Fuu Kasumi is a young and clumsy waitress who spends her days peacefully working in a small teahouse. That is, until she accidentally spills a drink all over one of her customers! With a group of samurai now incessantly harassing her, Fuu desperately calls upon another samurai in the shop, Mugen, who quickly defeats them with his wild fighting technique, utilizing movements reminiscent to that of breakdancing. Unfortunately, Mugen decides to pick a fight with the unwilling ronin Jin, who wields a more precise and traditional style of swordfighting, and the latter proves to be a formidable opponent. The only problem is, they end up destroying the entire shop as well as accidentally killing the local magistrate's son.
For their crime, the two samurai are captured and set to be executed. However, they are rescued by Fuu, who hires the duo as her bodyguards. Though she no longer has a place to return to, the former waitress wishes to find a certain samurai who smells of sunflowers and enlists the help of the now exonerated pair to do so. Despite initially disapproving of this idea, the two eventually agree to assist the girl in her quest; thus, the trio embark upon an adventure to find this mysterious warrior—that is, if Fuu can keep Mugen and Jin from killing each other.
Set in an alternate Edo Period of Japan,Samurai Champloo follows the journey of these three eccentric individuals in an epic quest full of action, comedy, and dynamic sword fighting, all set to the beat of a unique hip-hop infused soundtrack.
Samurai Champloo is the only anime to have featured music from the Japanese hip-hop producer Nujabes prior to his death in 2010. The anime also spawned the 2006 video gameSamurai Champloo: Sidetracked for the PlayStation 2.
The show aired in two parts, with the first half airing Thursdays at 2:28 AM on Fuji TV from May 20, 2004 to September 23, 2004, and the second half airing Saturdays at 10:30 AM on BS Fuji from January 22, 2005 to March 19, 2005.
Geneon Entertainment USA originally licensed and released the show in North America, but after their closure in late 2007, the show went out of print. FUNimation Entertainment later entered a distribution deal with Geneon to distribute some of their titles, includingSamurai Champloo. After the distribution deal ended, FUNimation later outright licensed the series.
"Samurai Champloo" may not have the same ring to it as "Cowboy Bebop," yet it is a title that has a similar function: to illustrate a combination of multicultural pulp fiction sensibility. Where Cowboy Bebop was a past + future fusion of jazz, rock, and blues, spaghetti western, kung fu, and noir cinema genres, and a setting equating outer space to the great frontier, Samurai Champloo is a more wildly anachronistic mélange of Edo-period history and contemporary hip-hop and bohemian culture. "Champloo" itself comes from the word "chanpurū," Okinawan for "something mixed," and a source of Okinawa's pride in multicultural acceptance. Cowboy...Bebop was a trend-setting marriage of anime traditions and Tarantino-inspired cultural hodgepodge — it could be said that Pulp Fiction influenced Cowboy Bebop as much as Cowboy Bebop influenced Kill Bill — and Samurai Champloo continues in this meta style, taking it even further.
Of course, Cowboy Bebop was not Shinichiro Watanabe's first foray into resonant crossover in anime: Macross Plus was a monolithic amalgamation of Top Gun's hot-headed romantic drama and sci-fi tropes including a pop-idol hologram version of 2001: A Space Odyssey's HAL, in turn influencing the famous cyberpunk writer William Gibson to write Idoru, a novel about a Japanese virtual idol and her marriage to a real-life rock star. Of course, all of this was before the invention of the Vocaloid, though I suppose the future imagined by Watanabe and Gibson was, in a way, not so far off.
Anyhow, now that I've finished my little history lesson — which I feel is relevant, as having such a perspective may deepen your enjoyment of Samurai Champloo as much as it did for me — let's continue on to the review. In light of all the prescient futurism found in Watanabe's other works, it's rather interesting that he decided to shift his focus to the past and present. Of course, the world's future is always in its past... and what we have here is, in a nutshell, Edo-period Japan: the remix. Baseball, tagging/graffiti, Van Gogh, zombies, and Catholicism are tossed into the "chanpurū" with a whole lot of revised Japanese pseudo-history. As such the medley of influences and tangential tale-spinning occasionally smacks of filler, but one would do well to understand that this show is simply all /about/ the filler — and this is all for the better, because Samurai Champloo is at its freshest and most hilarious when it's veering off the rails. It even has the single most entertaining recap episode I've ever seen. Even with all this episodic improv, Fuu's journey in search of a "samurai who smells like sunflowers" provides a compelling core to the story, much like a steady hip-hop beat giving structure to the mix of samples and freestyle verses. Her ronin traveling companions Mugen and Jin mingle like oil and water, and there we have the perfect cast for hilarity and drama.
