Samurai Champloo

Mugen is a fairly dim, self-taught swordsman who doesn't know how to hold back, Jin is the perfect samurai: cold, calculating, every move flawless. They could be no more different, and in fact one would gladly kill the other with the chance, but they are both reluctantly recruited by the ditsy teahouse waitress Fuu after she saves them from execution.

Samurai champloo is the story of Mugen, Jin and Fuu, as they journey across Japan trying to find "The samurai who smells of sunflowers." All the way they meet all sorts of people, get into trouble, and try to make money. As the show progresses, the mysteries of the characters pasts are slowly revealed.

Samurai champloo is an excellent series from the people who made Cowboy Bebop, the animated sequence in Kill Bill, and a few sequences in the Animatrix. The music is good, offering a wide variety of genres, the animation is excellent, and the dialog is kept to a bare minimum. Oh, and the comedy is great, too.

If you liked Cowboy Bebop, you will probably like Samurai Champloo. One's set in the future and has a lot of jazz music, the other's set long ago in Japan and has a lot of rap in the scene transitions. But the character types in both are pretty much the same, and in both the characters must come to terms with themselves. I recommend it to fans of this genre of anime.

This anime tells the obscure story of 2 samurai bound to a girl on a quest for a samurai who smells of sunflowers. She constantly conceals her motiviation for doing so.

The comedy element in this anime is excellent. A deliberate pairing comparable to Spike and Jet in cowboy beebop exists with one vagabond samurai and one honorable samurai. Both samurai have a completely contrasting fighting style which makes for great action scenes and simultaneous plots (where one is fighting on one side of a city and another is fighting on the other).

Similar plot style to cowboy beebop, via meetings with people from their past, both characters pasts are slowly revealed with a clear direction toward finding the samurai who smells of sunflowers. There's a constant struggle to find the basic necessities like food and a real feel to the plot as opposed to anime where you're left wondering if they've gone six months without a shower or a bath.

As i said, best anime i've ever scene, hilarious :D

Let me begin by saying I am a huge Cowboy Bebop fan. Spike Spiegel is my hero, okay? So as much as I was dying to see this new work from the mind of Shinichiro Watanabe, I was apprehensive from the standpoint that I didn't want to see any subsequent work destroy any luster or afterglow that Bebop left behind in its wake. I was downright scared, I mean, how can you mix samurai action with hip-hop? I know Bebop's atmosphere of 1940's noir and 2071 spaceships didn't seem possible at first, but I was proved wrong by that. Maybe Watanabe-san had stepped too far outside the box this time.

I'll just come right out and say it: Shinichiro Watanabe can make anything he dreams up work. ANYTHING.

Samurai Champloo is one of the absolute coolest series I have ever seen. And by ever I mean live-action, animated, whatever. "Ever" ever. If you like anime, this is required watching, a new classic for the medium. If you don't like anime, watch this and you just might start to.

The story centers around two rogue samurai and the girl they're somewhat assigned to protect. Fuu, the young damsel who always seems to get in and out of distress; Jin, the serious samurai, and Mugen, the samurai who's seriously un-serious. The three travel around Edo-period Japan in search of the mysterious "Sunflower Samurai". And if I told you any more than that, I'd ruin so much of it for you. Just know this - the first episode will hook you like Tyrone Biggums to crack.

If you're a fan of anime or Cowboy Bebop or just really bad-ass shows/movies in general, you owe it to yourself to check this one out. You can pick up the DVDs or just check it out Saturday nights on Adult Swim.

Oh, and if you watch Adult Swim regularly and haven't caught Samurai Champloo yet, shame on you. You should know better.

The story is about Jin a traditional very skilled samurai, Mugen a innovative equally skilled samurai, and Fuu a girl who worked at a tea house. When Jin and Mugen get caught and are about to be executed, Fuu saves their lives and in return she makes them promise to help her find the Samurai Who Smells Like Sunflowers. It may sound stupid but trust me its not.

The animation. The animation on this show is Bebop quality. The animation is just incredible. The fight scenes are kick ass, beautiful and often times bloody. The backgrounds are very lush and detailed. You will be amazed and how good everything looks.

Now on to the best part, the music. When I first heard about Samurai Champloo the first thing that came to mind was "Well its made by the same dude that did Cowboy Bebop so its got to be good." ,the next thing was "Well what does a Japanese man know about hip hop?". Even though I'm still wondering about the second question, it doesn't matter because all the music works great. Just like with Bebop the series wouldn't be half as good if it didn't have the great music that it does. The opening theme song to Samurai Champloo is a "rap" song. I put rap in quotation because none of the lyrics rhyme so its not a true rap song, but its still great.

Bottom line. If you are a fan of Cowboy Bebop you have to see this. In fact if your a anime fan at all you need to see this. This will go down in history as one of the greats along with Cowboy Bebop.

I was at Best Buy one time checking out the anime section, there I found Samurai Champloo for sale. I am a big fan of samurai anime so I took a look at it. Two things made me want to buy it: the dream team of director Shinchiro Watanabe (Cowboy Bebop & The Animatrix), designers Kazuto Nakazawa (Kill Bill Vol. 1: Chapter 3: The Origin of O-Ren), and Mahiro Maeda (Last Exile & Blue Submarine No. 6), and an awesome, hard-hitting hip hop soundtrack! There aren't many animes that have rap soundtracks, so I had to check this out. Samurai Champloo is one of the best new animes. Brilliant animation, memorable characters, laid-back kinetic atmosphere, great music, and kick-ass Hong Kong, Akira Kurosawa style fight sequences. The story revolves around two highly skilled ronins and a girl: Mugen, a violent, buck wild swordsman whose style emphasizes one hand kendo and Capoeira. Jin, a mysterious, calm gentleman swordsman that masters traditional, straight-forward Japanese Swordsmanship. And Fuu, a young, beautiful ditzy waitress. After Fuu saves them from being executed, Mugen and Jin agree to temporarily set aside their differences and help her in her quest to find the "samurai who smells of sunflowers. Jin and Mugen are the perfect examples of the yin-yang concept. These unstoppable, independent warriors are complete opposites, but their skills are equal to each other. Fuu plays a perfect mediator between the two. This series has strong ties to Watanabe's previous classic, Cowboy Bebop: same style action and atmosphere, but with a hip-hop soundtrack instead of Jazz. And Mugen, Jin, and Fuu could be compared to Spike, Jet, and Faye. But what makes this series original is the hybrid combination of a feudal Japan setting and philosophy with modern fighting, urban street flavor personality, and off-beat comedy, hence the title "Champloo", meaning stir-fry. The verbal exchanges between the three heroes are amusing and great to watch. They series also utilize rap DJ record style scratching to switch between scenes perfectly. Overall, Samurai Champloo is an anime bond to be a classic, and raises the level for anime. If you are a major anime fan, check this out, it will be an excellent addition to a collection.

***** (5 stars) Ryojin20 favorite!