Omake Gif Anime - Blade and Soul - Episode 1 [BD] - Aruka Beautiful and Dangerous

Blade and Soul - Episode 1 [BD] - Aruka Beautiful and Dangerous



Aruka is always beautiful, always dangerous, and never vulnerable, even while bathing.

10 Second Anime - Blade and Soul - Episode 13 [END]

Blade and Soul - Episode 13 [END]

A true fan service episode. A mystery, an adventure, and a farce on a remote island. Blade and Soul ends on a fun note.

Heh.

This whole episode was heh. Our three side heroines get to shine as they search for eternal beauty from a treasure map. With elements of Indiana Jones, and the exact same feel as the Secret of Monkey Island, I was impressed with the comedic writing.

Pia: "I understand them because their language sounds like my grandparents' dialect."
Karen: "Just where are you from, anyway?"

A big dead angry fish shooting bullets was not a scene I was expecting.

The cat people sure know how to prepare soup. Only the finest and cleanest ingredients!

I have to trust these primitive people's judgment. Prostrating yourselves in the presence of godly breasts is surely the correct thing to do. Oppai is FREE! Oppai is JUSTICE!

Oh, and just what is the Secret of Fish Head Island?

10 Second Anime - Blade and Soul - Episode 12

Blade and Soul - Episode 12

In the final confrontation, Aruka convinces Jin Varrel to live. Aruka learns to live too, following her way of the sword.

Heh.

So that's where all the great animation went...

I think I saw that scene with Gargante and Yu Lan way back in 1983, except it was Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine falling to their supposed deaths.

Aruka finally paid that traveling merchant for her shawl. Only took her 10 episodes...

You know, Jin Varrel and Aruka came a long way in their character development. Could you ever imagine them making faces like these when you first saw them?

10 Second Anime - Blade and Soul - Episode 11

Blade and Soul - Episode 11

Aruka learns that her swords actually helped people. The Big Boobie Brigade finds her at her old village. Jin Varrel revives and she seeks the pink butterfly.

Heh.

I'm with Hazuki. You just saved Haruka from my guns (even though I really wasn't going to shoot her), and now you're fighting her again? Nope, just some tough love: use the sword to live. I've almost totally forgiven Elle Karen, partly because she's beautiful (okay, mainly because of that...), but she did kill someone to get her revenge on someone else. Life is cheap in this anime.

I started to sympathize with Jin Varrel here. She's an exploited dead vessel who just wants to die, but Yu Lan won't let her. How many times has Yu Lan revived her before, just to get her to the right mix of compliance and killing intent? Even Gargante doesn't like what Yu Lan is doing. Maybe he was a survivor of the same process?

Feh.

The last episode better be chock full of awesome animation, because they just neglected to add the quality lines and colors to several scenes this episode.

10 Second Anime - Blade and Soul - Episode 10

Blade and Soul - Episode 10

Elle regrets taking her revenge on Aruka. The family of one of Aruka's victims takes her in, only to succumb to the tragedy that follows revenge. Jin Varrel reappears soon?

Meh.

We get it. Revenge is bad. Revenge, not even once!  Whether it's some pretty, rich lady moping around her summer villa, or an older couple mourning their daughter in a snow-covered country house, tragedy follows revenge. Did we need two episodes to cover the same thing?

Hmm.

One thing I liked was the use of glass being polished and smoothed after it's been broken to make something that's beautiful in its own right. As Aruka is being chased by Palam Empire agents, she sees her reflection in broken glass, and steps on it, breaking it further. The old married couple takes broken colored glass and makes jewelry out of it. But the father's anger when his daughter's old bracelet breaks incites him to vengeance, which makes him forget his own admonition to Aruka: You can fix something that's broken, but you can't fix someone who's dead. While Elle has the luxury of getting over killing someone to exact her revenge, the father takes his own life after killing his wife instead of Aruka.

Aruka still hasn't come to an answer to what "using the sword to live" means to her yet. All she is seeing is the revenge and tragedy from her past as a paid assassin. She better get an answer quick, because it looks like her revenge kind of wore off on Jin Varrel who's making her own comeback.

Heh.

Hazuki knows how to psych herself up to get answers from Elle's henchman. Liquid courage!

10 Second Anime - Blade and Soul - Episode 9

Blade and Soul - Episode 9

Yuu is dead. Jin Varrel is dead. But not for long? Elle Karen takes in Aruka, but only to take revenge for killing her lover.

