Samurai 7

I normally don't watch too much anime an my grammar is also very bad so this my first review. I will try my best not too include any spoilers.

After reading the Plot line too this anime I found it very Interesting.
I wanted a Anime where i can connect too the characters an connect too the anime which most people obviously want. I have an interest In samurai action type animes with a strong back story so I thought this was perfect judging by the plot.

The anime started of alright, it was good enough for me too carry on watching it. The story seemed ... too be building its self but it was completely immature, When i mean Immature it the humor was not funny at all .As the story progressed The seven samurai were introduced, at this point I thought shits gonna start soon as in the important parts of the story. I was deeply disappointed. It lack any proper back story on most of the samurai, it was also very very immature like watching an Asian animated tv show for kids that would play on tv in the mornings. As the story went on , what suppose too be a big parts of the anime as in a important parts gave me NO trills or emotional movement at all WHY ? Because it was SOOOOOOOOOO obvious. ANother part came up which you can make out what the writer tried too do, they tried too make another emotional scene which was suppose too be major but it felt like noting , felt like a waste of time which was not needed. Most of the anime scenes were not needed. I was soo angry with the anime i wanted too stop but i told myself il finish it.

Surprisingly it got much better towards the end. I was shocked it kept me interested but it was too late.

I rate this anime extremely low an I would not recommend it to anybody who want too watch an anime where you will feel connected with the characters or deeply moved it failed too grasp an emotional feeling but anger for wasting my time watching this. It was extremely Immature an I do not recommend it too anyone above the age of 15. This anime could of been soo much better which is probz the main reason i hated it soo much. good potential gone.

Props too some of the artwork an action scenes though.

When producers try to make money out of a story that was famous in the past, only by changing a few things and, like in this case converting it into a different medium, the result that comes out is this anime “Samurai 7”.
So for everyone who doesn’t know: Samurai 7 is an anime based on the same story of the movie “Seven Samurai” made in the year 1954 in japan which became pretty famous and successful. The movie has been remade in different form already and Samurai 7 is the anime-version of it.

The anime, such as the movie tells a story of a ... village of farmers being robbed by bandits, who then decide to ask Samurais to help them. The anime though don’t play in Japan from the past, it introduces a “new” mixed world with a futuristic design and some “samurai” influences in it, which in my opinion doesn’t really work the way they did it.

The pacing of the anime very boring though, unlike the movie, that’s the main problem I have with the anime.
The artstyle wasn’t that much outstanding, neither was the soundtrack

A good thing to mention are the characters which are all not that bad, at least they arnt very cliché.

So overall it is best to watch the original movie “Seven Samurai” from the year 1954 instead of this anime. The anime is rather boring and all the other aspects of it arnt very outstanding.

It's not terribly controversial to say that newer fans of a medium are more easily impressed than more experienced fans. A trope or twist might look like THE GREATEST THING EVER the first time we see it, but after seeing it more times in different works the novelty starts to wear off and we can judge it more objectively. Eventually we build a far larger pool of references that allow us to get a better sense of where a work truly stands in the context of its genre and medium, and what first appeared to be a flawless masterpiece might not be quite so impressive ... when judged with more experience.

All this to say that even though I watched 'Samurai 7' when I was new to anime, I still realized it wasn't much good. It seems everyone has a reason to dislike GONZO- this show is mine.

-Story-

Akira Kurosawa's 'Seven Samurai' is a centerpiece of world cinema- THE samurai movie. Then in the US it was adapted into the cowboy film 'The Magnificent Seven' and became one of the indisputable classics of that genre. And so GONZO figured if those baka gaijin could adapt it well, why not they? Well, enough GONZO bashing for now, here's why the plot of 'Samurai 7' fell flat on it's face: it's badly convoluted. The first half works well enough, mostly because it sticks somewhat close to Kurosawa's original plot and the post-apocalyptic mecha Sci-Fi setting is a fairly interesting twist. But the second arc goes off past the point where the movie ends into a ridiculous conspiracy involving the bandits, the emperor, a scheming prince, and a whole lot of rice. This is what I call 'Plot Pileup', there's too much going on, none of it is properly explained, and none of it is really engaging or memorable. Less really would have been more here.

