I haven’t done an anime review in a while so here’s one today about a relatively new series called ‘Samurai 7’:
Samurai 7 is a classical story with a twist about a group of farmers who are being oppressed by a group of tyrannical overlords know as the Nobuseri, who are ruined samurais. They rob the villagers of nearly all the crops they grow and because they have no way to fight them they must obey their orders.
Faced with starvation, the villagers send out a mission to find and recruit some samurai to defend them. With no pay to offer except rice, and knowing full well that only down-on-their-luck samurai would even consider accepting such a deal, the villagers can only hope that their saviours will appear before the rice is ready for harvest.
Once the small group reach the city they face many challenges, not least finding a samurai prepared to help them. As their quest progresses they run into a number of interesting characters some with more admirable intentions than others. As you can probably imagine they slowly build up an oddball group of samurai, some more able than others but all with a taste for war!
As these things go the animation is at the better end of the scale with some nice use of CG to create some pretty cool action scenes. One of the main reasons why I like Japanese anime is due to its ability to slow down time at exactly the right moment to pull you into the frame and feel the moment, a technique well employed by Samurai 7.
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