Review of The Elusive Samurai

No matter how beautifully dressed something is, if it's a turd, it will always smell like a turd. It will taste like a turd, and you can't force me to eat it and pretend it's a cake. The premise of the anime starts out simple. Houjou Tokiyuki lives a carefree life until his life turns for the worse. His family was massacred, and he wanted to die. But he was saved by a priest and his daughter. This priest Suwa Yorishige, who can see the future to some extent, sees him as a leader who will grow to liberate Japan. From a seemingly innocent-looking anime,it starts to get dark quickly.

Let me start with the positives. The character design is great. Not just Tokiyuki but others are distinctive enough, and this is its virtue because too many anime have forgettable character designs.

Among all the action anime I watched this Summer of 2024, this has the best animation. By itself, it's a good reason to check this out.

But here's where it stinks. Some people view the gore and the violence as enough reason to classify this anime as mature, but I don't feel that way. Yorishige's lame humour as well as the fact that our main characters are children don't fit the tone of something 'dark and mature.' (Worse, I found the recap episode, which is more on the outstanding animation and less of the cringe humour, better than this crap. I rated this crap as 3 [mixed feelings], but the recap episode a 5 [marked as recommended].)

Compare this with Rurouni Kenshin and Yatagarasu:

1. Yatagarasu, an anime that started in spring but also runs in summer, is seinen. It has the gravitas that I want in a dark and mature work. It has less of the violence of The Elusive Samurai, but it's infinitely better.

2. I haven't seen the new Rurouni Kenshin, but I adore the old Rurouni Kenshin. RK is shounen. It has goofy humour like The Elusive Samurai, but they don't tell jokes when they are in battle mode. It has gravitas and you can tell that the world is not kid friendly.

So how do we judge this turd called 'The Elusive Samurai?' Its incongruent tone makes me think that it's a kids' show despite the violence and gore. The moral is that the world can be cruel and that it's not all rainbows and butterflies.

This is a fair enough assumption. The inner kid in me doesn't mind the violence. Nay, I would have enjoyed this anime when I was younger, and I think I would have rated this high when I was a kid and when I was someone this anime was made for.

Alas, it's not for me. I'll watch season 2 when it comes but I'm not looking forward to it. Let me put on record the other action shounen anime in my watchlist — Failure Frame, Wistoria, and Why Does Nobody Remember Me in This World? They have issues of their own, but at least they feel that they were made for the older segment of the shounen demographic that the inner teenager in me enjoyed them far better than this turd.

In conclusion, it's worth watching just to see the animation, but not all will enjoy seeing this. I certainly didn't. It's a kids' show masquerading as a dark, mature show, and it is betrayed by the tone it presents to the world. If you're pressed for time, don't watch this. It's a beautifully dressed turd but a turd nonetheless.

NOTA BENE: A grade of 3 out of 10 means that I did not enjoy watching this anime despite being either well-regarded or at least popular, or perhaps I happened to rank them below my 4's.