-Art-

GONZO is essentially a 'Style Over Substance' kind of studio- that can be pretty hit and miss even on the style. The terribly integrated CGI is going to be the one thing you remember from this show if you remember nothing else. The character designs for the main protagonists are fine, but nothing special. However, the low-level bandit mechs looks flat-out stupid. Like something out of a cheap 1950's American sci-fi film. And the animation isn't above going noticeably off-model from time to time. The art isn't completely terrible the same way the plot is, but it's nowhere near good- maybe passable if you squint and remember this show is a decade old.

-Sound-

Nothing to see here, move along. It isn't bad, but there's nothing memorable.

-Character-

You'll remember Kambei because he's the leader, Kikuchiyo because he's the mecha-samurai, and Kyuzo because his character is the coolest in any version of 'Seven Samurai'. The rest... eh? Goals and motivations for the cast are pretty sparse. They have a quirk or two and a unique special attack, but that's about it. You won't find yourself deeply invested in any of them, or stay up late at night trying to crack the complex inner workings of their minds. The villains are even worse. The bandits are pretty straightforward, but that's forgivable in that they're bandits- they're simple men with simple goals. But the big 'final boss' is a convoluted mess who seems to do whatever the plot needs him to do. You can't even really bother to hate the guy as he's just so bland and his goal is so vague. The original movie cast worked because they were 1) interesting characters individually, and 2) they subverted nearly every popular samurai trope (most of which were the product of pre-WWII Imperial Japanese propaganda) in a movie that deconstructed the entire samurai genre. The cast here is neither interesting individually, or even functional in the service of some overarching theme (there ISN'T one).

-Enjoyment-

I saw the title, remembered how much I liked the movie, and gave it a shot. I liked it well enough at first, but by the end I was watching just to finish and because there wasn't much else available to me in terms of anime at the time. Fans of the original will despise 'Samurai 7', and those ignorant of the source material likely won't be terribly impressed either.

-Overall-

If you like Japanese culture you need to see Akira Kurosawa's original (in fact I'd recommend for any anime fan to occasionally get outside the 'anime/manga' bubble and sample a wider range of Japanese culture, you'll look more someone cultured and less like a fanboy otaku. Might I suggest some of Eiji Yoshikawa's novels, or a good translation of 'The Tale of the Heike'?). Forget this series. 'Samurai 7' isn't really passable on its own merits, but it positively STINKS in comparison to the work which inspired it. It may borrow its name from a classic film, but in terms of quality it has more in common with those cheap 'Magnificent Seven' sequels that were churned out here in the US.

Man oh man, where to start. For those not in the know, this is a semi-steampunk adaptation of the beloved classic Seven Samauri. This is a 26 episode adaptation of a 3.5 hour movie. What starts out as an interesting retelling of the tale of a small village hiring seven samauri to protect their village from a pack of bandits slowly (emphasis on slowly) devolves into a padded, middling, uninspired mess of a show by the end. What could've been a fantastic 13 episode retelling of the film classic is instead a bloated, creaky 26 episode disappointment.

CONS:

Pacing is horrible. The show spends 13 episodes getting ... the samauri gathered and returned to the village. Rather then wrap up the climactic battle in a few episodes and put a bow on it, the show then spends the next 13 episodes getting to the final arc with little setup and no relation to the classic movie. I'm all for adapting with the times, but the last 13 episodes really drag on. I was wishing for it to end come episode 16.

Animation quality is adequate at times, only to dip down to hilariously bad at other times. It's clear they were given a budget and story for 13 episodes, but a demand for 26. Animation dips are noticeable, too frequent, and jarring.

Having had to pad out this show, there are several characters that were added specifically for the anime, and the show is worse off for most of them.

PROS:

Fortunately for this show, the characters that were in the movie maintain most of their same characterization. A lot of the great character moments are maintained, and the play between them is fun to watch. Kikuchiyo's "Reason everyone sucks" speech is maintained, and was great to see again.

The Japanese voice cast has done a fantastic job.

NONS:

Katsushiro undergoes a much different character arc than he does in the original movie. While I feel like it is much more appropriate to his type of character, in the end it goes on for too long and is bobbled. So a hit and a miss.

Final thoughts:

This anime had so much potential, but was ultimately defeated by an episode count twice what it should have been, animation that dips to the absurdly bad at times, a final arc that should've been excised, and numerous additions that made the show worse.

Go watch the movie instead.

✪ Genre: action (gunfights, swordplay), adventure, drama, mecha (organic mecha, piloted suits, robots), sci-fi (alternative reality), seinen, with elements of comedy & romance (unrequited love)


✔Positive Aspects✔

◧ Good soundtrack: the only positive aspect of the series, though it was most noticeable during the regular, non-action-based interactions among the characters while the action scenes were clearly suffering. It was mostly comprised of Japanese folk music - a choice which proved to be neither overly enticing nor too disheartening.


