Afro Samurai Resurrection

Afro avenged his father and obtained the Number One headband.  Now he has retired, trying his best to leave his life of violence behind him.  But Afro has wrong many in his quest for revenge and now some are coming to collect on that pain.  When Afro is ambushed by an old friend and a beautiful woman, they not only steal his headband but also the skull of his long dead father: Rokutaro, the former owner of the Number One Headband.  Once more, Afro Samurai takes up his sword.  But can this deadly bad ass survive the greatest ordeals his past has to offer…especially when one of those is a fully resurrected version of his father?  

The original Afro Samurai might’ve had a simple story but it was a tour deforce: a call back to the glory days of bloody 90s action Anime with a dash of hip hop culture.  Within the first ten minutes or so of watching it, I knew I was watching something unique and special.  That same amount of time into the feature film sequel, Afro Samurai: Resurrection, I felt the opposite.  I felt that I was watching something familiar and lacking the same kick and wow factor that made the original so great.  While there are spots of greatness, Resurrection feels like a follow up that needed more work or didn’t have to happen at all.

Resurrection falls into the same kind of trap as the Rurouni Kenshin move: Requiem for Isshin Shishin Patriots.  The plot again revolves around someone from Afro’s past coming for revenge, doing something horibble and daring Afro to come back to the world of violence he left behind.  I mean yeah, like Kenshin Afro has a list of adversaries a mile long, but revenge as a basis for a plot…we’ve seen that done a million times before.  Why not have Afro be recruited by an old friend for a job or some kind of quest?  Not to mention, we already did the revenge plotline with the original miniseries.  It doesn’t help that the villainess du jour, Sio, is so one note it isn’t even funny.  Possessing a killer bod and the seductive voice of Lucy Liu can only take your bad girl so far.  Sio spends more time monologuing just how bad her revenge on Afro is going to be, that you can literally mute her every time she shows up after her initial appearance cause it is all you’ll ever hear her speak in the entire movie.  Even though his screentime was criminally brief, Ron Pearlman’s Justice had a far more menacing presence in the miniseries and was a foe you couldn’t wait to see Afro go toe to toe with (even if the end result was pretty underwhelming).  Sio was a villain so totally forgettable that the most you will remember is how Afro always replies to her boring monologues, “Shut your damn mouth”.

So familiar plot and boring villain, those are bad strikes already.  How is everything else?  Well Resurrection plays less like a feature film follow up and more like a truncated and rushed second miniseries.  Whereas there was maybe 30-45% of time dedicated to flashback to flesh out Afro’s backstory and connection with his childhood friends turned rivals, Resurrection has even less for Sio, introducing her as a quick retcon never even seen in the original.  More than the miniseries, the story exists solely to move Afro from one fight scene to the next and even then, those aren’t totally up to snuff.  The one particular area where Resurrection shines is when Afro embarks on a mini quest to retrieve the Number Two headband from it’s newest owner, a father samurai named Shichigoro.  The animation, action and tension filled pacing of this segment of the movie makes you wish that somehow this was the entire movie we were watching.  Hell I’d go so far as to say this could have been a prequel to Afro originally getting the Number Two headband that he needed to take on Justice in the miniseries.  But alas this plot point doesn’t last that long and all emotional weight feels jettisoned once its back to Sio and her sexy monologues without bite.

While I don’t think the animation is as up to snuff as the miniseries, Resurrection still maintains some insane fight sequences that hit hard and leave you feeling like you’ve gone the same ten rounds as Afro.  The Shichigoro fight sequence is the best of the bunch, featuring old school dueling leading into a brawl throughout the city during a festival and it’s one of the few times the quality of animation feels like it’s on the level of a movie.  Most other times, the animation feels like it’s even a step below the miniseries, which looked freaking spectacular.  Again, maybe my expectations were too high and I should have tapered them a bit.  It does feel like Gonzo didn’t put nearly most of its all into this one.  But still, if you liked the action of the original, you’ll probably enjoy Resurrection’s action as well…even if most of it involves Afro on some very one sided brutal beatdowns.

Afro Samurai Resurrection didn’t need to happen but we got it and I kind of wish we didn’t.  Scratch that, I wish the Shichigoro story arc had been expanded into a short sequel/prequel.  Everything is either unnecessary, recycled and, to be honest, pretty boring.  The action does punch things up on occasion but Resurrection lacks the surprise wow factor of it’s classic predecessor.  Sometimes just once is enough, especially when its Afro Samurai cause you shouldn’t mess with a good thing.

4/10