Samurai Champloo Review

"Disco, disco fever!"



This anime is actually rather old, coming out in English close to seven years ago now. I've watched it three times now, but it never gets old. It's a creative and humorous anime no matter what year it is. If there was ever a genre called "historical comedy," this anime would fit right in.




It starts out with a young girl named Fuu, who had been orphaned as a child. She works at a restaurant when a swordsman named Mugen happens on the place. The daimyo's son (or as they say in the dub "governor's son") is harassing Fuu, and after quite a bit of this, she gets tired of it and promises to give Mugen 100 dumplings to get rid of them. At the same time, a samurai by the name of Jin gets tangled up in a fight because he stood up for a peasant that couldn't pay. The daimyo's son explains that his father has many strong men (who Jin has just killed) and as Jin walks in, Mugen confuses him for one of these men and the two begin to fight. One thing leads to another, and the restaurant ends up burning down by means of the daimyo's son, and the two men are sentenced to death. But after a daring rescue by Fuu, they escape. She convinces them to go with her and the set out to find "The Samurai that smells of sunflowers."



After this, most of the anime is rather episodic, basically sharing amusing antics and adventures of the three, including an episode with zombies, a giant beast-man that tries to kill them all, and even an episode about baseball. Even though each episode can be watched stand-alone, they are all very good. The last three episodes reveals most of the character development that had been somewhat hidden throughout the series. The ending is a little bit disappointing, but cute none-the-less. There are quite a bit of correct historical references in this one, but they are also mixed in with some ridiculousness, like rapping carpenters, and a graffiti battle in one of the cities.



This is a rather good anime, so I would give it a 9 out of 10. I would gladly recommend this to any fan of historical comedy, even if they don't normally like anime. It's very good and worth at least a few watches.



To find out more about my rating system, please check

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