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crack_van2007-12-01 04:59 pm
jane-elliot.livejournal.com) wrote in crack_van2007-12-01 04:59 pm
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Samurai Champloo Overview
Samurai Champloo is a 26 episode anime that is, quite simply, one of the most creative (and, let's face it, whacked-out) anime series ever made. With a hip-hop soundtrack, a wealth of deliberate anachronisms, two anti-heroes, an emphatically *not* submissive female lead (who gets kidnapped more often than there are stars in the sky), more sex of both the het and the homo variety than you can shake a stick at, and a running *theme* of sexual slavery, SC is a show ripe for fanfic and fandom in general.
The Main Characters:
Fuu:
Fifteen years old and an orphan, Fuu makes a living working in her uncle and aunt's tea house. When that burns down, she saves the lives of Jin and Mugen and, in payment, demands that they help her find a samurai that smells like sunflowers. Despite being the youngest of the trio, she is the leader and generally manages to keep the boys in line through force of her will. Considering she spends most of the time nagging them about getting work so they can eat (and, in her defense, she is usually the hardest and most reliable worker of the group), it's amazing that she's only abandoned by the guys once and they came back to her within a couple of episodes. Fuu also demonstrates a remarkable ability to get into trouble. In fact, she gets into more trouble than Jin and Mugen combined, and most episodes revolve around them getting her back out of trouble. She's a resourceful girl, however, and usually manages to help in her own escapes. Her age does come though sometimes, especially when the boys encounter romantic interests or when something sets her temper off (which doesn't take much); at those times she is impetuous and tends to make serious mistakes (which leads to kidnapping. Of course.) There's slightly more canon evidence in the series that she's attracted to Mugen than to Jin, but an argument can be made either way.
Jin:
Jin comes from a very traditional background and it shows in his fighting style, which is brilliant but technically precise and works best in the confines of a building (like a dojo). Not much is known about his family, but it's understood that he spent the vast majority of his childhood learning sword fighting in a variety of dojos (most notably the one run by Mariya Enshirou -- see below), rather than living with his parents and having a childhood. He wears glasses, which were very unusual and highly expensive at the time and there is some debate as to whether he even needs them (Fuu says he doesn't, but, well, it's *Fuu*. Fandom is mixed on the issue). Either way, the glasses, his traditional and expensive clothes, and his very high quality swords all indicate that he's from a wealthy family, but we don't see said family during the course of the series and he never mentions them (certainly he doesn't have any familial funding during the series). Jin is level-headed and detached; even his grand romance with Shino (see below) is restrained and it's not surprising that he let her go. It takes nearly the entire series for him to open up enough to carry on conversations with either of his companions (and by 'conversation' I mean 'speak more than three words at a time'). He clearly has some feelings for Fuu (at one point it's possible he was about to propose, but then he could have been offering to style her hair for all we know for sure -- see below), but the only person he calls friend to the face is Mugen.
Mugen:
Take everything I said about Jin and flip it and there you have Mugen. Rude, crude, from a poor background (he was born and raised on a Ryukyu prison island), with a hot temper, and an insatiable lust for women, Mugen is disgusting and proud of it. He appears to have taught himself how to fight, and his style works best in open areas where he can move around, often jumping off of walls and ceilings in the process (he wears steel-soled geta (sandals) which he uses frequently as he fights). We know more of his past than anyone else's: his childhood was miserable, and his only childhood friends (who he called his family) talked him into helping them steal a ship and then tried to kill him; he was later scheduled to be executed for the crime. He has blue tattoos at his ankles and wrists to indicate that he was a prisoner, and his clothes are ragged and unkempt (and look a lot more like hip-hop clothing than anything someone would wear in historic Japan). Judging from the number of times he saves her life (he's not the type of guy who will rescue just anyone), Mugen has some feelings for Fuu, but he easily dumps her when there's any available female around (and often steals their food money to buy himself a prostitute). By the end of the series, Mugen has gotten attached enough to Jin that he decides to take back his vow to kill Jin as soon as the Sunflower Samurai is found (which is a lot sweeter in canon than it probably sounds here).
The Plot (Warning: MAJOR spoilers):
How much should I include in this summary? I've debated this with myself since writing this overview several months ago and I'm still not sure everyone will agree with my decision. The problem I'm facing is that 90% of all SC fanfic is post-series, which means you'll only understand the vast majority of the fandom's offerings if you know everything that occured in the series. While I highly recommend that you all go out and watch the entirety of Samurai Champloo today (It's only twenty-six episodes and Netflix has all of them! There's no wait for the first disc!), I'm realistic enough to know that that isn't very likely for all possible readers. Since my goal is to attract as many folks to the fandom as possible, I've decided to go ahead and summarize anything and everything that you might find in fanfic.
