Review of Samurai Champloo

one of the things i missed most about living in the usa is watching anime on [adult swim] every night. hell, i remember all the times i spent staying up until 3am watching episodes of inuyasha and cowboy bebop when i should've been sleeping because i had class in the morning. but if there's one anime that i remember fondly, it's samurai champloo. i don't want to be "that guy" who says that the ost is what i remember the most, but that's definitely what first comes to mind. i remember back in 2004/2005 when i was still attending high school and there was this massivehip-hop and reggaeton craze that swept pretty much every corner of the united states (and even my home country of india, since it seemed that virtually all bhangra music seemed to have a rap/hip-hop twist to it). samurai champloo started airing around this time period and i remember it so well because of all the promotional adverts on [adult swim] which featured that instrumental hip-hop soundtrack.

considering the fact that i was an impressionable teenager at the time who had nothing but 50 cent and eminem songs on his ipod mini, it was no surprise that i loved the hell out of this show. but looking back, i liked it for the wrong reasons. yes, the soundtrack is odd and yet works extremely well for a show with this kind of style. but there are many other reasons to like this show which i ended up finding out upon re-visiting this programme after 8-9 years. of course, i also found many reasons to criticise this programme as well but let's cross that bridge when we get to it.

at its core, samurai champloo can be viewed as cowboy bebop's younger brother. it's brash, impulsive, doesn't always make the right decisions and sometimes mimics its older brother much to our annoyance but we still love it anyway. unlike cowboy bebop, samurai champloo is much less serious. come to think of it, there weren't many serious episodes at all. episodes tend to vary between being action-centric and comedy-centric. unfortunately, this leads to quite a few problems.

cowboy bebop's biggest shortcoming is the fact that it's episodic in nature, and samurai champloo opts for a similar approach. however, it does have *some* semblance of a plot. the goal of mugen, jin, and fuu is to find the samurai who smells of sunflowers (which STILL sounds like a ridiculous name almost a decade later). the episodic nature is thus forgiveable since the show focuses more on the journey rather than destination itself. but it isn't all good.

i said before that shows of episodic nature tend to suffer from this problem of having episodes that vary wildly in terms of quality and that's further exacerbated in this show. considering the fact that it varies between being action-centric and comedy-centric, there exists a drastic margin of error. i'm biased toward the action episodes rather than the comedy episodes since some comedy episodes like the one which involved baseball (yes. that actually happened) were just plain average while other episodes like the one where there's a graffiti battle between two gangs and mugen learns how to read (yes, that actually happened) were fucking hilarious.

the action episodes are of particular note since it gets to showcase the absolutely gorgeous art and animation that champloo has. since the backgrounds moved in real time, the sword fights were intense as all hell. couple that with mugen's unorthodox fighting style and some rather bizarre scenarios that led to some intense fights, and you've got a happy desi anime nerd. speaking of art/animation, manglobe did a spectacular job animating this series. everything looks absolutely gorgeous and despite coming out in 2004, this holds up amazingly well 10+ years later (although some characters' faces tended to go off model from time to time, especially in shots that were at a small distance).

now with that said, let's go back to the characters. unlike bebop, we aren't really given much in the way of recurring characters so we're pretty much stuck with mugen, jin, and fuu for the entire run. unfortunately, they pretty much remain static throughout the course of the show. i mean, mugen and jin start out wanting to kill each other and over time, they actually tolerate one another but that's about it. as for fuu, she is quite literally useless. the only purpose she serves is being a walking plot device. oh, and being a generic damsel in distress. mugen and jin on the other hand are pretty damn likeable but sometimes it feels like they rely too much on their "gimmicks" (what with mugen being a vulgar, illiterate break-dancing swordsman and jin being a reserved ronin with an extremely orthodox fighting style). other than that, not much to complain about here.

now we get to my favourite part of champloo: the audio. put it short, samurai champloo is basically flawless in this section. i know so many people who hate rap and hip-hop, and yet love the everliving shit out of this show. also, despite comprising of predominantly hip-hop music, the show does a good job of not shoving it in your face (most of the time). the background music consists of amazing instrumental hip-hop tracks done by the likes of nujabes (may he rest in peace), fat jon, and forces of nature and i must say that i wish these three did more anime soundtracks, but i guess that's too late now.

the dub is also really good stuff, but that's no surprise since this is bebop's little brother. steve blum does an excellent job voicing mugen (although his voice work did remind me a bit too much of spike spiegel from time to time) as did kirk thornton as jin. i really don't understand why some people give this dub shit since it's pretty damn good. can you really go wrong by a dub done by funimation (or was it geneon? i keep forgetting who licensed this show when)?

on the whole, samurai champloo isn't perfect and in many ways, i can see why people would give this show crap. at the same time, it definitely has quite a few merits to stand on. say what you will about this show being a carbon copy of bebop, but there's one thing that this show has that bebop will never have: its style. going back to that little brother analogy, it does borrow quite a bit from its predecessor, but they are ultimately two totally different shows. if you're in the mood for something with a lot of entertainment value you'll surely remember for a long time, i cannot recommend this show enough. in fact, i highly recommend buying it on blu-ray (provided you have the means to watch something on blu-ray). some shows simply "take" to blu-ray with no two ways around it and champloo is one of them.