Samurai Champloo
Netflix Synopsis: Director Shinichiro Watanabe mixes a maturity rarely found in anime with a historical Japanese setting and a funky
hip-hop soundtrack. Fuu is a spacey waitress at a teahouse where a
sword fight breaks out between Mugen, a wild warrior, and Jin, a more
composed ronin. In exchange for saving them from execution, Fuu
demands that they accompany her on a journey to find “a samurai who
smells of sunflowers.”
Review: At long last, I can finally review this one! This is a
completely entertaining, modern, aesthetically and emotionally
pleasing and kinetic anime. In essence, the 7-disc series finds Fuu,
an opinionated, cutesy, attention-loving, always-hungry waitress
paired with Mugen, a young, rebellious, arrogant yet humorous loner
who can wield hell with his sword but whose fighting tactics are more
reminiscent of the martial arts of Brazil’s capoeira or Israel’s Krav
Maga than the classic samurai style, and Jin, a classic samurai
trained in the classic samurai fighting styles and who adheres to the
samurai code who is near unstoppable when his sword is unsheathed.
At the start of the series, Fuu trades her help when the both are
captured in an unauspicious turn of events for them to accompany her
on her journey to find “the samurai who smells of sunflowers.” It is
later revealed that this samurai is her long-lost father. The series
essentially details the adventures that this odd triplet have on
their quest. Needless to say, the odd triplet and their adventures
make for a lot of humor, entertainment and character development (the
eating competition episode and the baseball scene episode against the
westerners were two of my favorite and two of the funniest!). I felt
like I really knew each of the main characters by the end of the
series and loved their individual personalities – Fuu kooky and cute
but insecure, Mugen emotional and wild, Jin tranquil and composed but
passionate within – yet all have a sense of humor. Also, while the
series itself takes place in 18th century Japan, the anime has a very
modern sensibility to it reflected in the dialogue of the characters
and various people they meet mixed in with a little hip-hop music and
turntabled soundtrack (what? yes, you heard me – and oddly enough, it
works).
The actual animation is stellar and is reflected not only in the
expected fun fight scenes in different backdrops and using different
fighting styles (and sometimes “style” is used rather loosely)
against different enemies, but unexpectedly in the tranquil scenes as
well – waterfalls, geisha houses, the countryside filled with
sunflowers etc. The color palette hit everything in the spectrum and
fit well with each particular scene. Finally, I really loved the end
credit song for each episode.
Final Rating: 4.5 stars.
Audrey
