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September 15, 2004
Samurai 7 11 & 12
Poor Katsushirou. Didn't anybody tell him when he first took up the sword what it was actually for?
But I am ahead of myself. So. The gang finally arrive at Kanna to a less than cheery welcome. As in the movie, certain of the villagers have convinced the others that the samurai are just as bad as the Nobuseri (and the addition of a visit from the Nobuseri didn't help any). Kikuchiyo cheerfully flushes them out, along with - Uh oh. Shino. Frankly I didn't expect her to show up in this, but... well... gwah. And just when things were finally getting cozy between Katsushirou and Kirara, too. 
I also wasn't expecting Heihachi to be quite so ...vengeful (and I hope that what I think I saw isn't actually what I thought I saw
). And it's nice - I think - to see that time and space hasn't changed Manzou. He's a lot uglier than I remember, though.
Episode 12 picks up directly from where episode 11 leaves off, which is a first. Katsushirou has drawn first blood, and he's not real happy about it. For the first time, Kanbei shows a glimmer of the fatherly warmth that Takeshi Shimada brought to the movie Kanbei, both to Katsushirou and to Kikuchiyo - and then proceeds to unite the village as! An! ARMY! Of! ...A LOT!!! (Hmmm. maybe that's why Kanbei is hard for me to like... he does the whole declarations and orders thing in an arrogant kind of way, whereas movie Kanbei's orders were more like suggestions that you darn well better follow if you want to stay alive.)
I'm really quite enjoying how, with more time to devote to character development, each samurai's personality has been upped a couple of notches. In the movie, only Kanbei and Katsushirou (and Kikuchiyo, of course) had any real personality. The others were one-notes - Gorobee was the cheery one, Heihachi was the good-humored one (it was sometimes difficult to tell them apart), Shichiroji was Kanbei's right hand man, and Kyuuzou was the badass. Here, Gorobee is a street entertainer/adrenaline junkie, Heihachi is a happy-go-lucky engineering marvel with a steel-cold soul, Shichiroji has built a happy civilian life, and Kyuuzou is... a badass with style. At the same time, I'm trying really hard not to get too attached to anybody, because I have no idea how this will turn out. From this point on, the body count will start to rise... and even a samurai is not immune to death.
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Posted by Innocent Sidekick of Evil at September 15, 2004 11:08 AM | Posted to Samurai 7
