Akira Kurosawa's Samurai 7 Vol. 1: Search For The Seven Review

The Story

Taking place in the future, the village of Kanna is in dire straits because of a great war that left the country living in fear. The war put samurai, both human and new samurai who converted their bodies into machines, in a war but the merchants of the country used their influence to win a war that they weren't even a part of and rise into the dominant seat. Soon afterwards the samurai no longer had a place among society and some of them became bandits who extort everything they want from the cities and villages leaving the residents starving to death or worse.

One village decides to fight back though and sends one of their villagers, a mystic priestess and her younger sister into the city to find real samurai to come to their village and defend them from more than they bargained for when the heir to the throne of Merchants, Ukyo, falls in love with the young priestess Kirara and decides that he wants to make her part of his harem.

Soon the village will come to rely on Katsushiro (who isn't actually a samurai but wants to be one), a giant mechanical samurai named Kikuchiyo (who seems to have a good heart but a poorly functioning mechanical brain), Kanbei who doesn't believe he'll be any help at all and a samurai turned entertainer named Gorobe but they still need to find more.

The Good And The Bad

While this wasn't the first thing that grabbed me (for once), it is absolutely worth noting that the animation in this first volume is beautiful. The CG animation was a little heavy in its detail so it ended up not looking natural in some scenes (such as the chase scene near the middle of the volume) but for the most part this was a non issue, especially when I found myself getting distracted by all the interesting uses of shading they used to bring more intensity to some of the battle scenes.

This brings me to the battle scenes in this volume of which there are plenty. I knew that this was going to be a very heavy battle series and so I was really prepared for that but what I wasn't prepared for was the very exciting contortions that the characters play out in all of their battles and the very exciting near misses towards any character.

The characters in this series are really starting to feel familiar to me already despite there only being four episodes on this volume. With the title alone you realize right away that the cast is going to be large and there are going to be an insane amount of names to memorize but with only a few characters introduced on this volume I am already feeling like I am connecting with the characters and wanting to see them succeed for various reasons.

Though with a series like this, it's really difficult to not like the characters in one way or another as all characters are already being portrayed and shown as sympathetic without being helpless. Every character has shown their flaws with which the audience is supposed to sympathize with but even better is that the characters have also already shown their strength and so you know that they are going to actually fight for what they want by the end of the series instead of sitting there throwing a pity party for themselves while the audience gets sick of them whining all the time.

The stark difference between all of the characters is what is coming through the strongest right now plus the strength of the female lead, Kirara, who is already showing herself to be more than capable when it comes to taking the lead and doing needs to be done despite danger.

With Akira Kurosawa being the creator of the original story, I really expected something epic to come out and that's basically what I got. Unfortunately with an epic story, there is usually an epic introduction but that wasn't the case here as the introduction we got was short and really didn't explain much of anything leaving me pretty confused until the third episode when a short introduction began playing at the start of each episode but even that didn't help much as I was still a little confused and still had questions.

The writing itself within the series though is actually quite well done and I was very entertained by both the drama and the comedy of the series. The drama had a very real tension to it and a lot of it is centered on the enigmatic hero Kanbei who obviously has a very shady past which I hope will be revealed soon. I think one little feature within the writing that could so easily be overlooked is the recap at the end of each episode told in the form of Komachi writing a letter to someone back in her village. It was just a cute way to help the audience keep up with what is going on and who everyone is.

For the most part, I really enjoyed the character design of this series. I thought all of the samurai were very well designed and portrayed as well as the villagers but I think that the biggest error in design happened with Kirara. I'll tell you upfront that what I'm about to say can very easily be seen as nitpicking but I know that I am not the only one who noticed this. I had a hard time with giving Kirara credibility through at least the first two episodes because she looks so much like a character from an online flash hentai game that most everyone (who plays hentai games) has ever played. This is such a non issue though since this will not affect the vast majority of this title's audience but it's still worth noting if you happen to be an ero game fan.

Music

The music in this series was solid in most places. Some places are actually brought down because of it as well including some of the more dramatic scenes in which the background piece is a full orchestra, complete with brass section, and it just made the scenes feel overdone and drummed up into something bigger than they actually are.

On the other hand though, in other scenes the scene in question is fabulous because it has the right music with it including two scenes that had traditional Japanese instruments as the background music and it just made it sound all the better.

Dub vs. Sub

Luci Christian as Komachi is absolutely adorable and I honestly believe that I should be allowed to leave it at that when it comes to my thoughts on the dub track but I'll be good and add in that I loved the entire dub cast. I really thought that the series was really quite well done in the English dub with a very high amount of emotion for so many stoic characters. I always admire a voice actor who had hit those subtle nuances that convey emotions without being overt.

The Japanese cast shows just as much nuance in their performances as well making both casts a real treat to listen to.

Extras

There's not much in terms of extras on this volume with the most interesting feature being the character profiles but the best thing about them is that they do not contain major spoilers and so it is safe to read them before you begin the series if you wish though I do wish that there were more than four.

For everyone else out there, there is also a promotional video, an image gallery and clean animation.

Overall

I had heard a lot of good things about this anime before I began playing it and after seeing Akira Kurosawa's name attached to it; those expectations grew by leaps and bounds. I am happy to say though that this series sold me very quickly despite its issues with not revealing enough about a complicated story to keep me from getting confused, this was a very solid opening volume that I enjoyed. I will be quite interested to see where this series goes in the future and also what the new characters that get recruited will be like. This is a series that fans of action really will have to check out.

Final Grade: 88% - B