The Sacred Blacksmith is a show that makes a lot of promises. It’s going to be a fantasy in an original setting, not a total knockoff. It’s not going to be about the strongest with an unstoppable cheat power. It’s going to deliver some serious material, since it’s got a more mature rating.
In at least some sense, this show keeps its promises. However, while some of them are welcome breaths of fresh air, none of them equate to quality. I’ve learned all too well in my time as a reviewer that only quality equals quality, so it’s time to determine whether The Sacred Blacksmith’s work is one for the museums, or for the recycling center.
Our main character is Cecily Cambell, a somewhat clumsy but big-hearted (and big-chested, as the show is very eager to mention) knightly young lady. She does her best to keep the peace, but in our first two scenes, a flash-foward to a battle with a monster referred to as a Devil and a brawl with an old soldier seemingly having a PTSD episode and going on a rampage in the market, she manages to get her sword broken and her butt saved by the titular character, Luke Ainsworth. He is attended by a little girl called Lisa, who has weird ears so you know she’s some kind of demi-human even when the show pretends otherwise.
And in case you were wondering what kind of show we’re in, Cecily’s boobs are ogled in character and her panties flashed to the audience in the first ten minutes.
Before the first episode is out, we get her topless for literally no reason – it’s just a fantasy cut-in when she’s being earnest. The show will continue to find excuses to show her tits not every episode but at least on the regular.
I feel like I already did my job regarding fanservice a bit ago so I’ll try to keep it to a minimum this time.
Anyway, she ends up tracking down Luke (harder than it should be because he’s a taciturn grump) and convincing him to make her a sword (see previous parenthetical). Though, this process is interrupted by them catching wind of bandits attacking a caravan. Cecily gets owned trying to actually fight, and then Luke solos everything with his magic katana of enemy bisection. The incident causes the heroes to realize something is up since monsters are being controlled to attack people. This is further reinforced when that ice devil happens. Luke handles it with a magic-forged katana
Thereafter, Cecily and Luke hash out that whole sword business, which ends up working out to she’s not getting anything for a while, on account of the cost. Bludgeoning him heavily when an armor failure revealed she’s not wearing anything under probably didn’t help.
In the meantime, Cecily gets a mission to act as a guard for a magic demon sword of wind, who also happens to take the form of a young lady. The mystery black cloak antagonist causes more trouble, first in the form of turning all the prisoners in jail into hosts for brain-eating bugs that cause them to rampage across the city. This little arc reveals that Cecily, junior knight that she is, has never killed and isn’t really prepared to change that.
Finally, the wind sword auction occurs, and black cloak strikes again, using that PTSD guy to summon a fire devil to the scene.
Luke comes in and gives an assist, but for once Cecily actually gets a win, reclaiming the sword, Aria, and striking down the devil. In the wake of the battle, with the auction called off, Cecily and Aria bond such that it seems like Cecily won’t be lacking for a cool weapon thereafter.
We get a breather focused on Lisa which also gives us a bit of lore, but then more fighting comes to town in the form of an Imperial bastard brat-and-a-half called Charlotte and her trio of demon-sword-wielding retainers. Sadly, she doesn’t get cut to ribbons when she fails to abduct Luke (and rob Cecily of Aria) so we have to put up with her antics hoping that the show will prove mean-spirited enough to axe her later through no fault of the heroes.
After an episode of her being a brat (if slightly less of one) and giving a sob story about her mom the unacknowledged mistress of the Emperor, the Imperial authorities reply to that claim of lineage she was standing on: They don’t know her and based on what she has, she’s a thief and an imposter who they want extradited for severe punishment. She gives her best “surprised pikachu” face at the reading.
Girl, what did you think was going to happen? Your dead mom was never acknowledged, you were never acknowledged, and your whole quest was to somehow, through a few unknown steps, win favor and earn your place in the empire. Did you really think the authorities were going to substantiate your story? Well, it’s your head on a pike.
I know I’m being extra sour, but I really dislike her archetype where the entitled, shrill, horrible brat gets to get away with everything short of literal murder because she’s a little younger and maybe has a sob story in her back pocket. Far too many shows give a blank check to anything that can be vaguely called a “little girl” (it’s relative. Charlotte here is clearly able to operate more or less on her own but at the same time she’s younger than Cecily). And I get it, it would be too mean for most heroes to kick her while she’s down. So I’ll credit Sacred Blacksmith that it makes her work as a maid and then gives some logical consequences to her idiot actions.
The local authorities, not unsympathetic to the fact that she’s clearly being burned rather than actually being a criminal (you know, other than the assault, battery, attempted murder, and attempted kidnapping she’s done in their jurisdiction), work out that she can seek asylum in another major power, faking an escape while the demon swords are handed over to the Empire, though that’s not a solution that makes anyone happy.
In order to try to get more bargaining chips, Charlotte’s three stooges attempt to do some extra crimes. Cecily beats a little sense into them, and Charlotte too when she shows up and starts howling about her honor again. It’s just a slap for the brat but man is it a satisfying last hit. Eventually, the words get through, and the idiots decide to go live in exile like smart people. As they leave, they give the name Siegfried for the man who armed them and put them up to their misdeeds, presumably the Man in Black we’ve seen throughout the show since he was otherwise absent from this arc.
For that matter, Luke was basically dropped from the arc as well. It was trading one annoyance for another, but at least Cecily got to hold her own and legitimately solve her problems without an escort.