Hmm.

For someone who keeps saying that revenge is foolish, Elle Karen is not foolish when it comes to revenge. With a well-planned setup, and ruthlessly killing one of her own employees, she takes revenge on the assassin who killed her lover. Karen saw that just killing Aruka wouldn't satisfy herself. Aruka also had no one left alive she cared for, so there could be no suffering of loss either. So Karen manufactured someone for Aruka to care for, one of the newer employees, and then made Aruka suffer that manufactured loss.

We saw that Karen was always ethically flexible since the episode with the village growing the blue flowers, but this episode puts her all the way into the evil category. It's apparent now that she was only keeping tabs on Aruka to look for an opening to exploit in exacting her revenge, and when she couldn't find one, she made one. She also knew that Aruka only killed as a contract assassin, so why didn't she go after the one who contracted Aruka? She took her revenge on the first available target. It's hard to look at her now and see a likeable character.

Feh.

After all the revelations of her lost love, and her cunning plot to make Aruka suffer, I was still going to let myself feel ambivalent over Elle Karen. Then she did this:

10 Second Anime - Blade and Soul - Episode 8

Blade and Soul - Episode 8

Yuu and Aruka, two apprentice siblings finally meet. The Flower Monks discover their location. Jin Varrel versus Aruka, part 2. Yuu dies.

Heh.

You know, if I were a mortally sick dog boy, and I woke up with four beautiful women looking at me as they hovered over my bed, I would think I was actually in Heaven. Of course, Yuu just cares about the food being brought in.

If there's anyone who talks even less than Aruka in this show, it's Jin Varrel. Even the guy with damaged vocal cords talks more than she does.

Aruka is not much of a talker, this much we know, but I liked how she tried to share a moment with Yuu by eating filled buns like she did with their late master.

Again, Yuu cares too much about the food when you have someone like this sitting in your bed.

10 Second Anime - Blade and Soul - Episode 7

Blade and Soul - Episode 7

Aruka stumbles upon a cult at the beach. Hazuki is bored. Elle Karen rescues Aruka and confirms a connection with her.

Heh.

You know, when I saw Aruka find the beach last episode, I had my hopes up for the requisite swimsuit episode. Imagine my disappointment when she finds the village leader from the first episode has hooked up with a bunch of scarred individuals with a crazy cult leader who likes to offer human sacrifices.

Protip: when your crazy cult leader licks the blade of a dagger, that's a clue she is not interested in your soul's salvation. That's, like, universal, or something...

Without bikinis, hot springs, or some kind of fun splashing around, I was bored. Like Hazuki.

10 Second Anime - Blade and Soul - Episode 6

Blade and Soul - Episode 6

We finally meet the little dog boy who talks at the end of each episode. The Palam Empire has many factions, and some don't like the Flower Monks. Hazuki joins the Pleasure Gang, sorta.

Heh.

So that's the little dog boy's deal. We've been seeing this little guy Yuu giving us a review of some of the things and people we seen in the show, as well as introducing the preview. He's the last student of Aruka's master and has a blue power that appears to be the opposite of the impurity that Jin Varrel uses.

Those poor saps who tried to foment a rebellion were played by the Palam Empire from the start, even when they thought they were dealing with agents from a neighboring kingdom.

Those guys using the blue flower drug are still no match for the real deal.

Hazuki will work with the Pleasure Gang if they pay her in alcohol, but she will absolutely not wear the spikes. No spikes!

10 Second Anime - Blade and Soul - Episode 5

Blade and Soul - Episode 5

A morally ambiguous episode explores how common folks are caught in the middle of the illicit drug trade. Elle Karen lets down her hair, and puts down a mad dog.

Meh.

Dan Loana is all better and wants to start up the Pleasure Gang again, even if it's just three people. Ah well. I guess we'll see that big, stupid lunk again. Dabbuh!

Geh.

If I saw the beautiful inn keeper known for her fan dancing kill a raving lunatic with her hair pin, I'd probably be gawking like Hazuki here.

10 Second Anime - Blade and Soul - Episode 4

Blade and Soul - Episode 4

Aruka's fevered dreams show informative flashbacks. Bad things happen to those who use the sword for themselves.

Heh.

Elle Karen is pretty good at dodging rice buns.

The kids who were taking care of Aruka had the running joke of stealing food from the butcher, but that string of thefts will end at 16.

