Review of Samurai Champloo

Samurai Champloo is a funky train. It's gonna take you up and down, all over a parallel Edo period Japan. The train conductors? Two extremely skilled swordmen, two completely different styles. There's Mugen. A loud, rather simple man, with a more unorthodox fighting style. There's Jin, the refined, quiet type, closer to your idea of a samurai who earns the respect of others. Both of them have to carry their own weight; be it that of coming from a tough place, or that of being too skillful for others to stand it. Ah, there's Fuu too. She's there, being all cutesy and stuff with her``Mo!`` 's and ``Uso!`` 's. Don't you dare look down on her though. She is the link that holds this chain of unlikely travellers together, after all. And well, you've seen a lot of girls with huge appettites in anime before, but this one WILL turn fat after eating a lot. Her desire to find ``The samurai that smells of sunflowers`` was what gave the reason for their journey to begin. And what a journey it was.

It's the little things that made Samurai Champloo special to my eyes. A little touch of realism, where actually our characters more than often do have to worry about things often skipped as trivial; like having to earn money for food and lodgings. How the creators constantly turn on the style. How the characters move so smoothly, the fights are quite a treat with the fluid motions and the polished choreography.

I was a bit doubtful about the suitability of this music genre for a story about samurai. Needless to say, I found it hard to skip the opening theme after a while. It is one of those little somethings that add to the charm of the show. Same goes for the ending theme, earning you a bit of nostalgia as it sees you off, before you hop onto this train again, heading for the next station. Through out the show the music is just so good. Be it gritty, chill out tunes, or hauntingly sad songs like Obokuri Eemui.

What is there not to like in Samurai Champloo? Well... Most "arcs" are two episodes long, at the most. There's no typical structured built up, where a group of powerful villains exists, and everything seems to lead to the final confrontation with them. Mugen is a streetwise antihero himself anyway, slashing officials without a second thought if they happen to get in his way. It's understandable that not everyone finds this approach appealing. For the rest, travelling with two strangers in pursuit of something as vague as ``the samurai who smells of sunflowers``? It's enough reason in itself. Here it's all about the journey. The places you see, the people you meet, the things you taste.

So the three travellers will traverse Japan for a clue on the man that Fuu has to find. They'll work, steal and fight for a taste of the local delicacies, Fuu will momentarily turn chubby when she overdoes it. What about the people they meet? Any memorable journey requires a sequence of meetings with extraordinary persons. Our trio will meet a Dutch man searching for..something different. A housewife whose beauty radiates too brightly to be blurred by her husband's failures. The troubled young men who take the wrong path in life and, cruel as it might be, have to pay. Lethal, beautiful women. Your occasional powerful opponents. More lethal women. And umm..remember the forementioned realism? Scratch that when you witness a tribute to the zombie culture; or when eager..US navy officers choose as the deciding factor for the invasion of Japanese coasts a game of..ninja baseball, quick to turn into a massacre; finally, keep an eye for the references and the various legends making cameo appearances in a Forrest Gump-ish manner.

Still, there's an end to everything, and eventually for their journey to be meaningful, they'll have to find ``the samurai that smells of sunflowers``. After each of the three travellers takes care of what they have to, this train can briefly stop. It's only Death and Rebirth after all, right?