(no subject)
I just finished watching Samurai Champloo. I believe I started earlier this week. It's only twenty-six episodes long, but I could have happily watched it pretty much indefinitely.
First off, I OT3 Jin, Mugen, and Fuu so hard. I really don't have very many OT3s, which is weird, because I adore them. It's just so much fun to explore the different dynamics all three people have with each other versus the unique dynamic they all have together. Also, threesomes are cool.
Minor nitpicks first: BLOOD DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY. It...it just doesn't. But who CARES, right? EPIC SAMURAI SWORDFIGHTS. Sometimes it's distracting, though, like when someone gets cut just a couple of times and they manage to make an entire stream go completely red as they bleed into it. You...wouldn't have any blood after that, and you need blood to be a kick-ass samurai.
Also, occasionally people's noses disappear. It's sort of funny; there was an episode full of flashbacks and every flashback to a certain episode was a scene in which Fuu's nose was gone. I like to think it was mildly self-deprecating.
Aside from that, the art is gorgeous. The backgrounds are especially well-made, and all of the character designs are fun in their own way. All three of the main characters are great eye-candy, as is most of the show. The music is bitchin' as well; it's my goal to learn how to play the piano piece from Mugen's near-death scene after he failed to jump off the BOAT FULL OF DYNAMITE. (Seriously, Mugen. Just jump. Come on. You float in the ocean.)
The very first episode starts off with a screen saying that this is not an accurate historical portrayal, and boy, are they not kidding. I'm no expert on Japanese history, but the anachronisms come flying fast and furious and I managed to pick up quite a few. Some of the more amusing ones are beatboxing, break-dancing, and baseball. Also pretty much anything anyone says.
The overall tone of the series is humorous, while managing to have a somber side. There are no out and out tragic episodes, but quite a few have teary endings, and the finale brought a lump to my throat. The fights are amazingly tense; you're always pretty sure the good guys are going to win, but not--in the important battles, anyway--completely sure. Random mooks, of course, do not stand a chance, but the antagonists are well-matched with the protagonists and sometimes even stronger. They're also done with an economy of moves. Rather than both parties flailing their swords around like chipmunks on speed, each battle is done with a few strikes and a lot of footwork. The final battle with Mugen especially involved a lot of running around and ended in just a couple of moves. They were absolutely amazing, of course. It was probably the 'smartest' battle Mugen's ever been in, since he couldn't win through brute force.
Each episode is very self-contained, with the plot starting to really come in strong around episode seventeen, when the underground Christian movement was brought up. Even then, it's only briefly alluded to in the following episodes. The plot is tenuous, just barely holding the episodes together, and some of them are unapologetic exercises in self-indulgence. I direct your attention the baseball episode and the mushroom episode (both of which were amazing, although the mushroom episode was creepy as hell.) Honestly, I prefer a lot more drive behind my series...es? with a strong overarching plot and clear ties back to it, but Samurai Champloo is fun enough that I can forgive it.
I came into it with vague memories of having caught one or two episodes when it was airing on Adult Swim, expecting to slash the two male characters, and came out of it with an OT3 and something new to push on all of my friends. SC is not at all a romance-heavy anime, but there is subtext. Honestly, at first I just shipped Mugen and Jin because I like to pair pretty men up, but their mutual obsession with each other helped give it some substance. I can't just ignore Fuu, who is a big part of both their lives and heavily implied to be crushing on Mugen near the end, but pairing her up with just one of them also leaves the other one out. I think they really work as a threesome, because Jin and Mugen together would drive each other crazy, ditto Fuu and Mugen, and I can't see Fuu and Jin really working, just because they don't have much in common. She's very fifteen-year-old-girl-ey, bubbly and cheerful and very sweet, while he's a stoic and quiet samurai carrying around a lot of guilt from killing his master. I don't think they could necessarily connect on a deep emotional level. I do believe that if he were in love with someone, Jin would love them with all his heart, but he'd be quiet about it and Fuu strikes me as someone who would need something more obvious. Muugen is very obvious, but not given to displays of any kind of affection. They all three balance each other out.
Subtext-wise, they save the big stuff for the end. Mugen goes to save Fuu at Jin's insistence, Fuu cries over both of them but it's Mugen we see her waking up, and then, in the most homoerotic part yet, Mugen says that he suddenly doesn't feel like killing Jin, and Jin claims that he's finally found what he's been looking for to fill his life.
