Customer Reviews

Samurai Champloo Volume 2 (v. 2)

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3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

This manga is everything the Samurai Champloo television series is not: sketchy, cliched, predictable, cheap, poorly written, poorly illustrated, boring pop-pulp trash.
I can't express how utterly terrible this manga is, especially since its based on Shinichiro Watanabe's equisite series.
The cover is nice, and thats about all it has going for it. The artwork within the story is in ridiculously sketchy cartoon anime style, with NONE of the stylishness, depth, or a dynamic motion of the series. Simply put, its bad. Thirteen-year-old-back-of-the-school-book bad.
The writing is even worse, based about a couple of new storylines. Initially I was very pleased to hear that thered be some new stories being added to the travelling trio, but the ones contained in this manga are just pathetic imitations of some of the ideas from the series itself. They contain none of the flair which Watanabe's writing staff brought to the episodes. Its not worth going in to details of plot here, since theres not much to it.
I have not read the first volume of this manga, and now do not care to.
Newcomers will be put off Samurai Champloo, and fans of the series will hate it even more since we know just how much potential was squandered with this crummy book.
Don't waste your time or your money.

The first volume was a very enjoyable read, dispite the slight differences in story and characterization. But hey, who wants to read a story that's exactly the same as the anime? Unfortunately the second book has a very rushed and confusing feel to it, explaining why the title was discontinued in Japan. Rather a shame, but it was probably just too much of a good thing.