100 Days of Anime: Day Thirty Eight – Samurai 7

I first saw Samurai 7 sometime around 2011 when I first went looking for a new anime to watch. I wanted to find something that I hadn’t really heard other people talk about, and I really wanted to see something with swords and samurai.

What I found was an anime re-imagining of Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 work Seven Samurai. This is not, of course, the first time someone took Kurosawa’s work and adapted it into something new. Seven Samurai has been reshaped into The Magnificent Seven and A Bug’s Life and into arcs of shows like Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Naruto. Seven heroes must work together to protect a farming village from an external threat, usually bandits. (One time Han Solo, Chewbacca, a green rabbit, a Don Quixote rip-off and some others fought Godzilla. It was a good time.)

Samurai 7, unlike its Kurosawa-inspired siblings, is set in a world of steam-powered mechs and katana so sharp they can slice through said mechs. The plot mostly follows the movie until the last third, which introduces an entirely new story. The major characters all take their names and backgrounds from their film counterparts. The bandits this time are enormous mecha that were once human samurai.

As it goes, I think Samurai 7 ends up being just slightly above average. It came out in an era when it would be hard for a “pretty good” anime to thrive in the American market, and I think it ends up slightly overlooked because of that. It’s been on air a few times, most recently running on the revived Toonami from 2012-2013, but I think the show would have been a lot more popular if it had come out in the modern age of seasonal viewing.

The plot holds up even after additions. All the characters have some space to breath and implied history beyond the scope of the series’ 26 episodes. There are a few moments where drastic dips in animation quality and odd stylistic choices really weigh it down, but the real reason I bring it up is because I love its designs.

Seven years since I watched the series, Kambei still looms large in my imagination as a sort of re-imagined Jedi design that works well even outside of the series’ primary art style.

If I asked you to scroll back to the top of this page and take a look at the header image, I’m sure you could tell me who leads the party. I think you could probably pick out the kid looking to become a true samurai and the hot-tempered warrior with a heart of gold. There’s also a jovial but grizzled veteran, a lush looking to forget his past, a practical joker with a flair for technology and an aloof outsider traveling with the party to keep an eye on them more than anything.

While animation quality dips at points, visual storytelling is really well handled throughout. While various characters represent literal loss of physical humanity like the bandits and Kikuchiyo, a cyborg with a giant sword that revs up like a chainsaw, there’s also a significant visual twist. Villainous characters like Ukyo, the emperor and their flunkies tend to be very stylized and inhuman in appearance without having technically sacrificed any of their physical humanity (besides the bandits).

If you’re interested in checking out Samurai 7, it’s available on Crunchyroll, Funimation and Netflix.