AFRO SAMURAI

DESCRIPTION

CAST

MOVIE ActionAfro Samurai: Resurrection
MANGAAfro Samurai
SPECIAL ActionAfro Samurai Pilot
MOVIE ActionAFRO SAMURAI Movie

REVIEWS

• 

  TheRealKyuubey

  50/100
  It's not great, but where else can you see shit like this?

  Throughout time, many legends have been told about the mighty samurai… Warriors of honor, loyally serving their masters, as well as lone Ronin, serving only to uphold the values they hold true, whether they be religious or personal. Around these parts, you’ll hear tales of one such Ronin, a bad ass motherfucker who’s as silent as the grave and twice as terrifying. This man knows no love, no empathy, and no tears. He invites no trouble, and will offer no mercy to those stupid enough to give it to him. He knows few pleasures, save for the warmth of a woman’s body, the refreshing tang of a cool glass of lemonade, and the sweet, sweet flavor of revenge. Rumor has it he doesn’t even need to eat… That the blood of his enemies, which constantly bathes the blade of his sword, provides him all the nourishment he could ever need. I myself have no idea which rumors are true and which ones are just the product of fear, but I’ve got no intention of finding out, but there is a bounty on his head… Care to collect?

  You’ll know this young Samurai when you see him, as he sports an afro… A rare hair style indeed, and one that will surely become his sigul long after he’s departed our world, if he ever does. But don’t worry, traveler, there’s no need to fear this man… Well, unless you have what he wants. Otherwise, he’ll be perfectly willing to live and let live. See, you’ve probably heard tell about the headbands… Trophies only the mightiest of samurai are able to carry, and the only way to obtain one is to spill the blood of it’s previous owner. Well, this Afro Samurai is carrying the #2 headband, which… If you can’t guess… Is the second most prestigious headband in the known world, and the only one that grants it’s user the right to challenge the greatest samurai currently living, the holder of the #1 headband. And you didn’t hear this from me, dear traveler, but the Afro Samurai’s drive to challenge this man isn’t based on mere ambition, but something much more personal. He fights not for glory, or for honor… But for revenge.

  Unlike most anime, Afro Samurai was the product of an international collaboration. Studio Gonzo was interested in adapting the deeply personal work of Takashi Okazaki, a manga artist who had been influenced by his love of both samurai classics and African American culture, particularly in regard to rap and R&B. He was shy at first, and probably wouldn’t have signed over the rights if not for the encouragement and participation of American actor Samuel L Jackson, who had gotten his hands on a rare action figure based on Okazaki’s illustrations, and had become obsessed with seeing the project through. Jackson and Okazaki apparently connected instantly, language barriers be damned, and the project went ahead, albeit with what I’m told was a 1 million dollar budget.

  For an American cartoon, that sort of budget for a five episode series is abysmal, but it’s not that generous for an anime, either, despite the fact that anime is universally cheaper than it’s western counterparts. For Afro Samurai, this meant that each episode could only cost less than twenty thousand dollars, and that meant they had to cut a lot of corners… Which they did, brilliantly I might add, by turning the cheapness they’d been cursed with into a highly appealing visual style that incorporates the absolute best out of all the budget saving tactics you’ve seen before. It never quite falls back on the time old talking heads, at least not to the point that you’d ever notice it, but when movement is limited, the beautifully detailed artwork is more than sufficient to keep your eyes glued to the screen.

  To be completely honest, I don’t think I’ve ever seen an anime… Well, any animation, really… Get this much mileage out of such a limited color palette. There are occasional splashes of color throughout the series, especially when it comes to the buckets full of red blood and the golden glow of our hero’s precious lemonade, but for about 90 percent of the series, the colors on screen are almost monochromatic, playing with numerous shades of white, black and gray, as well as the occasional tan of the ground. At night, the cloudy, overcast sky is a captivating sight, and during the day, the lighting effects are beyond gorgeous. Other visual effects such as rain and fog filters are integrated smoothly with the cell-drawn animation.

  The real triumph here are the action scenes, which are fast, fluid and dynamic, even when the animators have to break a character’s anatomical frame in order to keep the pace up. It only takes one real glance to see this kind of animation style in motion, as Afro’s namesake blows in the wind like the reflection of the moon in a puddle, and the animators are not shy about letting an occasional arm or leg move with exactly the same level of consistency. It winds up working out better than you’d think not only because of sharp, fast editing, but because the sound design of every single sword movement is completely on point. I love all of the action scenes in this series, but a few easy highlights are an early fight where Afro splits a bullet with his sword, a huge bloodbath of a brawl from when he was a teenager that almost feels like Saving Private Ryan in the way it’s brutality is show to effect him, and of course, there’s also a fight towards the end where he takes on a robot who’s been designed to look and fight like he does, but has no problem taking Afro to the sky with it when those tactics don’t pan out.

