I'd rather watch Snakes on a Plane

Monday, July 16, 2007

I always knew that anime could fill the genre spectrum just like regular American television and cartoons. I've certainly had my fill of harem fantasies, giant robots and nonsensical space adventures, but I haven't dabbled much into samurai shows. Browsing through my archive reveals titles such as Ruroni Kenshin, Samurai Deeper Kyo and, of course, Samurai Champloo, the gold standard of samurai shows. But Samurai Champloo was the only one I could tolerate for any amount of time. Kenshin is too interested in its running time to be of any use, and Kyo is borderline indecipherable - just take a look at the list of characters (right grey sidebar) in this bloody thing!

It would actually be an honorific to add Afro Samurai to the list of samurai shows I've watched, but that would be inaccurate. This show is so bad that it crosses the Badness Event Horizon (currently occupied by sCRYed) and passes into camp. You'll be laughing during Afro Samurai, but not because anybody tells any jokes. Whereas movies like Transformers create problems with the details, Afro Samurai makes absolutely no sense, top to bottom, no matter how you slice it. If Wikipedia is accurate, this show cost a million dollars an episode to produce. Thus, five million dollars was wasted on this attempt at an entertainment product. Here's an idea: trim just one show by 1/6 of a second and give two people a hundred dollars to buy sock puppets and produce three minutes of real joy for all audiences.

This shows stars Samuel L. Jackson as the titular samurai. No, really: people call him "Afro" (or sometimes "Number Two"). And by people, I mean his imaginary friend named "Ninja Ninja," also voiced by Jackson, who follows him around and talks in a manner that no black person, not even the caricatures on In Living Color, has ever spoken. If I had to rank the stupidity of the character names compared to everything else in Afro Samurai... I wouldn't know where to begin.

Maybe we can start with the plot, which is so simple that a paragraph seems too in-depth for it. In the world of Afro Samurai there are two headbands: "Number one" and "Number two." If you have the #1 headband you have the powers of a god. Period. No one explains what this means. If you have the #2 headband you have the right to challenge the guy wearing the #1 headband for his "godhood." But anybody can challenge the #2 headband guy, kill him, and become the new #2. That's it.

In my mind I can vividly see the ascension pillar from Mortal Kombat (sadly, Google Images cannot provide me with a picture). At the top is Shao Khan, and just below him is Goro. The only way to kill Shao Khan and beat the game is to kill Goro. This kind of video game progression logic applied to an anime would work if they explained anything about why the world is this way. Such as, I dunno, how you can kill a god, or whether anyone has fabricated a headband, or just what you do as a number one god aside from wait around for the number two guy to come kill you.

Our hero Afro is out to get revenge on this Gung-Ho Guns reject called (yes way) "Justice" for the murder of his father. He killed Afro's father (the almost sensibly named "Rokutaro," for no reason I can fathom) to get his hands on Rokutaro's #1 headband. We see the murder in the opening of the first episode: Rokutaro defends his quasi-Buddhist template against Justice, who wields dual six-shooters and the #2 headband.

You might think a fight between a swordsman and a gunslinger would be interesting, or improbable, or quickly over, but you'll get none of that from Afro Samurai. Rokutaro and Justice have damn near the most schizophrenic fight I've ever seen (Bourne Supremacy still wins that contest), and when the camera pulls back, you'll see exactly why they don't show any long takes of the fighting. Afro's father sweeps at Justice like a clumsy marionette from Team America. There's none of the grace, forethought, or creativity of Samurai Champloo's elegant battles. Even the original Mortal Kombat had more convincing animation than this stinker.

After a minute of this nonsense Justice decapitates Rokutaro in front of little Afro. Tell me if you can: how do you decapitate somebody with a gun? And without firing it, even? I'm sure the NRA would be stumped. Oh, then it gets worse. Rokutaro's head (complete with two-foot afro) lands in front of little Afro, and the boy tenderly cradles it like a lost puppy. You know, instead of screaming and running the hell away like a sensible child. Justice takes the #1 headband, drops his #2 and tells Afro "This moment will always haunt you."

My guess for Afro's first words? "No shit, Sherlock."

In less complain-y news I've resumed my World of Warcraft subscription. Since the damn thing doesn't run out until December I figured I may as well do something with it. I'm back on my level 38 human mage Savannah and have started a Blood Elf warlock named, um, "Haruhi" on Draka. I got mixed up in the quest to free Myrazel in the Arathi Highlands and found myself liking it. When the quest called for me to kill Forzuk, the giant level 42 elite guy with three kobolds in tow, I knew I needed some help. So I sent out a broadcast in Arathi: help me kill Forzuk and I'll give you two gold for your troubles.

Three wipes later we finally got him. I'm out eight gold for ~3,500 XP, but I had a blast. To raise money I tried running around the ruined syndicate castle in Hillsbrad, killing gray level 20 mobs. I tell 'ya, a challenge is good, but nothing beats the pleasure of running into a group of six guys around a campfire, Frost Nova-ing them in place, and then using Blizzard and Arcane Blast until they drop. Then, like Lina Inverse on a good day, I bustle about and collect the loot off their carcasses. It's a good thing.