Samurai 7

[ace52387]

Samurai 7

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[Shimus]

Samurai 7 the anime is a series based off the movie "The Seven Samurai" produced in 1954, by acclaimed Japanese writer and director Akira Kurosawa.
I took the time to watch the movie and I found aside from animation and a couple additions, the anime stayed quite faithful to the movie. I was thoroughly pleased.

It's the tale of a village being harassed by marauders and bandits, taking whatever they want and leaving the village little to survive by. Eventually they even get to the point where the bandits abduct women and children. It's re-done as wiki put it well, into anime "Steam-Punk" generation of anime.



The village enlists the aid of the seven above, or the seven samurai, by offering them the only resource they have at their disposal - Rice. Since no Samurai in the era works for free, or for rice, they have a very hard time enlisting the aid of any samurai. I find this appealing due to the fact, hey, if you came up to me and offered me potato chips to go kill an army of people, would I seriously take the chips and fight? Only if I was deranged or had something wrong with me!

Even the most moral of the men, a man by the name of Shimada Kanbei, initially refuses the payment. Eventually through determination, the village envoy to the city (a young girl by the name of Kirara, a mikumari (village water priestess)) manages to get Shimada to agree to come help their city through her own wiles. As a whole, this plot element actually worked pretty well, it had its own action scenes and trifles with the local government as well.

Being a noble samurai and knowing his own limits, he then envisions a total of seven samurai to be needed to defend off the bandits from the village. In reality, if it were me however, I'd expect a little more then seven samurai to defend my city . To this end he enlists six other men, himself being the seventh. They return to the village after much searching and then prepare and train the men of the village for the next time the bandits show up. He also builds various town defenses I won't go into exact detail on, but suffice it to say they do the job pretty well. Oh yes; a giant ballista which is my favorite weapon by far, as it launches entire sharpened tree logs. He also trains them in the art of archery, as was very big back in the old days as most Japanese soldiers fought by sword, but anyways I digress.

In a plot twist, we learn that the government indeed were the ones bringing the bandits against the town through corrupt leadership. In my opinion, this parallels the world and how it majorly handles power. If the wrong person gets a grip, they tend to flip out. I liked this twist; It humanized the storyline for me.

After successfully fending off the invaders, Kanbei fears that if left unchecked, the government would send more and just keep harassing the villagers, so they decide to sock it to the leadership and take down the corrupt head of the government. Guess being too corrupt draws the ire of people who didn't even want to fight. Guess he should of kept it more secret eh?

I like character progression in the anime as well, you see a lot of characters (at least 3 or 4 out of the 7) mature along the way - also, the main villain - Ukyo grows from being whiny and a spoiled brat, to well, a psychopathic intellectual whiny spoiled brat who runs a country. In the movie to the anime, the same four samurai still perish in battle related deaths which I enjoyed, because staying faithful to a previous story which you are based off keeps a lot of the cool element.

After a mass of casualties on both sides, the corrupt ruler draws near in the ever-present floating castle/fortress deal in a lot of steam-punk type animes. The samurai, though fewer in number this time around, successfully destroy the castle and it falls just shy of ruining the land they started out to save, Kanna Village. Unfortunately, due to the scale, many of the seven die - even my favorite perished earlier then the rest

Overall, if you're seeking a good "Rise up and fight the powers that be" story, this anime is very choice to watch. In no way did I really spoil anything by reviewing, so feel free to go watch it - the animation style is crisp, the music is wonderful.

In my opinion, by the end of an anime, you should feel like a chapter of a certain book in your life has ended - leaving that "hole" feeling. This anime does just that, making you yearn for more. While not popular and not highly renowned, this anime is pretty decent. I even have this ranked as my number three on my signature.

Story 3/5
Characters 5/5
Animation 4/5

Overall: 4.5/5. A decent watch for anyone who likes a bit of action with their story.

[VivisQueen]

1. Just for future reference, always, always search the forum for an existing thread before posting a new one, otherwise it's just clutter. The official reviewing thread for Samurai 7 exists here.

2. Although you make a few interesting comments about what you thought of it, I'm surprised at the detail you went to describing everything that happens - including major twists and even giving away the end. Usually that's not a good idea, since others will want to discover these things for themselves.

I personally thought the series was rubbish. It started off with a really interesting premise and a damned awesome milieu - like you said, that steampunk feel is really refreshing. Unfortunately, it becomes a simplistic and repetitive good vs evil fable, where the fights get less inventive, and the characters (of which there are way too many for the 24 episodes of story) remain too one-dimensional to make them emotionally engaging. The main female character has a flat 'generic pleasant female' personality, and I don't even remember what four of the Samurai looked like. The boy one was like a less skilled, less interesting Ashitaka (Princess Mononoke); Kanbei was cool at first but then turned out to have nothing more going for him than the typical 'stoic hero' appeal; and the clumsy robot one got really irritating towards the end. My overriding feelings about it are one of massive disappointment and irritation.

[Huckleberry]

I am watching this now. I'm enjoying it a lot.

I will say that it's more inspired by, rather than based on, the Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai though. Only in chapters 13 - 16 can I see any direct correlations to the action in the earlier movie. The characters are roughly the same, and the premise is even more roughly the same; otherwise, everything is very different. This makes me like it more, not less, though.

