military considers her more of a mascot or a PR stunt than an actual knight and in all fairness she doesnt do much to prove them wrong. Now Im not the kind of person who sees a sword in a story and says Thats a dick unless Im making a joke about Bleach or something but that old symbolism cliche does kind of fit in this case when you consider just how unsuccessful Cecily is while trying to wield them in her attempts at doing whats considered mens work. Either they break in her hands or she flatout refuses to kill which is both suggestive of compassion which is a traditionally feminine trait and on a more lowbrow note a sign of impotence. Yes I am also including the fact that shes unable to get the main male character to erect a sword for her in my analysis and youre welcome for that. Keep in mind though shes just as bad with feminine pursuits as shes uncomfortable with the idea of drawing attention to her looks and she fails hard at performing house work and shes really awkward in any sort of feminine clothes so it could be said that both masculine and feminine ideals are waiting just out of her grasp. Having said all of that she doesnt start to grow as a character to gain more confidence both socially and in battle until she acquires a female partner who acts as a sword for her and shes finally able to perform successfully. Granted theres no actual confession of love or confirmed affection between her and Ilia but its still really easy to read their relationship as a romantic one with some seriously Utenaesque subtext to back it up. There are several lines of dialogue that seem to almost deliberately imply something deeper than friendship although that could have just been Funimation rewriting things. I dont know how things between Luke and Cecily went in the source material but its typically not my style to look into things like that and Cecily really does seem to grow and develop as a person after her and Ilia form their partnership. Granted this doesnt really go anywhere special as Ilias insistence on Cecily continuing to pursue Luke does kind of echo the very Japanese idea of lesbianism being a teenage phase but Im just the interpreter I didnt write the damn show. So to summarize The Sacred Blacksmith seems to insist that you cant become a complete person until you come to terms with your own identity and in order to do that you shouldnt live by other peoples standards you shouldnt live for the approval or fulfillment of your parents you shouldnt try to be more of a man you shouldnt try to be more of a woman you shouldnt try to live up to the role society has placed on you and you shouldnt live according to the rules of your creator... You are you and you shouldnt lose sight of who you are and what you want. And what if Im just pulling all of this out of my ass? What if Im just reading too far into the material and seeing what I want to see? Well thats incredibly likely but it would be a damn shame because that added depth is really the only thing this show has going for it. On its own merits The Sacred Blacksmith is just about the blandest thing youll ever see with its only real saving grace being that it gets less boring about a third of the way through so Ill stick to my interpretation thank you very much. Sacred Blacksmith is available from Funimation now as a part of the SAVE collection. The original light novels are not available stateside but the manga adaptation by Isao Miura are available from Seven Seas entertainment. It also makes a very brief cameo in the anime Haganai. In a general sense I want to like everything I watch or at the very least I want it to be worth liking and since there really isnt anything outright awful about this particular title the fact that Im able to read something deeper into it helps me to appreciate it perhaps a bit more than it actually deserves. Its not one of the worst anime Ive ever seen not by far but the fact that its not interestingly bad just adds to its lack of noteworthy qualities as part of the reason why I dont think Id ever recommend it to very many people. I guess you might like it if youre a hardcore fan of either the feudal setting or of Cherami Leigh as an actor or hell maybe if youre going through some crisis of identity and need to watch something that might help you affirm your own selfimage and maybe youll see the same subtext and symbolism that I did. Other than that its not an outright bad anime but it really doesnt offer anything that you couldnt find elsewhere in both bigger and better portions. I give The Sacred Blacksmith a 5/10.