YMMV / Samurai Champloo

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Is Mugen's and Fuu's bickering Belligerent Sexual Tension or just companions getting on each other's nerves?
  • Kohza, whose exact motives aren't revealed. Money, companionship, both? Or is she just confused?
• Awesome Music: With Nujabes' involvement in the soundtrack, it's no surprise. There's also the haunting song that Sara sings as part of her traveling performer act, and the one by Ikue Asazaki that plays over Mugen's flashbacks to his youth with Kohza and Mukuro.
• Bizarro Episode:
  • The zombie episode ("Cosmic Collisions"). It starts off with Jin and Mugen eating rare mushrooms, and ends with a nuclear explosion and the villain leaping out of his grave, and it is never mentioned again. The operative word here is mushroom.
  • The baseball episode ("Baseball Blues"), as the bizarre plot involves the gang playing baseball against a bunch of Americans intending to invade.
  • Episode 9 ("Beatbox Bandits"), at least towards the end, where the conflict is resolved... by a burning field of weed, which gets the antagonists all chummy with each other while completely forgetting about whatever they were supposed to do.
• Complete Monster:
  • "Lethal Lunacy": Shoryu, born Ukon, was a samurai who ended up in China and learned the art of "Hakkei". Growing arrogant upon his return to Japan, Shoryu murdered another student in a sparring match before wandering the land and killing other dojo leaders. Seeking to enhance his skills, he hunted down countless samurai and brutally slaughtered them with Hakkei to satisfy his ego and lust for blood until attempting to do the same to Mugen.
  • "Misguided Miscreants" two-parter: Mukuro is a bloodthirsty criminal who tricked Mugen into helping him escape the island they grew up on before betraying him. Going on to form his own pirate crew, Mukuro murders all aboard a merchant ship and brutally wipes out a village, only allowing the strongest of the young men to survive to serve as hired muscle for his latest scheme. Targeting a gold-bearing vessel, Mukuro savagely slaughters all aboard before using explosives to kill his own followers, uncaring as long as he gets to keep all of the loot for himself.
• Crazy Is Cool: Mugen's nonsensical style of fighting works perfectly for him, and is pretty damn impressive to watch.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Several characters are quite popular despite their brief appearances and are prone to crop up in fanfiction. This includes Sara (due to her intense arc), Yatsuha (due to her hilarious appearance and manipulation of Mugen, whom she's shipped with), Yukimaru (a significant figure from Jin's life, also often shipped), and Shino (due to bringing out Jin's softer and more romantic side in her bittersweet appearance, again frequently shipped).
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In a world full of dangerous swordfighters, Fuu is... decidedly not one of them. A little over a year later, however, her Japanese voice actor would go on to play one of the most famous swordswomen in all of anime. Her English voice actor would follow suit five years later.
  • Kazuya Nakai voices a character who has an honor-bound and incredibly skilled samurai partner named Jin. Sixteen years later, he voices an honor-bound and incredibly skilled samurai named Jin.
• Ho Yay:
  • Actually played straight (no pun intended) by the Dutchman, who comes from a sect that believes enlightenment can be obtained through homosexuality.
  • The Jin/Yukimaru subtext. Even though Jin has sex with women on multiple occasions and actually falls in love with a sex worker in one episode, he appears to be emotionally affected by Yukimaru's reappearance, who is essentially upset because Jin didn't take him with him. Given the Edo period's lax attitude towards bisexuality, it's entirely possible that they were, in fact, lovers.
  • Mugen and Jin. One such example is the very first episode, when Mugen dreams of Jin being naked in a bathtub during their fight, and he doesn't fail to point out "his dong hanging out" when he recalls the dream to him.
• Iron Woobie: Mugen. The "Misguided Miscreants" two-parter revealing his backstory gives him plenty of reasons to feel sorry for himself, on top of being betrayed by his childhood friend/possible love interest and nearly dying. But at any point does he let it get him down? No. He lets it make him angry. The man simply does not give a fuck.
  Mugen: I don't give a rat's ass about going to hell. I guess it's because I feel like I'm already there.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Mugen, who is rude a good chunk of the time. Despite that, he doesn't remember having any parents and appears to have lead a life of crime since young. Of particular note is him once being tricked into a life of piracy by Mukuro, who betrayed him.
  • Fuu. As bossy as she may be, her mother died a year ago and the two were abandoned by her father (aka the Sunflower Samurai), hence why she's so desperate to find him. And by the end of the series, said father's sick, revealed to have left in order to save his family from Christian persecution, and dies at the hands of Kariya, leaving Fuu overwhelmed.