  As you may have guessed from Okazaki and Jackson’s connection that I mentioned earlier, the music in Afro Samurai is made up mostly of hip-hop, full of vocal tracks whose head-banging beats fit the pace of the action in a way that’s easily similar to The Boondocks. The vocal work was performed by RZA, a former member of the Wu-Tang clan, a band that was, in it’s own right, influenced by Eastern culture. He also produced much of the music, as he did for his former band. The instrumental tracks feature slightly more traditional orchestration, but they fit more to the background, humbly doing their job without standing out too much. Besides, why bother making the instrumentals stand out when you have tracks featuring The Game, Too Short, Snoop Dogg and more, which are guaranteed to leave an impression all by themselves? The soundtrack, if you’re lucky enough to have it, features a small handful of tracks that weren’t from the show but inspired by it, and I don’t mean ‘inspired by’ like all the bullshit tracks on the Pokemon Movie soundtrack… These are songs that actually fit the series.

  The English dub is a very unique entity, as it’s comprised almost entirely of actors who work in traditional animation. or “Pre-lay.” This is a term referring to the practice of recording a voice actor first and then animating a character around them afterwards, as opposed to ADR voice acting, which does the opposite. Thankfully, they translate very well over to the more prevalent Anime recording style, although there are minor lip-flapping hiccups from time to time. The only anime regular who appears in this dub is Yuri Lowenthal, who plays Afro’s childhood friend, Ginno, who was an idealistic young boy in Afro’s past, but is even more compelling in the present day scenes, due to certain spoiler reasons. He does an outstanding job, probably the best performance in the dub, but because of a certain other big name, he was never the one I was going to get excited over.

  No matter how much hype went into the American airing of the series… And yes, the hype was palpable… The truth was, regardless of the show’s success, I was going to watch it either way because of one of the names attached to it. He’s one of the most underrated actors of our time, in my opinion, and as much as I enjoy his live action work, I practically chomp at the bit when I get a chance to hear him in a cartoon, or even in the rare video game, and I couldn’t resist the opportunity to hear him in an anime. He’s not only my favorite black actor, or my favorite voice actor, no, he’s my favorite ACTOR, period. I’ve been following him since BEFORE what many would consider his most memorable role in Pulp Fiction, and his inclusion made this dub for me. That’s right, I’m talking about Phil Lamarr, the original voice actor for Samurai Jack, who once again returned to the genre as the young version of Afro, as well as one of the Brothers, a league of elderly assassins including such prolific actors as Jeff Bennet and John Dimaggio!

  Oh, you thought I was talking about Samuel L Jackson? He did a fine job. I wish I could say more, but as a main character, he had relatively little to do or say throughout the series. The titular character Afro is a very soft-spoken character, choosing only to speak when necessary, letting his actions do the speaking for him unless he has no other choice. It’s not really Jackson’s fault, as it’s not really an acting-heavy role, but he still does an admirable job with it. Thankfully he has dual roles, as he gets a lot more lines as the mysterious Ninja Ninja, a loud-mouthed tag-a-long who appears to Afro the minute he earns the #2 headband properly. The true identity of Ninja Ninja is never openly revealed, nor is it stated until the final episode whether or not he exists at all. While his endless jabbering is welcome most of the time, breaking up long periods of silence and questioning Afro’s motives, he can become annoying with his knack for stating the obvious. Think of him like… D’s hand from Vampire Hunter D.

  The other two high-billed names are Kelly Hu and Ron Perlman, though neither one really appears enough to justify having featured names. Outside of flashbacks, Kelly Hu only appears in one episode as a shrine maiden who takes Afro in when he’s near death, and nurses him back to health… Using both medical AND sexual healing to see him through. Kelly exaggerates her accent with this character, which I guess is fitting, because she’s one of the only definitely-asian characters in the cast. Ron Perlman is unrecognizable as the main villain, Justice, who only appears in the first and last episodes, but that’s mostly because he hisses his lines like a snake, playing up how misanthropic and morally bankrupt this #1 samurai has allowed his time in the top to make him, as well as highlighting his delusional, god-like ambitions. If there’s a problem with this dub, it’s probably in the fact that some of the Brothers, played by veteran voice actors though they may be, are performed as though they were southern evangelical priests, a bafflingly poor fit for the tone of the series.

