41 of 45 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great action and drama while remaining faithful to the original!, August 23, 2005
This review is from: Samurai 7 - Volume 1 (Limited Edition) (DVD)
I have to admit, when I first heard of this series, my expectations were set really low. I'm generally against remakes that make drastic changes to the setting (usually in an attempt to "modernize"), because most of the time they end up changing the situation so drastically that it has almost nothing in common with the original. The phrase "Sci-Fi Action remake of Akira Kurosowa'a action masterpiece" instantly reminded me of the universally panned Seven Samurai 20XX video game, where the only similarity between the remake and the original was that there were seven people with swords.
I got a demo disc from the Funimation booth at Otakon (for the uninformed, an anime convention) that had the first two episodes, and watched them to see exactly how bad it would be. What I saw compelled me to immediately go buy the first disc.
The story is extremely faithful to the original. So far, the only alterations to the story are the addition of a few characters, that I'll get into in a bit. The villagers are still rice farmers living in fear of bandits that will come at harvest time and steal all of their rice. The bandits are still former samurai that have nothing better to do since the recent war ended. Only, in this series, the bandits are warriors who have either grafted cybernetic implants into their bodies, or had their bodies completely replaced with mechanical ones. The villagers have no chance of fighting against such odds, so they send some people to the nearest town to hire samurai to defend the village in exchange for all the rice they can eat.
They have added some characters from the village to better show their desperation and to give you a better connection with them. In the original film, the focus was almost entirely on the samurai, and I felt like the villagers were kind of left out a bit. The samurai are changed little. Kambe is a disgraced warrior who has fought only in losing battles. Kikuchiyo is still impulsive but good hearted. Katsushiro is a young samurai who wishes to prove himself in battle. I don't remember much about Gorobe from the film, but in this series he is a samurai who joins up only to fight along side Kambe, who he sees as a great warrior.
The only other additions to the plot are that the villagers attract the attention of the governor of the city and his son. This is a complete addition of the series, but it helps to add action to the first half of the story, which kind of dragged on in the film in my opinion.
The action in this series is over the top, but highly entertaining. The animation quality is also very impressive, as it was done by Studio Gonzo, the same people who made the first season of Full Metal Panic. They integrate computer animation into the traditional cell animation very effectively.
Perhaps Seven Samurai is one of those stories that, like Romeo and Juliet, can be transplanted into almost any time and still retain its meaning. It survived being converted into a western, and it seems that this conversion will also be successful.
The limited edition comes with some story board booklets, but not a box for the complete series. The DVD has a booklet that has staff interviews and lots of concept art, and is a very good read. Also, the coverart is reversible, revealing a totally badass drawing of Kambe cutting a dude in half.
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15 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Must own anime, August 23, 2005
This review is from: Samurai 7 - Volume 1 (Limited Edition) (DVD)
This is a great anime series loosely based on Akira Kurosawa's epic film Seven Samurai, with some sci-fi elements added to it.
The limited edition comes within the regular DVD plus 4 story books, one for each episode. All are secured within a big cardboard case. Note that the case is not an art box designed to hold the series. You will get a separate case for the limited edition of each volume.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Seven Samurai are back., March 23, 2006
Samurai 7 is a anime based on Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (1954) based in a futuristic world. The villages and cities are recovering from a massive war. The Samurai are now jobless and many have become bandits. But not just normal bandits. They have become Nobuseri bandits, machines who use to be men, Samurai who had their living cells replaced by iron and steel. And now they raid the towns for rice and, sometimes, women.
One of these villages have sent for Samurai, hungry warriors, willing to fight off for a meal of cooked rice each day. Titled Akira Kurosawa's Samurai 7, this anime does honor to one of the best Japanese movies of the 20th Century, if not one of the best movies of all time. The only flaw was the fact that the DVD held only four episodes. But the episodes were GREAT, each linked to the next, like one big story. Which it IS. None of the episodes are in a vaccum, they are all a chain of cause and effect. Not much in the way of extras, besides opening and closing songs, trailers and some character profiles.
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