Afro Samurai: Director's Cut Review

Simply put, Afro Samurai rocks.

Purists may choke: this is indeed a hybrid vision, a potentially deadly collision of hip hop and anime that smacks of compromise for the sake of international appeal and sales. But notice that word "vision": it's not just an Americanized version of an Asian original; the desire to integrate the two cultures was there from the beginning in the mind of creator Takashi Okazaki.

The result is gloriously violent and, at least in the "Director's Cut," obscenely entertaining in the best 70s/b-movie style.

Samuel L. Jackson voices the taciturn Afro, a man with an affinity for lemonade and a cigarette dangling from his mouth. He walks through a lawless land out of time, where state-of-the-art machinery emerges from traditional bamboo huts and vengeance is a way of life.

It is a land where only two samurai warriors matter: the one who wears the #1 headband -- and is considered a god -- and the one who wears the #2 headband -- the only one with the right to fight #1 in battle, but who must also face all comers on a daily basis.

Afro wears the #2 headband, and in the brief prologue we're shown how his father lost the #1 headband to the samurai called Justice (voiced by Ron Perlman). Throughout the five episodes, Afro's quest to find and defeat Justice is counterpointed with stories from his past. Most of the time, though, we follow Afro as he duels with a variety of challengers, from a femme fatale (voiced by Kelly Hu) to a Terminator to a teddy bear. He's accompanied by the street-talking Ninja Ninja (also voiced by the versatile Jackson), a motormouth with blonde hair and a yellow streak down his back.

The individual episodes are well-framed to allow for a maximum amount of fast-paced slashing action, drenched in geysers of blood and severed limbs. The action is at times too fast, making it difficult to follow, but the main point is that Afro will win and vanquish his opponents.

Still, each episode has moments of quiet contemplation which are surprisingly effective at creating dramatic impact. That's leavened with humor, not just through Ninja Ninja's jokes, but in some of Afro's opponents. Fans of animated undressed beauties have something to stare at in one of the episodes. Samuel L. Jackson does a great job of embodying both the traditional Afro and the modern Ninja Ninja.

Afro Samurai takes the kitchen sink approach, tossing in cliches from every genre, mixing them in a blender, and spewing them back out without much context. (For example, what the heck is an African doing in Japan? And what happened to Mrs. Afro Samurai?) Perhaps that's fodder for future episodes, if that ever happens.

For now, rest assured that if you're seeking a pleasant night with a bad-ass mofo and a deadly way with a blade, Afro Samurai more than fills the bill.

When the episodes aired on the SpikeTV cable channel in the US, they were edited both for content and time, cut from 25 minutes to 22 minutes. A less-expensive, single-disk DVD edition is available, but it contains only the edited for SpikeTV versions.

The Director's Cut version has two disks in a nicely-packaged edition, with all violence, profanity, and brief nudity intact. The first disk has Chapters I-V -- the picture looks fantastic on my admittedly small 26-inch HD monitor -- with English 5.1 and 2.0 audio tracks. There's also a selection of 8 trailers for other DVDs from Funimation.

Extra features on the second disk include "In the Booth -- Voice Talent of Afro Samurai," 15 minutes of interviews with Jackson, Hu, and Perlman, as well as two of the producers and creator Takashi "Bob" Okazaki; "RZA Music Production Tour" five minutes of talk with The RZA, who lays out his concrete ideas for how the music should complement the characters and action; and "Character Profiles with Commentary by Co-Producer Eric Calderon," which is just as described, interspersed with many original character sketches by Okazaki and Calderon expressing the intentions of the artist.

Both editions will be released tomorrow, May 22, so you can still pre-order tonight if you're quick about it.

LINKS

Director's Cut -- order from Amazon US

Official Site (age verification required)
Director's Cut Trailer (Embedded Windows Media Player)