Samurai Flamenco

"A hero will never give up, never hide, never be defeated and never accept evil!"

Firmly believing these words, Masayoshi Hazama has been obsessed with superhero shows since childhood. By day, he earns his living as a famous model, and by night, he becomes the gallant hero Samurai Flamenco. Armed with only his superhero costume, he seeks to bring justice to the city and faces anybody who tries to break the law—even rebellious juveniles and people who litter on the street.

Masayoshi's heroic antics later catch the attention of the public, leading to the fateful discovery of his identity by policeman Hidenori Gotou. Although initially telling Masayoshi to leave the crime-busting activities to the police, Gotou ends up joining him in his antics. However, things soon escalate from preventing littering and petty thefts to bizarre adventures that involve even the fate of the world. Together with their newfound comrades, Masayoshi and Gotou embark on a battle with the world and themselves in order to find the true meaning of being a hero—with or without superpowers.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Hazama, Masayoshi Main

Masuda, Toshiki Japanese

Gotou, Hidenori Main

Sugita, Tomokazu Japanese

Gorilla, Guillotine Supporting

Imaruoka, Atsushi Japanese

Morita, Moe Supporting

Yamazaki, Erii Japanese

Maya, Mari Supporting

Tomatsu, Haruka Japanese

Kaname, Jouji Supporting

Kosugi, Juurouta Japanese

Flamenco, Alien Supporting

Yasumoto, Hiroki Japanese

Konno, Akira Supporting

Mikami, Satoshi Japanese

Tesseract Supporting

Nakamura, Tadashi Japanese

Midorikawa, Hekiru Supporting

Toyonaga, Toshiyuki Japanese

Kouchiyama, Takashi Producer

Mori, Akitoshi Producer

Yokoyama, Shuko Producer

Oomori, Takahiro Director, Sound Director, Episode Director, Storyboard

Reviews

Oct 9, 2024

whiteflame55

Recommended

This was a fascinating watch.

To get some of the bigger picture stuff out of the way first, this show is pretty uneven. That seems to be purposeful, as the goal is to throw not only the audience off, but the characters as well. There are a lot of meta jokes about episode counts and viewership that work in the show's favor, but even though I can appreciate those elements, it doesn't change the fact that the show is very chaotic and occasionally opaque in its approach. Especially as it gets to the middle of the series, I think most audiences will have a split opinion ... on whether the direction of the series really works, and as someone who is a big fan of absurd escalation a la Gurren Lagann and absurd twists a la Bang Brave Bang Bravern, my mileage varied. At a certain point, the crazy variety the show implemented started to feel less purposeful and more there just to move the plot in a certain direction. That's not necessarily a flaw, but considering where the series really shines, I think a lot of that portion of the plot stands out as considerably weaker as a result, especially since the show could have leaned more into the humor to make it pop (again, a la Bravern).

As for the more granular details, I think this show was at its best in the beginning and towards the very end because these characters are what make it work. Hazama's a bit of a mixed bag because many of his best elements seem to leech from him in the middle of the series, but he's also one of the major elements carrying the finale, so I can't be too harsh on him. Goto might be the best character in the show, but again, largely takes a backseat in the middle before getting a devastating finale that brings the series full circle in the more ways than one. A lot of the same can be applied to MMM, who also get some of the best comedy in the series while hitting some of the best emotional highs and lows. I love Kaname, just everything about the man proves he's essential to the series, start to finish. As for the rest of the cast, while I think there are a few highlights, a lot of the newly introduced characters for the middle section are pretty tropey and uninteresting.

Overall, the ride was definitely worth it, even if it went through a rough patch. The show started and ended strong, and the journey was a good time regardless of the p(l)otholes. An underrated gem.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Oct 2, 2019

mouthpiece

Mixed Feelings

One should really be prepared for what this show is all about. Regardless of what the premise and the first episodes make you believe the show is about, is not going to be valid for long. So if you want to get into this series with the proper mindset as means to enjoy it, it is crucial to be spoiled about a few things. So allow me to spare you the trouble and spell it out for you. Samurai Flamenco is a parody reconstruction of a superhero deconstruction, set in a laid back slice of life world, where supernatural stuff exist only if God said ... so. Sounds confusing, doesn’t it? Well like it or not, that’s what it is.

