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Message: <blockquote data-quote="WizarDru" data-source="post: 1754986" data-attributes="member: 151">No, it really doesn't.  You have to consider that the original movie was some 206 minutes....over three-and-a-half HOURS.  That's a whole LOT of material.  Now, consider the fact that the recruitment of the samurai is relatively quick in the movie, and that the villains of the piece, the bandits, are totally undeveloped.  I can easily see the series stretched to 26 episodes, based on the first five that I've seen.  My initial fear was that it would have some relation to Seven Samurai: 20XX or whatever the PS/2 game that was recently released was...which has gotten nearly universally horrible reviews.  As it happens, there is absolutely no linkage...in fact, the video game only features a single character from the movie, Kanbei, in an altered form.  Several things tickled me pink about this series.  First, they kept the original characters, and while different interpetations of those characters, they are still the same at their core.  Gorobei still appears to be on the fast track as my favorite character, for example, and the relationship between Kanbei and Katsushiro is cleanly intact.  Second, whole chunks of dialogue and elements have been transposed into this interpetation.  Some lines are directly taken from the source movie (such as the "You're worrying about your beard, while the bandits cut your head off at the neck" line).  One of my favorite scenes, where they test Gorobei at the doorway, is kept virtually intact.  So how do they make it last more than five episodes?  Easy.  First, as I mentioned, they extend the recruitment significantly.  Gorobei doesn't even appear until the third episode or so, Heihachi until the fifth.  Second, they add a few new characters, such as Kirara.  They introduce new elements consistent with the source work.  The emphasis on Samurai being proud paupers is strongly reinforced here, with many starving samurai denoucing the noble peasants while taking a free meal.  The rise of the merchant class and devaluing of the samurai is a strong element, and Kikuchiyo's 'how long did it take to harvest this rice?  You don't know, do you?' lines are stretched out a ways.  All that said, there is some serious butt-kicking going on, as well.  Chambara elements don't overshadow the series, but they support it well. Cyborg warriors, a wacky mixture of high-tech and low-tech and the Edo-era shogunate meets Final Fantasy make for a virtual smorgasbord of delights.  The animation is just beautiful, and the story is well written.  As Scorch alluded to, some of Gonzo's CGI work is just masterful here, taking some of the visuals to a new height.  As a big fan of the original movie, I can appreciate how the effort was made to be faithful to the spirit, if not the details.    I mean, I like the Kanbei from the series, but I still liked the venerable Takashi Shimura as the movie version more (who is the same actor who plays the main character in Ikiru, in case you were curious).  To me, he embodies the elder master samurai perfectly, in the same way that the incomporable Toshiro Mifune represented the Angry Samurai (or the seemingly-indifferent-but-really-not Samurai of Yojimbo).  So yeah, I'd say I like it. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

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