Bamboo Blade (2007)

Kojirō, the coach of Muroe High's kendo club, makes a bet with his senpai, Kenzaburō, on a practice match between both schools, but the fighters must be 5 girls, no boys. Kojirō's victory would mean he could eat all he wants at Kenzaburō's father's sushi restaurant for a full year. Kojirō desperately needs to find more talented female kendo students because he only has 2 girls in his club. With only a month remaining before his match with Kenzaburō's team, he meets an extremely talented freshman, Kawazoe Tamaki.

Tamaki's motivation is presented in the form of her favorite tokusatsu, Blade Braver, and feels happy when toraji nicknames her "Red", the leader of the Club's female team. Her relationship with the other club members develop when they start having lunch together and sharing their bento, her everyday bento, however, consisted of a single umeboshi and rice, which she constantly made in honor of her parents, and couldn't share with the others. She start making "shareable" bento at the end of the episode, even though she fells she's disrespecting her parents a little.

The 4th female member of the Kendo Club, Sayako Kuwahara, nicknamed by Toraji as the team's "Blue", is revealed, and has a painful first encounter with Miyako's "Black" personality. (note: the encounter between Saya and Miya-miya is different in the anime from the manga.)

Miyako learns that the girl she had thrown in the lake the previous day was actually her senpai in the club, this leads her, in her "Pink" personality, to awkwardly try to hide her identity from Sayako to avoid any confrontations. She starts to enjoy more of the club's activities, even though being forced to train from early in the morning, because of the opportunities kendo give to harm others legally. She is eventually convinced by Toraji to apologize and befriends Sayako.

The day of the match arrives, however, due to the unique personalities of its members, the Machido High Kendo Club is awfully delayed. The real match starts very late in the episode, and the episode ends with Machido High's members awed by Tamaki's ability, after scoring a point in the first battle.

After Tamaki's match, which ended in a victory for her, the other matches take place meanwhile she prepares to participate in the last match too. At the end, Muroe High School ends winning 3 wins to 1 loss and 1 tie. Therefore, Kenzaburo challenges Tamaki to a match, impressed of how a girl of her age with such a great talent is in a club like that.

This episode picks up at the end of the previous one, starting with Kenzaburo revealing that he knew the fifth fighter (Bureiba) was actually Tamaki. His challenge to Tamaki is accepted and so Kenzaburo and Tamaki's match starts. Kenzaburo goes all out on Tamaki, and they both score a point, but in the third round, Kenzaburo starts out in Jodan. This forces Tamaki to have a flashback of her mother in the same position. Kenzaburo leaves the match as a tie, and then goes out to a sushi dinner with Koujiru where Koujiru finds out that Kenzaburo's father has given his restaurant away, making their bet void.

Tamaki sees an anime package on TV that she wants, but later finds out that she does not have enough money for it. At the school's dojo, Tamaki overhears Miyako on the phone talking about how she could not work part-time that day. Tamaki approaches her and inquires about it. Miyako then asks Tamaki to work part time there, to which Tamaki agrees to. Tamaki's father at first disagrees with Tamaki getting job, mostly because the school does not allow students to work part time jobs, but then accepts because he thinks that Tamaki is growing up, and also she will use the money to buy him a gift for his upcoming birthday.

Kōjiro has an incident in a public setting that places his teaching prospects at Muroe High School in doubt. With the rest of the club he resolves to get to the Nationals (or some similar honour) in an attempt to improve the club, gain distinction and save his teaching position. A weary Tamaki nears the end of her part time job filling in for Miyako. Then a suspicious customer arrives.

The team enters the high school tournament. Only Tama-chan did well enough to win. Miyako meets her middle school classmate, Otajima Reimi who has a crush on her. Miyako as such became troubled and couldn't concentrate on her match. It was revealed that Reimi used to harass Miyako when they were in middle school. The episode ends off with Kōjiro sensei discussing about a fifth member with Kirino, the club captain.

Miyako reveals to the other kendo members that Reimi has been harassing her because during middle school she refused to go out with the captain of the mens football team, whom Reimi had already been rejected by. Try as she might, Kirino is unable to remember the name of the potential fifth female member who's studying at Muroe high school. Yūji suggests that Kirino should call her friend up and ask for her name again, which she does. Armed with the name Satori Azuma, Kirino and Sayako begin to search for her.

This episode dedicates to Mei from Seimei high and Azuma from Muroe High. Mei joined Seimei High's Kendo club to get along with her friends, but many of her friends quit the club as they couldn't take the sensei's strict training. They gear up for the practice match with Muroe High, she had set her mind to quit after the practice match. Kōjiro found out that Azuma didn't want to join the kendo club as her results in examinations were bad. Not because she wasn't able to do it, but she made careless mistakes. Nevertheless, Kirino drags her to the practice match. The episode concludes with Seimei High's Kendo team training against Muroe High's Kendo team.

Muroe High School Kendo team won all their matches against Seimei high in the practice match. Azuma upon seeing Tama's Strong kendo skills become motivated and took part in the practice match. Before that, Tama had a match with Azuma, despite Azuma losing, she was impressed and therefore became motivated. Mei, from Seimei high who originally wanted to quit decided to stay on as she was impressed by Tama's skills. The episode end off when Seimei High's Sensei competed with Muroe's high sensei and won the match.

