Brought together by fate and misfortune, Mugen, Jin and
Fuu continue their journey to find the “Samurai who smells of Sunflowers”. But few places have any clues or details as
to his existence. What they do have are Yakuza,
deadly Temptresses, beat boxing bandits and random assassins all coming after
our trio. One thing is for sure, no
matter where these three go, there’s hardly a dull moment.
I get why Samurai Champloo was a major hit back in the
day.
With it’s cool artstyle and action
scenes blending together elements of hip hop culture and music, it’s pretty
unique and it’s from the same guy who did Cowboy Bebop and pretty much
everyone, even non Anime fans, love Cowboy Bebop.
For the life of me though, I’m finding it
hard to see why this was a hit beyond those aspects cause if everything after
Episode 1 yesterday felt undercooked, todays second outing feels like the shows
already recycling plot threads and beats within episodes of each other.
That’s not to say there aren’t some stand out
moments that could pay off further down the line but lets break down why
Samurai Champloo, for me, isnt reaching the hype it should.
Much like last time, the four episodes are all their own
stand alone stories but this time they all seem to have the same setup but
different executions: Mugen, Jin and Fuu wander into a new town or city; they
need money or food; they get into some random trouble, usually resulting in Fuu
getting captured; the day is saved; next destination.
At least twice the story starts with everyone
starving their way into a city or Mugen and Jin being forced to pawn off their weapons
for currency til they can get more money.
I get that the Bebop crew was always short on cash but at least their
bounty hunting job had them facing off with all manner of crooks and gangsters
and occasional assassins.
Champloo goes
for the same but far less memorable, mostly but I’ll get back to that in a
minute.
Everything just feels so
rehashed and repetitive that any story can blend into another that there’s
little to make at least 2 out of these 4 episodes stand out…well one does but
in the worst possible way.
As much as I like to test a series on its own merits, the
Cowboy Bebop comparisons are inevitable and there’s a big one in Episode
7.
In “Waltz for Venus”, Spike
encounters a young pickpocket working for a Syndicate who’s trying to raise
money to help cure his sisters blindness.
Despite Spike’s best efforts, poor Rocco gets gunned down in the final
showdown and his sister is left to deal with the fallout.
Champloo Episode 7 has Fuu meeting a
pickpocket who steals a drug meant for a Yakuza group that he hopes to hawk for
money to save his sick mother.
Barely
into the back half of this episode I realized that this was a straight up
rehash of Waltz for Venus, right down to the ending and…yeah like a lot of
Champloo thus far, Bebop did it better.
Not helping matters is Fuu.
The girl is one the most useless and annoying
protagonists and it’s a miracle Mugen and Jin continue to stick with her the
way they do.
Remember when I said most
stories start with the gang pawning off weapons or desperate for food?
That’s just the intro.
The real plots don’t begin until Fuu is
either captured or runs into the plot of the week and man it’s getting
old.
If Champloo wants to make her the
“main character” of the three leads, it’s failing.
She’s just there to be a mostly Damsel in
Distress who whines about every little thing especially when it comes to a
quest she has very little information about (that she’s willing to share
anyway).
It makes me enjoy my remaking
idea of the series from the last set all the more: lose Fuu and everything else
is golden.
Now, I’m not hating on the series entirely.
Like I said last time, the artstyle, music
and action are all pretty strong and I wish that there was a way to allow for
an audio track with just the music cause it seems to fit and tell the plots of
the episodes just fine.
But there were
some genuinely fun and cool moments too, including my favorite episode since
the first.
I thought I was going to be
annoyed with the not so secret European visitor Jiro but I ended up really
liking his first visit to Edo.
He’s got
all the enthusiasm and wide eyed wonder of someone who’s dreamed of going to
Japan and exploring it for the first time.
Jiro’s reasons for doing so are also well handled especially when he
does surprise the gang with what kind of lover he prefers.
Likewise, I was expecting Nagamitsu to be
annoying but he brings the one thing I’ve been hoping the show would lean into
more: a beat boxing back up band.
Seriously, a groupie using the back of a Katana as a microphone while
booming beats is pretty sick…even if Nagamitsu doesn’t try to free style rap,
missed opportunity there.
Nagamitsu’s appearance also gives us something else I’ve
been waiting on: character backstories, or at least the beginnings of one.
A swordsman as quiet and composed as Jin
doesn’t come along by accident.
And in
Episode 8 we learn he’s the man who killed his own Master for reasons known
only to him.
It was a good reveal with a
nice duel between Jin and Nagamitsu’s companion that ends with the promise of
more former students coming for Jin’s head.
Even Fuu got a dream sequence tied to that pink dagger she’s carrying
around and Jiro pointing her in a possible direction for her Sunflower Samurai,
along with a warning about one of the charms on the dagger.
It would have been great for Mugen to get
some backstory teasing of his own but Mugen still continues to be the most fun
and entertaining character of the bunch, even if he is constantly getting
robbed or fooled by cute women.
Samurai Champloo has a lot and I mean a lot of work to
do.
The episodes need more variety and
showed they could have them with Jiro and Nagamitsu.
And the show needs to do more with it’s main
trio actually being a trio and not letting three separate stories keep falling
into each other at the end.
Or the show
will just stay the course and I’ll be hoping Mugen and Jin just tie Fuu to a
tree somewhere and leave her to do their own thing for the rest of the
series.
We’ll see what happens when we
resume our normal review schedule with more Samurai Champloo Next Monday right
here at the Gundam Anime Corner.
No comments:
Post a Comment