Review of The Elusive Samurai

I had to wait to see the whole season before I could give this series a fair shake. It tries to do a lot of things, and some it does better than others. In the long run though, I was very pleased with most of this. The artwork is what initially caught my attention. Bright and powerful, to muted and depressing, the scenes are all very well done indeed. Some nice background work. They played around and experimented with the animation quite a bit. Sometimes it kind of sucked, with some so-so 3D rendering. But most of the time it was well done, and acouple episodes I found magnificient; like Demon Slayer levels of magnificient. Kudos! It could have used a little more consistency, but it all comes out in the wash as very well done. Be aware this series is not afraid to toss lots of gore around. I found it wonderful, but it might be too much for those of sensitive nature.

The character designs have some interesting artwork for both protags and antags. The MCs and his retainers get nice features and colors. Some of the side characters are a little over the top, to the point of being goofy looking. Still, they seem to fit the high-spirited semi-comic vibe the producers were going for.

The character writing was mostly good, with one HUGE exception. The MC and his retainers are all treated well by the writers. I thought the antagonists were a little too villianous, to the point of being comic. The huge exception is the priest. OMG, especially in the first haff of the season, he is so annoying, Wanted to reach into my screen and slap him. The writers start to take him a bit more seriously as time goes on though.

The VAs were kind of all over the place, from being really good, to so overacted they were laughable. I greatly got the impression this was a direction flaw though, trying to inject dumbness as some sort of humor. So while it wasn't a total put off, there was a lot left to be desired, And one thing the director did get right was use of the sound. It was used to enhance scenes nicely.

I couldn't evade that I liked this a lot more than other recent samurai/shonen titles. If I was grading, this it's a very high B+ at 89/100. If that damned priest had been killed off by the 2nd ep, I'd probably have given this an A-