Samurai Champloo is one good-looking show, with its thick linework giving an impression of manga blended with graffiti style. One episode even takes a quick trip into the psychedelic, with a sudden burst of colorful hallucination, Mind Game style — courtesy of episode key animator Masaaki Yuasa, of course. A wide variety of such notable animators were brought on board and thus the style occasionally varies slightly from episode to episode or even scene to scene, but it's always pleasing and completely in tune with the show's theme. Rural Japan has never looked so urban; almost any given scene in Samurai Champloo would be right at home spray-painted on the side of a city building or underpass.
The music, likewise, blends hip-hop, rhythm & blues, and traditional Japanese shamisen. Music often plays second fiddle to the look and quality of the animation when it comes to my enjoyment of anime, but in some cases it becomes just as important. This is one such anime, where the music contributes so greatly to the feel of it that it defines it and sets it apart from other anime — much like the soundtrack by Yoko Kanno and the Seatbelts did for Cowboy Bebop. It's also worth mentioning that rap and beatboxing sometimes enter the dialogue, and it's always amusing. Admittedly, most younger people these days are far more familiar with hip-hop than they are with the jazz, blues, and big band genres; nonetheless, in the realm of anime this feels a bit groundbreaking, especially with the theme songs featuring Japanese rap lyrics. The world is getting bigger and smaller every day.
Samurai Champloo is a show for everyone. Plenty of great sword-slashing action, clever comedy, and a good share of moments that will tug at your heartstrings — often all at once. If you enjoy anime, this is one you can't miss.
This show could have been something special on the same page as such classics like Ninja Scroll(NOT THE TV SERIES), Samurai X OVAs, Rurouni Kenshin, or Basilisk.
Samurai Champloo could have been great like the classics above, but it ended up like Samurai Deeper Kyo. Just average, nothing special. There was nothing really special about the show. The characters were interesting, but not compelling. By the end I didn't really care that much about anyone of them. The mix of comedy was the one pretty good part of the show. The music was just bad, no make that terrible. The action never got me excited....The animation was very good I'll give it that everything about that was great.
Now for the worst part the story throughout the 26 episodes were a big let down. The story had no real drama or drive, it never gave the characters any real emotion, and the ending was just plain anti-climatic. I like when shows end without no real resolution. It happens a lot in romantic anime, but even their character evolve and come to some sort of ending when the series ends. Samurai Champloo just ends without any king of resolution.
Overall a decent anime series, but also a disappointing series.
Alright this is the first review I've ever written so sorry if it's not the best quality. Hope this helps you if you're planning on watching this show.
Story: 5
Now honestly i was pretty disappointed by Champloo's story, you see I'm a massive fan of Watanabes most popular work 'Cowboy Bebop' and I expected this story to be of similiar quality as it is held in the same high regard but considered 'heavily underrated' compared to Bebop but that is completely false. Firstly this show is mainly episodic which could have worked in it's favour as Cowboy Bebop was mainly episodic and amazing but Champloo's...attemp just falls flat with boring predictable plots and when there is a story that overlaps across episodes it just feels long and dull. The pacing isn't terrible but can feel awkward as well due to the fact that you don't really have a great anticipation for the story conclusion as there isn't really an overarching plot.
Art: 7
Now the art was pretty solid overall relative to when this show was released. Now I do think it possibly has some of the weakest animation in a Watanabe directed show but thats's mainly because Watanabe's other creations are just so interesting and defined in their art-styles. The animation during action scenes is very fluid and the dark gritty style works heavily in Champloo's favour.
Sound: 7
Now the soundtrack is probably one of the best parts of this show as it was done by the popular lofi-hiphop-esque producer Nujabes. The smooth jazz-rap builds on the action packed parts of this show and create a really chill vibe for watching. The opening and ending are also great and very memorable parts of the show.
Character: 4
The characters were also extremely disappointing and one faced in their personalities. Mugen was the typical excited, rowdy main character who is always ready for some action and kind of felt like a ripoff of Spike but minus the depth and development. Jin was the silent, Sasuke type and Fuu was basically an irritating tsundere type. The side characters were sometimes interesting but lacked development due to most stories only lasting one episode in the series.
Enjoyment: 4
Some may think I'm biased in some way from my review of this show but honestly I love anime and samurais as much as the next man but this whole show just wasn't interesting at all to me and everytime I watched an episode it felt forced and long.
Overall: 4
Overall i really didn't enjoy this show and my expectations were crushed in a mere few episodes. I think this show mainly suffers from the community's overrating nature and it's dull way of playing out mini-stories within a decent length show. I really wanted to like this show but my experience watching this show felt long and boring.
I hope this review helped you out in someway, thanks :)
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