Mindhive

Samurai 7 spotlight

Hmm. So, Samurai 7 (Japanese link) is a new GONZO anime, which attempts an animated retelling of Akira Kurosawa's legendary live-action movie, Seven Samurai. GONZO was nice enough to include Kurosawa's name right there in the credits, so it's not a total ripoff -- but I was still skeptical when I heard about it. To put things in perspective, the idea of GONZO remaking Seven Samurai sounds sort of like the idea of Disney remaking The Godfather. Sure, it can be done, but why ?

Despite my general tendency to wave my hand and say "bah !", I watched the first four episodes of the show. As it turns out, Samurai 7 is not just a one-to-one remake of the original; it's also set in a science fantasy type of universe. On the one hand, the question "why ?" rears its ugly head again; on the other hand, at least GONZO is trying something original, right ?

Celestial BattleWell, not really, no. The anime opens up with the classic, clichéd, painfully stereotypical aerial battle scene. You've got rows and rows of floating mecha, lined up facing each other in front of giant floating fortresses, firing CGI special effects at each other. When Macross did it, it was original and very effective; Macross also managed to keep the audience interested through the creative use of choreography (for lack of a better word). When everyone else imitated Macross poorly, it was tiresome but inevitable. When GONZO does the same thing today, and in a way that just screams "we've got copy/paste now so we don't have to pay animators", it's just sad. Blah blah stupid-looking robots flying around blah. Anyway, in this universe, the Samurai are people who hop from mecha to mecha in mid-air, slicing up battleships with their katanas (and yes, I am being perfectly accurate). Again, why ? What's the point ? I would understand if GONZO was making some sort of a parody, but, as far as I can tell, they're being completely serious.

BanditsAnyway, flash-forward N years. The war is over, and now there are bandits. In this universe, the bandits are former soldiers who have fully exchanged their body for machinery -- sort of like the Mothership from Homeworld, only on a lesser scale (house-sized, not asteroid-sized) and not as cool. These gigantic floating mecha-bandits shake down the local peasant village, forcing the peasants, whose most advanced technological implement is a bucket, to fork over all their rice -- or face thermonuclear annihilation.

Ok, look. I have nothing against science fantasy universes -- I loved GONZO's own LastExile, for example, and I liked the "space western" style of Outlaw Star. But the crucial thing to remember here is that the universe has to make at least some sort of minimal sense. What do these fusion-powered, titanium-armored, laser-scanning, plasma-blasting, man-machine-integrated battle fortresses need rice for ? They don't even have mouths to eat it with ! And besides, how much rice can they extract out of a village of 50 people that scratch in the dirt with sticks to grow their daily bread, er, daily rice ? I am all for suspending disbelief, but there's only so much of it I can suspend. Note that, in the original movie, the situation made perfect sense: the bandits were ordinary humans, who had no useful skills besides poking sharp things through soft things that scream and bleed -- so it was fairly logical for them to pillage defenseless villagers.

Familiar Scene

Main CharactersAnyway, where was I ? Right. Just as in the original movie, the villagers decide to hire some samurai in self-defence, even though the only form of payment they have is rice. Here, the series takes a departure from the original movie, and introduces the main characters: a young water-priestess named Kirara, and her annoying little brother. Kirara is a teenage girl who (with the aid of her creepy pendant that looks like the Lidless Eye) is able to dowse for water; she believes that her powers of clairvoyance will help her to seek out samurai, as well. Piro, whose news column convinced me to watch the show, thought that there was something special and magical about the way Kirara was animated. To me, she just looks like generic anime priestess #N+1, but I guess these things are subjective. Anyway, Kirara embarks on her journey to the city, accompanied by the aforementioned annoying baby brother (again: why ?) and a random peasant.

The LeaderThe rest of the show (well, at least, the first four episodes) revolves around Kirara's adventures, as she desperately tries to recruit various samurai to her cause, with no tangible reward except for rice. The story hits the major plot points of the original movie, but weaves GONZO's own material between them, and translates everything into the science fantasy setting. Unfortunately, when GONZO do remix the original movie, they do so poorly. For example (*** warning: minor spoilers ahead***), recall the scene in the movie where the desperate robber holds a baby hostage in a shack. The peasants push their way through the crowd of onlookers, and watch as a samurai agrees to rescue the child. He proceeds to shave his hair and dresses in the robe of a priest. He then asks for two riceballs, and, disguised as a priest, approaches the shack. He first tries to talk the robber down; after that fails, the samurai distracts him with a riceball, and rushes in. Seconds later, the mortally wounded robber staggers out, followed by the samurai with the baby in his arms.

This is a short scene, and very simple, but it does establish many things about the main character. We learn right away that he is compassionate: he risks his life just to save a baby whose parents are so poor that they couldn't possibly offer any kind of reward. We also learn that he is not proud: the samurai shaves off his top knot without a second thought. And, of course, the samurai is clever as well as skilled. So... what happens in the anime ? Well, in the anime, the samurai just charges in guns blazing (swords slashing, whatever), after someone else has done all the work. In the movie, we get a good glimpse at his character; in the anime, we just get another one of those classic swordfighting scenes. Other remixed scenes from the movie follow in the same vein: they just scream "look at how cool we're making things ! GONZO rules !", while completely missing the point. I understand that the original movie sometimes feels too slow, but making it dumber is not an improvement.

The Loud OneWhich is a shame, because Samurai 7 clearly has potential. The art, while occasionally cheesy and repetitive, is nonetheless pretty good on average. The CGI blends quite well into the rest of the show (with the exception of the horrible opening scene in the first episode). And the soundtrack is surprisingly good: it's a sort of fluid mix of modern music and traditional Japanese melodies (the end credits song is especially nice); the effect is oddly captivating, especially considering the lousy j-pop that is featured in most animes. Overall, though, Samurai 7 feels disjointed and sloppy. If GONZO only wanted to remake the movie, I think they could have handled it quite well. Or, they could have made a futuristic fantasy action show about the adventures of a water priestess in the big city -- that could've worked, too. But, instead of making two separate animes, GONZO decided to slap them haphazardly together into a single series; the end result is clumsy and pointless.

Bottom line: watch LastExile. Watch Seven Samurai. Samurai 7, though it's not exactly terrible, is probably not worth the time.