Eh?!

Aruka's master is a little old dog-type person?

Geh.

Two of the Pleasure Gang dudes survived, and one of them was the biggest, dumbest one they had.

Hmm.

We had quite a bit of exposition through Aruka's fevered flashbacks of her master, the butterfly mark, and the blue flowers. We still don't know exactly how the pink mark works, but it is effective against dark powers. The master had said that one can't fight the darkness through the sword alone, and I found it interesting that the mark finished curing Aruka of the Impurity only when she picked up her sword to defend the kids from the local mafia.

The master also called the blue flowers poison, but a poison that can be used to show or identify demonic powers. There might be an illicit trade in them because they make people high by altering their perceptions. We know the Flower Monks are using them to juice up their own mercenaries.

I appreciated the ambiguous handling of the two kids Seto and Pia. Seto may have always had a dark streak in him, or perhaps he was traumatized by seeing someone cut down in front of him and then having to kill someone in self-defense, but whichever the case, holding the sword changed his personality, or revealed it. This tied in neatly with Aruka's dreams of her master explaining that one must use the sword to live, not to kill. That Seto died trying to protect his sister offered some redemption for his actions, or perhaps just added another layer to his tragic story. I like that. Sometimes bad things happen, and it's up to the observers to make their own sense of the events.

Also, Pia showed that she was the stronger of the siblings, by mourning her brother, and immediately changing her circumstances by asking Karen for a job. Maybe Seto was always holding them back from rejoining civil society, and now Pia can have a chance to shine. This was all good. You don't see this kind of straightforward storytelling in anime very much, with inner dialogue, or long scenes of outer dialogue, being very much the standard practice. Perhaps having a laconic hero without a lot of lines lets the other characters also tell their stories by doing stuff, instead of standing around talking to themselves.

10 Second Anime - Blade and Soul - Episode 3

Blade and Soul - Episode 3

Hazuki keeps trying to collect Aruka's bounty, but is thwarted by Dan Loana, who has her own vendetta against Jin Varrel and the Palam Empire.

Heh.

Hazuki never gives up on her prize, and she keeps gunning for Aruka. Ironically, in trying to collect on Aruka's bounty, she helps her escape from the very people who are paying for her capture.

This show is just full of strong women. We now have another in Dan Loana, the leader of The Pleasure Gang, who's gang gets eliminated by Jin Varrel and her two lieutenants. At least she survives, so we'll get to see more of tan skin and eye patch.

The show is at its best when these women are moving. Hazuki and Aruka duking it out in the daylight looks even better than their first moonlit tussle.

Preview Gif Anime - Blade and Soul - Episode 2

Blade and Soul - Episode 2

More world building as the main story hasn't started yet. A mix of animation styles leads to mixed results. We meet more interesting characters.

Heh.

Can you tell this anime is based on a video game? Our hero Aruka barely says anything at all, as we come to our first small town on the frontier, with bounty hunters, thieves, and assorted sundry NPC's. The bounty board looks exactly like something you'd use to pick out your side quests to get experience and money. And our Aruka has no money. With how little she says, I think her name is perfect in Japanese, 「あるか？」, "Are you still there?"

We get a nice Mexican standoff between three would be bounty collectors, and some shadowy censorship on how Aruka uses her blades along with hiding bullet wounds.

Elle Karen, the Tomon Inn Propietress, really knows how to handle her fan. From putting on a little show at the inn, to saving the drunk bounty hunter Hazuki from Aruka's blade.

But she really knows how to use it to dance, as the end credits showcase.

Preview Gif Anime - Blade and Soul - Episode 1

Blade and Soul - Episode 1

Role playing game adapted to anime. Safe for work, unfortunately...

Our main character, Aruka, is a soldier gone AWOL from the evil empire. She is a member of a special clan known for its martial arts with bladed weapons, which is becoming obsolete within an empire on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution. Unfortunately, all the overplayed themes of environmental damage, robber barons, and the soulless use of guns against hand-to-hand combat and blade and blunt weapons make themselves very apparent. The plot centers around using fertile land to grow performance enhancing flowers so that the formerly valued martial artists can prove they have a role against the march of industry, and against vast numbers holding guns.

I could just ignore all this stuff and watch the pretty, pretty girls, and they are pretty pretty, but we have barbie doll style nudity, which doesn't even the balance. My search for a replacement for High School DxD NEW and Freezing Vibration continues.