Review of The Elusive Samurai

The Elusive Samurai seems to be a show that targets a young demographic (child to teenager). I would say that for adults and adolescents, this isn't enjoyable. For a young demographic this is maybe a 7. For older demographics this is a 5 or even lower. This makes it hard to judge the show because do I judge it for adults or do I take into account that it's obviously for children? In this review, I try to do both but keep in mind I am an adult. The main characters are easy to understand; they are all young teenagers with "easily digestible" personalities and slapstickhumor (which isn't funny). By easily digestible personalities, I mean that they don't really have any complex emotions or interactions between each other. The story arcs themselves also feel very simplistic, sometimes to the point of not being realistic or believable.

The characters, their age, their shallow personalities and the simplistic plot lead me to believe that this is a show for younger audiences. In fact, I am sure of this since I cannot see how anyone would like such shallow characters (but then again, anime characters are just mostly dogshit). However, there are some parts that make me doubt this assumption. First is the setting and the way the main story is framed. The setting is historical. The main plot is basically about gathering allies to retake the throne, which seems like a story for adults. Second, this anime doesn't shy away from showing blood. They regularly show decapitations and blood splattering everywhere. Third, the main villain seems to have a slight tinge of horror to him.

This is not to say that if a show has these contradictions, it is bad. For example, Happy Tree Friends uses very cartoony characters to make its violent gore even more jarring. In fact, I think the way The Elusive Samurai shows blood and violence in very colorful animation is a good thing. I loved the scenes where the main villain is portrayed as a terrifying monster who enjoys carnage. However, when you take that task you have to own up to it. You can't pretend that you are willing to mix in adult themes into your show and then give me shallow, boring characters with unfunny humor and a super simplistic story where every arc gets solved by the power of friendship.

Also, I'm not sure how much you can get away with saying that a show is meant for kids. For example, I could point to Over The Garden Wall and say that even though the characters portrayed are children, they did an amazing job of mixing in horror elements and accurately portraying how real children would behave. Alternatively, I could also point to an acclaimed Ghibli movie which are also suitable for children, yet I wholeheartedly enjoyed the characters that they crafted. So I don't even know if it's fair to say "it's a kids show, it's okay for them to have bad characters."

The animation is amazing a lot of the time. The first few episodes especially were very pleasant to look at. However, it's not consistently good either. The more episodes you watch, the worse the animation gets. There are a lot of points where CGI gets used. The horses in The Elusive Samurai are cursed; whenever a character rides a horse, they become a PS2 3D model of their own character.