Samurai Champloo - Reviews

Samurai Champloo. Even the name doesn't sound synonymous with the Samurai genre as a whole. Boasting one of the most impressive score to action coherence I have encountered, Champloo is an anime you MUST watch, I will not hear otherwise.

Mixing eccentric characters like the untamable Mugen, Jin the crystalline example of a ronin sticking rigidly to his beliefs and Fuu, the ditsy but determined 15 year old girl who wrangles the two swordsman like a couple of stray steer to accompany her on a journey for the samurai who smeels like sunflowers....even Sherlock had more to go on then that.
Each installment is packed with humour and great swordplay all the while expertly crafted to a hip hop style score kindly created and masterfully put together by the Nujabes which, wonderfully, matches each moment sparks rise from swords or a wacky side adventure is undertaken.

At 26 episodes, Champloo is in the shorter end of series and it is truly a pity to have to report that the final few episodes are a bit of a let down. However, dont let that damning brand set your mind away from the series. Samurai Champloo will captivate your attention, often leave you guffawing(tremendous word) with laughter and the swordplay renders any seeking the ancient clashing of steel like myself quite reasonably satisified. Yes, the 'friends conquer all' theme is resident here but it never stopped anyone from watching Naruto, Bleach, FMA:B or any other of the greats.

My simple review of Champloo is; WATCH IT! It's an experience both you and it deserve to have and neither will be left feeling too hard done by at the end, if maybe you crave only another slice of sumptous Champloo Pie.

Please take the time to experience the series as well as this review and make your own opinion upon the matter, particularly if you disagree with what is written above.

Many Thanks,
Thuringwethil.

So I admit that Samurai Champloo is probably my favorite anime of all time.  In fact, Samurai Champloo was the first anime I’ve ever watched in its entirety, and is the primary reason I am a fan of anime today.  I disclaim this in honest admittance that I have a soft spot for this show, and while I always do my best to keep my reviews objective, some of my subjective love for this show is probably going to bleed through.  You’ve been warned!

Art/Animation 9/10 – I’ve seen several other reviews bash SC’s art as being subpar, but I honestly do not really see it.  The characters are well drawn, their facial expressions were drawn well, and effectively portrayed their moods.  The action scenes, while normally short, were very good.  The sword strokes were comprehensible, and the characters’ movements were stylistic, and well done.  The fights rarely lost you, like in some anime’s where the screen just goes dark, and stuff happens.  While SC does not have the production values of some shows that are a decade newer, I never think, when I sit down and watch it, that the art or animation is substandard or bringing the show down.  The visuals are pretty to look at.  And sure, the female characters are not sex dolls with colossal bouncing tits, and yeah, the males aren’t pretty boys who are harem-like eye candy either.  So SC didn’t over indulge in fan service – big deal.  It’s better off that it didn’t.  The characters looked good enough and unique enough to serve as our leads, but they also looked real, and not over-the-top.  Kudos.

The choreography for the majority of the fights was utterly amazing.  But there were still certain fights where the screen blacked out and people died, such as when Jin killed a handful of ninjas at the brothel.  It seems to annoying to have those occasional cop-out fights, but it’s mostly forgiven by the great work that is put into the more important fights, and otherwise understandable when one sees how much action and liveliness is crammed into every single episode.

Sound 10/10 – Samurai Champloo offers some of the best musical themes and BGM of any anime (or non-anime for that matter) that I’ve ever seen.  It is funny I say this, because I am not personally overly fond of hip-hop, but the themes are so masterfully integrated with the series, that it is just impossible to not give out a full score.  The fighting scenes always have an appropriate beat, or theme, and like wise, the background themes will always bolster the mood the show is trying to inflict, be it sadness, angst, comedy, etc…  The voice acting is superb as well.  The OT is basically a rap song, but it is just so cool, and fitting with the feeling of the series that I will always just sit through it instead of skipping it, allowing it to amp myself up for the show.  The beats, the themes, and all the wonderful sounds of this show are so connected with the series itself, that they are more than just background noise, they truly are the heart and soul the piece.

I should also mention that the voice that the voice acting on this show (in both English and Japanese) is solid.  It is mature, and the voices very aptly fit the characters.  The sound effects were solid as well.  The sword clashes and flesh cuts (like when Mugen/Jin hack limbs) all sounded great and real.

Story 7/10 – I admit there is not a whole lot to say about the story of the show.  The premise is fairly simple; an oprhaned teenager gets two badass swordsmen to escort her acros the country in search for a man.  I normally am not at all a fan of a sereis that is episodic as opposed to ongoing.  Indeed, most of SC's episodes are tiney sub-stories that occur over teh whole journey.  Sure, there's the occasional two-parter, but the effect is still the same.  The major drawback of resolving events in a single episode, is that past characters/events tend to have little bearing on the future of the show.  Additionally, it is harder to retain tension from episode to episode to hook the viewer to keep watching.  You won't often find that need to watch the next episode as you would certain other shows which are more suspenseful.  Inversely, episodic stories (when well written like SC and Cowboy Bebop), gain tremendous buffers to their rewatchability - there's quite simply too many sub-stories to remember on a single go.  When a show is as enjoyable and well done as SC, the episodic nature might be looked at as a perk for this reason.

