Samurai Champloo

Samurai Champloo is a really weird piece of media to categorize. Everyone seems to recommend it as a more experimental project of the guy who made Cowboy Bebop. That is true but also makes it seem like Samurai Champloo actually has anything to do with Cowboy Bebop. It is an episode-centric genre-bending anime focused on non-related misadventures. It has iconic and incredibly cool characters. It has an unforgettable soundtrack and visuals. And it heavily focuses on the theme of dealing with one's past.

So is Samurai Champloo just that? Weirder and less successful Cowboy Bebop? Well, kinda. Which means mostly that it is known by fewer people but also loved by them a lot more. There are a few key points that make it harder to sell to most people.

The most cohesive pitch you could make about Samurai Champloo is that it is an anime about samurais with hip-hop music. Sounds bad and most people are hesitant about it. At the core of it, the idea alone seems insane. Samurai Champloo takes this seemingly bad premise and turns it into something unforgettable. What also helps is that the theme of hip-hop is not merely an aesthetic but also part of a bigger narrative. It is a story (or rather a set of stories) that could not be told in any other way.

Animation is crazy good too

Attention! Spoilers ahead!

Why hip-hop?

First of all, what even is Champloo? It is a play on the Okinawan dish Chanpurū but also means "something mixed". It mixes ingredients with very different tastes. And the more you think about it, the more you see how much of Samurai Champloo is about mixing.

The first more of a "meta" example are the genres themselves. Samurais and hip-hop have almost nothing in common and yet they click together. But that is not the only level on which it works. Sampling works by mixing old stuff in a new way. 80s and 90s rap beats often used samples from 70s soul and funk to create completely new sounds. It's mind-boggling how much influence a few-second sequence sampled in other ways can have. The Amen Break from Amen Brother by The Winstons became a genre by itself.

Then there is Mugen and Jin. Both as different as they can be. They think, look, dress, speak and even fight differently. The only thing that makes them even interact with each other is Fuu. Their fighting styles emphasize their personalities and backgrounds. Jin is a stoic and efficient warrior, he uses clear cuts, often barely moves and is rather socially awkward. Mugen on the other hand "fights like a stray dog". He is impulsive and aggressively free. He often uses his environment and breakdance moves when fighting.

Anti-authority

There are a lot of themes in Samurai Champloo. Past, freedom, guilt, honor. But one that is omnipresent throughout the series is the government. Most of the episodes actually are caused by something related to the government or related institutions. It connects most of these unrelated stories. Think of the beginning of the whole series and how we meet the main characters. Jin defends a poor worker from a government official threatening to kill his family. Mugen offers to help Fuu when the son of said government official is causing a mess in a teahouse she works in.

And the really sad thing about the corrupt institutions is how they implicate regular people. There are a lot of characters "forced" to do bad things. A painter who helps criminals in trafficking to make ends meet. A warrior who cannot earn just by his swordfighting skills alone so he works for gangs. A son who has to pickpocket to afford money for his sick mother's treatment.

In the strict Edo period of Japan, the Tokugawa Shogunate (basically government) had an incentive to keep the status quo and keep or introduce any isolationist policies. This made any personal deviations from the norm criminal. The "Ogre" from the second episode is cast out because he is basically a bigger guy. The Christians need to keep their religion a secret. Anyone outside of the current social norms needs to be punished.

This circles back to the theme of hip-hop once again. Many situations in the series mirror the situation of black movements in the USA in the XX century. People forced into poverty and crime by a government wanting to keep the status quo. As stated before, Samurai Champloo could not be told without the hip-hop elements. This is not just a "cool aesthetic" but the core of the story and its themes.

Anti-samurai myth

They do be goofy sometimes too

What Samurai Champloo also does is strip the samurai genre of most of its seriousness and grandiosity. It refuses to play the myth. Most influential samurai media like Seven Samurai or Sanjuro focus on honor, discipline and stoicism. Samurai Champloo is also full of that but it tends to focus on the day-to-day street-level events. The main cast's main goal is to find the samurai smelling of sunflowers. Yet almost each episode starts by showing how hungry they are.

