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Review: Samurai Champloo (2004)
I won't lie, I came into this anime expecting something on par with Cowboy Bebop in terms of quality. These two series were associated as they had the same director.
However, Samurai Champloo was definitely a step below Cowboy Bebop. It was a fun anime, but I think there were two things that prevented me from enjoying it as much as Cowboy Bebop.
First, Samurai Champloo was set in an alternate Edo period. As somebody who is not well-versed in historical Japanese settings, I think that I probably missed a lot of the anachronisms and quirky things that would've stood out from a typical Edo-period story.
Second, Samurai Champloo was a relatively tame story in that it still erred on the side of moral caution. Our main characters did have questionable characters, but ultimately, it ended up being a happy, feel-good story. I didn't find myself interested in the characters because they were predictable and not particularly fleshed out.
So the reasons that I didn't enjoy Samurai Champloo was that I didn't think the writing was as compelling, and also because I wasn't from a background that could fully enjoy the stylistic aspects of this show.
Spoilers.
Story
This was an adventure story about two samurai accompanying a girl as she travelled to find her father. Pretty simple, but that doesn't necessarily say anything about the quality. (I'm sorry that I'm going to keep going back and comparing this to Cowboy Bebop). Cowboy Bebop wasn't about anything in particular either, and yet it hooked me as each of the characters had enough going on in their own lives for me to want to know what they were going to do next.
I believe this was the crux of what I couldn't enjoy about Samurai Champloo. None of the three main characters compelled them. Over the course of the show, we found out more about them as people, but that was all factual information. I never felt any curiosity for why the characters did what they did.
In addition, this show was a bit more anime trope-heavy than Cowboy Bebop, though far less tropey than the typical anime. But because the characters fell into tropes very easily, it was hard for me to think of them as individuals with motivations and personality. I'll talk about them more in their character sections.
In terms of the stylistic aspects of the writing, I did understand that there were many anachronisms in this alternate-Edo period. I was watching the anime with the original Japanese voices, but I did hear many English transliterations being used. I don't know how funny they were supposed to be to the average Japanese viewer. They were amusing, nothing more.
In terms of the actual story line and how it ended, I don't have a problem with it. Fuu met up with her father only to find out that she didn't feel good striking down this ill man. Mugen and Jin faced people in their pasts but ultimately came out on top. But I struggle to say that I felt any of them went through any emotional journey throughout the show. Perhaps we were supposed to focus on the three characters learning the power of friendship, but I struggled to connect with their friendships, even at the end. I can't explain why.
The inability for me to connect with the story was biggest reason that I was disappointed with this series. The humour was moderately funny, which was fine. I don't need a show to be ha-ha, roll-on-the-floor funny to love it. But rather, it didn't really hit where it counted. With a show that had a villain-of-the-week format, it was important to develop the three main characters very well and I just didn't think the script did that for us.
Production
Style
What made Cowboy Bebop stand out was that in addition to a fantastic story, it had great style. The atmosphere and the character designs were all so compelling. I really wanted to live in the world of Cowboy Bebop, despite how tough the characters' living conditions were.
However, Cowboy Bebop was set in the future, which gave the creators a lot of leeway to be creative. While Samurai Champloo was set in an alternate-Edo era, they were still restricted in that the atmosphere had to at least feel similar to the Edo that most people would recognize.
One thing that I noticed a lot about Samurai Champloo was just the lack of colour. I get that the characters were always scrounging by, but I've watched many historical shows with lovely colours. I just felt that for an upbeat show like Samurai Champloo, the colour palette could've been more exciting and enticing.
Animation
The animation was okay. There were times when I noticed lazy animation or just drawing that looked really off. Lazy animation was expected when characters would just be talking or walking. But sometimes the characters' faces were just very different from their usual look, and not for comedic reasons either. I noticed this a lot with Jin, who has a rather long face with straggling hair on the sides of his face. But sometimes his face would be drawn to look extremely haggardly, even if the situation didn't call for that.
