Story 9/10: I hate to compare it to Bebop, but it's inevitable. I do think Champloo did a much better job of slowly weaving in its overarching narrative alongside the episodic story, which is probably the biggest marked difference between its predecessor. Cowboy Bebop has 5 episodes in total that talk about Spike's backstory, the rest seem to make a conscious effort to ignore it almost entirely when it's not the main focus; the same thing applies to the rest of the main cast apart from maybe Faye.
Champloo does a great job with casual and offhand references to the past littered into the episodes that have no bearing on the full story, begging you to ask more questions. Even when the story is the main focus, they still leave a lot to be determined on purpose and do very little explaining beyond what would naturally come up in conversation.
Great story for what it was intended to do, could have been better in some regards or a little bit more fleshed out but I don't think I would have personally changed much if I was behind the pen and page. A perfect first episode, a perfect last episode, what more could you ask for?
Art 10/10: Way ahead of its time, I was genuinely under the impression that studio Bones had made this until I saw it was actually Manglobe, shocker. Even more impressive is that this was basically their first anime, just wow.
Samurai Champloo's character designs are unique and memorable, the fighting is fast, fluid, creative, and most importantly fun, the set pieces are gorgeous, and the bright hip-hop-infused aesthetic permeating everything fuels me dopamine. Watch a few of the fight scenes on YouTube.
Sound 10/10: This is a perfect soundtrack, and probably my favorite one altogether. I'm a hardcore Hiroyuki Sawano simp, but one day I ran into a Nujabes song on YouTube, immediately fell in love, and started this anime a few days later because his name was tied to it and it was also apparently a pretty damn good show regardless.
I don't even know how to put this into words, but this is like a time capsule to the birth of lofi as a genre and it is so breathtakingly beautiful it makes me mad I didn't hear it sooner. The intro is great, the ending is PERFECT, and everything in between is a masterpiece. Perfect score across the board.
Character 9/10: I'm gonna miss these guys so much, what a wonderful ride it was to watch them constantly grow and change. They feel all feel so simple, but not without depth. Every character, from the minor side characters to the villains to the main characters all carries baggage with them, some more than others; and the show goes to great lengths to unpack it in front of you. All the minor characters introduced to us along our journey stand out enough to leave a hole in my chest when it's time to depart and continue onwards, and everyone was done fantastically. The main trio's dynamic is also nearly perfect.
I don't want to spoil much, but the inner strength our vagabonds grow from episode 1 to episode 26 is enough to make a grown man cry when you see how it all plays out in the end, but I'm gonna keep my mouth shut about the character department because it's better to go into this completely blind.
Enjoyment 10/10: It's gonna be a long time until something hits me as hard and as well as Watanabe can again, Samurai Champloo is one of those shows that's hard to explain the value of because on the surface level it's an episodic adventure show with some good fighting and cool characters, but I think the beauty of a show like this is lost on a lot of people due to its tendency to convey its messages without words.
Overall 10/10: After watching its ending, I am at a loss to describe this weird feeling of optimistic melancholy as the final credits rolled. I want to talk about it in more detail, but it's impossible without majorly spoiling the ending. The world is bright and alive with color, the characters are fun and personable with good depth to back it up, the art is a decade ahead of its time, it quite arguably has a perfect soundtrack, and it can make you go from laughing to crying within minutes.
Samurai Champloo is a show about finding meaning in the meaningless of life, focused around a group of penniless drifters in search of an unknown destination for no reason other than to find a reason to do so. They play baseball, fight zombies, go on adventures, and even run away from each other, but there's no place they'd rather be than by each other's side, even though they know one day their paths will inevitably diverge again. The real treasure was the friends we made from the enemies along the way, but all good things must come to an end and that's alright.