Jin and Mugen are not perfect warrior-archetype heroes. Mugen from the start is supposed to be the antithesis of a perfect samurai but Jin from the start acts like a perfect stoic samurai. Yet they killed people that shouldn't have been killed. They are messing up all the time. They are even shown using brothels and seduced by women. They are shown as people, not samurais.

There is one episode in particular that really messes with your expectations. Jin and Mugen finally meet someone they can't defeat. They both lose. Jin then learns a secret technique from someone calling themselves Miyamoto Musashi. Mugen goes for a rematch now knowing this secret technique. He still loses. There is no secret jutsu that will save them. They are just people and there is no secret fairy-tale technique that will just solve all their problems.

The endings of the stories are also unusually somber. We usually expect some feel-good ending of people getting their redemption arcs or just living happily ever after. That almost never happens. The series almost always ends in the most realistic way possible. Not the most glamorous or epic or even just predictably tragic. Just grounded. A thief with good intentions gets unceremoniously killed. Women are sent to brothels. Gang wars leave each side broken. Couples loving each other being forced to let each other go.

All that to say that even though Samurai Champloo is the samurai genre, it deliberately focuses more on the day-to-day struggles. The hip-hop music also emphasizes it. There are no tension-inducing drums, just slow and chill beats. This is not a story of two samurais mastering their craft. They are just people, they sometimes lose, they often fuck up but they are still moving forward.

Jin and Mugen

Jin and Mugen's relationship is the core of the series. Complete opposites forced to interact. That's what makes them so magnetic. They don't interact with each other as much as they just clash.

The end of the series reveals a lot of why they stayed together.

Jin told Mugen directly what he felt. His whole life, he has been alone. His peers have seen him as an opponent to beat and vice versa. He was learning from everyone better than him and was teaching everyone who could not teach him anything. Mugen did not check any of these boxes. Jin could not kill him. But he also could not learn from him either. His style was so different that they were speaking two different languages. And in a weird way, that was the only type of person that Jin could make friends with.

Mugen had a family at Ryukyu Island. An abusive one at that. Mukuro and Koza were the only people in his life. And he stayed loyal to them till the end. Koza and Mukuro were speaking only the language of money. All their actions in the series are motivated by money. In this dynamic Mugen was the muscles, Mukuro the brain and Koza a cute girl used as bait. Their relationship was more or less built on usefulness. That's why Jin was so different. Jin is never shown interested in riches. He also does not need Mugen. That's why Jin was the only person Mugen could have been friends with. In Jin's eyes, Mugen was completely useless. Weirdly enough, they needed exactly each other.

And their last stands are very telling of how much they influenced each other. Which is to say, not at all.

In most media about mixing differences, it shows how much you can learn from people different from you. Samurai Champloo throws this concept out. Said concept makes it seem like relationships are about usefulness. In their most important battles, Jin and Mugen use their own techniques. Jin executed a pre-defined technique perfectly. Mugen made a move so insane by throwing his sword out that his opponent had no way of predicting his next blow. They did not have an epiphany of using each other's styles. They never had to.

The reason why Chanpurū is so good is thanks to its clashing ingredients. It doesn't pull any punches. By making the ingredients more matching, it would just taste bland. Jin and Mugen did not need to average themselves out. They worked perfectly before meeting each other. The unique thing about them was the relationship they had. What they learnt was not to become more like the other one, they learnt to remove judgement. Jin tells Mugen to fight a more unconventional fighter because he knows that adapting is his expertise. And Mugen listens because he knows that Jin is great at executing pre-defined templates. They recognize each other's strengths. And they can respect it while not being influenced by it.

Fuu is glue

While Jin and Mugen are absurdly competent for any bodyguard job, they remain broke throughout the whole series. Jin can complete some minor gigs and Mugen sometimes wins while gambling but weirdly enough, it's Fuu who's the most capable. She's also often glossed over.

