Amazon.com: As the 2004 broadcast series Samurai 7 continues, "water priestess" Kirara and the peasants from Kanna village try to hire samurai to protect them from crop-stealing bandits. They find two new recruits: wood-chopping Heihachi, who works with machines, and Kambei's former comrade, Shichiroji. When an imperial agent is murdered, Ayano, the ruler of the merchant city, orders all samurai arrested. His fey son Ukyo pursues the villagers and their hired swords into a series of caverns controlled by the Shikimori, who trade "energy cells" to both the merchants and the bandits. As the characters and plot twists multiply, the filmmakers move farther away from their supposed model, Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (1954). Kurosawa's classic film stressed the shared humanity of the peasants, the samurai, and even the bandits; the often grotesquely designed people and mecha in this derivative sci-fi adventure lack that essential bond. The Limited Edition includes bound volumes of the storyboards for each episode, but in Japanese with no translations. (Unrated, suitable for ages 12 and older: violence, brief nudity, alcohol use) --Charles Solomon
Product Description: After the mysterious murder of the Imperial Envoy in the Magistrate's home-with a bloody sword as the only clue-a citywide hunt for all samurai begins. With a high price suddenly on their heads the band of a samurai must quickly escape the city.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: ANIMATION/ADULT SWIM UPC: 704400058042
The Excitement Continues The farmers of Kanna continue their search for seven samurai to protect their homes from "The Bandits." By the end of this DVD I think the search is over but some recruitment needs to be completed. I believe that we are still in the characterization phase of this show as we are getting to know more about the characters but plot development is a little bit low.
The characters are still as rich and the story is still as interesting as what roped me in to this series in the first place. I can't wait to move to volume 3 and continue this show.
Great DVD!! Great DVD for a great series! You should have the collection! The music is great, the menus are excellent, the costumes are very nice, there are a lot of thing to watch in this DVD!
Too early to tell if it'll suck or not but so far it's not Many many anime shows have the plot kick in halfway through. It's usually 13-15 episodes in before the main story arc kicks in. It's not a bad way to tell a story but when you're trying to get into an anime, it's hard to get into it when nothing big happens, just a bunch of adventures that eventually will lead to a bigger story. Samurai 7 in a way follows this where we have character introductions and talk-y scenes throughout the first couple volumes. Volume 2 changes the pace a little bit.
This volume centers around 3 main plots: the introduction of 2 new samurai: Heihachi and Shichiroji, the formal induction of a third and things known as Guardians. What's different about this one than Volume 1 is that the plot's finally starting to kick in. If you've been keeping score, there's one samurai left until they move towards their main goal: to defeat the bandits terrorizing a village.
It's one of those kind of animes where you either think it's one of anime's premier shows or you think that it's a blemish and a poor re-imagining of a film classic. So far, it's not a bad series. This is volume 2 after all and it's too early to tell whether it's an anime classic or it's another overrated show.
One thing's that's disappointing is the image and sound. At times the image got incredibly bright with a noticeable whitish tint while at times it went back to normal although it could just be my tv. And on the english tracks, it was hard to hear the english voices while the japanese tracks had odd sound problems too.
If you've been following the dvd's so far, it's pretty good with an obvious room for it to be great. So it's pretty much wait and see but so far, I'm enjoying it.
Hanging On If you liked the first dvd then you should still like this one. Its got less action, more just continuation of the story and characters. The first one is rewatchable because i thought it was really good, but this second dvd not so much. But still, if your watching the series and like it keep watching, its just not quite as good as the first. Leads up to a promising looking next dvd though. Also the art is very good on the limited edition, im not sure its worth the extra $ but if u love the art, go for it.
Lift Off In volume one of Samurai 7, there just seemed to be too much character introduction and not enough story. Not to say that this was bad or anything. I enjoyed the first volume very much (see my review at my profile). It presented the conflict and progressed to the characters from there. It just didn't move much from there.
Volume two though gets more into the story, or at least in parts. There still is a great deal of character introduction. The final two samurai make their appearances in this one, but a little more of the characters' pasts are revealed along with more of the world setting and history. It also develops some of the character relationships in volume two.
As was expected, the action scenes are excellent and the characters, though numerous, have their own unique qualities. The one problem, though, is the huge number of characters, whether they're protagonists or antagonists. It's extremely difficult to grasp all of the names. Counting right now in my head, there are nine protagonist characters and five antagonist characters, not to mention the numerous support characters that have popped up.
I recommend this for fans of Samurai Champloo or if you own and have liked the first volume of Samurai 7.
Anything Goes Trivia
Trevor
Megaton Man
