Review of Samurai Champloo

Shinichiro Watanabe, that's the name of the man who directed Samurai Champloo, and the same man that directed Cowboy Bebop. How do follow a series like that? Is Samurai Champloo anywhere near as good, did Watanabe direct another masterpiece? Well, like Bebop I've heard that the dub here was good so I watched it in English. Here's what I thought. Story:8/10 Just like Bebop it follows an episodic narrative design. Although not as consistent as Bebop, there were definitely some awesome episodes. My fav being ep. 23,"Baseball Blue," it's one of the funniest episodes Ive seen in anime. The best part however was its themes, it discussedthe culture and problems that occurred at that time such as religion, sex, and food. This caused the story to feel deeper and showed how the writers really cared about what they were tryna do. Plus the fight scenes here was so lit. There were some flaws however, I found a few episodes to be boring and it really dragged parts of the plot and becuz of this it screwed the pacing a bit. The main plot also lacked motivation and backstory as it didn't really make me care for our characters to find this 'Sunflower Samurai.'

Art:9/10
Very well done here. The animation is very smooth and very fine to look at, plus the lighting is used extremely well. Like Bebop, the artwork here just has amazing style to it. My fav thing here however is the use of the Edo art, it gave us a unique look at how Japan was at that time as shown in the opening song. The main characters had great character designs but other than them, most of side characters were not very attractive. It does lose a point however for the backgrounds, cuz although they were very detailed there were times where they looked dull. There were also times where the action quality dragged but that was only a few times

Sound:10/10
Like Bebop, this was the series' biggest highlight. It has one of my fav Anime soundtracks ever, it's opening theme and ending song are one of the best ever. It consists of hip hop and R&B and although the setting was around the Edo-era, it still matched all the scenes. It was just a perfect choice for the anime's style. As for the dub it was very good. Both Jin and Mugen's VA did a great job on fitting their personalities. Fuu's VA had the right voice but the main problem I had was that she sounded corny at times. But it doesn't matter becuz the dub overall was still great.

Character:8/10
Although a good rating, this was the one area that kinda disappointed me. But we do have dope ass characters in Mugen and Jin. These two were an enjoy to watch each given their own unique fighting styles that are completely unmatched. Jin had the best backstory of the cast and it beautifully showed us what gave him his lonely, stoic personality. Fuu to me was good not great. I felt she didn't really have much of a purpose here(other than keeping Mugen and Jin from killin each other)but she was kind hearted and intelligent and what her interesting was the fact she had the biggest appetite of the three. What made this trio entertaining was that most of the series' comical scenes came from when they were all together. Weakness here are the side characters, although some have their moments, most of them are kinda forgettable.

Final Verdict

So did Watanabe do it again, the answer is YES. He did a great job on utilizing contemporary music and mixing genres just like in Bebop. Although it ended well imo, this was one anime that I wish was longer cuz I felt it had the stuff to give us much more. Not only is Samurai Champloo great but it's one of the coolest samurai works ever. Like Bebop, when it comes to style there's nothing better than this.