Review of Samurai Champloo

I'm sure everyone has at least heard of the anime even if they haven't seen it, myself included. I also knew that the series was by the same guy that made Cowboy Bebop which definitely piqued my interest more. So how does Champloo hold up compared to its legendary predecessor? And the short answer is.. In a mixed way? To summarize the story, Champloo is about two ronin called Jin and Mugen and the girl they meet randomly called Fuu's journey through Edo period Japan and their encounters with various people and factions they meet during it while the ultimate goal is to find the socalled Sunflower Samurai who is somehow connected to Fuu.

Good parts first; I'm a sucker for samurai stuff so the theme was already good in my eyes and the series delivers well in some well choreographed and mostly visually pleasing fights sprinkled throughout the episodes. I have pretty mixed feelings about the comedy of the series but I will say that it was always placed appropriately, never taking away from serious scenes which some shows fail in.

And I also have to mention the music which is another thing the serious is pretty famous for. There's not much I can say that already hasn't been said but I will add to the voices in saying that the music for the series is really good and certainly enhanced it to a new level.

Now for the bad and subjective stuff. As I said visually the show looks really good, even to this day when it really shines, but sometimes it doesn't as we get these weird quality dips in art and animation here and there, most notably during the more episodic episodes and it's a bit jarring sometimes.

And speaking of the episodic stuff, this is just my opinion but it's also one of my biggest gripes as it was with Bebop too. While I don't think the main plot in Champloo is as fleshed out as Bebop's, it was still miles ahead of all the random episodic content we got which sadly comprised of most of the series' runtime. This could be very controversial but I feel like the series would have benefitted heavily from a 1 cour, rather than a 2 cour runtime.

The episodic content sometimes is poorly placed too. We can go from a very awesome multi-part episode which a sad ending to suddenly walking through a mushroom forest and getting high in a goofy manner which kinda takes you out of the mood, especially when binging like I did.

Regarding the main plot without spoilers, to me it felt like the mystery behind the Sunflower Samurai dragged on for too long before anything noteworthy was established which probably left an even worse taste in my mouth regarding the episodic content that didn't do too much for the main plot.

And finally, I'm sure no one will argue but there is some pretty heavy plot armor thrown around. Not gonna go into specifics again but some things from certain fights felt pretty hard to believe to me.

To wrap things up, I wanna say I'm not too surprised Samurai Champloo is considered a classic and that it has aged well but a part of me definitely thinks a bit otherwise. It's not a bad show by any means, decent even, but I felt like it was mostly just a Bebop remake with many similar episodes and themes recycled in a different setting. So as brutal as it sounds, for people that haven't seen either show, I would just recommend them to check out Bebop instead.

I still enjoyed my time with the series overall, regardless of it dragging at parts.