released 29 oct 05 / last mod 01 jun 07 / greg goebel / public domain
* When I heard that an anime series titled SAMURAI 7, derived from Akira Kurosawa's classic live-action samurai epic THE SEVEN SAMURAI, was being released on DVD, I was intrigued and picked up the first volume in the series to find out what was going on.
The original SEVEN SAMURAI takes place in classical Japan, when a poor farming community pillaged by bandits decides to fight back. A bumpkin peasant boy travels from the village and enlists seven samurai to lead the battle; the samurai organize the villagers and defeat the bandits.
SAMURAI 7 does not so much duplicate this scenario as use it as a starting point, creating a science-fiction analogue in which the bandits are cyborgs and one of the samurai is a steam-powered cyborg. Since this is a full video series and not a one-shot movie, SAMURAI 7 also adds new elements to keep the story moving, for example, having the bumpkin villager accompanied by a pretty and dignified priestess who has powers of divination, plus her somewhat obnoxious little kid sister. Increasing the number of characters also means adding subplots, for example one involving a spoiled foppish prince who tries to kidnap the priestess for his harem, and another involving a young samurai wannabee as a romantic interest for the priestess.
* Two things become quickly on watching the initial episodes of SAMURAI 7: one, that the production values are very good; and two, that this is definitely an anime series, with loud splashes of color and almost nonstop action, some of it wildly implausible, and targeted for an audience about at high-school level and above. The series does pay its tribute to Kurosawa in terms of visuals -- when the village elders discuss their dilemma, they are striped by light and shadows from the slats of the hut they are meeting in, clearly a Kurosawa photographic technique. Some of the scenes are simply beautiful.
Alas, in the end the stylistic borrowings from Kurosawa cannot make up for the weaknesses of a script that remains so heavily rooted in conventional anime plot gimmicks, and by the time the series ends, its credibility has generally fallen apart. It's a bit of a pity, since the idea was basically a good one and a good deal of effort was expended to make it work -- but in the end SAMURAI 7 just doesn't have enough brains to carry the load it takes upon itself.