The pacing was quite solid for basically the entire show.  This is a feat very few anime series’ can boast.  While eps. 22 and 23 were goofy, and semi-fillerish, they were whacky and funny enough in their own right to not bring the show down.

The show’s complexity is subtle, yet present.  It mixes modern themes that did not necessarily fit the Edo era, but they were cleverly integrated into the story.  It creates this odd clash between ancient and modern times that seemed to work.  There was definitely a very heavy anti-authoritarian theme present as well.  In fact, I thought it was interesting that while Mugen and Jin were basically created to be perfect foils to one-another, and had stark differences in almost every way, it was interesting how they always agreed to oppose government, and rule. There were some odd magic moments that I think the show could have done without.  There was a guy attacking with a magic chi wind, a blind woman with daredevil-like sense, and Mugen/Jin were a little too indestructible.  The show sets an early pace with being very well grounded.  Sure, Mugen and Jin's power was awesome, larger than life even, but it still felt grounded enough.  The show maintained a mostly realistic feel, and the adventure, while perhaps excessively eventful, felt real and plausible as well.  I guess I just feel that the show would have been better served to leave out the magical elements and keep things realistic - it bothered to do so the majority of the time anyway.

I will only say that the conclusion took an incredibly implausible and cheesy turn - the momentum and impact of the last few minutes of the show plummeted.  But hey, I'm sure it worked for some folks.

Characters 9/10 – The characters were fantastic.  While SC does not boast a large cast, (indeed there are truly only three recurring characters), it can definitely be said that the three undergo a lot of development, and fleshing out.  The wonderful thing about SC, is that the cast of characters are very unique, and clash in such a way that is most often funny, but at times also very dramatic.  The characters have strong personalities, but they’re not fixed, either.  This makes the characters feel more human.  For instance, the well-mannered, and calm Jin still partakes in hiring whores, and inversely the crude, hot-headed Mugen has his pensive and insightful moments.  When the characters have strong personalities, many shows fall into a fallacy of making them unwavering.  SC does well to make its characters significantly more dynamic than that.

The backdrop to the characters remains a very large mystery at first, but SC very cleverly offers insight into the characters’ pasts in almost every episode.  If the subtle hints were not enough, there were many segments that offered rich details and past events.  It raises questions “Why did Jin kill his master?” “Why did Fuu undertake this journey?” “Why is Mugen so broken?” and indeed, it answers these questions wholly by the end of the series.

The character development is also very present.  What I really liked, was that the relationship between the three characters was very frail and fickle at first.  Each character was out for themselves, and intentionally separated several times because they simply didn’t get along.  The friendship between the three takes a significant amount of time to develop, but the viewer can truly see how it slowly strengthens with each passing episode.

Overall 9/10 – Samurai Champloo is that sort of anime I would recommend to anyone; and is most often the first (or maybe second to Cowboy Bebop) recommendation I make to non-anime watchers.  It has great pacing, great characters, and is a solid watch through and through.  As I’ve said, I do not believe I’d be an anime fan today if it weren’t for this show.  Since my first watching in 2004, I’ve watched it start to finish 13 times – so I hope that says something about the show’s rewatchability.  The anime’s already a bit of a classic, and has certainly earned its place in anime history.  While there are likely many others who will not quite find as much enjoyment from this show that, I can say with a good degree of confidence that this show offers a little something for all viewers, be it action lovers, comedy lovers, or drama lovers.  The show has  a very healthy dose of all those elements.

If you are reading this review, and have not yet watched SC, do yourself a favor and give it a watch.

ART SECTION: 9/10
General Artwork 2/2 (beautiful)
Character Figures 2/2 (memorable)
Backgrounds 2/2 (aesthetic)
Animation 2/2 (amazing choreography)
Visual Effects 1/2 (hot and cold)

SOUND SECTION: 10/10
Voice Acting 3/3 (sometimes corny, but well done)
Music Themes 4/4 (very catchy, and masterfully integrated)
Sound Effects 3/3 (awesome)

STORY SECTION: 7/10
Premise 1/2 (basic)
Pacing 2/2 (great)
Complexity 2/2 (some mature themes, nihilistic)
Plausibility 1/2 (mostly there, but sometimes very absent)
Conclusion 1/2 (cheesy, but ok)

CHARACTER SECTION: 9/10
Presence 2/2 (strong)
Personality 2/2 (well founded)
Backdrop 2/2 (deep)
Development 2/2 (strong)
Catharsis 1/2 (cheesy, but it’s there)

