I burned through Samurai 7 quite quickly a while back and intended to say a few words about it, but never quite got around to it. I am reminded of it now by Mark’s list of anime on his queue to watch, and I can definitely offer a recommendation for S7, though it wasn’t the kind of anime that really grabs you (unlike, say, Death Note). Samurai 7 was simply a good story, with some interesting themes, but ultimately didn’t leave any significant mark. I’d recommend Samurai Champloo far more enthusiastically to anyone looking for a good samurai anime.
Incidentally, now that I am dipping my toe into the Fullmetal Alchemist waters, I notice an interesting parallel between Kikuchiyo and Alphonse. Of course I am only a few eps into the latter but still, the idea of a cyborg samurai seems to be an anime trope of sorts. Are there other examples I am not thinking of?
FYI – the earlier discussion on my previous post was pretty interesting – talking about the influences of Kurosawa’s original movie (which I’ve not yet seen) on this anime, as well as more mainstream movies like Star Wars and The Magnificent Seven.
(aside – my apologies to Mark and Nick for the confusion. I blame my feedreader. This is the reason I created @otakusphere, incidentally…)
Wow! I’m *everywhere*!
I had watched Samurai 7 a while back, and I do own the original Seven Samurai and watched that one a few times. The movie was brilliant, even if it drags on a bit too long. The series, I’ve found, was rather good. Not in my top 10, but I did find that they expanded on many of the themes of the movie pretty well (at least, it satisfied me). I had originally thought the steampunkish/mecha anachronism and the “Jedi on speed and crack” (how else would you describe Samurai with 4-5 foot long katanas taking down 50-foot tall mecha?) would grate on me, but it really didn’t.
It would be interesting to do more analysis and comparisons to the original movie.
argh, sorry Mark – and Nick. Fixed *blush*