Amazon.com: As the 2004 broadcast series Samurai 7 continues, "water priestess" Kirara and the other peasant-recruiters fill their quota of seven warriors and lead them back to Kanna village to fight the crop-stealing bandits. Kambei and his comrades tell the villagers that their hamlet is now Kanna Castle, and they must join in its defense; the farmers reluctantly build fortifications and practice archery. But before they left the city, the samurai easily defeated several of the robot-bandits in a skirmish, so their threatened attack doesn't feel like much to worry about. Samurai 7 is supposed to be adapted from Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, but it's really just a flimsy sci-fi epic in which the villains sneer, "Keep your eyes in the dirt, where they belong," and the good guys portentously declare, "Because I am a samurai!" (Unrated, suitable for ages 12 and older: violence, alcohol use) --Charles Solomon
Description: Kikuchiyo has been foolishly captured by the Bandits, and the samurai must leave the caverns to rescue him. When daylight approaches, the towering machines plan to ambush them. Clearly a traitor is in ther midst. Kambei knows legions of Nobuseri will be searching for them soon and decides to the group must get to Kanna, though the team of seven is invomplete. To survive the trek, new bonds of trust must be forged. As their journey begins, the samurai must confront an even more dangersious deception: betrayal from the farmers who hired them.
A Continuation of a Great and Heartfelt Story The seven Samurai are establish as they make their move to Kanaa Village. The characters we have grown to know are further fleshed out as we learn a lot more about the characters. The final episode even reveals a background to one character, a secret that I was suspecting from the first disk and is finally confirmed.
The story gets pretty good especially since, as the characters develop, there is no longer just good guy and bad guy but people that are stuck in between. While this causes a bit of a rift with the 7 Samurai the team actually seems to work well together drawing on each other's strength as they prepare the Villange and the people of Kanaa for the confrontation that is headed in their direction.
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!
DO THE VILLAGERS STILL WANT THE SAMURAI? Honoka, a farmer who lives on the patronage of the mysterious Shikimori told the band of samurai that she could lead them to their missing member, the blustering and reckless Kikuchiyo. What she leads them to instead is a trap set up by the bandits. Even though they have been betrayed in one way, they gain an ally from an unlikely source. Kyuzo, disgusted with his partner's failure to honor the way of the sword, switches sides to join Kambei's band. Now that the gig is up and the samurai discover that the bandits now know they are going to defend the village of Kanna, they decide to split into groups in order to escape detection. But if they do reach the village, do its inhabitants still want the warriors to help them out, or have they been scared into turning them over to the bandits?
Samurai 7 is nothing if not spectacular. It has pretty much steered clear of pyrotechnic battles in this third volume and concentrated instead on the psychological aspects of the samurai and villagers. Katsushiro especially has to go through a trial by fire, in that he has to kill his first man. Up until now, he's been able to cloak himself in his idealism, but when it comes down to it, samurai might kill honorably, but they have to KILL. It remains to be seen if he will be able to deal with this fact. The cool thing about Samurai 7 is that it tries to look at the problems it brings forth from all kinds of perspectives. For example, you get annoyed by the villager's renunciation of the samurai but surprisingly Kikuchiyo argues eloquently for their case, saying that peasants HAVE to be treacherous and sneaky because of the way the more powerful are always oppressing them! They are just pawns that have to figure out a way to survive because noone protects them. The challenge that Kambei and the others face is working up the backbone and will of these people whose pride still lurks somewhere in their hearts. Excellent show.
It's starting to get better In the previous volumes, the show seemed to be slightly slow. Not that anime is immune to slow openings, it's just Samurai 7 seemed to be a little bit TOO slow, introducing its characters and the storyline. Well in volume 3, the samurai finally reach their destination and formulate a plan to deal with the bandits but like the other volumes, it's still slightly slow, only now there's a bit more tension.
The volume starts off with an encounter with a couple Nobuseri(bandits) which reveals there's a traitor in their midst. Helping them out is the 7th samurai to be found who's incredibly silent half the time and would rather fight Kanbei to the death. The samurai finally make it to the village which is met with slight resistance, including by one member while one samurai learns what it'll take against the upcoming battle.
Blessed with a huge budget, estimated at around 300,000$ US per episode, the show definately looks very stylized and great while other times character designs look slightly off. The weird overly bright feeling I had with previous volumes also seems gone(unless it was just my TV). One thing is slightly disappointing is the english dub. Unlike Fullmetal Alchemist's, which I actually prefer in English oddly, Samurai 7's VA's aren't that impressive but they're not outright terrible either.
In many ways I can use volume 3 and volume 4 as the point of no return: either you're a fan of the show by the end of this volume or volume 4 or simply you're not going to so if you're a fan, you'll enjoy it but otherwise, you'd probably try finding another series.
The Heart of the Anime Revealed It was clear that volumes one and two of Samurai 7 were specifically meant to introduce the characters of the story, and these volumes do so fairly well while still presenting the conflict and the story along the way. Volume three, though, gets much deeper into the story since the character intros are out the way, and action also gets a little role here as well, though this could be found in the other volumes.
In volume three, the final samurai, who's introduced earlier as an enemy, is brought on board early on and from there the samurai make their way to the village which they had gathered together to protect. Once here, the anime gets great. Anyone who has seen the classic movie Seven Samurai will begin to see all the similarities the anime of nearly the same name shares. I'd hate to spoil the rest of the anime, so I'll keep the rest to myself. I will say that one of the samurai reveals a surprising past, and another learns what is needed to be a samurai. This happens in one episode, and this is easily the best of the first twelve.
This anime is turning slowly into a great, and I'm a believer that it is Gonzo's current best, with the controversial Gantz being in second. I'd recommend this volume to anyone who enjoyed the first two, and to anyone who is a fan of Gonzo. Also, it's beginning to pay its respect to the classic movie, so I'd also recommend it to those of you who love Seven Samurai.
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