Samurai Champloo

Director- Shinichiro Watanabe

Cast- Various

Country of Origin- Japan.

Distributor - Funimation

Number of discs –  3

Reviewed by - Scott MacDonald

Date- 05/30/2019

Shinichiro Watanabe is one of the names that broke anime in the West in the 1990's with his show Cowboy Bepop, which was a film noirish, space action adventure that is as entertaining as it was timeless. Aside from Cowboy Bebop the movie, Watanabe has never ventured back into the world of the Bebop, but anything he did would be watched by fans with excitement. His follow up would be the early 2000's series Samurai Champloo.  Whereas Bebop was built around a funk and jazz soundtrack, Champloo is also a musically centered anime series which takes the world of the 19th century samurai (Edo period), and mashes it up with hip-hop culture.

    The story follows 2 samurai and a waitress. Fuu is a waitress at a restaurant that ends up as fighting ground between the brash, impulsive, and violent Mugen, and the more restrained, but no less violent Jin. Their battle practically destroys Fuu's restaurant, and ends with the pair in trouble with the law.   The pair gets out of it with the help of Fuu, and they promise to help her find a Samurai who smells of sunflowers, an entity she was predicted to fall for. The pair swear off fighting their death match until their promise is fulfilled.

   The series itself outside of Mugen and Jin's promise doesn't have match of a narrative through line. The series episodes are mostly episodic with each episode wrapping up a narrative, and only a few  continuing on for 2 or more including the finale. Which was a tone of start realism in the emotions of the characters, and ends up fitting the tone of the show nicely. The animation is quite excellent, it takes a stylized approach similar to Bebop, which makes it quite distinct for the era. The soundtrack mostly of early 2000's hip hop tracks are an excellent accompaniment to the series as a whole.

    Samurai Champloo is repackaged as an anime classic by Funimation and presented with a 1080p AVC encoded transfer that looks quite solid, even though it is an SD remaster and upscaled. Colors are well reproduced and detail is fine throughout.

    Audio includes 2 HD audio tracks 1 in English, the other in Japanese. Both of these are solid, clear, and bring the pulsing heart of the show to life.

    There are a pair of promo videos, trailers, clean opening, clean closing, and more as far as extras are concerned.

    Samurai Champloo is one of the most exciting anime series of the early 2000's period. It was a fine follow up to Cowboy Bebop, and is still entertaining through to this day. The Blu-ray looks and sounds quite solid, with limited extras. RECOMMENDED.