Comic Book Resources

Danielle Leigh’s Reading Diary — Bamboo Blade vol 1 & 2

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• by Danielle Leigh
• in Comic Reviews, Danielle's Reading Diary
• 7 Comments

Bamboo Blade, by Masashiro Totsuka and Aguri Igarashi, is a not-quite-manic sports comedy, light on the fan service (it is almost nonexistent actually) with plenty of character humor.  The series also features a mixed-gender after school kendo club which means you shouldn’t expect a traditional shonen sports narrative.

Bamboo Blade opens with a life-less kendo club led by the fairly unmotivated instructor, Kojiro.  Kojiro was once a pretty great kendo player himself but as an adult he is pretty much concerned entirely with paying the bills and managing to scrounge up enough extra cash to feed himself on a regular basis.  An old classmate — and former kendo opponent — makes a bet with Kojiro which vaults him out his boredom.  If Kojiro’s girl’s kendo team can defeat his old classmates’ team in a match, Kojiro’s prize will be a year of free sushi.

Now, this is an incredibly weak reason to set the plot of a manga serialization into motion, but this part of what makes Bamboo Blade pretty hilarious.  Everyone has incredibly random and often bizarre reasons for deciding to join the kendo team.  Kojiro is a terrible teacher who seems to have very little investment in his “calling,” which means students who bother to show up only want to mess around and look cool.  However, they are usually scared off once they learn that kendo equipment is really very “smelly.”  But with his new goal in mind, Kojiro’s suddenly fired up enough to cajole, manipulate, or even blackmail talented female players into joining his club.

Kojiro’s efforts to get a real kendo team together only works because everyone in this manga is a bit of a headcase in their special way.  Take Tamaki, who is a real a monster at kendo.  Her father — who has his own dojo — has raised her on kendo since she could walk it seems, and because of that, she is both scary strong and completely lacking in motivation.  To her kendo is a household chore, sort of like doing dishes or sweeping the walk.  However, Tamaki loves anime and has always dreamed of becoming a hero who saves the world.  Enter two shit-heads from the school’s kendo team who like to use their powers to abuse weaker kids and suddenly Tamaki now has her reason — she’s going to save the club from evil!

And pretty much every other person has this kind of reason for joining — Miya, who joins the club to keep her useless boyfriend company, discovers she really, really likes hitting people with blunt objects.  Meanwhile, Saya has a manic personality that swerves between passionate devotion to something and then complete despair at her inability to master her current obsession.  Therefore, she can only be bothered to show up to club after she’s given up on writing her novel or learning guitar (or threatening to commit suicide).  Only the team captain seems to love the sport, but I’m sure her weirdness will be outed eventually.

Everyone’s motives seem impure, but in spite of that, they all seem to be enjoying themselves.  While once in a while references are made to the honor associated with the practice and study of the sport of kendo, the driving force of the story is how these folks are coming together to work toward some goal — even if that goal is utterly ridiculous.  At the end of the second volume, the first team match begins and unlike a lot of other sport manga, this one moves at a smart clip as personality and not raw talent carry the girls through their first match.

The humor of the book never devolves into stupidity, and the big laughs are almost always supported by interesting (although not partiuclarly deep) characterization.  The kendo matches themselves are usually represented by blurs of motion — partiuclarly when the resident kendo genius Tamaki is involved — but for the most part the art is hilariously evocative.  When Miya gets her hand on a shinai (or the “bamboo blade”) for the first time, the entire team shivers instinctively in fear thanks to the look of pure evil ecstasy on her face.  It is a perfect moment that entirely encapsulates the fun of Bamboo Blade as we can’t help but wonder what kind of kendo player this true sadist will make.  One of the real joys of the book is seeing how exactly each girl makes kendo entirely her own, as the traditional weight conferred upon the sport is blown away by their kooky practice of it.

Review Copy of volume 2 provided by Yen Press.