[Funkgun]

Indeed. The very fact they did not try to copy the classic, and instead almost re-envision it completely makes it almost more fun to watch.
I just finished it last night, and I would have to place it high on my list of anime.
The Music, machines, animation and characters all flowed smoothly.

[Elminster]

I am currently stalled on this show because the HD of my main comp fried and I haven't gotten that fixed yet. Although I did transfer all my anime and other important stuff to my cousin's spare drive before mine completely gave up. Im on episode 3, from what I remember though this series got off to a very slow and stilting start, hopefully when I pick it back up it will get better though.

[Funkgun]

Yes, and then after the slow start, it does have some furious action followed by a sorta muddled middle, where the action sorta slows again.
But the end makes up for that.
I hate loosing my computer for the count, when I am in the middle of a series.

[rockenroll4life]

*Thread merged with already existing Samurai 7 thread*

~Rock

[Gundevil]

This is my first attempt at an anime review (though I've reviewed other things like video game and music albums before). I welcome any and all feedback, improvements, and revisions and hopefully I can start getting some reviews up on the site.

Samurai 7 Review

Story- 6.5/10
Anyone attempting to recreate Akira Kurowasa’s 1954 classic Japanese film Seven Samurai has a major dilemma on their hands – no matter how well done, the adaptation will never hold up to the greatness of the original source material. Gonzo’s Samurai 7 is the first attempt at converting the three-and-a-half hour masterpiece film into an anime series, and though there are plenty of exciting action scenes throughout, the series clearly fails to captivate its audience like the original.

The most striking and noticeable contrast from the source material is the setting. Samurai 7 is set in a futuristic, yet feudal Japan with bandits taking the form of giant robots and samurai slicing through metal as if it were butter. Though certainly not lacking in creativity it felt awkward to me to have human samurai based on feudal Japan fighting giant robots from the future. Even though some of the action scenes were visually stunning, this idea just did not appeal to me.

The story begins, as does the original, with a poor village of farmers being harassed by dishonored samurai turned bandits for their rice crops. The villagers decide to fight the bandits in order to have enough food for themselves by going into the city and hiring skilled samurai. The early episodes are fairly true to the original source material as the villagers travel to the city and slowly recruit each of the seven samurai, who join the fight against the bandits for their own personal reasons. Samurai 7, like the original, brings up the issue of class-based struggles though the series remains rather simplistic and not very thought provoking. This was the biggest disappoint for me since the original film made me think a lot and feel for the characters. There simply was no major emotional or rational pull into the series whatsoever.

One of the major challenges for Gonzo was in stretching a three-hour film into six-hundred plus minute series. The sixteenth episode in the series actually marks the end of the original source material, and then the series takes off on its own path, creating a new ending. The end result is that Samurai 7 feels like two completely different series where the first sixteen episodes are rushed with too many characters left underdeveloped. The second part then deviates drastically from the original source material and gets downright ridiculous at some points. In the end, the story has a great basic premise that is derailed by poor pacing, underdevelopment of characters, and a deviation from the original film.

Animation- 7/10
The animation is a mixed bag. While the backgrounds—especially the city in the first few episodes— are very colorful and spark the imagination, the character models are drab and boring for the most part. All the “poor villagers” wear the same exact clothing; I guess they’re wearing uniforms now. Some of the designs for the samurai are also boring, though I did like the design for Kyuzo, and Kikuchiyo. Action scenes are another strong point as there of plenty of swordfights that are just gorgeous to look at.

Sound- 7/10
The music, including the opening theme and ending theme, fit nicely with the anime and do a good job setting the serious mood of the series. The English dubbing is lacking with some voice actors that just annoy me. If you do want to watch the series, I definitely would recommend watching the series in Japanese with English subtitles over the dubbed version. Sound effects are done well but don’t really make much of a difference either way.

Characters- 6/10
The characters are well-developed by the second half of the anime, yet most of them still fit into rather common clichés and are completely one-dimensional. The main protagonist Kambei is the one character whose history is well-developed and feels more multi-dimensional. He has seen many battles and it has hardened him to the harsh realities of life and class-struggles, yet he also has a soft and sympathetic side. One other protagonist is the main villager girl, Kirara, who fits perfectly into the role of clichéd “nice girl”. She isn’t very interesting at all because we have seen her character a million times. Most other characters are forgettable, expect maybe Kyuzo who is extremely underdeveloped and clichéd as the quiet badass, but at least he’s cool to look at in action.

Overall- 6.5/10- Above Average
Samurai 7 seemed to have a lot of potential at the start of the series but too many unnecessary scenes and characters keep this anime from excelling. In the end, it falls to being your average anime that does enough things right to keep it from being horrible, but not enough right to make it compelling, thought provoking, and emotionally engaging. For those who are fans of the original this may be worth watching just to see an animated adaptation of a masterpiece. Just don’t expect it to be any bit as good as Seven Samurai, or even the western remake by John Sturges, The Magnificent Seven. If you haven’t seen Seven Samurai and don’t care for good action scenes in anime, pass this one up as you would just be wasting your time.

868 words

[valondar]

This looks like a very solid review to me. I really don't have a lot to add to that, except for this minor, niggling quibble:

Gonzo’s Samurai 7 is the first attempt at converting the three-and-a-half hour masterpiece film into a twenty-six episodic anime series,

This seems a little unnecessary in detail. Surely this is the first attempt to make an anime version at all, let alone specifically twenty-six episodes? I think the length problem is adequately addressed in the rest of the review as well.