seiken no blacksmith : [ not so ] first impression

SEIKEN NO BLACKSMITH / THE SACRED BLACKSMITH
studio : manglobe
director : Masashi Suzuki
serial run : October 3, 2009 - ongoing
total episodes : ?

O HAI CAN I TOUCH THOSE ?

my ninth [ and hopefully last, as i would like to work on something else ] entry for the fall 2009 first impression series; supposedly this one were to be submitted prior to the macross zero review but i seemed to have [ embarassingly >///> ] overlooked the super obvious orangey 'draft' tag, as well as my enthusiasm over macross zero [ and later, shakugan no shana s ] at the time went like over 9000... thus late overview is so the very late [ pardon the bad grammar ]

[ note : i'm saving some details for the complete review later, so do expect a much more lacking overview for this one v.v ]

anyway, seiken no blacksmith basically is a fantasy series with quite a similar atmosphere to those of murder princess [ if you liek swords and monster kills ] and spice and wolf [ minus the delicious wolf but plus a nice-elven-loli ]; interesting enough, the series kicks-off with a brief trade-related argument before proceeding into the introduction of the lovely young knight cecily [ cambell ? there should be a P there or else it'll sound awkwardly funny ], of whom seems to resemble a bit of everybody's fave railgun-tsundere, biribiri [ plus a sword and a VERY DELICIOUS NICE armor ]. as for those who paid enough attention to the bgm might as well notice a lovely irish-folk-ish tune playing in the background [ you may also refer to haibane renmei and spice and wolf's OSTs for similar music-get ], and yes peeps, that is among the few charm of the series which had gotten me straightly hooked from the get go other than the magnificent display of swordfighting skill by the main protagonist luke, and my bottomless interest in the 'knights and clashing swords' fantasy genre.

the character design were drop dead lovely, and i just love the designer's gorgeous touch over them characters' facial features which at times had me reminiscing over those seen in kannagi [ the animation ]; cecily, above all were bestowed with one of the best design for a female character for this year around [ say, why don't she wear a bra beneath those metal chest plate ? ], and i can certainly keep on writing this over and over again until ye peeps get to puke blood all over the monitor. animation wise, you can expect the best from manglobe, and if you've seen their previous efforts before [ samurai champloo and ergo proxy for example ] then i assume that you are to greatly agree with me on this. well, it is still waaaay too early for me / us to praise over the matter so let's just sit back, wait and see if the quality were going to last until the very last cup of tea :3

[ character ] relationship wise, it is best for me to view both luke and cecily as a solid alternative to touma x mikoto from to aru majutsu no index; seriously, from my personal perspective the two nevertheless mirrors an almost exact parallel to the aforementioned pairing, only that cecily's tsuntsun-ness aren't that overwhelming yet as those of biribiri's. well there's still plenty of episodes to go and i would [ greatly ] love to see something similar to those of touma x mikoto brewing between the two.

all in all it certainly is a nice watch for this season around. it may be a bit cliched in term of storytelling but don't let that very aspect alone hinders you from indulging on this one; well at least i greatly find it to be very much more amusing than kampfer [ no offense to the fans ], that is.

next entry preview : 'dramatic mahjong'.