For the record, Samurai Champloo is awesome. I’m particularly impressed with how well-drawn all three main characters are–even though eight episodes in, I know very little about their pasts. I still almost know why each is traveling, and I can accept them traveling together.
Minor spoilers below the cut.
The girl, Fuu, delights me. Earnest and caring, but she’ll crack a bad guy over the head with a vase if the need arises. She’s a strong woman, but not a warrior or an ice princess. Also, while both men are swordsmen and Fuu is not a trained fighter, they aren’t afraid to let her cross a street by herself. They trust Fuu to take care of herself, and for the most part she does. In fact, the reason they travel with her is she saved them from execution, earning a promise of assistance in return. On one occasion when Mugen does try to come to her aid after she is shanghaied to work in a brothel–by the time he gets there, Fuu has rescued herself.
What really gets me, though, is the relationship between Jin and Mugen. Jin is ronin, a samurai without a master: trained and disciplined, long-thinking with a strong code of honor. Mugen is…Mugen. Loud and obnoxious, can’t help starting fights, wild and amazing in his fighting skills…Â The first time they meet, the fight begins. And it continues at random moments when the two suddenly can’t stand each other any more. But they don’t constantly bicker, which is also hugely refreshing. They are mostly grumpily taciturn as the writers let Fuu fill in the backstory or what’s needed.
Often the three try to go their separate ways, and are dragged back by fate or honor–not whim or coincidence. In one episode, Jin and Mugen land on opposite sides of a gang war–and still don’t manage to complete their fight.
This show gets everything right. In what I’ve seen so far, the plot grows seamlessly from the characters and the setting. Even the deliberate anachronisms seem natural and integrated and fun. The art is lovely, the comedy, drama, and tragedy well-mixed, and the marvelous fights are frequent but not unending.
I hope to God it ends well. (DON’T TELL ME!)