First Episode of Samurai 7 on YouTube

I didnt like the series at first, I think the fact that Kikuchiyo is a giant robot that is steamed powered really confused me, along with the pointless comic relief coming from a young girl.
Despite its odd quirks,I did however watch most of the first season. I cant say its bad as I did maintain interest, enjoying when it followed the movie, but when strayed off the story line, which happens very often it begins to suffer it is however never unbearable. A interesting concept worthy of watching wither fan of anime or not

I think I should give the anime another try. I watched the first episode a while ago, but simply couldn’t go further. Kikuchiyo’s being a steam powered cyborg simply was too much to take.

Well, I wont go though too much trouble to watch it, you’ll sonly be disappointed if you expect too much. I only watched it because it was airing on IFC in America.

I found the entire Samurai 7 collection at a local store. I thought it was funny that the box art says “Akira Kurosawa’s –7 Samurai”.
I wonder if Kurosawa would be please of this, personally I was a bit upset that Kurosawa got writing credit for this despite it being completely different then the Seven Samurai . The anime is simply inspired by, not written by Kurosawa.
I am sure stating its Kurosawa’s is more for marketing, but I certainly dont consider it to be his in anyway. Having never meet the man, I still have a feeling he wouldnt be entirely pleased. I do wonder what he would think of this project.

Something really messed up my first paragraph, it what happens when you type from a cell phone.

I intended to type,
If I was you I wouldn’t go through too much trouble to watch it. I watch the first season because it was airing on IFC in America, but I believe its 7 seasons long. I cant imagine how they would continue to stretch the story more then they already have, as even in the first season it strayed off.
Perhaps if someone wasn’t a fan of the Seven Samurai it would actually be better, otherwise comparing it to or thinking it will be similar will only disappoint

I have been wondering about the same thing — the “Akira Kurosawa” bit on the box, and how he would react. I suppose they must have got the permission from Akira Kurosawa Productions, which I think is a bit worrying. Especially when you consider that they also sold rights to Sanjuro and Yojimbo last year.

For anime, it was very good. For an adaptation of Kurosawa, not so much. Even given that the story was loosely adapted and they had to fill 600+ minutes by padding out the plot (and adding to the the plot past the ending of the original), I was hoping to see more homage to Kurosawa than just story use. I like anime when it’s done well and breaks expectations. Unfortunately, this was very conventional for anime.

Ah, well, time to pick up the new Criterion set and watch the original again.

AiYume: I agree with anime as a genre having a lot of potential, but most of the series and films unfortunately don’t really make use of it. There are some absolute gems in there, though. One of my favourites is Serial Experiments: Lain, which is simply extraordinary.

For those with a Xbox 360 connected to Xbox Live, the entire series Samurai 7 will become available for download June 12th. I dont believe all seasons will be released at once, but it has been confirmed that the entire series will be available for download at one point, the price per episode is not known yet.

Thanks for the info, Jeremy!

I actually recently acquired the old Xbox, as I needed something to play DVDs with here in Finland other than my laptop, and the used console cost pretty much the same as a standard DVD player. (The result is that I have only actually watched one film, while I have played quite a number of games on it…)

I now wonder if I actually made the wrong choice, considering that PS2 seems to have more of my type of games for it, as well as a bunch of games “inspired by” Kurosawa’s films that I probably should check out one day. (But Xbox has Sid Meier’s Pirates which I loved on Commodore 64…)

Actually, if I haven’t mentioned it already, there is in fact a game that is currently being developed for PS3 from one of Kurosawa’s unfilmed scripts. The script was also supposed to have been turned into a movie for a simultaneous release, but that project somehow never worked out, so we’ll have to see whether the game is popular enough to bring the story also onto the big screen.

The original xbox did have very little selection, compared to the PS2, if your into RTS, RPG and anything from Japan the PS2 is the only real choice.
As for current consoles the 360 seems to be the better choice and has attracted enough attention from Japanese developers that its starting to have wide variety and lately nearly everything that is being developed for PS3 will also be on 360.