The Sacred Blacksmith

     As a teenager I was always pretty skeptical of anime. It's most popular incantation, at least at my school, was Sailor Moon, so you could understand my skepticism. In recent years however, I've been taken by Hayao Miyazaki's magical movies Tortoro, Ponyo, and Spirited Away as well as by the not quite anime but sort of close The Last Airbender (Which is also available on Netflix) so I thought I'd give the  mini series The Sacred Blacksmith a try. It was added to the Netflix Instant Queue two days ago, March 28, 2012. It is comprised of twelve half hour long episodes. So there is not a lot of commitment required to finish off this one.
     The Sacred Blacksmith is based on a series of Japanese Novels by the same name.
     The movie begins with our main character Cecily Campbell quoting expositional dialogue to herself as she faces down a large ghostly fantastic creature, just as she's about to be destroyed a tall dark stranger saves her to which she breathily exhales, "that's the third time you've saved my life." Despite this auspicious starts, the main character is a strong woman, and a member of the Knight Guard of Housman, a group of knights that does not usually include women. Her main role is patrolling the village's market ridding it of trouble.
     The episode hits its stride when her sword is destroyed in battle, and because of it's sentimental value she wants to repair it rather than simply replace it. Her quest brings her to Luke, the sacred blacksmith of the title, and the same young man who saved her at the beginning of the episode. While Cecily admires him for saving her, he is apathetic to him, setting up a classic romantic comedy set up. Though their romance never takes off in the pilot episode, the set up is silly enough that it would be difficult for it to come to a satisfactory conclusion.
     The mythology of the episode, a war that is still having major implications on the society and competing government factions are intriguing, but certainly not so interesting that I'm invested in learning more about them.
     The major antagonist, a group of bandits, that you know are the bad guys because they dress in darker colors, and stand in shadows, seem motivated by little more than their desire to be bad.
     The other reoccurring character from the first episode were Cecily's breasts, which it seemed none of the men old or young could manage to avoid ogling, and considering that Cecily is portrayed as a young teenager is rather discomforting.
     The opening credits had to be subtitled, but the remaining dubbing was done well enough that it was never distracting.
     If you love anime, there's probably nothing I could say that could keep you from watching The Sacred Blacksmith, but for everyone else there's nothing really here for you.