Samurai Champloo #2 Pioneer 100 minutes English/Japanese English Subtitles Released: 03/29/2005 Reviewed: 07/26/2005

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It is more and more infrequent that we get to see Joel these days. Now that he's up and decided to join the rank and file of the married class he's too busy doing things like "working out a budget" and "sleeping with his wife" to make himself available to the likes of us, we who continue to spend our days harbored in West Philadelphia, watching Japanese cartoons and eating fried chicken. Joel has fancy, classy dinner parties with married friends and relatives and he probably just doesn't see the point anymore of scraping a French fry off of the ground and yelling "five second rule!" So the other day I had to bait him in the only way I knew how. I had offhandedly mentioned to his beautiful new bride that a friend of mine had a spare kitten hanging around. Immediately she pounced on me, demanding I procure this foul smelling beast for her enjoyment. Wily fellow that I am, I constructed a rather complex ploy. Many days later I called Joel from my (four beer) lunch break, throwing out grandiose promises of how the stinking rodentia would be available for pick up just a few days hence, why, in fact, the exact same day that the DVD of Gunslinger Girl was scheduled to arrive! What a strange coincidence it would be! And, as such, I did invite Joel over to our apartment. We could eat discounted Chinese times, sit in our squalor and reminisce like only men can reminisce. Why, if there was a better experience on planet earth I would care not to know about it.

Thus, through my trickery and intrigue, our tradition of getting together once a month and watching cartoons was held sacrosanct In an unfortunate series of events for Joel I was not, and still have not been, able to actually get a hold of my companion with the spare poop factory, despite numerous messages left on her answering machine. I feel no regret for this situation, because my original intent was only to get my old friend in the area. After that, all methods of kitten acquisition were merely tertiary. I wanted to watch some Samurai Champloo! This all seems excessively complex, especially considering that many of the episodes on this DVD are ones I have seen before through the magic of television's [Adult Swim] while Jerry and Joel have squandered their days watching fansubs of this, one of the most popular series to come out of Japan in recent memory. Essentially, we weren't watching much of anything new, but watching anime without someone else around just seems hollow. Certainly I will be glad to turn on the magic of FLCL at 4:30 AM when I stumble home from a bar, but it is not in my general MO to spend my days getting down and dirty with cartoons unless I have multiple witnesses to a) use as a sounding board b) use to prove I have friends and c) waste something in the area of four paragraphs when I'm writing a review.

So now, like Joel, I've made you aware of my ruse, my clever attempt to deceive you. One could do much worse than with what we're given. The trio of travelers encounter illicit sex traders, foreign diplomats with severe cases of eggroll fever and, my personal favorite, a charmingly inept samurai who attempts to make a name for himself by downing a famous samurai that killed his original claim to fame. The anachronistic stylization of a hip-hop introduction is so patently ridiculous that I can't help but find it captivating. Much like Cowboy Bebop before it, Samurai Champloo pays little heed to the plot at hand and is better for it. The overarching story of young Fuu trying to find her "Samurai that smells of sunflowers" is all but ignored in favor of eating contests and encounters with sleazy pawn brokers. The results are absolutely spectacular and my only quibbles are weak and contradictory. Even this early in its run Samurai Champloo has dug its claws into me and my complaints are limited to the fear that eventually it'll end and I'll be going back to watching the same animated schlock I've always watched.

Samurai Champloo is hip-hop storytelling at its finest. The episodes weave and bump to the rhtym, their characters awkwardly stumbling from place to place. Equal parts episodic storytelling and frantic sword battles are woven together in a way that is delightfully embodied by mic master Shing02 in his clumsy-yet-charming opening theme Battlecry. Situations like drunken older women seducing young warriors and vassals "beatboxing" to their lord's speeches should strike a chord with even the hardest anime watcher's hearts. A situation on paper that seems so ridiculous clearly leaves the viewer with no option but to it worm its way into their fragile, wounded heart. Like Joel, perhaps I have become too trusting in my old age. Samurai Champloo offers me respite from the humdrum activities of anime as a whole and that by itself is enough to garner my attention from it. Like Shing02's self-proclaimed "magnum opus", Champloo does falter at times. Fuu delicate treads the line between a delightful satire of the "crazy shouting grumpy" anime girl and actually being a "crazy shouting grumpy" anime girl. There isn't enough in Samurai Champloo for me to consider it a masterpiece, but it's solid, quality programming. Maybe, just like my withering relationship with Joel, the absence of good material makes the heart grow fonder. But I am not a philosopher, I just know what I like.