So. If you are planning to watch Samurai Champloo in the future, stop reading. I also recommend that you wait to read any SC fic until you are done with the series, as chances are you'll a) not understand what's going on and/or b) get thoroughly spoiled for the series anyway. This overview and the subsequent recs will be waiting till you are done.
That said, The Plot (and, I can't emphasize this enough, MAJOR SPOILERS):
Samurai Champloo is mostly composed of stand-alone episodes and 2-3 episode arcs, so much of the content of each episode has nothing to do with the overall storyline. Since the focus of the series (and fandom) is the main trio, I'll only be describing the plot as it relates to them over time.
In the opening episode we meet our characters in their typical lives: Fuu, a tea house waitress; Jin, a seemingly wealthy young samurai; and Mugen, a vagrant. By the end of the episode, Jin and Mugen are scheduled to be executed for killing the local magistrate's men (despite the fact that that was all Jin) and the death of the magistrate's son when the tea house burned down with him still in it (despite the fact that Jin and Mugen didn't start the fire, though Mugen did break all of the son's fingers prior to starting a duel with Jin in the tea house). Fuu tries to help them escape on the condition that afterward they help her find the Sunflower Samurai (i.e., a samurai who smells of sunflowers), but she's not able to break the lock on their cell and eventually has to flee to avoid the guards.
The next day, Fuu starts putting a plan together to stop the execution though it doesn't look like she'll make it in time and seconds before they are beheaded, Jin and Mugen end up breaking free of their bonds on their own and start massacring the magistrate's men. They might have gone on to escape without assistance, but the explosives (i.e., fireworks) that Fuu starts chucking around don't hurt, and she uses that to talk the guys into accompanying her on the trip.
Over the next few episodes, Mugen joins the mafia (Jin promptly joins a rival gang), Fuu is sold into sexual slavery (twice), Mugen is betrayed by a beautiful woman (twice), the entire group meets up with multiple gay men (one of whom tries to kill Jin), and they run into one of the students of Jin's sensei (who tries to kill Jin). They start poor, starving, and homeless and they end the same way.
Finally they (by which I mean 'Momo', see below) win some money in gambling, but Fuu's pocket is promptly picked. They spend most of the day tracking down the pickpocket (Shinsuke). Fuu finds him first, only to discover that he is stealing money to pay for medicine for his dying mother. Unfortunately, he also picked the pocket of an opium dealer, and is currently on the run from Jin, Mugen, opium dealers, *and* the police so, despite some touching scenes between him and Fuu, he dies by the episode's end.
Then Mugen burns an entire field (literally!) of marijuana and gets high. (Yes, really.)
After Mugen defeats yet another undefeatable bad guy, they wander into a new town looking for work. Mugen joins a beetle fighting gambling league (yes, really), Fuu gets another food-service job, and Jin meets a mysterious woman (Shino) while trying to manage an eel stand (yes, re...*sigh*) and they fall in love over killing and skewering eels. So, of course, Shino has been sold into prostitution to pay for her husband's gambling debts and this is the last night before she enters the brothel. Jin takes Mugen's winnings from the beetle fighting and buys some of Shino's time (Mugen is happy to learn that Jin is actually interested in women -- overcompensation?) He eventually helps her escape and despite her protests that she wants to go with him, he leaves her at a divorce temple, where she has to live alone for at least three years to free herself from her husband.
Now that Jin's demonstrated some personality, we promptly get a bit of Mugen's background, as the trio stumble across Mukuro and Kohza, two people that Mugen had grown up with and the closest thing he currently has to family. Despite the fact that Mukuro double-crossed Mugen last time they saw each other, Mugen agrees to play pirate and help Mukuro steal some gold from a government ship. Unsurprisingly, Mukuro double-crosses Mugen again and blows up the ship with Mugen on it. Jin restrains a nearly hysterical Fuu from doing anything regrettable. Once she's under control, he goes off and kills Mukuro (which is revealed to have been Kohza's plan all along, since she wasn't able to get rid of him herself). Meanwhile, Mugen drowns, ends up in an afterlife filled with upside-down people (called the crows in fanfic -- I suspect that's information from the Japanese script that didn't make it into the English subtitles), and decides he wants to live after all. He is rescued by a fisherman and limps off after Kohza. He kills her current protector (a corrupt government official who had helped orchestrate the attack on the ship) and leaves her behind, alive but alone.
