Fall 2009 Anime Impressions – The Sacred Blacksmith, Miracle Train, Trapeze

Miracle Train

Trudging on with these anime impression posts, next up is a trio of shows The Sacred Blacksmith, Miracle Train, and Trapeze. On first glance, this is a very diverse set of shows which would make it difficult to talk about them all at the same time but they all happen to share something in common that’ll make it easy to talk about them.

The Scores

The Sacred Blacksmith

Average Rating: episodes 1-6 – 5/12 C+
Anticipation Level: 0.5/5 – Very Low

Miracle Train

Average Rating: episodes 1-6 – 4/12 C
Anticipation Level: 0.5/5 – Very Low

Trapeze

Average Rating: episodes 1-5 – 2/12 F
Anticipation Level: 0/5 – None

The Fine Print

I tried to be patient and give each show a fair shot but I can’t take it anymore. The thing they share is that I’m dropping all three and it feels liberating to say so.

The Sacred Blacksmith is set a bland medieval-style fantasy world where our heroine ends up getting a super-sweet “Demon Sword” that is so powerful that it can cover-up the fact that she completely sucks at fighting and is only in the town’s military because of her family’s name and/or because the male soldiers have a thing for women dressed in metal bra armor who don’t mind comments about how big she’s gotten in that department. Even when she has this super awesome sword, she still needs help staying alive and a mysterious boy keeps saving her with an awesome sword known as a “katana” which is so much better then the swords of her town. As for the story, an evil person is set on doing evil things which for the purposes of this show include forcing people into contracts with devils which turns them into monsters. For what reason, I don’t know or care. So for lousy characters, weak character development, bland world-building and poor storytelling – The Sacred Blacksmith is dropped.

Miracle Train takes a recently opened subway system, anthropomorphizing it’s train stations into pretty guys who’s personality and likes represent the area around each train station and this pack of guys help women with their problems. The heavily episodic nature of this show means that every problem these women have can be solved within ten minutes of show time which is a good thing for these women because they’re not allowed to decline the help offered by these guys or return to their lives until it’s decided that the problem is solved. The most interesting part of the show is the trivia that’s inserted into the show about the history and local flavor around the different train stations but I’m here to watch an anime not a documentary so Miracle Train follows The Sacred Blacksmith and gets dropped.

This guy is the best part of Trapeze, too bad he has 30 seconds of screen time per episode.

Trapeze is another heavily episodic show about problems being solved but this time it’s a trippy psychologist treating people’s mental issues and it has even less going for it then Miracle Train does. It starts with the characters whose problems make up the reason for the show – I just don’t care about them. At least with Miracle Train, I felt something for the women with their problems; here, for example, I don’t care if a baseball player is having trouble throwing a baseball because the team has drafted a younger, handsomer player. This alone, is pretty much a death sentence but I also find the show’s absolute mess of an animation style to be just plain ugly and wholly lacking any redeeming qualities so Trapeze follows Miracle Train and gets dropped-kicked to the curb.