VALUE SECTION: 10/10
Historical Value 3/3 (certainly)
Rewatchability 3/3 (very high)
Memorability 4/4 (catchy tunes, memorable characters, and colorful elements)

ENJOYMENT SECTION: 8/10
Art 1/1 (looks nice)
Sound 2/2 (outstanding)
Story 1/3 (basic)
Characters 4/4 (very cool and memorable)

VERDICT: 9/10

Guess what, the word champloo isn’t made up (even though my spell check thinks it is), it’s a Japanese stir fry dish, or it could mean blend…I don’t know, not really pertinent to this review, but I thought it was interesting. Also, this show does baseball in the best way I've ever seen!

SHORT REVIEW:

Samurai Champloo doesn’t have a linier story line it is set up like a lot of normal shows, you can skip episodes and not really lose anything, the show is meant to be funny. The animation and sound is very different from most anime. The show has only three characters that you should care about, one’s calm, another’s wild, and the other’s a midway between the other two. The show should appeal to people that want a good short funny anime.

FULL REVIEW:

Story

Generally these types of stories kind of turn me off from an anime, since one of the only reasons I watch them is for their linear stories, (I mean c‘mon, most of them are) so me liking this show is somewhat of a mystery. This is one of those shows that you could miss a few episodes and not miss anything. Basic story: Guy named Mugen shows that he’s a bad ass at a restaurant, kicks a lot of thugs asses; then, another guy named Jin meets Mugen and two bond instantly, and also want to kill each other. But a girl named Fuu saves them when they’re in trouble and makes them promise that they help her find the “samurai that smells of sunflowers”. There you go, that’s most of the plot, the rest of the show is their adventure which has many hilarious, sad, and weird occurrences.

Now the plot isn’t perfect, for one, why do they stay with her; I mean sure they promised her, but I doubt that would keep them at bay, especially Mugen. Though, he does mention this to himself on one episode, but simply realizing the problem isn’t enough to fix it, writers!

...

Had you going there didn’t I? It starts with Mugen going along because curtain events keep them together; so, on the episode where he mentions this, it’s their friendship that keeps them together. Doesn’t the give you a fuzzy warm feeling inside?

Though most would disagree with me since I’ve read a few other reviews, Samurai Champloo seems like it would not appeal to many hard-core anime fans (besides the fact that everyone in it actually looks Japanese) and would actually appeal to someone new to anime. Now this show will not appeal to the following: People who hate Japanese society, overly religious people, people without a sense of humor, people that hate swords, people that hate the past, and people that hate Samurai Champloo (and/or samurais). So yes, now that those people are out of the way, everyone else should take a look at the first two episodes of Samurai Champloo then continue if you like, and stop if you don’t and waste an hour, or so, of your life complaining that I wasted 48 minutes of your life.

Animation

This show animation makes me believe that all of the anime artists in the stereo were fired for not being different and were replaced by graffiti artists and one anime artist who was good at adapting. So, yes, this show’s animation is different from the norm, in fact, very different, yet still not lazy like most of the American animation (where did that come from?). Though the show’s fights aren’t that long they are done very well, you see, most anime fights consists of many flashes and lines to signify speed, and though those get the job done, Samurai Champloo actually shows the sword contacting the other sword, as well as many other more realistic effects like that.

Sound

To go along with the animation, Samurai Champloo actually has some interesting music as well to say the least. What seems to go very well with graffiti art? That’s right, Hip-Hop music (and yes there is a difference between Rap and Hip-Hop), and boy does it deliver, people have mixed opinions about the beginning song, so that’s all based on what you think of it. As for the voices, everything is done very well, if you watch dubs like I do, then it may feel odd at some points when they put up Japanese subtitles when a non-Japanese speaker starts talking, but that’s because in the original subbed version those people actually spoke English.

So music gets a 6.5 because of people’s mixed feelings about it and voices get a 9 since I really can’t remember when their voices got bad, though it makes watching dubbed version kind of weird when they’re speaking the same language and the main characters act like they don’t understand them. So average that out and you get about 8.

Characters

This is a show where you won’t have to worry about not remembering their names, the only characters that you should give a s*** about are Jin, Mugen, and Fuu.

Jin is my personal favorite since he seems like the wisest of the three, and more of a samurai then Mugen. This show is about ancient Japan, it should have more samurai’s, so Jin is the incarnation of an ideal samurai. This is why he is my personal favorite, though he does sometime come off as the incarnation of shyness as well, heheh…

You really can’t get more opposite than Jin when it comes to Mugen; when Jin respects women and treats them like more than meat, Mugen WILL treat them like meat, where Jin speaks softly, Mugen speaks louder than a baboon without food (now that I think about it, that‘s a great definition of Mugen). His sword play is more rigid and unpredictable, though with talent. Though it’s never really explained why he’s so good with a sword.

