Fedranime reviews
Samurai Champloo
You might be wondering why I’m not reviewing Gurren Lagaan
like I said I would try to do in my Summer Wars review. Well my vacation was
great thanks for asking. Anyways as High School of the Dead taught me, I should
not review an anime until either I have watched the entirety or a reasonably
caught up in it. So excuse me for currently watching only 5 episodes but I
swear to god if I have to hear the black siblings yell “LALALALALA” while
throwing water balloons at mecha’s then someone will lose a limb tonight!
Anyway Samurai Champloo.
Samurai is an original anime made by studio Manglobe and
dubbed by Funimation. It follows the story of Fuu, a 15 year old girl with a
pet flying squirrel and the ability to pack away food that would make Goku cry
in shame, Mugen, a guy from Ryuku islands who fights by breakdancing with a
katana and metal soled geta sandals, and Jin, an aloof ronin with a mysterious
past. They are on the journey to find the samurai who smells of sunflowers, a mysterious
man who has something to do with Fuu’s past.
Samurai Champloo is a pretty good anime in my opinion, in
fact I really like how they have reversed the typical hot-shot loner and cold
chivalrous hero types with Mugen in Jin. In any other anime you would expect
Mugen to be kidnapping Fuu and tying threating her only for Jin to then break
down a wall and save her. Here every time something bad happens to Fuu, which
is ALOT since this is feudal Japan, Mugen actually gets up and save her while
Jin’s just “Eh didn't really like her anyway. To the Brothel!”(No seriously)
Each episode also introduces several characters of the day for each episode and
each one is memorable and always sticks with you, particularly Manzo the saw, a
detective spoofing popular Japanese movie series Hanzo the razor, and Isaac
Kitching, a Dutch man escaping to Japan so he can become bushido.
I think the main problem with this anime is that it has
little continuity and almost no story. Sure there’s the plot of how Fuu somehow
needs revenge on the Sunflower Samurai, but in a lot of episodes this barely
gets mentioned. Hell, in the last 1/3 of the series the guy barely gets mentioned.
There’s also how there’s rarely any continuity between episodes, the one major
exception being the last four. This is particularly glaring in the fifth to
last episode where Fuu, Mugen, and Jin eat mushrooms, hallucinate working in a
mine, and then Gosunkugi from Ranma ½ grabs a lute and just carpet bombs them
with a meteor. Next episode doesn't even acknowledge this happens and basically
goes “Oh crap! Our contracts almost expired and we don’t even know who the
samurai is! Quick summon awesome spear battle with an assassin and Mugen!”
There’s also a few minor(?) snarls such as Jin falling in love with a women who
tried to commit suicide and has to work at a brothel (are you noticing a
pattern with Jin here?) to pay off her husbands debts, they fall in love, and
Jin pays for her freedom and sends her to an island where she will be safe. Two
episodes later Jin is in a different brothel in a different town and no one
talks of her again.
So is Samurai Champloo good. Yes. This is an amazing anime,
as would be expected from the spiritual successor to Cowboy Bebop. Similar to
their predecessor they blend the amazing animation with music, in this case hip-hop.
I love the characters and despite the problems with the story, I can easily say
this is one of my favorite to anime. That's it for this edition of Fedranime
reviews, don’t forget to leave a request in the comment section and something
tells me to stop ending these reviews with “Catch you later” or MasakoX might
sue.
