I’ve heard a lot of bashing of this show but unfortunately I can’t join the fun. That’s because I found that Blacksmith was actually an entertaining show. As I’ve written before, Blacksmith isn’t outstanding in any way. However it gives a solid, steady performance in all areas.
RAGE
Blacksmith isn’t the best show in the season or not even the second best, but it’s better than most. In fact, it’s better than Railgun. Because in addition to cute girls it has a coherent, well-paced storyline and manages to actually build some mystery surrounding the characters and their world – something Railgun pretty much never managed to do despite its awesome-sounding setting. Blacksmith cannot match Railgun’s visual excellence of course, but gets very close. The animation is fluent and above all consistent – Blacksmith looks the same from the first episode to the last minutes of the finale. The background music is rather lame fantasy stuff but the seiyuu cast more than makes up for it. Fujimura Ayumi does a great job as Cecily and Toyosaki Aki adds a big multiplier to Lisa’s cuteness.
Wut
Cecily was sort of both weak and strong point of the show. Her incompetence and stupidity annoyed me to no end but her blazing female GAR in the last few episodes was pretty awesome – starting from the time she returns to the Assembly. Also, I must admit that I actually felt quite moved when Lisa’s matter with Luke was resolved – her VA sure knows how to do the crying voice right.
D’aaawww
Blacksmith was average in many respects. A whole ton of fantasy clichés, the bad guy was rather stereotypical must-destroy-the-world-baddie and the ending was an annoying cliffhanger. But the show was very well paced, unlike with Railgun I actually felt like we’re constantly getting somewhere with it. The animation is decent and consistent, characters are good and the final episode was pretty intense yet didn’t drag out the fights too much. All in all it was one of the few shows I felt like following this season and backlog burns with it didn’t feel like working. Manglobe, I am impress.
Oh yeah, and Cecily’s totally hot.
You are just in for the loli.
@ Kljigen
I don’t want to hear that from you.
I guess that rules me out as well… i should really give this one a go since the manga for it, despite being rather good, it’s being scanlated at snail speeds at best. (Here’s a random thought, i should revive my blog and make it about mango… mnah so much effort =__= )