Samurai Champloo サムライチャンプルー, as posted earlier, is one of my favorite anime of recent times. Mostly this is because of its ground-breaking genre/time-bending mix of samurai historical accuracy and storylines with present-day hip-hop, trip-hop and rap dance and music mixes. It is a fantastic piece of work. Of course, the violent fight scenes and attitudes reflect both the historical realities of warrior-clan and individualistic feudal violence along with the present-day disenfranchisement and attitudes of today’s Japanese youth. Although violence in entertainment is problematic, at the same time the violence reflects reality and is ‘not-new’ and can be placed in contexts of reflection and thought, and perhaps change. The issue is perhaps to bring certain violences into visual/aural realities that are distanced from many mainstream people, although violence is everywhere.
Samurai Champloo is an often pleasant, brutal, aesthetically incredible and inspiring, horrific and amusing piece of modern, ‘new’ anime-making.
The first video is of the character ‘Beatbox’ and presents clips of his presence in the anime.
The second video is of the opening credits. Enjoy for the aesthetics of Japanese/hip-hop/samurai historical cultures.
AI NO KO 