The animation did feel detailed during any fight and action scenes, which was to be expected. We were meant to notice the different fighting styles between Jin and Mugen. Jin had a more typical form where he was rooted and stable, whereas Mugen preferred to get on his hands and utilize a lot of spins and flips and kicks.
The animation was also detailed in a lot of comedic scenes, to emphasize facial expressions and such. But overall I wouldn't say that I was super impressed or charmed by the animation.
Music
Before I started the series, I had understood that Samurai Champloo was to hip hop what Cowboy Bebop was to jazz. This show did have some funky hip hop tunes, but the soundtrack definitely wasn't as rich as the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack.
Voice acting
As I mentioned, I was listening to the original Japanese voices. They were fine, but Fuu did suffer from anime-girl voice which ground my gears A LOT. Why are female characters always sequestered into high af girl voices or low, cool woman voices?
Characters
I'm only going to talk about our three main characters since they were the most important and the only mainstays of the show.
Mugen
Mugen was a wanderer. He had an unsavoury past to do with robberies and such, but he'd left that life behind when he left the Ryukyu Islands.
I think the episode that developed Mugen's character the most was Misguided Miscreants, the episode(s) when the gang was on the Ryukyu islands. It was mostly because we met the only people who ever had a personal relationship with Mugen prior to the start of the series.
We already knew that Mugen was kind of a cold bastard, but before, it seemed more for comedy and self-protectiong. Through the character of Koza, we saw that he was more of a cold bastard than we thought. Koza wanted so badly to stay by his side and he'd rejected her many times.
In little bits throughout those two episodes, we saw that Mugen did care a bit for Koza, only for Koza to have used all of them in order to gain freedom from her brother for herself. Mugen killed Koza's new benefactor, but left Koza alive. I interpreted this as Mugen letting her have her life as a sign of respect for the history they shared.
Other than that, Mugen was really not fleshed out. His final fight was with a man he'd wronged in a robbery, but that was it.
What were his motivations for following Fuu? Just for the bet that they made? Was that really enough to keep him tied down? Perhaps Mugen had been craving company and easily gave in because it was a good opportunity. If that's the case, there was nothing else in the show to support that.
I assumed that Mugen was supposed to be THE samurai of Samurai Champloo, but he fell short as he was nowhere near charming or compelling enough to hold that mantle.
Jin
Jin was the other samurai. He was more of a typical stoic samurai. I felt that he was more compelling of the three characters because he was the one whose story was developed slowly over time during the episodes, as opposed to in huge spurts of exposition dump. That being said, I wouldn't say that his character was that well developed either.
Throughout the series, he'd be attacked by a number of people for reasons relating to him killing his teacher. However, we never really found out more about the circumstances of the killing until the last episode(s).
Like Mugen, I couldn't really understand what Jin's motivations in life were. Was he really in it for the fight against Mugen? (The "only I'm allowed to kill you" rivalry?") But they hardly have the same personality, and it would've made sense for them to have different outlooks on life.
At the very end of the series, Jin expressed that he'd killed his teacher because he didn't want to become a killing tool of the state. Okay, so why didn't the story build up more of his anti-state personality? The story spent too much time on the what and not the why, and that was a missed opportunity for Jin.
Fuu
Fuu just felt like a typical, spunky anime girl to me, I'm sorry. She was a peppy girl with a "dark past," but nothing about her made me care about her.
She wanted to find the Samurai who smelled of sunflowers, and it was very far into the series before we understood who he was and why she wanted to seek him out. That wouldn't have been an issue if the story was able to plant more clues earlier on for me to care about the Samurai who smelled of sunflowers. I wanted to know who the Samurai who smelled of sunflowers was, but funnily enough I had no interest in why Fuu wanted to seek him out. She just seemed totally disconnected from this story in my mind.
Fuu also suffered from a lot of the usual quirks of anime girls. Acting cute and being insecure about not being so womanly, having moments of vulnerability to make us try to sympathize with her. Fuu felt like the writers' one tool for trying to get me into the mood and there's nothing I hate more than the writers trying to manipulate my feelings superficially rather than telling a fleshed out story to make me feel things.
