Review: Samurai 7

Akira Kurosawa’s classic movie, Seven Samurai, retold as a stunning and cleverly written anime.

The premise of the story is roughly the same as the classic. A farming village is being raided by bandits, so they hire ronin samurai to defend them. The bandits in the anime are samurai who have forsaken their honor and turned themselves into machines during the last war. The plot is well written and flows well, involving character development in most of the main characters and several supporting ones. I don’t want to give everything away, but keep your eye on Ukyo.. He’s much more cunning than he looks.

Each samurai interacts with the farmers in different ways. As you learn more about their pasts, you are able to relate and understand their feelings and reasons for helping the farmers, which vary from having come from a farming community to trying to cleanse the blood on their hands by doing good deeds. The farmers can only pay the samurai in rice, so the battle is taken up strictly for personal reasons.

Fighting styles vary and are all a joy to watch on-screen, though most notably is Kyuzo and Kambei, easily the more skilled samurai out of the seven. They fulfill the role of true master swordsmen, never wasting a stroke of the blade. Kyuzo’s Nito-Ryu (Two Sword Style) is devastatingly beautiful to watch.

The anime is short, only 26 episodes long and moves fairly quickly. The writers try to incorporate a love interest during the story, but ultimately i feel it was a failed attempt. It provides a needed character development for the young samurai, Katsushiro and the priestess Kirara, but I fail to see the significance of the other party and why that was necessary.

I will not spoil the ending, but I will say I was not disappointed. The short anime was entertaining, speckled with humor from the robotic samurai Kikuchiyo and the younger priestess, Komachi, and keeps the story moving at a good pace. There are deep elements tied within this anime: frustration from living under a corrupt government, honor among the samurai, and the loss of innocence.

The story was well written, involving elements that you would expect to find in a blockbuster film. Continuity was maintained and I saw no holes in the script or any loose ends. The plot flows well and does not jump around. I would say that the few flashbacks they did provide seemed unnecessary, as the length of the anime itself does not truly warrant flashback sequences. The intrigue and complexity of the plot combined with the well written characters and their relationships bring out the true depth of this story. There is a lot going on here, for those who are looking for it.

The music fit the film and I never heard a score that was out-of-place, but at the same time it did not stand out to me. Don’t get me wrong, the music applied the correct atmosphere for the scenes and fit the tempo of the moments, but it really didn’t grab you the way you want a good musical score to do.

The animation style is very good, sharp movements, colors and detail all crisply executed. Battles are drawn as intense, not just physically, but emotionally. The artists do an outstanding job portraying abstract feelings in the characters through facial expression and posture. Each samurai has his own personality, through mannerisms, stature, dress, and fighting style. You learn enough about each one’s path to understand what makes them tick and why they make the choices they do. This goes further to many of the farmers, who do not play a static role in the anime. There are static characters in the series, but the writers did a good job making sure that most of the characters you see play an important, dynamic role in the story. The names and personality of most of the characters stay pretty true to the original movie, which is a nice plus for anyone comparing the two.

I highly recommend this anime to anyone who enjoys a well written story. The characters are vivid, each samurai having their own personality and even some of the farmers going through life-changing trials and changes. The writers did a superb job balancing all of these elements, tieing them together with no loose ends. The plot is deep and intriguing, having subtle connotations that tie even to our modern-day issues.