Set in the Noitamina timeslot, you of course need to expect the characters to feel sort of feminine, since it is aiming at middle aged women who prefer things to be easy going, regardless of how post apocalyptic the stories may be. Right off the bat, don’t expect excitement of the sort of Hollywood action flicks, nor expect manly brutes.

The biggest quirk this show has is its several genre shifts. It will constantly be switching from normal, to superhero campiness, and then back to a normal world. The reason for that is because the protagonist really wanted to be a superhero, and because there were no supernatural stuff in the world, God created them for him. And that is the explanation you get in the end of the show, and I have to spoil it for you if you don’t want to drop the show because of the genre shifts. For you see, when the show began everybody thought it would be a realistic take on how heroes would look in a typical world. Of course and it is embarrassing to have a guy dressing like a clown and going around preaching to people how to behave properly as if they are still in the kindergarten, and of course most wouldn’t take him seriously and try to kick his ass. Of course and the media or the police would try to unmask and ridicule him as a troublemaker. All that felt at place in the first episodes and you were made to think that, well, it may not be exciting but at least it is trying to depict how ridiculous it looks to try bringing lame idealism in a cynical world.

But when gorillas with guillotines in their bellies started appearing (aka Gorillatine), most of the audience was very confused. Many dropped it because it became ridiculous and others thought the whole thing was either special effects or the protagonist dreaming the whole thing. THERE IS NO WAY SUCH WEIRD STUFF CAN HAPPEN IN THIS SETTING. Well, turns out there can happen if God said so. Thus the ultimate deus ex machina is supposed to excuse your discomfort of having a realistic setting turning to Disneyland. As long as you can bear with it, you will like the show for the silly nonsense it is.

As for me? Well, I like exciting shows and this one never was. It remains all the way as nothing more than a light comedy about a zero turning to hero casually fending off gradually more ridiculously powerful enemies that popped into existence because God said so. Also, if you are waiting to see another Sunred or One Punch, or Kickass you won’t get that either. The daily lives of our heroes are filled with lots of silly moments one would expect to find in a fluffy shojo romance and not in a dynamic coming of age teen story. And indeed, what most of the viewers were more concerned about was if some of the girls were lesbians, or who was the secret girlfriend of one of the guys. Yeah, talk about being afraid of monsters that are trashing cities if you are wondering that sort of thing.

The way I see it, the show could have ended as a 1 cour mediocre parody of power rangers most would remember as a nice filler anime between better things. But nope, the show decided to head for 2 cour and the only way it for not becoming boring was to keep throwing in more and more absurd things to keep the audience guessing of what could possibly be causing all those supernatural stuff in a typical world. And it was God…

Now you may be wondering why I make such a fuss about the Big Cheese. The reason is, EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE if God feels like it. There is nothing to take for granted, all conflicts are rendered useless, and what is worse, the hero didn’t even know he was given a playground for his petty dreams. It’s like he unknowingly almost destroyed the world a dozen times because he was a brat, and nobody was telling him it was his fault. How childish and disgusting is this? How doesn’t that contradict the premise of a show where a superhero wants to protect the world, when he is the one endangering it, and then treat the whole thing as a joke?

Of course there will be those who will try to defend the show as EVERYTHING IS FORESHADOWED and that IT MAKES SENSE in the same way they consider Clannad to be the most realistic anime there ever was. Wish fulfillment doesn’t slide with me and what I mostly care about is excitement and consistency. This show has neither. I would have given it the base score if it remained a plain anime about a normal guy pretending to be superman. But it didn’t, it turned to a farce because God said so. There you go, have another Gorillatine. Now go stalk those lesbians.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Aug 3, 2019

SCLFI

Not Recommended

"Plot twists are good, so the more we put in our story, the better it is, right?" - M. Night Shamalayan, who was apparently the director of Samurai Flamenco

Viewer expectations are an interesting thing to mess around with, you've got your Dokuro-Chans, which mess around with them and utilise them for comedic purposes, and you've got your Evangelions, which utilise them to enhance an emotionally impactful story, in what is called a deconstruction, a word I really do not like and so I hope I won't have to say it again. Samurai Flamenco clearly intended to do something, but it didn't really manage to ... do so, it betrayed my expectations as a viewer, but failed to utilise them, in any manner. It's like a joke without a punchline. We've been told that 2 men walked into a bar, or that a chicken crossed the road, and that's the end of it.