Overall
So overall, I was kind of disappointed with this show. It's definitely not bad, but it could've been better, particularly in the writing department.
However, Samurai Champloo was definitely a step below Cowboy Bebop. It was a fun anime, but I think there were two things that prevented me from enjoying it as much as Cowboy Bebop.
First, Samurai Champloo was set in an alternate Edo period. As somebody who is not well-versed in historical Japanese settings, I think that I probably missed a lot of the anachronisms and quirky things that would've stood out from a typical Edo-period story.
Second, Samurai Champloo was a relatively tame story in that it still erred on the side of moral caution. Our main characters did have questionable characters, but ultimately, it ended up being a happy, feel-good story. I didn't find myself interested in the characters because they were predictable and not particularly fleshed out.
So the reasons that I didn't enjoy Samurai Champloo was that I didn't think the writing was as compelling, and also because I wasn't from a background that could fully enjoy the stylistic aspects of this show.
Spoilers.
Story
This was an adventure story about two samurai accompanying a girl as she travelled to find her father. Pretty simple, but that doesn't necessarily say anything about the quality. (I'm sorry that I'm going to keep going back and comparing this to Cowboy Bebop). Cowboy Bebop wasn't about anything in particular either, and yet it hooked me as each of the characters had enough going on in their own lives for me to want to know what they were going to do next.
I believe this was the crux of what I couldn't enjoy about Samurai Champloo. None of the three main characters compelled them. Over the course of the show, we found out more about them as people, but that was all factual information. I never felt any curiosity for why the characters did what they did.
In addition, this show was a bit more anime trope-heavy than Cowboy Bebop, though far less tropey than the typical anime. But because the characters fell into tropes very easily, it was hard for me to think of them as individuals with motivations and personality. I'll talk about them more in their character sections.
In terms of the stylistic aspects of the writing, I did understand that there were many anachronisms in this alternate-Edo period. I was watching the anime with the original Japanese voices, but I did hear many English transliterations being used. I don't know how funny they were supposed to be to the average Japanese viewer. They were amusing, nothing more.
In terms of the actual story line and how it ended, I don't have a problem with it. Fuu met up with her father only to find out that she didn't feel good striking down this ill man. Mugen and Jin faced people in their pasts but ultimately came out on top. But I struggle to say that I felt any of them went through any emotional journey throughout the show. Perhaps we were supposed to focus on the three characters learning the power of friendship, but I struggled to connect with their friendships, even at the end. I can't explain why.
The inability for me to connect with the story was biggest reason that I was disappointed with this series. The humour was moderately funny, which was fine. I don't need a show to be ha-ha, roll-on-the-floor funny to love it. But rather, it didn't really hit where it counted. With a show that had a villain-of-the-week format, it was important to develop the three main characters very well and I just didn't think the script did that for us.
Production
Style
What made Cowboy Bebop stand out was that in addition to a fantastic story, it had great style. The atmosphere and the character designs were all so compelling. I really wanted to live in the world of Cowboy Bebop, despite how tough the characters' living conditions were.
However, Cowboy Bebop was set in the future, which gave the creators a lot of leeway to be creative. While Samurai Champloo was set in an alternate-Edo era, they were still restricted in that the atmosphere had to at least feel similar to the Edo that most people would recognize.
One thing that I noticed a lot about Samurai Champloo was just the lack of colour. I get that the characters were always scrounging by, but I've watched many historical shows with lovely colours. I just felt that for an upbeat show like Samurai Champloo, the colour palette could've been more exciting and enticing.
Animation
The animation was okay. There were times when I noticed lazy animation or just drawing that looked really off. Lazy animation was expected when characters would just be talking or walking. But sometimes the characters' faces were just very different from their usual look, and not for comedic reasons either. I noticed this a lot with Jin, who has a rather long face with straggling hair on the sides of his face. But sometimes his face would be drawn to look extremely haggardly, even if the situation didn't call for that.
The animation did feel detailed during any fight and action scenes, which was to be expected. We were meant to notice the different fighting styles between Jin and Mugen. Jin had a more typical form where he was rooted and stable, whereas Mugen preferred to get on his hands and utilize a lot of spins and flips and kicks.
