iewers who've seen Akira Kurosawa's classic 1954 film Seven Samurai (or any of the contemporary films inspired by it, such as A Bug's Life or Battle Beyond the Stars) will find Samurai 7's plot familiar enough: The farmers of a small agrarian village are weary of having all their hard work exploited by the bandits who steal their harvest and leave them to scrimp and starve. So they attempt to hire samurai to defend them. They have no gold to offer, only rice, so they can only hope to attract men who are desperate or altruistic or have something to prove. Still, they find seven warriors to take on their enemies.
Samurai 7's first twist on the classic comes up in the opening scene: The bandits are Nobuseri, essentially immense, alien-looking robots, reportedly former samurai who mechanized their bodies to become unstoppably strong. The villagers aren't just up against men with horses and swords, they're facing a massive flying battle fleet and fortress-sized mechanical enemies. Fortunately, the samurai of their world are phenomenal, Jedi-like warriors, and the best are capable of slicing a destroyer-sized ship in half with a single katana strike.
The four episodes on Samurai 7's initial DVD volume introduce a core cast of characters, starting with colorfully dressed "water priestess" Kirara, who uses her dowsing pendulum to find potential samurai heroes with the same determination and confidence she brings to bear when using it to find potential wells. With her younger sister Komachi and the self-effacing young villager Rikichi, she travels to the shabby, crowded local town to seek protectors for her village. There she catches the eye of Ukyo, a garishly painted, effeminate magistrate's son who decides he absolutely must have her for his harem. Fortunately, the samurai Kirara's party has found—quiet, preternaturally accomplished master Kambei; heroic but untried young Katsushiro; volatile mechanical showoff Kikuchiyo; and enigmatic street performer Gorobei—stand ready to protect her from Ukyo, his more ruthless father, and their deadly minions. Meanwhile, the search for seven samurai—the number Kambei has determined they need to stand against the Nobuseri—continues.
Old story, new guise
To some degree, the characters and situations of Seven Samurai do map over into Samurai 7: The samurais' names are the same, and their personalities seem based on their filmic predecessors. In particular, Kikuchiyo, the man-turned-robot samurai who's loud, blustery and full of himself, but has more power than sense, seems both like a parody of his original character (played by Toshirô Mifune) and like a relatively natural anime analogue of it. But the series feels more like a futuristic version of Rurouni Kenshin than a Kurosawa movie. Colorful characters keep popping out of the woodwork, and while there's some comedy relief and some fighting for the sheer joy of fighting, it's relatively clear that nearly everyone in this series is deadly and real combat is just a blink away.
The animation throughout the opening episodes is terrific, with solid, chunky character design and a lot of subtle coloring, but it reaches a new level once that promised combat kicks into gear in episode three. Like Kenshin, Samurai 7 explores ways to make sword combats endlessly fresh, with odd angles, slow motion, blurs of speed, stylized combatants and much more. It can be a little gimmicky, but it's still breathtaking when two equally matched opponents square off. And the show takes the samurai aesthetic seriously, with characters touting bushido and facing off over the propriety of divergent beliefs and actions.
The first four episodes (out of a 26-episode run) certainly just feel like ramp-up; one of the key samurai has appeared but hasn't joined the cause, while others haven't even made an appearance. But it's a solid and promising start. And while viewers may feel they've already seen this story before and know where it goes, all the additional concepts, characters, technology and twists give the story extra shape, setting the stage for a series of lively little conflicts before the big one can begin. Whether the series can maintain this level of interest as it stretches Kurosawa's story out to four times its length remains to be seen, but nothing here indicates the experiment will be anything but fascinating.
This makes me want to see the Kurosawa film all over again.
— Tasha
Back to the top.