  You wouldn’t be unjustified in saying that Afro Samurai had a very weak story. Despite all that happens in it’s five episode run, little to none of it seems to matter in the long run. Afro gets into fights that are resolved as easily as possible, and then moves on afterward, as if nothing had happened at all. This is because, at it’s core, Afro Samurai is the very simple story about a surprisingly simple man. While we do get generous doses of flashbacks to explain who he is and why he’s doing what he’s doing, you really wouldn’t lose anything important to the plot if you just told his backstory, and then cut directly to Afro standing at the gates of his final enemy. Even at five episodes, this anime could have been reduced to one, or two at the most, with nothing you would need to know lost in the process. The story does not see actual progress very often, and neither does Afro’s journey, as he himself sees little to no development, at least if you don’t count his childhood and teenage years in the flashbacks. This has become a major criticism of the series, and it’s one I feel I should address.

  One of my favorite movies of 2013 was 2 Guns, a more-or-less by the numbers action film that featured both Denzel Washington and Mark Walberg as undercover agents from two separate factions pretending to be friends to investigate each other, constantly fighting together and backstabbing each other as the story progresses. I say that, but the story for the most part was an incoherent mess. There were so many betrayals and plot twists that I’m not sure even the writers knew what was going on, so why did I love it so much? The answer lies in the execution, and what the movie brought to the table that worked. The insane story was made palatable by the sharp, clever dialogue and the chemistry between the two leads, and it ended in such a way that it was able to embrace it’s insanity… Where else am I ever going to see a shoot-out between the Navy, the CIA and a drug cartel that takes place in the middle of an honest to God cattle stampede?

  And that’s exactly why I like Afro Samurai so much. There are plenty of samurai stories with depth and complexity to them… Samurai Jack, Seven Samurai, Rurouni Kenshin… But in how many of them do we get to see the main character ride a robot version of themselves into the stratosphere, and then fight it all the way down? The only theme that Afro Samurai really tackles is the cost of revenge, as you do get to feel the bodies of Afro’s friends and enemies pile up over time, which forces you to wonder whether or not vengeance for his father’s death is really worth it in the first place, and his past does come back to haunt him at numerous occasions, as will often happen with the hunt for vengeance. Aside from this, there are a lot of things that just kind of happen, but the saving grace… And what makes the execution here so good… Is that it’s all done with so much sincerity that none of it ever feels forced or pointless. Every single fight is memorable, no matter how easily they’re resolved, and even no matter how forgettable or how generic the attackers themselves may be.

  Does this excuse the obvious problems with the series? Well, yes and no. On the one hand, while this series does make for good popcorn material, it doesn’t offer much in the way of a rewatch, and much like your typical Superman story, it’s kind of difficult to get invested in the story of an unstoppable man. There’s also quite a bit that doesn’t make any sense… The rules behind the headbands in particular are a head scratcher, and I’m not just talking about how easy it would be to fake a #2 headband, but… What happens when #2 kills #1? Do they choose who gets the #2? Apparently they do, because Justice just hands it over to little Afro so that some bandits can pick it up. And why can’t someone just break the rules and kill the #1 with a sniper rifle? Guns exist! And while I had no problem with most of Afro’s enemies, the writers never portended that they were supposed to be important… Except for the Empty Seven, who prove to be completely wasted by the end.

  And yet, the series keeps a consistent tone that makes it really easy to get lost in. Shallow as the story may be, one dimensional as adult Afro may be, underdeveloped as several concepts may be, it’s a dark, gritty story that’s taken completely seriously and steeped in the love of two very adult genres. It’s definitely style over substance, but with both a style and substance that feel more like a collaboration between Kanye West and Quentin Tarrantino than a collaboration between Sam Jackson and a Mangaka, it’s worth at least a second look. That’s not to say the series is as much as the sum of it’s parts, but there’s something to be said for how much fun it is to watch a passion project that’s creatively unhinged, and held back only by budgetary limits. It’s not trying to be art, it’s trying to be grindhouse, and to that end, it does a pretty solid job.

  Afro Samurai is available from Funimation in an impressive fold-out DVD case, as well as your standard thin blu-ray release. A follow-up movie, Afro Samurai Resurrection, is also available from the same company, and while you can buy them separately, you can also get them as a bundle in a set called The Complete Murder Sessions. The original manga consists of only two volumes, and it IS available stateside from Seven Seas Entertainment. A video game for the Playstation 3 and X-Box 360 is unfortunately out of print, but it’s not that difficult to find a copy online.

