Samurai Champloo, Volume 2 (2005)

Exceptional, but often unbalanced.

Watching Samurai Champloo is, at times, an uneven experience.

Watanabe brings his audience exactly what they expect: quality. The music is a stellar mix of traditional Japanese folk songs and hip-hop beats. The art is beautiful and the story line is engaging. The characters are interesting and fully developed by the conclusion of the series.

In certain ways Watanabe has improved on Cowboy Bebop. Samurai Champloo leaves no gaps in the lives of the characters or the motives behind their actions. Watanabe fleshes out the story line completely and evenly. The journey of Fuu, Jin, and Mugen moves steadily and the conclusion lasts three episodes; the most important segments of the show take place over more than one episode and have a much more prolonged affect. And unlike Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo effectively introduces elements of past history into its story line: the Satsuma Rebellion and the Tale of Heiki/Genji for example.

However, Samurai Champloo suffers from overflow. No anime in recent memort has provided its audience with side characters of such depth. The villians and friends they meet on their journey feel as real and as significant as Fuu, Jin, and Mugen. But there is simply too many of them and they occupy too many episodes.

Episodes such as "Baseball Blues", "Cosmic Collisions", "Art of Altercation", "Beat Box Bandits", and "War of Words" have too many eccentric characters and are not relevant to the story. They are single episode stories that drag down the flow of progress. A single season show shouldn't feel like it has filler episodes to reach 23 weeks of airplay. In certain cases - these side-stories provide great entertainment. My favorite episode happens to be a single episode story - "Gamblers and Gallantry." But more often than not, the audience may feel like the series is dragging on with extra filler adventures that affect neither the three main characters or the audience to any great degree.

Despite this weakness, I do highly recommend the show. Watanabe does not let his creativity become a distraction nor does he let his refreshing take on the "hip-hop samurai" become a gimmick. Watanabe nails all the core elements of story telling and animation on the head. Just be prepared to watch some filler before you get to the meat.

As a sidenote-do not pass up "Misguided Miscreants" and "Elegy of Entrapment." They are the highlights of Watanabe's work in any show. May 11, 2006

Samurai Champloo & Kung Faux are good to go!

Are you ready to be served a feast of hip hop beats and Asian pop culture? Just order a dvd box of "Kung Faux" fun and "Samurai Champloo" son and your apetite will be will vanquished with haste. March 27, 2006

If u'r readin this u'll most likely end up buyin the DVD

If you're even showing an interest to vol.2 then you most likely own or have seen vol.1. Even then I recommend this one as much as any of them, since you gotta watch the whole series in order to find out what happens in the end. Anyways, vol.2 offers the same fun antics the 1st vol. did, BUT unfortunately when compared to vol.1 you'll see that there are a whole lot less sword fights and basically no violence at all. Any sword fighting that actually occur usually doesn't last long enough to be considered a "fight". But this DVD makes up for that with plenty more comical antics than the 1st vol. So enjoy it, I know I did. March 21, 2006

Fantastic

It's the same formula of hip edgy moods and attitudes that you felt in BEBOP. Hip hop replaces jazz as the underlying tempo of the show, and characters play great off of each other. Am saving up to purchase the rest of the series. March 21, 2006

Something happened on my way to loving this series...

After catching a few episodes on Cartoon Network's 'Adult Swim', I finally decided to invest money and time in this series. While watching the first DVD in the series, I caught myself grinning and marvelling at the great characterization, perfect animation, and ambiance put forth for my enjoyment. I allowed myself to hope that this series was going to hold my attention and devotion for a while. So, it was with such high hopes and expectations that I began watching the second DVD in the series.

Sadly, either my expectations where too high or the delivery fell very flat. The most obvious deficiency to me is the abrupt loss of fine animation. The characters become so poorly drawn, that they look different from scene to scene and are completely flat, devoid of any shading implied depth. This transition happens around the third episode and becomes undeniably distracting by the fourth episode. Some moments are so harsh to watch, I felt like I was watching a storyboard minus "inbetweener" frame drawings. Unacceptable after the fantastic work of disk 1. Moreover, the plots and voice acting of the English dub also suffer equally...in the end, I had to stop watching as the glow I felt after watching the first disk was quickly being snuffed out frame by horrible frame.

I hate to say it, but I ended up just skipping through each vingette of the episodes and dared to hope for a return of quality in the third disk (which arrived today). Well, I'm sorry to report, it got even worse. My wife, an admitted anime neophite, couldn't understand why I was just skipping through the disk. It didn't take long for me to explain as all I had to do was compare disk two and three with the first disk in the series...it was that obvious.

It's possible others will not be put off by the quality issues, focusing on the ongoing story line, but I'm done. I should have just been patient and saved my money by waiting for these disks to come to me through Netflix. Look for my copies of disk two and three on eBay very soon. The first disk I'll keep...you'll have to get your own.

Best regards,

Michael January 21, 2006

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