Genre: Comedy/Action
Age Appropriate: Teen
Emotional Response: ....hahahahahahahahaha
Notable Features: sword, demons, magic, teen knights
Language: English
Length: 1 season, 12 episodes
Overall Recommendation: Pretty Good
"Thank you, Luke. You saved my life, again." - Cecily (x11tybillion)
The Sacred Blacksmith is Luke Ainsworth, but it isn't Luke that is the main protagonist. That would be Cecily Campbell - a Knight Guard of the Independent Trade Cities of Housman. She's a brand new knight, following in her father's footsteps. She trips over herself often, and has a hard time killing people. It takes a bit for her to be willing to hurt others - not to fight, but to actually take that final step. The captain of the guard gives her a very special job, of which he says she's the perfect fit for: guarding the demon sword Aria, who takes human form and controls wind in sword form. Cecily's main requirement is actually just that she's female.
Of course, Cecily makes friends along the way. Luke becomes a reluctant friend with Cecily's constant poking about getting a special katana for herself. Lisa, Luke's elf assistant who is mysteriously named after someone else, adores Cecily (and her breasts). Aria, of course, becomes Cecily's good friend and helper as her sword. Throughout the series, Cecily also finds great friends with minor appearances.
There are also bad guys, mostly of the mysterious sort. Valbanill is the end all be all of bad. The best equivalent is that he's the devil coming to rain destruction on the world. There is mention of Valbanill Wars frequently in the episode as wars that happened 40-50 years prior to the current storyline. The most devestating part of the war is the use of demon contracts. Demon contracts are pretty much what they sound like. People make a contract with someone who controls demons and they get power but have to offer up their soul in the end. The process is pretty gruesome. Along with Valbanill, there is "The Man in Black" who controls and signs demon contracts in the current time period and seems to be sneakily running schemes in the background.
So, that's the basis. Good guys (or girls!) versus the bad guys.
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The Sacred Blacksmith is both fun and serious. It seems to be a running theme, right? There isn't actually much focus on the serious aspects until the last few episodes. Mostly it's about annoying people and annoying situations that pop up as vehicles to boob jokes, and the complicated relationship of Luke and Cecily. Aria becomes a more major character the further the episodes go - almost like the writers realized near the end, "Oh yeah. We should finish this, huh. But it was so fun!" They might have been able to stretch the story out, but I can see why they wouldn't.
The end theme is really poppy, but it's really nice with the occasional cliffhanger endings. Wipes away anything that might have created baby nightmares. Cecily is a good character for young ladies, as she's very relateable in her awkwardness. Luke is all grumpy growly, but nice inside. He made me both want to give him and hug and stick my tongue out at him in defiance. Stupid boys are stupid. Ha.
I gave it a Teen rating because of all the boob shots. The boob jokes themselves are relatively tame. There isn't much blood all over and the storyline isn't too complicated. Without the breasts, I would probably have left it a PreTeen. It got a "Pretty Good," because that's what it was: pretty good. It was a nice diversion, and I'm happy to have seen it for free.
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