It's probably a good thing that the series isn't very plot-heavy, because they're not very good at foreshadowing. All the big reveals--Jin having killed his master, the sunflower samurai being Fuu's father, and probably plenty of other smaller ones I'm forgetting--were obvious way ahead of time. I called Jin killing his master in the second episode, and the identity of Fuu's father a couple of episodes before she said anything to anyone. There were several occasions where either Jin or Mugen 'seemed' to have been killed, but it was obvious that they weren't really dead. The main villain kind of came out of nowhere, too, as did the guys chasing Mugen; I kind of think they just threw them in there to have an epic conflict for the finale, or, if they planned them, didn't do a very good job of it. It's plot-lite, really, with no real substance but also easy to follow.
My favorite thing about a series like this is the fanfiction opportunities. There's so much left unsaid, both in the main storyline and in the pasts/futures of the characters, that fanwriters have a huge amount of freedom. The canon is obviously malleable--one episode ends with the protagonists being at the center of a NUCLEAR STRIKE and is never mentioned again--and there's so much space in between what we're told that the possibilities are endless. The characters aren't necessarily too strong to play around with either; there's lots of room for alternative character interpretations. Is Fuu a sweet girl on a mission, or a manipulative bitch who nearly makes two men die for her own selfish ends? Is Jin a noble samurai or a sullen, dishonered excuse for a man who murdered his own master and several fellow students? Is Mugen basically a good person who does bad things or has his rabies just not progressed to foaming yet? Are they the protagonists or a bunch of thieves and vandals who leave destruction and violence wherever they go?
Another anime might not be able to get by on the bare-bones plot and occasionally flimsy characterization of Samurai Champloo. It pokes fun at itself, though, and it's just so damn awesome that you can't bring yourself to care. The characters are fleshed out enough to be recognizably people and we're given interesting flashes into their hidden depths often enough to keep us wondering; the plot is shaky but works out in the end, especially with the highly self-contained nature of each episode; the art and soundtrack are beautiful enough to make us forgive more grievous sins. Samurai Champloo isn't necessarily a GREAT anime, but it's a lot of fun and I would recommend it to someone who wants to waste a lot of time.
First off, I OT3 Jin, Mugen, and Fuu so hard. I really don't have very many OT3s, which is weird, because I adore them. It's just so much fun to explore the different dynamics all three people have with each other versus the unique dynamic they all have together. Also, threesomes are cool.
Minor nitpicks first: BLOOD DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY. It...it just doesn't. But who CARES, right? EPIC SAMURAI SWORDFIGHTS. Sometimes it's distracting, though, like when someone gets cut just a couple of times and they manage to make an entire stream go completely red as they bleed into it. You...wouldn't have any blood after that, and you need blood to be a kick-ass samurai.
Also, occasionally people's noses disappear. It's sort of funny; there was an episode full of flashbacks and every flashback to a certain episode was a scene in which Fuu's nose was gone. I like to think it was mildly self-deprecating.
Aside from that, the art is gorgeous. The backgrounds are especially well-made, and all of the character designs are fun in their own way. All three of the main characters are great eye-candy, as is most of the show. The music is bitchin' as well; it's my goal to learn how to play the piano piece from Mugen's near-death scene after he failed to jump off the BOAT FULL OF DYNAMITE. (Seriously, Mugen. Just jump. Come on. You float in the ocean.)
The very first episode starts off with a screen saying that this is not an accurate historical portrayal, and boy, are they not kidding. I'm no expert on Japanese history, but the anachronisms come flying fast and furious and I managed to pick up quite a few. Some of the more amusing ones are beatboxing, break-dancing, and baseball. Also pretty much anything anyone says.
The overall tone of the series is humorous, while managing to have a somber side. There are no out and out tragic episodes, but quite a few have teary endings, and the finale brought a lump to my throat. The fights are amazingly tense; you're always pretty sure the good guys are going to win, but not--in the important battles, anyway--completely sure. Random mooks, of course, do not stand a chance, but the antagonists are well-matched with the protagonists and sometimes even stronger. They're also done with an economy of moves. Rather than both parties flailing their swords around like chipmunks on speed, each battle is done with a few strikes and a lot of footwork. The final battle with Mugen especially involved a lot of running around and ended in just a couple of moves. They were absolutely amazing, of course. It was probably the 'smartest' battle Mugen's ever been in, since he couldn't win through brute force.