Fuu is a balance of the two ultra one sided personalities, as if to say that Mugen represented evil and Jin represented good, show would be an almost perfect middle…well not really, she’d lean more towards Jin than Mugen, i.e., good and evil (Damn, I‘m saying a lot of stupid jokes this time around)

Overall

Okay, so there isn’t going to be any ultra fandom of Samurai Champloo anytime soon, the show’s story is ran like a very well written sitcom (yes, I‘m comparing it to a sitcom). There will be no parts that will make your mind explode then implode into a neutron star and rip though your whole body and make you die; however, it’s a nice fun anime that is fun to watch if you’re feeling in a FUN mood. Besides, who wants their body’s ripped though anyhow?

To my surprise, when I finished the 26-episode series Samurai Champloo, I found it much to my liking. The series was directed by Shinichiro Watanabe of Cowboy Bebop fame. The premise is a little bit of a screwy one: it is a "cross-genre" mix that employs a blend of Japan in the early Edo period (with a revisionist historical bent) with use of anachronistic elements of hip-hop, punk sub-culture, and modernism.

Sounds strange. But the series was done with such style and pizzazz that I ended up quite liking it, despite the fact that the show was a bit uneven and, quite frankly, WEIRD at times.

ART, COLOR & DESIGN
I absolutely loved the action sequences in this anime -- superior to those of Rurouni Kenshin (the anime series, not the OVA) in the way the frames cleaved to the swordsplay without cutaway screens. The fights were deadly, fast, and bloody. Slash, slash, dead body + blood spraying. Instead of having people stand around naming and talking about their special moves, these guys made quick work of their victims. Their motions were fluid and animated beautifully.

Colorwise, I was pleased. The colors in the show were not too bright, not too dull, and also quite varied. Impressive use of contrast. The episode featuring graffiti in particular employed color to good use.

As for character design, I have to admit at first I found it odd and jarring. The designs of Jin and Fuu adhere to traditional archetypes: cold, steely samurai and (yes, sigh) ditzy, cute anime girl (though Fuu was, for the most part, less annoying than most anime girls).

But the design of the 3rd main character, Mugen, is clearly taken from street sub-culture, from the way he looks & talks to the way he fights. It was so weird, but so awesome. The way the show unfolded, the design just seemed to FIT. In short, the show had STYLE and PIZZAZZ. Action sequences, character designs, animation... meshing with the irreverent dialogue and hip-hop music. It was so interesting to watch!

PLOT & CHARACTERS
This anime was not a plot-driven one. In fact, its basic plot is, well, basic -- Fuu recruits Jin and Mugen to help her find the Samurai Who Smells of Sunflowers. That's it. Most of the episodes don't advance the plot at all. It's not one of those I-must-find-out-what-happens shows,which I appreciated. The episodes ended up being random, mostly unconnected, and, as such, had great range and variety.

The show sampled a whole host of topics, with tidbits lifted from Japanese (and Western!) culture: beetle fights, ukiyo-e paintings, zombies!, baseball, graffiti, marijuana, the blind assassin, Musashi Miyamoto, Tale of the Genji... Sometimes the show got really weird (as in the zombies and baseball episodes), but ... I appreciated the breadth of things touched upon.

I guess I would call Samurai Champloo a character-driven show, although I wish the characters' backstories and pasts had been more fully fleshed out. The contrast between the wild, unruly Mugen and the aristocratic, traditional Jin was great, and unfolded in the way they dressed, talked, and fought. That was done really well, and really formed the heart of the show. But I wanted to know more about them. Fuu was boring, as most anime girls are, but I wanted to know more about her too. The director seemed more interested in developing the characters as a trio, in relation to one another.

OVERALL

Overall, I really liked the show. It was a novel and interesting concept that was executed well. There were some really fantastic episodes in there. Episodes of note: "Gamblers and Gallantry" (Ep. 11, where Jin falls in love with and rescues a whore-to-be), "Bogus Booty" (Ep. 15, where Jin and Mugen go to the counterfeiting brothel), "War of the Words" (Ep. 18 - the graffiti episode), "Elegy of Entrapment" (Eps. 20-21, with the kickass female blind assassin who kicks both Jin's and Mugen's asses), and of course the last 3 episodes ("Evanescent Encounter").

And again, as I said before, the show just had such kickass style that it made up for a simplistic plot and slightly underdeveloped characters. And, of course, the animation was really good. Samurai Champloo didn't have the epic, addictive quality of pre-season-3 Rurouni Kenshin but it was just ... really fun. I can't really say which (Kenshin or Champloo) I like better, though. I think it would depend on my mood.

This series will hook ya and keep ya wanting more, best part is currently all the episodes are on youtube for your viewing pleasure for free.