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Well i am going to try my hand at reviewing movies. I am in no way a film expert nor am i going to pretend that i am any good at reviewing, i just love watching movies and thought that should be enough license to share my opinions on the subject. Feel free to let me know your thoughts. I promise i welcome criticism and i am more than happy to learn from anyone who has something to share.
Samurai Champloo
The series kicks up sometime during Edo period when Japan was on the cusp of great change resisting from the European influences even as its people slowly borrowed from it. Old ways were dying and new trends hadn't yet been accepted. Champloo's vision of Japanese history is a skewed one indeed. Amidst all the chaos a story of three travelers is about to break out.
"A young lady named Fuu is working as a waitress in a tea house when she is harassed by a band of ruffians. Another customer, Mugen, offers to take care of them in exchange for food, but ends up instigating a brawl. Jin, a stoic young ronin in samurai garb, enters the tea house in the midst of the fight. Mugen attacks Jin after he proves to be a worthy opponent and they begin fighting one another, ignoring a fire that started during the brawl. They both faint from smoke inhalation. When they awaken, they find they have been arrested for the murder of Shibui Tomonoshina, the magistrate's son who had burned to death in the fire, and are to be executed. With help from Fuu, they escape and Fuu asks them to travel with her to find "the samurai who smells of sunflowers," a mysterious man Fuu can give little description of, but who she insists she must find. They agree to join her, with Fuu making only one condition: they are not to duel one another until the journey is done." (Wikipedia)
So they set off on their journey provided that a chi wielding shaolin swordsman, ghetto pirates, Dutchmen invaders, mind shaft zombies, beat-boxing delinquents, skin head tigers, Spanish missionaries, the new your Yankees or a whore house cutthroat counterfeiters don't do them away first.
On the technical side of things Champloo is actually not always a visual marble but this is covered up very well. The characters go off model fairly often and the animation can be limited and kinda sloppy every now and again, but for the most part the animators put attention to details where it mattered and took short cuts when it was less noticeable remaining strong throughout instead of starting strong and getting crappy. Besides those few inconsistencies the art direction in Champloo is gorgeous full of thick dark strokes striking locale, and most of all constant perfect use of lighting to strike the mood. The use of colour and shading in Champloo is ever present and totally amazing.
Musically Champloo relies on the heavy down beats of Hip hop, rap even a little reggae played on both modern and traditional instruments. Its a strange blend to be sure but even stranger is how the music is used. As if determined to abrade the norm even in its soundtrack Champloo plays weird music in weird place - a soulful ballade might play when a pack of thugs is being slaughtered and an eerie broken turntable mix might occur during a sensitive moment and intense drum loops might pound in when there is nothing on screen but a thick male biding tension in the air. Of course what really matters is does it work? Every time! the director Shinichirō Watanabe is somewhat of anime genius and he knows what he is doing but its definitely unusual.
Vocally Champloo works equally well in both languages and its certainly hard to determine which one would be more appropriate to watch in if you think about it. On the one hand this is a period piece thick with Japanese culture so you would think it would be better to watch it in Japanese but on the other hand, it's also jam packed with western element, slangs and style. Its a dichotomy split much like the characters of the traditional Jin and the unhinged Mugen and it really just comes down to personal preference as they both work well.
Some people view Champloo as a parody of chambara films (combat based samurai films). But i don't think its so much of a parody, rather, a gumbo. The word 'Champloo' is a short hand for goya champuru which is a stir fry dish and it simply means to hash up. Wata who previously directed Cowboy BeeBob has a Tarantinoesque fixation on deriving new visions from bizarre blends of reality and extreme pop culture. He prefer to see the waning days of the samurai not as a time of dying nobilities and traditions but a rough and chaotic period where the wondering warriors were more like inter city mobsters, which may be a little closer to the truth in the same way Americans glorify cowboys as heroes. But Champloo exaggerates Watanabei's vision into an anachronism extreme. Fuu's nail polish is an anachronism, Jin's Bi-focal is an anachronism and Mugen's very existence is an anachronism.
Logically Champloo does not make sense at all. Champloo is entirely composed of vignettes of its own style, funny, dramatic, parodic or pensive that often focus on blending a historical event or element with modern trends and references giving it something you have never seen before. If nothing else this is a smart attention getting bundle of stories. The downside to this is the bundling of stories and not at all the stories that gets your attention. Champloo is all about style over substance. With maybe a few exceptions all of Champloo's anecdotes are simple enough to be summarized into two sentences, sometimes even one. They are gripping and impressive in execution but fall flat narratively, always cliched and overly simplistic and never able to form a lasting impression on a deeper level.
The characters are lovable but also pretty shallow not stretching much pass the stereotype you pegged them for from episode one. They do get a little back story, they become more of a family but its nothing we haven't seen done much better before. For the most part they don't really change. But still that's not so bad, the worst part of all of these is that Champloo does feel like it has a message to share with us. But then again its the simplest and the most hackneyed message out there delivered in the simplest and most hackneyed way possible.
In my opinion Champloo is significant but hard to care about. Champloo is sort of like a hit hip hop single into itself - maybe there is almost nothing to it and it should be forgettable but you still always listen to it because its enjoyable, its stylish and its just gets into you and is great a parties ,so who cares about depth and complexities when you have ridiculous fun done right. And that's really all Champloo is, much as it is for our sunflower seeking vagabond trio, its not the destination but the journey that really matters.
