Well, I've finished
Samurai Champloo, and I'm glad I gave this series another chance because I really didn't care for it all that much back when I originally saw it. I think back then, this show was really trapped in the shadow of its spiritual predecessor: Cowboy Bebop, a standard it never did and never could measure up against. Watching it now after so many years have passed, I think I can enjoy it more on its own merits...with some caveats. Like Bebop, comedy episodes and adventure-y episodes work great as the show continually throws the main trio into various situations, playing their personalities against each other for maximum effect. Unlike Bebop, though, when the series tries to be overly dramatic it just doesn't
work because the writers have the cast
separate, and I'm sorry but these characters just aren't interesting enough to carry some of the more substandard stories by themselves. And while there are some really cool sequences in certain episodes, I don't think the writers allowed themselves to really let loose enough. There's a certain restrained insanity that fueled Bebop that this show
tries to emulate with its hip-hop/samurai mixture, but it just doesn't go far enough in most episodes to carry some of these stories. How do you manage to have a
boring zombie episode, for example?
And I'd forgotten just how pessimistic and
depressing so many of these episodes can be, which didn't help me care about their stories when they weren't supported with comedy episodes between them.
On the upside, I remembered the ending being a lot more boring and depressing than it really was (I came away much more satisfied this time); the dub is still excellent for its time; and when it works the show is just
cool in a similar way to how Bebop often was. The music's excellent as well, especially the very relaxing ending credits theme (which is something very,
very few anime get right). Unfortunately, I don't know if this is just how the dub was made or if it's a problem with the Blu-Ray transfer, but the English audio mix on this Blu-Ray re-release is kind of messed-up. The audio levels jump all over the place in this show, with some scenes being
extremely quiet only to gradually grow louder, and some vice-versa. At first, I though it was my TV or PS3 doing stuff in the background to equalize the sound so I made sure all those options were disabled, but I still heard it to some extent.
Overall, Champloo's better than I remember it with a good style and (when the writers decide to unleash it) a good sense of fun, but it's held back by some really dull writing in sections and stories that just aren't that interesting.
Started watching
Trigun on my old Geneon Tin-pack DVD re-releases, and man I'd forgotten how genuinely
funny this show is in its first half. It's amusing hearing how fresh and lively Jonny Yong Bosche sounded before he became the Nolan North of the anime dubbing industry. I'm sorry, though, Madhouse...I know how much work you put into this show's animation, but this show always has and always will look like crap with its extremely faded color palette. With colors this bleached, the show looks a good 10 years older than it actually is. It reminds me of how the original Evangelion TV series looked before that show got a total color restoration to actually
look like it was made in the mid-90s. Perhaps the show's creators wanted it to look like that, though, because looking at the trailers for the upcoming
Trigun: Badlands Rumble revival movie you can still see some of that bleached color palette.
Topic: Rate the last TV show you've seen (Read 1199334 times)
