From Old Country Bumpkin to Master Swordsman

Episodes 1-2

Episode 1 of From Old Country Bumpkin to Master Swordsman takes a genuinely solid premise and does a pretty good job of getting the ball rolling with it.

I think the best element the show has going for it is the central conceit. Beryl is a middle-aged sword instructor with a great deal of humility and no real-world experience. This is a really good and unique lead character to tell a story with. He's got the skills and years of training/teaching, but has seldom – if ever – had to use those skills in actual combat. No life or death situations, no great victories of the past, etc. It's a great way for the series to have its cake and eat it too, so to speak: a lead who manages to exist in the overlap between “character with lots of life experience” and “character who is very inexperienced with how the world works.” He can be strong but not quite know his own strength, connected but not fully in tune with politics and various factions, known to some and unknown to many. That's an engaging lead.

Sadly, I don't like a lot of the character dynamics being established here. I understand that he taught a lot of these knights when they were much younger and is now meeting them years later, so we avoid some of the more concerning aspects of what is being implied. But there's still a lot of repetition on display: meet a new character that Beryl seemingly doesn't know, oh wait, they trained under him years ago, he has mostly forgotten them, but they adore and idolize him. I'm hoping we get some new character interaction types in future episodes to vary things up a bit.

Episode 2, meanwhile, does a decent job with the sword fighting despite rehashing the character interactive bits. Beryl is a likable main character for his humility alone. He does not seem to have known how great an impact he was having and is loath to take too much credit, even when others try to heap praise on him. The show makes a clear distinction between teaching and practice, but not in a negative sense – it takes a certain kind of skill to instruct others effectively, and there is often little chance to know if that instruction had an impact long term. It's great to see how many lives Beryl has affected over the years.

Again, not liking the repeated introduction of former students using the same formula. Two episodes in and this bit has worn out its welcome. I'm hoping we get a bit more characterization from the former students than what we have currently, as all of their personalities seem to be “I love and respect my former teacher Beryl, but I get into meaningless conflicts with his other former students.”

The sword fighting has been engaging but not high quality. I like the focus on angle of angle, momentum, and using various parts of the sword like the pommel/hilt, etc. The animation isn't the best, sadly, but it's perfectly fine for weekly television. I should also mention that I discovered this was dubbed in English too, but did not care much for the dub performances overall. I hope they can settle in as the series progresses and they get more comfortable with the characters.

Episode 1: Rating:

Episode 2: Rating:

From Old Country Bumpkin to Master Swordsman is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Videos on Saturdays.