Samurai Champloo
The series kicks up sometime during Edo period when Japan was on the cusp of great change resisting from the European influences even as its people slowly borrowed from it. Old ways were dying and new trends hadn't yet been accepted. Champloo's vision of Japanese history is a skewed one indeed. Amidst all the chaos a story of three travelers is about to break out.
"A young lady named Fuu is working as a waitress in a tea house when she is harassed by a band of ruffians. Another customer, Mugen, offers to take care of them in exchange for food, but ends up instigating a brawl. Jin, a stoic young ronin in samurai garb, enters the tea house in the midst of the fight. Mugen attacks Jin after he proves to be a worthy opponent and they begin fighting one another, ignoring a fire that started during the brawl. They both faint from smoke inhalation. When they awaken, they find they have been arrested for the murder of Shibui Tomonoshina, the magistrate's son who had burned to death in the fire, and are to be executed. With help from Fuu, they escape and Fuu asks them to travel with her to find "the samurai who smells of sunflowers," a mysterious man Fuu can give little description of, but who she insists she must find. They agree to join her, with Fuu making only one condition: they are not to duel one another until the journey is done." (Wikipedia)
So they set off on their journey provided that a chi wielding shaolin swordsman, ghetto pirates, Dutchmen invaders, mind shaft zombies, beat-boxing delinquents, skin head tigers, Spanish missionaries, the new your Yankees or a whore house cutthroat counterfeiters don't do them away first.
On the technical side of things Champloo is actually not always a visual marble but this is covered up very well. The characters go off model fairly often and the animation can be limited and kinda sloppy every now and again, but for the most part the animators put attention to details where it mattered and took short cuts when it was less noticeable remaining strong throughout instead of starting strong and getting crappy. Besides those few inconsistencies the art direction in Champloo is gorgeous full of thick dark strokes striking locale, and most of all constant perfect use of lighting to strike the mood. The use of colour and shading in Champloo is ever present and totally amazing.
Musically Champloo relies on the heavy down beats of Hip hop, rap even a little reggae played on both modern and traditional instruments. Its a strange blend to be sure but even stranger is how the music is used. As if determined to abrade the norm even in its soundtrack Champloo plays weird music in weird place - a soulful ballade might play when a pack of thugs is being slaughtered and an eerie broken turntable mix might occur during a sensitive moment and intense drum loops might pound in when there is nothing on screen but a thick male biding tension in the air. Of course what really matters is does it work? Every time! the director Shinichirō Watanabe is somewhat of anime genius and he knows what he is doing but its definitely unusual.
Vocally Champloo works equally well in both languages and its certainly hard to determine which one would be more appropriate to watch in if you think about it. On the one hand this is a period piece thick with Japanese culture so you would think it would be better to watch it in Japanese but on the other hand, it's also jam packed with western element, slangs and style. Its a dichotomy split much like the characters of the traditional Jin and the unhinged Mugen and it really just comes down to personal preference as they both work well.
Some people view Champloo as a parody of chambara films (combat based samurai films). But i don't think its so much of a parody, rather, a gumbo. The word 'Champloo' is a short hand for goya champuru which is a stir fry dish and it simply means to hash up. Wata who previously directed Cowboy BeeBob has a Tarantinoesque fixation on deriving new visions from bizarre blends of reality and extreme pop culture. He prefer to see the waning days of the samurai not as a time of dying nobilities and traditions but a rough and chaotic period where the wondering warriors were more like inter city mobsters, which may be a little closer to the truth in the same way Americans glorify cowboys as heroes. But Champloo exaggerates Watanabei's vision into an anachronism extreme. Fuu's nail polish is an anachronism, Jin's Bi-focal is an anachronism and Mugen's very existence is an anachronism.
Logically Champloo does not make sense at all. Champloo is entirely composed of vignettes of its own style, funny, dramatic, parodic or pensive that often focus on blending a historical event or element with modern trends and references giving it something you have never seen before. If nothing else this is a smart attention getting bundle of stories. The downside to this is the bundling of stories and not at all the stories that gets your attention. Champloo is all about style over substance. With maybe a few exceptions all of Champloo's anecdotes are simple enough to be summarized into two sentences, sometimes even one. They are gripping and impressive in execution but fall flat narratively, always cliched and overly simplistic and never able to form a lasting impression on a deeper level.
The characters are lovable but also pretty shallow not stretching much pass the stereotype you pegged them for from episode one. They do get a little back story, they become more of a family but its nothing we haven't seen done much better before. For the most part they don't really change. But still that's not so bad, the worst part of all of these is that Champloo does feel like it has a message to share with us. But then again its the simplest and the most hackneyed message out there delivered in the simplest and most hackneyed way possible.
In my opinion Champloo is significant but hard to care about. Champloo is sort of like a hit hip hop single into itself - maybe there is almost nothing to it and it should be forgettable but you still always listen to it because its enjoyable, its stylish and its just gets into you and is great a parties ,so who cares about depth and complexities when you have ridiculous fun done right. And that's really all Champloo is, much as it is for our sunflower seeking vagabond trio, its not the destination but the journey that really matters.
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"Evil will always triumph because good is dumb "
Grill me, I dare you!
My Reviews
"Evil will always triumph because good is dumb "
Grill me, I dare you!
My Reviews
Keep it up 
but i still like your review 
