Review of The Elusive Samurai

Well, I do appreciate how the anime depicts actual conflict. I mean, it doesn't take the lazy route where all modern shounen are just good guys vs the evil demons. Oh boy, would it be too difficult to watch humans cutting down other humans, let's dumb it down a little and make the enemies literal demons and monsters so that the audience can understand who are the good and bad guys are! Yes, this show has people cutting down other people. After all, it's set in a time of wars between provincial lords and successions of people in power. It's the late Kamakura period! It's niceto see a historical show -- albeit very loosely I imagine -- when all shounen series tend to be generic power fantasies. However, as always, the show obviously is shounen at heart. The show features some minor magic and superpowers at hand, as well as a nine year old protagonist trying to take revenge over the current administration that threw his clan out of power.

The offputting part of the show, and perhaps the reason people will love or hate this show has to be the comedic and slice of life bits. Even our main character's personality consists of enjoying the thrill of running away. It's a little difficult to take a show seriously when the main character's getting off in a fight to the death. There's plenty of manzai and comedic interactions even when people are fighting. Either way, the show attempts to inject a lot of lightheartedness and humor even in the most serious of times. People can be cutting other peoples' heads off and there would still be a mandatory comedic bit like running out of energy and having to eat a bunch of rice balls in an exaggerated manner. There's one thing for sure: it's not a Gintama. I wouldn't say it was very successful at pulling this sort of dynamic off very well.

Yorishige's the worst of them all, being a running overpowered gag character and also a sort of mentor and father figure for Tokiyuki. While he doesn't possess any actual combat ability, I'd say having such a facetious and light-hearted personality and affecting the entire story with his endless insight of peering into the literal future counts. While Yorishige himself has some obviously more serious scenes, you can't help but think mostly to the comedic bits where he acts as a boke.

I actually don't mind most of the characters, especially the rest of the side characters. Genba's a bit too much of the perverted archetype but the rest of Tokiyuki's retainers aren't bad. The synergy, dialogue, and relationships between each other definitely shines through. If the show treated itself more seriously while still maintaining some slice of life and appropriate manzai when it was appropriate, I'd think the show would be getting somewhere.

Of course, the reality is that actually writing a good story is really difficult. By injecting a lot of manzai interactions, the author is able to keep things light-hearted, maintain the shounen vibes, and still write a relatively competent story. A lot of people maybe would be turned off by a slower paced story, or maybe the author would lose his charm when writing in such a manner. After all, his strength does seem to be in those moments of comedic relief.

The animation is also a huge hit or miss. The beginning especially had some nice animation, but throughout the entire show there's so much cutting corners despite a solid storyboarding and art direction overall. I enjoyed some of the more abstract representations, painting style, and framing of interactions here and there, but the excessive amount of still frames, CGI, and lack of concrete background and even just faces being drawn at far distances does not rank highly. It's these small problems with the animation that ultimately drag it down to an overall mediocre and even unenjoyable experience. Near the end of the season, most fights are still frames and animated with as much shorthand as possible.

Overall, the show attempts to have a similar storytelling with the likes of giants like Gintama, but fails to understand the delicate balance of character personalities when doing so. It's hard to watch gag characters kill people and make me think much of them. Gintoki's most fun traits are things like liking sweet things, being stingy, and being extremely lazy. When Tokiyuki's most fun trait is getting off to battle, you can see the large difference in character development.