I can’t even recall when i finished Samurai Champloo, yet another masterpiece by the creator of Cowboy Bebop, Watanabe Shinichiro. It must’ve been sometime back in the middle of august…

Yet, just as its older brother, Samurai Champloo is great. As Cowboy Bebop mixes blues with space and western, so mixes Samurai Champloo historical Edo period Japan with modern city underworld and hip-hop. As expected, both the graphics and the music of the anime is of insane quality. Fantastic puns and jokes, hilarious situations often burst into amazing fight scenes and/or tear-jerking drama parts.

The story is very well designed too. Through the loosely connected episodes of the heroes’ journey, a story worthy to be compared to a classical full-length novel unveils. In the meanwhile, sometimes strikingly harsh realities and brutal but just philosophies appear. And however matching this description is to Cowboy Bebop, i’m talking about Samurai Champloo, and despite these similarities, while watching it, it doesn’t feel like a “little brother” or successor, but a creation of great value.

Something you really should watch.

Above image from The Futile Podcast

There are a few things that aren’t connected to any of the series, or rather are connected to all of them. I won’t care about spoilers, so you be careful.

I remember only fragments of the first season, Adventure… It was ages ago, watching it after school in german on RTL2. The kids were so many. Nine-ten? And they were so kids.

I guess it must’ve been hard for the writers to create a storyline where they could fit in all the characters, develop all of them well and still stay entertaining. Probably that’s why the two youngsters of Adventure come back in 02. In 02, the eight kids (counted, eight) of Adventure were made helping background appearances except for the two of them who became members of the new five person team. They were later joined by one more kid, a past enemy, going to six, the same pattern as in Frontier. In Tamers, in a totally different world, where Digimon is “just” a card game, the new team goes down to three kids, and they spend much more time in the real world, compared to the first two seasons or Frontier. In that aspect, Tamers and Savers are very similar. This number three seems to be the best one, because in Xross Wars the team is again of three kids.

Today in my lunch break i watched the last episode of Digimon Frontier, the fourth season in the saga of digital monsters. Although i was more or less familiar with the story, the characters and everything else from the time i was running Digimon Backup, i hadn’t watched the series itself until this week. Not so long ago i watched Digimon Savers, the fifth season, after that i simply had to watch Frontier too.

Frontier first aired eight years ago, in 2002, and for a painfully long time (until Savers came out in 2006) it was the last. I still recall how everyone was mourning Digimon already, with only a few fansites harboring some hope… (Go TK!)

Frontier was very different from the previous seasons in that the kid heroes didn’t have digimon companions—they themselves turned into digimon. They are invited to the Digital World by Ophanimon, for no less goal than to save it of course. It turns out this is once again a different DigiWorld from the previous series: this one is a planet with three moons, and lots of rails from Trailmons.

Since the creators of the series cut the digimon partners, the focus is much more on the interactions of the kids themselves. The only digimon accompanying them are Bokomon and Neemon, two ditzy digimon who are more of a source of comic relief than of any actual help to the characters.

The graphics are of course good, and the hybrid digivolutions are simply awesome. The character designs, dialogs and filler stories are oriented at the elementary school student audience, which is also often made fun of by Arbormon. (Wash your hands before eating!) It was also interesting when i realised that Takuya, the fiery leader boy has the same voice actor as Naruto.

Frontier is not the best Digimon series, but still it’s good. Check it out, if you’re over 15, for nostalgia, if you’re younger than that, then for many hours of true and exciting entertainment.