SF starts off reasonably decent, we've got some (male) model who is obsessed with superheroes to an unhealthy extent, and has created one by the name of Samurai Flamenco, costume and all, and has taken it upon himself to go about at night and stop people from all wrongdoing, starting small, and usually creating misunderstandings, one such understanding brings him to police officer Goto, who spends the next few episodes basically trying his best to keep our protagonist, whose name is Masayoshi for the record, out of trouble. If the show was funny, I'd say that Goto plays the straight man, and Masayoshi the funny man, but I'll talk more about humour later on.

After a video of SF embarrassing himself goes viral, he finds himself having to keep his secret identity just that, while simultaneously trying to keep a lid on the whole affair, despite others seemingly intending to do the opposite, and in most cases, I’d use the phrase “it all takes off from there”, but herein it really doesn’t, it all descends from there. From Episode 7 in particular it goes from a bit unengaging to what I can only imagine was the writer having 25 minutes of time to make 25 minutes worth of content, which resulted in some awful storytelling, not the absolute worst, but certainly bad enough that it is highly deserving of the title “shitload of fuck”. Once the evil aliens who want to enslave humanity for no reason other than that they enjoy enslavement come along, there was a definitive drop in quality in storytelling, one it never recovered from. And this is where Samurai Flamenco biggest shortcoming is – its tone. It has none. It seems to have wanted to make it about philosophical ideas about justice a little bit, a little bit a standard superhero (and later super sentai) type, but doesn’t really do either, it’s got poorly orchestrated action, uninteresting and shallow attempts to be “deep”, and to return to humour, it’s got some things that seem like they could very well be humorous, yet were not. Consider, for instance, a politician whose mecha suit’s power is directly linked to how much support he has. Or an evil alien brandishing a “Destruction of Japan Device”, or, more generally, just a story about a man with no superpowers at all, trying to be a superhero, it all seems like it could very well make for some perfectly good comedy, they just rather strangely chose not to do so.

Now, on to plot twists, I’m not going to go too in depth on this, but I do believe it would be agreeable to say that the most effective plot twists are ones that the viewer does not expect, and ones that greatly alter the course of the story. Samurai Flamenco has foregone both of these, as at around the halfway point, they decided to implement a plot twist every single episode, after about 3 of them, they lost their charm, and after about 5, they were stupid, bungled, meaningless, and predictable, in other words, the complete opposite of what a plot twist is meant to achieve. Imagine if you had a surprise birthday party every year. After a few years, you know once your birthday’s arrived, you’re going to get someone trying to surprise you, but there is no surprise at all, you know it’s coming, and that’s just what SF’s plot twists were. You knew they were coming, and you know they were going to be an omnishambles, utterly reprehensible, every last one of them. So, to conclude, Samurai Flamenco’s unbelievably poor writing, coupled with the boring and uninspired and genuinely impossible not to predict plot twists forced in, resulting in some extremely boring writing, and despite all the faux philosophy they tried to put in, it is utterly irredeemable, I’ve seen better stories written in shit on the walls of a public toilet.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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	Poll: Samurai Flamenco Episode 7 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ... Last Page ) Stark700 - Nov 21, 2013	419 replies	by Araxz »» Nov 16, 12:38 AM
	Poll: Samurai Flamenco Episode 22 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ... Last Page ) Stark700 - Mar 27, 2014	301 replies	by OrangeRium »» Jul 14, 11:31 AM
	Poll: Samurai Flamenco Episode 9 Discussion ( 1 2 3 ) Stark700 - Dec 5, 2013	122 replies	by dragnpiano »» Apr 24, 9:41 PM
	Poll: Samurai Flamenco Episode 1 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 ) Stark700 - Oct 10, 2013	181 replies	by lordgaara »» Jul 16, 2023 9:15 PM
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