iRentAnime

Like all my anime DVDs, I rent it from Netflix.com. Today my review is on Samurai Champloo – Volume 3 DVD. Volume 3 has two of the best episodes so far. Episode 9 “Beatbox Bandits” is one of the funniest episodes and episode 10 “Lethal Lunacy” has one of the most intense sword fight scene yet. Those two episodes really got me excited about the series.

However, episode 11 wasn’t that great. It was again centralized around a brothel which seems to be a recurring and overused theme in Samurai Champloo. Often, there’s something to do with either a brothel or prostitutes and the victim is always paying off debt for someone else’s mistake. On another point, this often used theme is one reason that this anime is definitely not for little kids.

Samurai Champloo episode 12 is basically a recap. It was actually not too bad to sit through. The director Shinichirô Watanabe made it very comedic so it doesn’t bore audiences who have already seen all those episodes, and there are even some new scenes of the old episodes.

Overall, Samurai Champloo seems like it is starting to pick up. From the very beginning, the only reason the three characters are traveling together is because of one very vague central plot. The plot is that Mugen and Jin promised Fuu to find a mysterious samurai that smells like sunflowers. What I don’t like is that the promise is the only reason that the three are together and 98% of the series so far does not reveal anything about the main central plot. I think this problem is a crucial drawback. However, the feeling I got from this volume of Samurai Champloo is that the main central plot will become more important in future episodes.

Samurai Champloo - Volume 3 DVD
Encoding: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only.)
Director: Shinichirô Watanabe
Screen Formats: Widescreen Anamorphic 1.78:1
Subtitles: English
Language and Sound:
English: Dolby Digital 5.1
Japanese: DTS 5.1 Surround

Episode 9: “Beatbox Bandits”
Episode 10: “Lethal Lunacy”
Episode 11: “Gamblers and Galantry”
Episode 12: “The Disorder Diaries”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 13th, 2005 at 1:18 pm and is filed under Samurai Champloo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.