• Magnificent Bastard: In this episodic adventure with a colorful cast of characters, some opponents stand above for their grace and ingenuity.
  • Kagetoki Kariya is a master swordsman and wise old man, his skills renowned so much that he is known as the "Hand of God". A dignified and intelligent samurai, Kariya realized that the world was changing and allied with the shogunate, allowing the shogunate to believe he is a puppet when reality, he is using the empire to further his own agendas. Tending his garden while making comparisons to life and defeating Mugen in combat with the same amount of exertion, Kariya fights Jin and defeats even him, giving pointers on his fighting style the entire time. Ordered to eliminate the legendary "Samurai who Smells of Sunflowers", Kariya uses Fuu to lead him to the Samurai, kills the man after offering him last words with his daughter Fuu, spares the Samurai's elderly caretaker and then tries to kill Fuu as well, offering her the chance to honorably take her own life in the process.
  • "Redeye Reprisal": The samurai Inuyama aids the vile Ryujiro in his quest for revenge, playing the role of a meek coward to deflect suspicion from villagers and the heroes. Luring Jin into a secluded forest, Inuyama engages him in combat, showing both remarkable ingenuity as well as respect for his opponent and after seeing the death of his employer, gracefully exits with no qualms, merely commenting he hopes to battle Jin again someday.
  • "Beatbox Bandits": Yamane "the Ogre" is the bespectacled, unassuming right-hand man to Kinogasa, serving as the real brains behind the Hakone checkpoint. Giving Kinosaga sound advice all while sitting back and letting the man's corruption run rampant, Yamane concocts a brilliant scheme to turn Mugen into a delivery boy of an important package in exchange for sparing his hostage friends. Following closely behind Mugen with stealth and agility, and staging a sneaky breakout when the two are temporarily captured, Yamane ends up laughing off his differences with Mugen and enemy priests after all of them get high off burning marijuana fields. Yamane then goes on to orchestrate himself into the leadership role at Hakone, where he reigns for 30 years before quietly and successfully retiring, recalling with fondness the adventure he went on with Mugen.
  • "Bogus Booty": Yatsuha is a police officer investigating a counterfeiting operation, having gone undercover as a prostitute for the past year. Using Mugen's attraction to her advantage, Yatsuha has him take a room with her next to the criminal conspirators to catch the full scope of their plan. Nearly killing Mugen when he becomes a nuisance, Yatsuha is instead impressed by his fighting abilities and falsely promises him sexual favors to have him help her battle and arrest the whole gang.
• Moral Event Horizon: Umanosuke chases down Fuu, molests her, knocks her out, then ties her to a cross and beats her in the penultimate episode.
• MST3K Mantra: With its opening disclaimer, the series makes it abundantly clear that it doesn't give a damn about being historically accurate and that we as the audience should just enjoy the show.
• Nightmare Retardant: The zombie episode, while still frightening, loses a fair bit of its edge when you realize that they were most likely just having a very, very bad trip.
• One True Threesome: The main three, due to their Vitriolic Best Buds dynamic, especially with Fuu quite possibly having feelings for both guys, and Jin and Mugen admitting at the end that they consider each other their first friends.
• Spiritual Successor: Of Cowboy Bebop. Created by much of the same production team, stylistically the shows aren't too far removed. The fluid animation, episodic nature, the Dark and Troubled Past of each character, the running theme of the protagonists struggling to earn enough just to survive another day and the way the music is integrated into the story makes these shows practically siblings. Casting Steve Blum as Mugen in the English version helps even more (though Mugen and Spike are extremely different characters).
• Stoic Woobie: The ever-so-stoic Jin, who killed his kendo master (his one parental figure) prior to the story.
• Superlative Dubbing: The English and French dubs have been very well received, the latter being considered the best French anime dub ever, especially considering France's history of dubbing anime in general really badly.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • "Hellhounds for Hire" involves a yakuza gang trying to take over a town by cheating the residents at dice. While the gang is Obviously Evil, it's kind of hard to feel bad when all the residents know that they're cheating, and all they have to do to stop their takeover is to not gamble with them.
  • "Artistic Anarchy" involves a different yakuza gang involved in human trafficking. The episode ends with the leader, the quirky old man, revealed to be the boss and he's taken to jail, his exit met with dignity and a feeling of sorrow from his underlings and wife with even the narrative giving him a somber tone. It's jarringly unfitting for a man who sold dozens of women into sexual slavery overseas, not to mention the other gang members aren't arrested.

---