Review of Samurai Champloo
Style : Look, there goes a baseball breaking a tower, unusual dead men digging for treasure, Americans talking like Germans, Germans talking about homosexuality and while all of this happens, there's this hip hop thingy going on in the background. A huge of fan of music maybe, You wonder, (Read in Jin's voice)what's it? Someone's rapping, no wait, someone's on the DJ, fuck, the style of this thing! The greatest weapon in the artillery of Champloo is its undeniable, ravishing and extraordinary style of doing things. There is so much mediocrity overcome, superseded and overshadowed by the style. The presentation is so state of theart that caring for the substance is dismissed as petty and, the need of a story? Pfft.
Art/Animation : The animation, even in the Blu-ray I watched, was dated, very. It looks like the producers didn't want to/or were too lazy to up the quality or maybe the original master was lost. In any case, I believe the animation could've been a lot better than the current 'watchable' status quo.
Soundtrack : Feeling a bit dizzy? A bit high or maybe sad? Don't worry, we here have all of it. The soundtrack is, again, one of the ups of Champloo. Its shelf has enough for you to be be immersed in whatever randomness that goes on.
Characters : Here for some of those greatly built characters? One you can talk to, to your IRL/Online friends? Nope, this ain't that kind of anime. Particularly, this is one of those places where Samurai awards you with a slap. The character writing is downright lazy. If you know what I mean, insert one of those "had harder lives, become ignorant and mean over the years" here. The three characters as usual go on a journey and there's nothing much to be cherished in their souls.
Story : The biggest flaw of Champloo is it doesn't get any interesting right upto the latter part of the midway. Samurai Champloo is a remix and mash up of all of Japan, damnit, I get it. But there are so many badly written fillers in there that it is almost unbearable before things start getting interesting. The humour only takes birth in pure form in the last 6 episodes wherein, an amazing episode called "The Baseball Blues" ups your opinion of the show.
Conclusion : Samurai Champloo could've been a huge success and a straightforward classic if it didn't suffer from all that bad vision in direction and writing, in my opinion. It works as a satire for sometime and then falls into pits it stood up against. It hits the jackpot a tad bit too late for the viewer to hold on to it. But when it really does, it almost feels like a miracle. A lot of unnecessary fillers but some of the great ones make Samurai Champloo a hindered yet nearly fulfilling experience.