Samurai Gun

Reviewed by Chris Hori
May 15, 2007

Director: Hideki Sonoda Distributor: ADV Genre: Samurai, Shonen Age Rating: Mature Website: Click Here Review Rating: 6 out of 10

Set in feudal Japan, just as the industrial revolution is beginning, Ichimatsu is a member of an elite samurai group who are trained in the use of firearms.  This group is sent on missions on behalf of justice to fight against corrupt government officials who are abusing their powers in an attempt to gain more power and wealth for themselves.

With that said, the plot of Samurai Gun is obviously nothing original or creative.  Like many other Shonen anime, a single, highly skilled individual must fight the overwhelming odds, and overconfident adversary, to save the day.  Amongst other cliché’s this anime uses is: the reluctant hero who is a member of a secret organization, the obligatory female love interest who will inevitably require saving, the comedic relief friend, and finally hoards of expendable minions for the hero to slay on his path to justice.  While this is a typical shonen style story, this particular anime falls short at each turn.

Ichimatsu’s motivation appears to be the death of his mother, and as a result the bad guys seem to have an obsession with graphic violence against large breasted young girls.   The anime takes every opportunity to put helpless women on screen.  Ichimatsu’s purpose comes off feeling very weak, fails to drive the character from the beginning, and seems as though this story element was intended to justify the fan service. While obvious fan service is not uncommon in many anime, the art style is nothing special, nor does this fan service do anything except seem out of place and slow the story down.  In addition, the overall frame rate and animation quality are not as good as I would have hoped.  The best animation appears to takes place during the opening credits, and the action scenes leave much to be desired… which leads me to my next problem with this anime.

When the hero has a gun, and the bad guys have swords, the action scenes are not very exciting.  While the animators do their best by adding things like matrix like bullet time effects, the bottom line is that the hero, who is wearing full body armor, pulls out his gun and shoots the bad guys dead.  As the story progresses, some of the mid-boss level bad guys also get various guns, but for the most part this left most of the action scenes feeling bland and simply stalling for time until a worthwhile person (with a gun) shows up.

Despite only being 12 episodes long, there seems to be far too many dull moments.  The beginning failed to draw me in through the story, action or characters, and the follow up episodes did nothing to encourage me to continue watching.  The audio quality is acceptable, though without the other elements, this is not an anime I can recommend picking up.

The part that bothers me the most is the number of good anime that follows a similar theme or story.  For excellent sword fighting scenes and a good story, I recommend Samurai Champloo.  For a good story set in the feudal era I recommend Samurai X (Rurouni Kenshin), or Samurai 7.  If you want to see a well done anime with gun fighting, check out Black Lagoon.  Samurai Gun just doesn’t cut it.

Screenshots (Click image to enlarge) :