  Afro Samurai isn’t for everyone. I personally enjoy it, but there’s a good reason I can only watch this series about once a year, tops. It has a definite cool factor, but so did the first seasons of RWBY and Hellsing, and I hated both of those. Granted, Afro Samurai has quite a bit more to offer than those two did(as much as it fails compared to their future incarnations), mostly in regard to it’s great production values, addictive music and engrossing adult tone, but I have to admit that if it were even one episode longer, I’d probably hate it. I love Afro Samurai, but like so many other guilty pleasures out there, I have to be brutally honest about it… This series works really well, but only in small doses spaced out over time. Hell, even as far as Samurai shows with heavy hip-hop influences go, Samurai Champloo did it first and better. I give Afro Samurai a 5/10

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• 

  Lokyaziis

  90/100
  Sharp, Astounding, Spiffy.. A piece of Art !! (French Review)

  _« Un Bandeau pour les gouverner tous. Un Bandeau pour les trouver. Un Bandeau pour les amener tous et dans les ténèbres les lier. »_

  Ceci resume bien le scénario d'Afro Samuraï... Autant le dire de suite, ce n'est pas le genre d'anime qu'on regarde pour réfléchir !!
  C'est "juste" un pur chef-d’œuvre cinématographique, magnifique, rythmé comme c'est pas permis, complètement délirant et sans aucun complexe. Rien de plus et rien de moins qu'une parodie hilarante de deux genres populaires des années 70, les films d’action de Kung-Fu et la blaxploitation. En gros c'est une histoire de samouraï shooté à la cortisone sur fond de western/sci-fi/cyberpunk post-apocalyptique !!

  _"Dans un Japon féodal futuriste, le jeune Afro est un samouraï aussi redoutable qu’atypique ! Grand, black, coupe afro ! Détenteur du second bandeau, il veut devenir le samouraï le plus puissant et doit pour cela tuer le possesseur du premier bandeau. Il part donc à la recherche de "Justice", un puissant adversaire qui est aussi l’assassin de son père. Dans cette quête de vengeance, la solitude et la souffrance seront ses seules compagnons."_

  Le tout compressé en 5 épisodes (6 avec le Pilot) menés tambour battant, avec un Afro à la marche métronomique qui ne souffre d'aucun obstacle sur son chemin de vengeance parsemé de flashbacks, schizophrénie et femme vénéneuse...
  La force de cet anime réside belle et bien dans son ambiance générale, tant visuelle qu'auditive plus que dans l'histoire !!
  Le contraste entre l'ambiance grise, presque monochrome, et le sang rouge qui resort lors des batailles, son character design très original, le trait stylisé et une maîtrise de la chorégraphie (les combats sont époustouflant), bercé par une bande originale hip-hop par RZA géniale, en font une perle rare de l'anime Japonais !!

  ---

  _"Mini-série animée conçue par [Takashi Okazaki](https://anilist.co/staff/101144/Takashi-Okazaki), Afro samurai réussit en effet l'exploit éminemment tarantinesque de réunir quatre ou cinq subcultures en même temps à l'intérieur de chacun de ses épisodes : le cool machiste de la blaxploitation, le hiératisme du western-spaghetti, la sagesse à deux balles des films de Shaolin, l'ultraviolence saccadée de l'animation à la japonaise, sous la référence-étendard du film de sabre ; et, au sommet de cet amoncellement référentiel, le voix de Samuel L. Jackson dans le rôle-titre, en guise de suprême signature subculturelle." - Pierre-Yves Bocquet (Pierre Evil)_

  Il y a un résumé en film de cet anime aussi et une suite Afro Samurai: Resurrection !

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• 

  oolonoui

  100/100
  Afro Samurai: A Masterpiece Revenge Story.