We then leap into the next arc with something that at first looks like a breather: Cecily has the day off and, by one thing and another, ends up joining Luke for a little graveyard visit. There he reveals that Lisa – his first love and a young lady suspiciously similar to Cecily, not the little Lisa who lives with him now – died tragically in battle against a legendary monster. Immediately after Cecily is gone, an old lunatic (goaded to it by the man in black) shows up on Luke’s doorstep looking for the same monster, attacking Luke and Present-Lisa like they’re it.
Only at this late juncture do we then get the tutorial that the boss monster that cost Luke his beloved is a sealed evil nearby, responsible for all the magic (particularly the devil stuff) we see, and that Luke is meant to forge a new sacred sword to reinforce its binding. And of course, time is running out on that score. If it breaks free, humanity is cooked.
Little late to bring that up for the first time, but sure, we can do the epic fantasy plot now. After a second clash where Cecily is there, Siegfried/The Man in Black reveals that the Lisa we know is a devil made from the original Lisa and containing some of the great evil’s essence, which leads to Luke confirming it and blaming himself for the original’s death.
We follow up on this with all the important folk having an important council that… pretty much just amounts to Siegfried holding up a legal fig leaf that he’s not the Man in Black while everybody else dunks on Luke.
Eventually she chats with Lisa and works out the truth: that Lisa prime created Lisa the Second, not Luke, and that it was out of love and a desire to protect and stay with him. She gives a big speech about how his own love for the Lisas will be the power that completes the sacred sword, and it seems to work out. This annoys Siegfried because… I don’t know, honestly, he’s had no theme nor motivation in this show and with “the whole of humanity goes kaput” at stake the international politics angle is kind of dead in the water. And he’s extra peeved about the idea of love being a power because I suppose it offends his transparent evilness. So, he has his minion and primed devil contracts start attacking the city.
This is our climax, a giant flaming apocalypse for pretty much no reason. It works less well here than in something like Boatmurdered.
Anyway, there is of course a big last battle against Siegfried and his corrosion sword. Luke loses round one, but then Cecily (disarmed due to Aria being out of it in a previous fight) and Lisa show up so luke can do the magic forge thing. Why Siegfried doesn’t just melt her while she’s giving the big speech about Lisa Prime’s feelings and Luke’s inner strength like he says he’s going to, I don’t know. Despite saying that an unarmed Cecily standing in his way isn’t going to slow him down he just sort of waits patiently like an idiot for Luke to finish doing a magic forging thing and come up with an ultimate Katana.
For reasons of injury, Luke hands that off to Cecily. Siegfired just kind of watches the heart-to-heart there too. I wouldn’t complain too much if he had honor or a thirst for a fair fight, but he talks up just wanting people to suffer and die miserably before and after ignoring free kills, and babbles all about the sealed evil and wiping the world clean since he apparently lost what little lucidity he had.
Anyway, Cecily cuts him down, but it turns out that he’s just the “Evaporates into smoke” kind of baddie, despite being an established person in the setting as this big shot imperial representative. Was he just some kind of projection of the sealed evil? Not answered!
Whatever. The credits roll, we see that everybody last witnessed alive is still alive as the town is rebuilt (including Aria, who was left on a threatened note just so Cecily would have a reason to need a weapon from Luke), and all’s well that ends well.
To this one, I say… good riddance.
Sacred Blacksmith is a prime example of the fact that getting to show tits doesn’t really do anything for the show’s quality. Given how non-germane the nudity is to anything, you could cut it and lose nothing… or so I would say if there was anything in this show worth watching other than Cecily’s rack.
I guess the production values, even aside from the countable instances of nipples across the show, are pretty good. There are some nice backgrounds and colors, and the fights look cool. Most of the time, I suppose I can admit they’re also choreographed to be cool as well, though that can be a bit hit or miss when the whole combat has to grind to a halt for the next big set piece.
And talking about cool, there’s a sort of artificiality to the things that are supposed to be awesome in this show. I almost give a pass to the katana-worship being on the level of mid-2000’s internet memes, but I’ve seen enough Japanese media to know that isn’t common even as just a mark of cultural pride. The whole magic system also just sort of coasts on “what sounds badass today”. Yeah, devil contracts, formed by magic words literally written on every human heart. By some sort of sealed evil of doom. Need an easy answer, just mutter something about “the war” and be done with it.
I give this show a little credit that it’s a fantasy property with the balls to neither be an isekai nor rely on video game mechanics. In that way, even the poorly sketched world-building here isn’t the worst of the worst. But we’re still on a level somewhere south of Bubuki Buranki, which made stuff up as it went along but at least had its theme and purpose clear. There’s a similar childish feel to Sacred Blacksmith, but it’s weaker base material and less polished.
Back in positives, Cecily was mostly a fairly watchable character, and Lisa was remarkably non-annoying as the tagalong youngster. Aria was a bit thinly sketched and Luke was unfun, but on the other hand Luke didn’t steal the show, Aria tried to have an arc, and for all my ragging on it the Charlotte arc was handled way better than I expected from its first episode.
It feels like that for everything good I can say about this show, I can also say something bad about it. Normally, that would sort of lean towards a C grade, but unfortunately the bad does start to outweigh the good here with the purposeless antagonist, arbitrary random introduction of the main plot in earnest when we’re two-thirds done, closure-deprived ending, and a heap of small annoyances. Thanks to all that, I can give this show a D+ and walk away, hopefully never to revisit this one.