There's a brief respite where nothing much happens except Fuu gets monsterously fat (for about half an episode), Jin puts his back out through too much sex, and Mugen demonstrates a possible love of S&M with a female ninja (Imano Yatsuha) who decides she's going to marry him someday (eventually -- see below). We never see her again.
Then our heroes have a huge fight, where Mugen demands to know why they're looking for the Sunflower Samurai and Fuu refuses to tell him. Mugen and Fuu stomp off in opposite directions and Jin stands around looking lost before taking a third direction. He promptly gets attacked by another one of his sensei's former students and after a couple of duels laden in (homoerotic?) tension, Jin kills the latest attacker. In the process, we learn that Jin killed his sensei and that all of the sensei's other students have sworn to kill Jin or (more likely) die trying.
Meanwhile, Mugen gets chased by the police though, for once, it's not actually him they're after. The criminal they *are* after (Okuru, see below), finds Fuu, who was injured in a fall, patches her up, gives her food, and delicately turns her down when she asks to accompany him on his trip (time between leaving the boys and deciding that she was lonely? Eight hours.) Eventually the trio stumbles into each other just as the police catch up with Okuru. Jin and Mugen fight off the police while Okuru is shot twice by arrows, set on fire, and stumbles off of a cliff into a deep river gorge. Once the trio is alone, Fuu admits that the reason she's looking for the Sunflower Samurai is because she wants revenge. Turns out he is her father (not a shock to anyone who'd watched tv before, but Mugen and Jin seemed surprised), who abandoned her and her mother when Fuu was just a baby. That's good enough for Mugen and Jin and the three of them continue on their journey together.
After a couple of pit stops where Mugen learns to read in twenty minutes at Bundai's Educational Institute aka Boot Camp for the Mind, Fuu is kidnapped again, Jin goes around saving the day for all and sundry, and Christianity makes a surprise appearance on the scene (being a Christian is punishable by death), our trio meets up with a blind troubadour (Sara) who is willing to pay them in food and lodging if they'll act as her bodyguards for the next leg of her trip. For the length of a montage all is happiness and light, until Sara asks Fuu if one of the men, either one, could accompany Sara to find her son, who had been taken away from her because she was blind. Fuu is devastated by this request, but eventually asks Jin to accompany Sara. Jin agrees and Fuu, who had thought he would say no, cries in front of Mugen (who is distinctly unsympathetic, as he'd been all fired up and ready to be the one to go with Sara).
As it turns out, however, Jin went with Sara because he had figured out that she was an assassin sent to kill one of the trio, though Jin isn't sure who. He and Sara fight on a rope bridge over a river and Sara proves to be a formidable opponent despite her blindness. Just as she's about to deliver the killing blow, Jin cuts the bridge supports and they fall into the water.
When Mugen and Fuu hear about the destroyed bridge, they immediately search for Sara and Jin. They find Sara, who seems to be seriously injured, but there's no trace of Jin, aside from his glasses. (Meanwhile, Jin was rescued by an insane man with red hair.) Mugen finds Sara's weapon and they go out to fight and Sara defeats Mugen as well. This time as she's about to deliver the killing blow, Fuu throws herself over Mugen. Mugen is too injured to push her away and Sara can't make herself kill Fuu in the process of killing Mugen, so they arrange to fight another time. Before their next fight, Sara learns that her son (who was being held by the government to compel her to act as their assassin) had died long ago. In the following duel, she allows Mugen to kill her.
Then there's a stupid episode about zombies, but the show is immediately redeemed with a brilliant episode called Baseball Blues, wherein a boat full of Americans show up and decide to play a game of baseball against Japanese in exchange for trading rights. The American team (nine men) immediately start cheating against the Japanese players (Fuu, Jin, Mugen, an octogenarian, the guy who suggested the game in the first place, Momo, and a dog), who promptly use their Super!Samurai!Power!s to play five positions each and hit a home run every time. The game degenerates from there. (Best part? The Japanese voice cast playing the Americans, one of whom speaks English intelligibly with a fantastically overblown Kentucky accent, one who speaks English intelligibly with a Japanese accent, and a gaggle of extras who apparently learned their lines phonetically. Good stuff.)