✘Negative Aspects✘

◧ Animation: although the character designs were fairly clear and distinct from one another, I was incredibly disappointed with the mecha designs and the more elaborate robotic structures which, ... unfortunately, immediately reminded me of Karas (2005-07), a series of OVAs that I thoroughly disliked.

Specifically, I could not get past the glaring visual disharmony between the human characters and the mecha designs/robotic structures, which felt as if they were designed by 2 different groups of people or, at least, were never meant to be featured within the same end product. This series felt like a live-action film with some animated characters but in reverse.

◧ Concept: this alternative reality, which was essentially a newly-emerged Meiji Restoration time period reimagined with organic mecha, piloted suits, and robots, did not feel real, even momentarily, because of its countless contradictions.

The idea that mechanized former-samurai-turned bandits are raiding villages, with their incredibly sophisticated offensive & carrier technology, for the sole purpose of obtaining a portion of their cultivated rice does not pass the smell test. How aren't those people able to get ahold of technology that would automatize, at least to an extent, the process of cultivating rice?

As another example, how were non-mechanized samurai able to move fast enough to dodge or cut bullets in half, jump through very long distances, and cut through gigantic mechanized enemies as if the later were made out of butter, without being themselves superpowered? What a silly spectacle this was.

◧ Plot: I don't think there was anything there to speak of since it proved to be instantly forgettable. Even though each season had its own, distinct plotline, the entire series felt as if it was comprised solely of filler episodes.

◧ Character development: absolutely terrible since the series, despite devoting an immense amount of airtime on its characters simply walking around from place to place, ended with the viewer having a very insufficient understanding of the protagonists' (let alone of the antagonists') personal histories, beliefs, motivations, and thought processes. Just like the mechanized samurai enemies, the protagonists were portrayed as if they were empty shells of human beings.

Overall: I had a hard time finishing this series through. Don't waste your time.

(PREFACE) I will say, first and foremost:
I'm a person who gets bored Very easily of anything that isn't to his taste, and also of anything that from the get-go is known for being more than 3 hours long all in one go.
I've watched most big movies from when I was a kid (before 2010), for comparison and maybe it's a bad one, movies like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings around that time and even those at times bored me if it wasn't for some action packed scenes.

Although I always loved anime, again, as a kid, I only watched big shounen shows or ... niche products but always those with very tight animations and back to back bloodrushing sequences or edgy setting (aside from the big 3 at the time Darker than Black comes to mind immediately for me).

I'd say I was a pretty average user up till that point, an average kid with average tastes and attention span. With that said...

I've been in a very dark period of my life 2 years ago, and while searching and scuttling about looking for something to entertain me and to make me feel better I stumbled upon Seven Samurai.

Not the anime but the Original movie by Akira Kurosawa, the one from 1954.
Why a completely average young adult found solace in a 3 and a half hours long jidaigeki is because of two things, I'll be honest: the "despair" I felt at the time, and "pride" in having watched something that in all likeness all my peers wouldn't dream of watching.

BUT

Maybe because of the situation I was in, maybe because I was very "tense" and "susceptible" to certain themes, I hella loved it. I stayed till the end and watched every second of it almost without blinking. The movie conveys many things you'd find in a sengoku-era jidaigeki: honor, trust, camaraderie and most of all to make a Stand, a selfless sacrifice for something or someone that is helpless or beyond hope without Any reward in return. A beautiful and forgotten concept portrayed flawlessly in a 1954, post world war 2, black and white, japanese movie with smelly farmers.

Since then, I revamped my appetite for curiosity, and watched a multitude of movies and anime (altho I haven't wrote a review for all of them ofc), not randomly, but always picking up whatever could really light the fire in my soul so to speak, and eventually I gave Samurai 7 a try, going in knowingly that it could never possibly surpass the original Of Course. Even so... Even knowing that... My disappointment was abysmal. It's been a while since I saw it, and I remember most of it, but now that I made an account (for completely different reasons tho) and while thinking of reviews to write as a practice I thought to myself that I could be doing good by saving some souls.

---I WON'T GO IN-DEPTH NOR GIVE ANY SPOILER---

(END OF PREFACE)

Samurai 7 takes you into a steam-punk sengoku era Japan... I guess, don't care. The anime itself aside from the first episode makes you stop caring about that, because when you take the same exact premise of the Movie but add crazy technologies into it... It'll boggle your mind with a myriad of questions and that's already a bad start.

