Samurai Champloois one of the greatest works byCowboy Bebopcreator Shinichiro Watanabe, offering a comparable vibe despite having a wildly different setting and musical tone. The series' original inspiration comes from a surprising place, but it’s actually a perfect fit for whatSamurai Champlooeventually became.
Samurai Champloofollows the adventures of Fu, a young girl accompanied by two bodyguards, the outlaw Mugen and the masterless samurai Jin, as she searches for a man known only as “the samurai who smells of sunflowers.” Set in the Edo period,Samurai Champlooincorporates many anachronistic elementsinto it, largely in the form of rap and hip hop culture, which also shapes the series' music. These factors combine to create a story that’s extremely unique, just like its title. How Watanabe brought these disparate elements together, and what led him to do so in the first place, happens to be a perfect origin for the series.
Samurai Champloo Was Brought About By Sampling
The Musical Technique Inspired Watanabe to Mix Samurai and Hip Hop
The series' title refers to “chanpuru,” an Okinawan dish whose name means “something mixed,” referring to the variety of ingredients that can be used in its creation. As it turns out, this idea of mixing was key to the series' creation in the first place.In an interview hosted on Forbes, Shinichiro Watanabe commented on the series origins: “…I didn’t want to make something old-fashioned but instead take a new approach. I also felt that hip-hop and samurai might have some similarities.In that, the important essence of hip-hop is its sampling. A musician can pick up old pieces of music and use them like new.”
The idea of sampling, or reusing segments of older works in a new song, was the starting point from which Watanabe approachedthe creation ofSamurai Champloo. Watanabe talks about drawing inspiration from old samurai films, and essentially “sampling” scenes and ideas, mixing them with modern things like hip hop and other Western influences to create something entirely new. The ideas of hip hop shaped far more than just the soundtrack; they were essential to its very creation. The series lifts ideas from all across time and places them in a new context, in much the same way as a sampled track.
Elements like Mugen’s break-dancing inspired fighting style are mixed with more classical samurai ideas (largely seen with Jin), so that when the two of them fight, it’s a fight scene unlike any that has been seen before. The series also picks up historical figures, ranging from baseball players to Andy Warhol, dropping them into its Edo-inspired setting and seeing what happens. The mix of elements enables Watanabe to tell unique stories that wouldn’t be possible had he taken a more traditional approach to samurai media.
WhileSamurai Champloodoesn’t literally sample older works, the idea of sampling was enough to inspire Watanabe to develop a very original idea, mixing two elements that might seem highly distinct from one another in a seamless way that few others could pull off.
Samurai Champloo
Cast
Samurai Champloo is an anime series created by Shinichirō Watanabe. Set in an alternate Edo-era Japan, it follows the journey of Mugen, a brash and fiercely independent swordsman, and Jin, a calm and skilled ronin, as they accompany a young waitress named Fuu on her mission to find a mysterious samurai who smells of sunflowers. The series is noted for its unique blend of historical elements and modern hip-hop culture.
