Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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35 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Sound to Match an Anime, December 19, 2005
Katana, the soundtrack to Samurai Champloo, contains the songs and sounds from the hip-hop themed anime. It opens with rap, and ends with the sentimental ending theme Song of the Seasons. Those, along with YOU, are the only songs with any lyrics, the rest are instrumental songs.
I'll address the lyrical songs here in detail. First off, Battlecry is an excellent stand-alone (I think it could be sold as a single, if only j-pop were as world-wide as the other genres), with an English track. It has a great beat and a great rap, the perfect theme to Samurai Champloo. YOU is a soft song, obviously a love song, also done in English, with an excellent chorus. Song of Seasons, done entirely in Japanese, is the best of them all, with moments both upbeat and some soft and subdued, working together with the plucking of the guitar and a gentle beat. This song is what makes the CD.
As for the instrumental, here is where the CD fails, at least at some times. Most of the fourteen instrumentals have looping sounds, which get old after listening to it for more than two minutes. While the sounds are good at moments, the repetitiveness of them makes you hop from track to track. While these may work in the anime, they don't work that well on the CD.
Still, I recommend this CD to fans of j-pop and the anime, as it is a great addition to the Samurai Champloo collection. Plus, the three songs with lyrics help to pick up the slack of the instrumentals, which really aren't that bad, just repetitive.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Sounds of The Samurai..., August 24, 2005
I first started watching Samurai Champloo during it's recent run on Cartoon Network's late night [adult swim] lineup, and truthfully, I was pretty blown away. I've never been a fan of anime on the whole. I've liked a hand full of shows; Miyazaki's films and Cowboy Bebop mostly. I especially was drawn towards Cowboy Bebop's unique mixture of music (Jazz) and storytelling (Intergalactic Bounty Hunting). So, when I heard that [adult swim] was bringing Samurai Champloo, the new television show from the Cowboy Bebop team, to U.S. screens I was intrigued. The show definately lives up the expectations set by Bebop; Champloo's mix of music and storytelling is just as impressive, with what I feel are superior visuals, story, and action.
But where Bebop juxtaposes a cold, metallic future in space with an organic jazz score, Champloo deals with two samurais accomponying a young girl on a quest, set to the modern sounds of Japanese Hip-Hop. It sounds like a strange mix, but the music is used so naturally and appropriatly that it works much more to the shows benefit than anything else. The music is a large reason why I feel that this is the best anime series I've ever seen.
I bought this soundtrack primarily to get the show's opening theme song, Battlecry, and the closing theme, Shiki No Uta (Song of the Seasons), and these songs bookend this collection. In between there is a variety of instrumental hip-hop songs (about half of which I could recognize from the show). It's a nice collection of atmospheric hip-hop; somewhat repetitive, but great for background/mood music.
I think this is a great starting point for music from Samurai Champloo. It was worth it for me to have the open/closing themes, and I look forward to exploring both the show and it's music furthur.
Samurai Champloo, Saturdays @ 11:30pm (check your local listings) on [adult swim] - Cartoon Network
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
simply amazing., August 24, 2005
I love the anime and love the hip-hop instrumentals sprinkled across the various episodes and was compelled to pick up the soundtrack. I hardly thought I would enjoy it quite as much as I did, though.
See, intrumental hip-hop is a genre that's deserved much more attention and has been underrated for a long time now-everyone who has ever said to themselves "I'd really enjoy rap if it weren't for the rapper," or "that hip-hop song has a catchy beat but I can't get past the lyrics," would enjoy it; and this soundtrack, for the most part, fits right in there.
The tracks are hardly repetitive or boring, in fact I think they're lively and introspective, starting off with "Battlecry" (the title track from the show) offering you a bit of flavor to the soothing lyrics in "You," to the soulful but progressive beats in "Ole," "Vagrancy." The entire album has American instrumental hip-hop artist Fat Jon's impressions all over it, himself having created a great deal of the music American fans of Samurai Champloo on Cartoon Network may have heard during Adult Swim's black-card bumps in between commercial breaks. That's right, some of those smooth, jazzy (yet a little funky) beats? That's Fat Jon.
Seriously-he has a few of his own albums available (even right here at Amazon) and the Samurai Champloo soundtrack, although it's obviously a collaborative project, fits in exceptionally well with his own discography. So if you like this, check out the rest of his stuff, but don't leave this soundtrack behind. Calling it hip-hop isn't quite right, but it's definitely got a hip-hop flavor and jazzy, funky lines that will please anyone who appreciates complexity but catchiness from their beats. Electronica fans and Hip-hop fans will appreciate the grooves, and the head-nodding beats will allure music fans from all genres. Definitely a worthwhile buy.
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