Fuu is initially painted as a naive girl that will be used mainly as a damsel in distress. But the more the series progresses the more you get to see how capable she is. Jin and Mugen are amazing swordsmen yet they remain completely directionless. The only way they get money is through Fuu. She also gets out of her troubles by herself most of the time. Jin and Mugen are muscles but Fuu is the brain.

Her leaving the boys at the end is what she has learnt. She goes on the journey mostly because she's forced to. The teahouse she was working in got burnt. She has nowhere to go. She spends most of the series chasing Jin and Mugen and then crying realizing that they will split up after their journey. After all they are not friends yet, they just have a quest. Fuu spends the series chasing her past. Searching for her father. Yet most of the episodes are not centered around it. The series even often mocks the idea of moving the plot forward. That's because it's Fuu who is stalling. As much as she tells herself she wants to find her father, she just wants to idle. She feels at home with Jin and Mugen and when she realizes they will split up soon, she can't help but cry.

The whole series she is afraid to let things go. She can't let her job go, she can't let Mugen and Jin go and she can't let her last memories of her father go. After witnessing her father's death, she has nothing except Jin and Mugen to cling on to. She has no family, no friends, no money. That's why she then leaves Jin and Mugen. She finally is free to be free.

It is easy to just not mention her because her dynamic is not so simple. Jin and Mugen are each other's opposites. Fuu is not even on their spectrum. She is the only actually capable person with any direction. She is not just a plot device used to make Jin and Mugen interact with each other.

The music...

This is what elevates the show from "it has a cool premise" to "I can't stop thinking about it". Nujabes, Fat Jon, Force of Nature and Tsutchie really helped in making this show unforgettable. Nujabes himself has a legendary status. His music is so uniquely serene and genuine. It's the kind of music that makes you appreciate nature when you listen to it. But Fat Jon, Force of Nature and Tsutchie deserve the love too.

Tsutchie works great in more of the "flowy" beats. They work more like ambient most of the time. "adapt myself" is the best example when the track is really engaging and unique but also simple enough to get lost in. It doesn't announce itself. It just sits in the corner and does its job flawlessly. His music is confident enough to not need to prove itself.

Then there is Force of Nature. They have a wide range of tracks. They focused more on the more heavy-sounding music. "judgement on" or "silver children" show their expertise here. They are still cyclical but make you feel ready to take action. The kind of music that could be used in a quiet heist scene to make all the characters look both professional and badass. It's full of movement and tension.

Fat Jon is the hardest to define. "ole" for example feels similar to Tsutchie's work but is a little more noticeable. He is often compared to Nujabes but it takes away his uniqueness. His music feels more grounded, noticeable but grounded. His tracks sit in this middle area between Tsutchie and Nujabes where it works as "background music" but is still full of emotions and vulnerability.

And Nujabes himself. The most popular out of all of the main four musicians. His music transcended Samurai Champloo. It's just so recognizable. You always know when his track comes up. Tracks like "aruarian dance" became their own memes. There was a huge wave of the "I have no enemies" memes coming from Vinland Saga using this track. It is just so serene. It makes you appreciate nature any time you listen to it. But tracks like "mystline" show that Nujabes can also make more meditative and somber music. It sounds so beautiful and human. The slow piano intro and the "ding!" sound that is repeated through the whole song just never leave your mind. And then when the piano finally switches it makes you want to cry. It feels tragic but like the life still must move on. All of his music is so simple yet so powerful.

Why it matters

There is an unspoken war in the world for your attention. And the easiest way to get your attention is to make you hateful. There are always "them". "They" are responsible for all the world's problems. Everyone has their own "them". The algorithms are making sure that you hate "them" so they can show you more reasons for hating on "them". It's a never-ending loop.

And Samurai Champloo shows how much beauty is in the relationship between opposites. The series itself, the relationships it shows. Samurai Champloo unteaches you judgement. Any time I meet someone new and I don't think we will get along, I think of this show. It is one of the few series that actually changed the way I see the world around me. I stopped thinking in terms of we and "them". Samurai Champloo is powerful enough to show it to you.

In a world full of hate, kindness is the new punk rock.

Thank you, Nujabes