Kirino and Sayako continue their attempts to persuade Azuma to join the kendo club. Their attempts end only in tears. As they run through and around the school, Miyako hears their mobile lamentation and springs into action. She offers an excuse that she has cleaning duties, then sweetly dumps said duties onto her classmates. Alternating between a good friend, salesperson and snake cornering a frog she attempts to win over Azuma. Miyako's tactics eventually convince Azuma (and later her parents) to join the kendo club with the expectation/condition that it will lead to improved grades. With the team set (and the boys ignored) a training camp is announced. Due to a lack of funds, this intensive training will take place on the school grounds. Tamaki's father is perturbed especially when Tamaki confirms Yūji Nakata will be there.

It's training camp at Muroe High, jointly with the five Machido students that they had a practice match with. Tama's father sneaks around worried about the boys while the group cleans up the pool, fights over who gets to train with Tama, and takes a break at the Bath House. After that, they have to deal with one of them sneaking away, pillow fights, Saya's guitar, and even getting freaked out by the sleeping habits of their fellow students (like sleeping with eyes open!). The episode wraps up with Tama and Kirino, the latter who can't help but stay up and hold her shinai a bit longer. Camp ends and everyone returns home, but for Kirino, something more than a warm welcome awaits...

Kirino is worried by home troubles while the rest of the team worries about her. Saya, sharing a deep connection with Kirino, is prepared to step up for the win and ease Kirino's burden. Despite these troubles, however, Kirino seems even more focused than ever. Meanwhile, Tama is pulled into a deceitful web...

The tournament continues, with Tama seemingly in trouble with the other team's treacherous plots. Satorin (Azuma) encounters a little bit of stomach troubles while Miya-miya is continuously haunted by Reimi's face. Saya does her duty to relieve Kirino's burden, and Kirino does her part as the team's captain. When Tama steps up, she has a little payback in store for her opponent...

Kōjiro and Tama have a little talk and wounds are tended to. Kirino must stand up in order for the team to keep fighting. The tournament ends and the team is back to base as usual, with Saya off somewhere and Tama alright.

Miya-miya and Dan-kun shops for a new Shinai at the Kendo store. There they meet Carrie, an expatriate living in Japan, who falls in love with Dan-kun at first sight. Miya-miya challenges Carrie to a duel.

Yuji invites Tama to go to an amusement park that's hosting a Blade Braver concert. At the venue, She meets a girl called Rin who's a fan of Braver's rival, "Shinaider". They enter a fan-quiz to win Blade Braver dolls.

Rin and Tama along with the production crew go on location to film the new Blade Braver movie, where an incident gets both of them the replacement roles in the new film. The rest of the Kendo club members either practice or take the day off doing what they want. The episode concludes with Kōjiro returning from his business trip.

Muroe High goes to the Kanto High School Kendo Tournament. Miyamiya shows her improvement in practice, but fails to defeat Carrie in the tournament. Muroe makes it to the 3rd round, where Tama is finally defeated by Rin, and Muroe is pushed out of the tournament. Meanwhile, Toyama and Iwasa, two former members of the kendo club, are caught fighting in a video game arcade and destroying two machines.

The principal of the school tells Kōjiro that the kendo club will be disbanded because of club members engaging in suspicious or risky activities—specifically, Toyama and Iwasa, who, ironically, have stopped attending kendo club but have not turned in any resignation forms. Kirino and Sayako are distraught when Kōjiro reveals the news to them, and they protest the principal's decision, calling it unfair. Meanwhile, Miyako has an emotional breakdown over her failure in the competition and, surprisingly, refuses Danjūrō's comfort. Tamaki, also unhappy over losing the competition, quits the kendo club, much to Kirino's dismay.

Kirino attempts and fails to prevent Tamaki from resigning from the kendo club, the latter already having decided to give up. Neither she nor Miyako decide to attend kendo club, and nobody knows Miyako's whereabouts. Eventually even Kirino decides not to attend, and the only members left are Satori, Yūji, Danjūrō, and Sayako. Satori manages to convince Miyako to keep up with kendo, while Sayako dissuades Kirino from quitting kendo. Yūji comforts Tamaki, telling her that losing is not as bad as she thinks, and Tamaki decides to learn jōdan to help improve her kendo skills. Eventually she decides to come back to kendo club, and the members are reunited.

Muroe High goes to a national kendo competition and meets with many of their former opponents. Miyako, having watched footage of her previous kendo match filmed by Reimi in an effort to improve her kendo skills, manages to beat Carrie Nishikawa, the latter of which calls the former out for a match of their own and is beaten again. Tamaki fights Rin Suzuki again and wins by using the thrust attack. Kōjiro, on the other hand, has emptied out his apartment, and in the last few minutes of the episode is shown getting on Nobu-chan's motorcycle and going to a different place--presumably his new home.

It is a new year and several months have passed since the National competition. Two freshmen show up to join the club. The members one by one appear trying to convince them to join the club only to perform sideshow tricks leaving the freshmen unimpressed. The club later have a sparring match which causes the freshmen to become enthusiastic about joining the club. Its later revealed that these two new members are the siblings of the previous members that quit. Kojiro returns back to school having settled the problem with the old lady that forced him to leave. At the very end of the episode Tama-chan encounters a long purple haired woman with blue eyes, hinting that Bamboo Blade may have another season to come.