Cowboy Bebop defined a generation of anime fans a few years back. It’s solid mix of action, comedy and a fantastic soundtrack has solidified its place in the mind of anime fandom. So many shows are now casually compared to Cowboy Bebop that it now stands as one of the benchmarks of anime from the last decade alongside such titles as Evangelion. But Samurai Champloo is of course yet another title that will constantly be compared to Bebop, and perhaps for a much better reason than so many other shows. Shinichiro Watanabe, the creator of Cowboy Bebop, has now returned with Samurai Champloo – a show as unique in its style as his previous effort was.

Edo period Japan: the Shogunate has become a bloated parody of what it once was; samurai are now bureaucrats; the people starve from high taxation and poor government; and a new

breed of Samurai have emerged – warriors who value money and not honour. Those who use their influence and position to get away with anything, so not much has changed. Into this mix we get Fuu, a young waitress looking for a samurai that had some impact in her life many years previously. She gets the chance to truly pursue this desire when she saves the lives of two hardened warriors the vital, brutal Mugen, and the calm reserved and yet equally deadly Jin.

Now theses three then move on across Japan in search of this elusive samurai who smells of sunflowers. They continually get into dangerous situations, and live on the brink of starvation, scrounging for food. In fact, much like the lifestyles of the crew of the good ship Bebop! The action scenes have a vitality that really brings the screen to life. The

sword fight between Mugen and Jin in the tea-house is jaw-droppingly cool, and so very reminiscent of Cowboy Bebop that fans of that show will find themselves right at home with this one.

Of course mention must go to the soundtrack for this show. Unlike the sublime soundtrack for Bebop that had the fortunate benefit of being under the direction of the uber-talented Yoko Kanno, the soundtrack for Champloo does not have the breadth of diversity that Bebop had. Focussing instead upon the single genre of hip-hop this show mixes the soundtrack almost seamlessly with the show. One of the most obvious examples of this would be the use of the break-beat tracks when Mugen is fighting. A perfect marriage of audio beats with visual action, is just one example of how well this show uses hip-hop to its advantage. Whilst it may seem like a

bizarre soundtrack to build into your period samurai show, the creative talent have clearly worked hard to make this aspect one of the very polished whole of Samurai Champloo.

So what is actually wrong with this show? Well, at the moment I’m hard-pressed to find any flaw with it. These first four episodes provide all the excitement and action I look for in samurai titles, with its own brand of comedy mixed in for good measure. It does not stand next to the quality of shows such as Full Metal Alchemist, Haibane Renmei or R.O.D. The TV Series, but certainly shows the potential for sitting up there with such high class shows currently on release. It still waits to be seen though as to whether Samurai Champloo can possibly define a new generation of anime fans, as Cowbcoy Bebop did so many years ago.