If a sensible somebody, an average anybody, who comes in with any knowledge of the original movie and looks at the first, heck maybe even the second episode they'd leave. Immediately, they'd leave. Those who stay... They do probably because of the same reasons I stayed to watch Seven Samurai, pride.

That or you're really just really, really, new to the genre.

For fans of the original, it is... I was gonna say insulting but that's not exactly it, I guess they tried to take the original and add more flavor to the characters failing tremendously. Now I don't say that the characters are badly done I liked some of them and for a "re-imagining" I guess it can be ok, but my main problem is that you're taking an original property and changing things around, TOO many things around. I hate when they do that, it feels like a netflix western adaptation animated by a japanese studio instead of something that they came up with, hell if you're into that they already did a great job with Magnificent Seven just six years after.

Besides, the whole point of that would be to draw in people interested based on the original and to keep them interested, but so many, so many things are OUT OF PLACE or feel too forced. If you ever felt that 3 and half hours would be too much for a movie (even tho they weren't and you'd be glued to the screen every second in the OG) 26-episodes is way too much.

Many times I really, truly, felt like I was listening to an unfunny joke that was lasting way too long for it to be funny anymore. I'd say the anime should've ended halfway through after they've dealt with what the original movie was about but NO.
They just HAD to drag you and to force on you plot that... Adds nothing but misery.

------ TL;DR ------

Story:
If you come from the Movie, don't bother, you'll suffer. If you're new to... anime in general, your time is much better spent with Demon Slayer or Bleach if you're into samurai and katanas, or anything else really.

Art:
Maybe this is the only one I'll concede, the steam-punk elements are really nice, and the locations and settings feel very fresh and makes for good ambience, almost Kill la Kill-esque or Trigger-esque really, don't know if they worked together and really don't care but if this concept was taken and upon it they wrote an original story it would've been a hit, or it least it would've had a good following I guarantee it, because the quality art is there, 'tho nothing mind-blowing if you're a veteran but still.

Sound:
I don't remember it. I guess it was decent. When you don't remember something it means it really didn't made any impression on you. Not good, not terrible, just bland enough to be forgotten. Surely you've started humming something out of the blue or in a particular situation, that's when something is very good or apt in a given a case, that's what makes the sound department memorable, but here it just isn't.

Characters:
Ok -> if you've never heard of the original or you're very, very new to anime in general.
Unnecessary, forced, tropy -> anyone else.
That's the gist of it, If I were to go in-depth I'd commit verbal murder, third degree.

Enjoyment:
Again, if you're into samurais and fights, you already know there is better, if you're here is most likely because you've seen or heard of the original, in which case, there is Only misery here, not just for you but even the characters. There is no happiness, nor enjoyment here, I'm not sure they even know where they were going with this because even for a lesser mind (such as mine) you'd find or feel something at the end of a show. But here, there is either. Mu - nothingness. And it's not solace since you weren't actually trying to escape from anything but came here to enjoy something. Either that, or your disappointment would be so great, so deep that you'll try to forget it asap, or like me try to warn everybody before they waste, literally WASTE more than 9 hours of their lives.
Most of all, if you're a hot-head firebrand like myself and will watch it for pride in having it watched for yourself my first advice is "don't" there are no victors here, second DON'T do it in one go like binge watching because the misery you'll feel will be even greater.

Overall:
Why studios and anyone really would take and original property and f... Mess with it, therefore making absolutely nobody happy besides maybe those who are none the wiser, which aren't at fault, yet, is beyond me. If you wanted to make an anime out of this I'd say take the original, make a short season of heck a dozen episodes, or an animated movie sure, whatever, but don't go around putting unnecessary stuff in, focus on the animations, the sound, the art but don't change everything for the sake of inclusion or putting your personal view into it, if you wanted to do that, that's fine but create your own.

Fans of the original, stay as far as you can from this.
Fans of anime, go watch the original, don't let me catch any of you going around thinking this was the original thing (even tho it's written at the beginning that it isn't)
Fans of samurai and katanas and duels, you already know. What you're looking for is not here, look at the guy with the green-checkered haori.

Samurai 7 is a waste of your time.
And time is the only thing that we humans are given by nature to spend freely.
Don't do this to yourself. Stop at the original as nothing will top that.