Each episode is very self-contained, with the plot starting to really come in strong around episode seventeen, when the underground Christian movement was brought up. Even then, it's only briefly alluded to in the following episodes. The plot is tenuous, just barely holding the episodes together, and some of them are unapologetic exercises in self-indulgence. I direct your attention the baseball episode and the mushroom episode (both of which were amazing, although the mushroom episode was creepy as hell.) Honestly, I prefer a lot more drive behind my series...es? with a strong overarching plot and clear ties back to it, but Samurai Champloo is fun enough that I can forgive it.
I came into it with vague memories of having caught one or two episodes when it was airing on Adult Swim, expecting to slash the two male characters, and came out of it with an OT3 and something new to push on all of my friends. SC is not at all a romance-heavy anime, but there is subtext. Honestly, at first I just shipped Mugen and Jin because I like to pair pretty men up, but their mutual obsession with each other helped give it some substance. I can't just ignore Fuu, who is a big part of both their lives and heavily implied to be crushing on Mugen near the end, but pairing her up with just one of them also leaves the other one out. I think they really work as a threesome, because Jin and Mugen together would drive each other crazy, ditto Fuu and Mugen, and I can't see Fuu and Jin really working, just because they don't have much in common. She's very fifteen-year-old-girl-ey, bubbly and cheerful and very sweet, while he's a stoic and quiet samurai carrying around a lot of guilt from killing his master. I don't think they could necessarily connect on a deep emotional level. I do believe that if he were in love with someone, Jin would love them with all his heart, but he'd be quiet about it and Fuu strikes me as someone who would need something more obvious. Muugen is very obvious, but not given to displays of any kind of affection. They all three balance each other out.
Subtext-wise, they save the big stuff for the end. Mugen goes to save Fuu at Jin's insistence, Fuu cries over both of them but it's Mugen we see her waking up, and then, in the most homoerotic part yet, Mugen says that he suddenly doesn't feel like killing Jin, and Jin claims that he's finally found what he's been looking for to fill his life.
It's probably a good thing that the series isn't very plot-heavy, because they're not very good at foreshadowing. All the big reveals--Jin having killed his master, the sunflower samurai being Fuu's father, and probably plenty of other smaller ones I'm forgetting--were obvious way ahead of time. I called Jin killing his master in the second episode, and the identity of Fuu's father a couple of episodes before she said anything to anyone. There were several occasions where either Jin or Mugen 'seemed' to have been killed, but it was obvious that they weren't really dead. The main villain kind of came out of nowhere, too, as did the guys chasing Mugen; I kind of think they just threw them in there to have an epic conflict for the finale, or, if they planned them, didn't do a very good job of it. It's plot-lite, really, with no real substance but also easy to follow.
My favorite thing about a series like this is the fanfiction opportunities. There's so much left unsaid, both in the main storyline and in the pasts/futures of the characters, that fanwriters have a huge amount of freedom. The canon is obviously malleable--one episode ends with the protagonists being at the center of a NUCLEAR STRIKE and is never mentioned again--and there's so much space in between what we're told that the possibilities are endless. The characters aren't necessarily too strong to play around with either; there's lots of room for alternative character interpretations. Is Fuu a sweet girl on a mission, or a manipulative bitch who nearly makes two men die for her own selfish ends? Is Jin a noble samurai or a sullen, dishonered excuse for a man who murdered his own master and several fellow students? Is Mugen basically a good person who does bad things or has his rabies just not progressed to foaming yet? Are they the protagonists or a bunch of thieves and vandals who leave destruction and violence wherever they go?
Another anime might not be able to get by on the bare-bones plot and occasionally flimsy characterization of Samurai Champloo. It pokes fun at itself, though, and it's just so damn awesome that you can't bring yourself to care. The characters are fleshed out enough to be recognizably people and we're given interesting flashes into their hidden depths often enough to keep us wondering; the plot is shaky but works out in the end, especially with the highly self-contained nature of each episode; the art and soundtrack are beautiful enough to make us forgive more grievous sins. Samurai Champloo isn't necessarily a GREAT anime, but it's a lot of fun and I would recommend it to someone who wants to waste a lot of time.