The animation was also detailed in a lot of comedic scenes, to emphasize facial expressions and such. But overall I wouldn't say that I was super impressed or charmed by the animation.
Music
Before I started the series, I had understood that Samurai Champloo was to hip hop what Cowboy Bebop was to jazz. This show did have some funky hip hop tunes, but the soundtrack definitely wasn't as rich as the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack.
Voice acting
As I mentioned, I was listening to the original Japanese voices. They were fine, but Fuu did suffer from anime-girl voice which ground my gears A LOT. Why are female characters always sequestered into high af girl voices or low, cool woman voices?
Characters
I'm only going to talk about our three main characters since they were the most important and the only mainstays of the show.
Mugen
Mugen was a wanderer. He had an unsavoury past to do with robberies and such, but he'd left that life behind when he left the Ryukyu Islands.
I think the episode that developed Mugen's character the most was Misguided Miscreants, the episode(s) when the gang was on the Ryukyu islands. It was mostly because we met the only people who ever had a personal relationship with Mugen prior to the start of the series.
We already knew that Mugen was kind of a cold bastard, but before, it seemed more for comedy and self-protectiong. Through the character of Koza, we saw that he was more of a cold bastard than we thought. Koza wanted so badly to stay by his side and he'd rejected her many times.
In little bits throughout those two episodes, we saw that Mugen did care a bit for Koza, only for Koza to have used all of them in order to gain freedom from her brother for herself. Mugen killed Koza's new benefactor, but left Koza alive. I interpreted this as Mugen letting her have her life as a sign of respect for the history they shared.
Other than that, Mugen was really not fleshed out. His final fight was with a man he'd wronged in a robbery, but that was it.
What were his motivations for following Fuu? Just for the bet that they made? Was that really enough to keep him tied down? Perhaps Mugen had been craving company and easily gave in because it was a good opportunity. If that's the case, there was nothing else in the show to support that.
I assumed that Mugen was supposed to be THE samurai of Samurai Champloo, but he fell short as he was nowhere near charming or compelling enough to hold that mantle.
Jin
Jin was the other samurai. He was more of a typical stoic samurai. I felt that he was more compelling of the three characters because he was the one whose story was developed slowly over time during the episodes, as opposed to in huge spurts of exposition dump. That being said, I wouldn't say that his character was that well developed either.
Throughout the series, he'd be attacked by a number of people for reasons relating to him killing his teacher. However, we never really found out more about the circumstances of the killing until the last episode(s).
Like Mugen, I couldn't really understand what Jin's motivations in life were. Was he really in it for the fight against Mugen? (The "only I'm allowed to kill you" rivalry?") But they hardly have the same personality, and it would've made sense for them to have different outlooks on life.
At the very end of the series, Jin expressed that he'd killed his teacher because he didn't want to become a killing tool of the state. Okay, so why didn't the story build up more of his anti-state personality? The story spent too much time on the what and not the why, and that was a missed opportunity for Jin.
Fuu
Fuu just felt like a typical, spunky anime girl to me, I'm sorry. She was a peppy girl with a "dark past," but nothing about her made me care about her.
She wanted to find the Samurai who smelled of sunflowers, and it was very far into the series before we understood who he was and why she wanted to seek him out. That wouldn't have been an issue if the story was able to plant more clues earlier on for me to care about the Samurai who smelled of sunflowers. I wanted to know who the Samurai who smelled of sunflowers was, but funnily enough I had no interest in why Fuu wanted to seek him out. She just seemed totally disconnected from this story in my mind.
Fuu also suffered from a lot of the usual quirks of anime girls. Acting cute and being insecure about not being so womanly, having moments of vulnerability to make us try to sympathize with her. Fuu felt like the writers' one tool for trying to get me into the mood and there's nothing I hate more than the writers trying to manipulate my feelings superficially rather than telling a fleshed out story to make me feel things.
Overall
So overall, I was kind of disappointed with this show. It's definitely not bad, but it could've been better, particularly in the writing department.