Dec 28, 2014
It’s just like Fuu said. I never wanted the journey to end.
Assuming you’ve read the synopsis, yes, Samurai Champloo is a samurai show with hip-hop undertones mixed with parallelism and satire of the modern world. The beginning was kinda meh and forced myself to watch it to understand the hype and the ending was kinda wonky as expected of its very thin and forced "main" story line but the middle part was some of the best anime I've seen. The random episodes where the trio went off on a tangent to go on an adventure, full of action and comedy, was awesome and Champloo at
...
its best. The mini two episodes arcs were epic. And some of the comedy episodes made me lol of how unexpectedly funny it was. The story premise is to look for a “samurai who smells of sunflowers” but never really focuses on that until the very end. The real main story is the adventure of the three main characters: Mugen, Fuu, and Jin. I won’t reveal anything about them since they need to be experienced firsthand. Some say they’re one-dimensional and don’t grow out of their stereotypes but who really cares about that stuff when you’re so engrossed in their actions. I watched this show and realized I didn’t care at all about the hip-hop music or the sunflower samurai story but rather the characters’ journey. It left me wanting more episodes depicting their journey through Edo period Japan. There is an underlying subtext story of how the past doesn’t judge you as a person and the journey is more important than the end result. A 10/10 for its soundtrack (RIP Nujabes), its amazing, relaxing ending themes, and glorious animation. Its not a full on parody a la Gintama but not also super serious like Code Geass, fate/zero, or Attack on Titan to name a few. You would be doing yourself a great disservice by not watching this show dubbed. Seriously the dub is amazing plus the original Japanese kinda throws me off hearing One Piece Zoro as Mugen. This show does get a lack of slack for being compared to Cowboy Bebop and it not being as good or “artistic” but if you take it by itself and not compare like a reasonable person, you will find Champloo is still a great anime to watch. If all else, it’s better than what comes out these days with the overpopulation of harem-fanservice-slice of life shows that dominate the market. The middle part to me is the textbook example of episodic anime and I would highly recommend to anyone who wants a balls-out entertaining and fun show to waste time on.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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