  spoilers will be marked appropriately. "It's nothing personal, just revenge" Afro Samurai is a Tale of Revenge & Tragedy, and it's also one my favorite pieces of fiction I have so far consumed. Even if you don't care about the story of it, you will find something enjoyable. ___ __How I feel about Afro Samurai.__ I love this anime soooooooooooo much, the first time I watched this anime, I got so many chills, you ever get a series no matter what people say about it, you don't care, that you know that it's a great show. This show isn't perfect but It is a masterpiece in my heart. Idk if that sounds sappy or not, but just everything in this anime adds and adds to each other to create, just one of the greatest tales I have ever consumed. The music, the voice acting, the themes, the story, just everything. I'm not sure anyone else feels like this about this anime, but I don't really care, nobody could say anything to make me feel different about this anime. No flaws I uncover could either. I love this anime, imma stop typing lol, here's the rest of the review, I just wanted to edit this in here lol. ____ __Story & Themes.__ Afro Samurai takes place in Japan with some sci-fi elements. The story of Afro Samurai starts when Afro sees his father get murdered by Justice, our main antagonist and the story goes from there. The anime revolves around 2 headbands, the #2 headband which is how you challenge the #1 headband, in this world, the person who has the #1 headband is treated like a god. So the person with the #2 headband fluctuates a lot because they keep getting murdered repeatedly, somehow the band never gets bloody though! The headbands spawn a cycle of violence & revenge. In the sequel film & the manga afro kills a man for the #2 headband and in the manga, the man's son comes back to kill him (he fails) The Themes of Afro Samurai, are that of revenge. I think you should read the manga for the themes also once you are done with the anime, anyways the themes are pretty simple, The Cycle of Violence and Hatred. as justice points out this anime also has one of the greatest twists I have ever seen in fiction, and it's an intense-ass moment, Afro Samurai is a story that has made me cry, and made me have chills from how intense things can be. Afro Samurai is truly one of my favorite fictional tales. ___

  __Sound.__ Voice Acting From the legendary [Samuel L. Jackson ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_L._Jackson) and even [Yuri Lowenthal ](https://anilist.co/staff/95225/Lowenthal-Yuri) (Sasuke (Naruto) & Sazaku (Code Geass)'s Dub VA) Now right now you are like dub!? Yeah, Dub, Afro Samurai has one of the greatest dubs (IMO) ever made, and people who have watched it will most likely agree. You kinda have to watch this in dub, idek how you could watch the sub, it's not even listed on Anilist. Just watch the dub. There is a scene with Jinno x Afro, that has some of the most real and brutal voice acting (on yuri's part) I have ever had the pleasure to hear in my life. The soundtrack is great, the main musician being [RZA ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RZA), the leader of the [Wu-Tang Clan ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu-Tang_Clan) (A Legendary Rap Group) The OP is fucking great and yeah it's lit. [__The Entire Soundtrack.__ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8n4I4GSfZ0&t=1474s) ___ __Animation.__ The animation in this anime is awesome, the fight scenes are great because of such animation and it's honestly gorgeous. The anime has barely any use of CG or anything like that, there are only 2 scenes I can remember which has CG, obviously, there might be more, but they are the only ones I can really remember both of those scenes have meh CG but you barely see it, so it doesn't really matter, other than those 2 scenes, this entire anime has great animation and is one of the great parts of the show. ____ __Characters.__ There are not many characters, but the characters you see are very unique and are just great fucking characters. *Afro* Afro is our main protagonist, The first scene, we see him, we see him witness his father get murdered by Justice and that is the main theme of the story: Afro's Revenge Afro has a very good character design and has a great VA (Samuel L Jackson) Afro isn't quite a hero, as he kills people, such as his Master for the headband, and continues killing and killing just for some satisfaction in revenge (which in the manga, he doesn't even get). I would most likely put Afro as an anti-hero more than anything *Justice* Justice is our main antagonist, the one who killed Afro's father. Justice is a great character, he is not in very much, and in fact in the manga at the end of the manga, we see him dead because it took afro so long. Which I think is one thing (writing-wise) the manga does a tiny bit better, but I still love the anime ending) His character design is fucking AMAZING, I love it. *Jinno* Jinno is in fact my favorite male anime character. He is an extremely well-written character and very much like Afro. Jinno is Afro's childhood friend, He is looking for revenge on afro after afro kill's his & Jinno's master for the #2 headband. The quote from afro comes in here "It's nothing personal, just revenge." Jinno has a bear head which was what one of the girls wore, and I think it represents that he betrayed all of them including the girl, and the bear head is on the side of the one killing afro Can't say much without spoilers *Ninja Ninja* Ninja Ninja is afro's "friend" that comes along for the journey. He is also voiced by Samuel L Jackson. He is most of the comic relief in the show. Ninja Ninja is revealed to be an imaginary representation of Afro's fear, and not actually real. Now I'm not completely sure what he is in the manga, I'm strictly talking anime here. The twist when you realize it is actually genius, the music, the directory of the scene is so fucking genius. *The Empty Seven Clan* The Empty Seven Clan basically guard Mount Shumi (Where the #1 is located) They all have pretty unique character designs, each having a different number (pretty lit) it turns out they actually wanna take the #1 headband for themselves. They all die to Afro. _____ Welp, end of the review, this was why I think you should watch Afro Samurai and just truly a look at the story. To completely appreciate you would of course have to watch it (I have 3 times) Anyways thanks for reading! "It's nothing personal... just revenge"
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