Review of Samurai Champloo

I remember the first episode I saw on Adult Swim. It was the baseball episode. I remember thinking "just WTF was that cluster all about?" Then I was up at 3am the next night to see some more. I almost lost my job over this shit. Never seen anything like it before. And I've never seen anything like it since. I used to have this rated an A- 90/100 over at CR, but then I rewatched it for about the 7th time a while back, and was struck by how utterly close this is to perfection. The artwork is unique, there's nothing quite like itanywhere else. The background work is amazing. The characters all are so finely tuned to their roles; protagonists, antagonists and side players. The animation, especially the hand drawn action scenes, show you why this era is known as the Golden Age of Anime.

The story, on it's face, is pretty straight foward, with a teenaged girl enlisting the aid of two antagonistic ronins to help her find a samurai that smells of sunflowers. Easy, huh? Nope this quest takes all kinds of crazy twists and turns that I had little or no idea what was going on at first. Then this last viewing, everything clicked. It all made perfect, deep, satisfying sense in Fuu's world. I now think this is one of the best written anime series ever produced.

Since I own the series, I have watched both subs and dubs, and the VAs for either version are stupendous. The English cast plays things a little more happy-go-lucky and comedic. The Japanese cast tends more toward serious and dramatic. Now I almost exclusively do subs, but this is my favorite English cast of all time. I have to admit I like their rendition just a scoosh more than the Japanese.

The direction is superb. I can't imagine how difficult it was to get all the far-flung pieces of this title to mesh in a satisfying way.

I rarely mention soundtracks, because typically in anime, they are useless and forgettable. And let me make this perfectly clear; I absolutely LOATHE hip-hop. Samarai Champloo does for hip-hop what Cowboy Bebop did for jazz. In this instance it is cooler than hell.

I'd open a bottle of champagne for Champloo. It's a winner. If I was grading, this is 99/100, an A all the way. So close to the magic 100 that I couldn't even bother to mention the meager imperfections. One cannot claim otaku-ness until you've seen this at least twice.