Finally, in the last arc of the series, the trio learn that Fuu's father is a major figurehead in the Christian underground and find out where he lives. Unfortunately, a lot of people find the trio. First, we have three brothers who were seriously injured by Mugen back when he was a kid and boy are they pissed. They spent the last decade or so learning various weapons so that they could get their revenge and they kidnap Fuu (shocker!) to compel Mugen to come to them. He does, they fight, Mugen's ass is kicked, but he prevails. Then he gets blown up. Again.
Meanwhile, an assassin by the name of Kariya Kagetoki makes an appearance. Turns out that he's been behind all things evil since the dawn of time, including telling Jin's sensei to kill Jin (a flashback proves Jin killed his sensei in self-defense). Jin and Kagetoki fight and Jin loses.
Once Fuu is freed from the brothers who want revenge against Mugen, she finally gets to her father's hut, only to find him sick and near death. He just has time to apologize for abandoning Fuu and her mother (he did it for their safety, as Christians were being persecuted everywhere and he was too high profile a Christian to disappear with his family) when Kagetoki appears and kills him. Since his mission was to kill both the Sunflower Samurai *and* his family, he starts after Fuu. Fuu runs away (Kagetoki follows in the typical slasher film killer walk) and gets trapped at the edge of a cliff. Just before Kagetoki kills her, a seriously injured Jin appears. He takes a sword in the gut, but manages to kill Kagetoki.
Amazingly (and, let's face it, improbably), Mugen and Jin survive and, in fact, have enough energy to swing at each other one last time. Their swords simultaneously break and they collapse to the ground, barely alive.
Some time later, they wake up in Fuu's father's hut (which now belongs to Fuu). Too injured to move or to even look at each other, they have a little heart-to-heart. Mugen admits that Jin is the first strong fighter that Mugen's met that he doesn't want to kill. Jin admits that Mugen and Fuu are the only true friends he's ever had.
And then they go their separate ways. No, I'm not kidding. Yes, it is frustrating. But that's why fanfic exists.
Important Minor Characters:
Since this is a series of one-shots and short arcs, most of the minor characters are only around for an episode or two. Despite this, a few of the characters made a big impression. These are the guys you're most likely to come across in fanfic.
Momo
Fuu's pet flying squirrel. Oftentimes demonstrates the most practical, mature thinking of the group.
Manzou the Saw
Okay, so you're not actually going to find this guy in much fanfic. However, he has the distinction of being one of the very few characters to appear in multiple episodes/arcs. If you find any references to an overweight, mostly incompetent cop who kept tangling up with our trio, this is the guy.
Shinsuke
A pickpocket who steals from the trio to buy medicine for his dying mother. He's killed by the police at the end of the episode, but he finds time to bond with Fuu before then (and she finds time to bond with his mother). Usually you find him as a guy from her past, the first boy she ever really liked.
Mariya Enshirou
Jin's sensei (instructor, in this case for sword fighting) and mentor. Under orders from Kariya Kagetoki (see below) he tried to assassinate Jin, but Jin killed him instead. As a result Jin is the target of many of Enshirou's former students, none of whom know the whole story.
Shino AKA Kohana
One of the dozen or so women in the series who are sold into prostitution. Jin meets Shino on her last day as a free woman and, according to canon, falls in love with her. (According to fanon, she is further proof that he's gay, which just goes to show that you can lead a fangirl to the well of heterosexuality, but you can't make her drink.) Whatever his motivations, he helps Shino escape from the brothel and her husband, but leaves her behind to continue his journey with Fuu and Mugen.
Mukuro
A not-so-welcome blast from Mugen's past. Also born on the prison islands, he turned out be a very bad apple. Convinced Mugen to moonlight as a pirate at least twice and double-crossed and tried to kill him both times. Probably the closest thing Mugen has to family other than Kohzu (see below). Jin kills Mukuro after the second double-cross; at the time, he thought Mugen was dead.
Kohza
Mukuro's 'sister' though the canon support of this relationship is vague at best and it's heavily implied that she was sexually involved with Mukuro (and she wasn't happy about it). The same upbringing that turned Mugen into a petty thief with a nasty temper and Mukuro into a back-stabbing pirate made Kohza believe that the only way she could survive was to find a man to be her protector and to manipulate him through sex. She survives the series, but unlike Mugen, there's no evidence that she will ever find a way to rise above her past.
Imano Yatsuha
A female ninja working undercover at a brothel to help expose a counterfeiting ring. Mugen falls in lust with her and she promises him sex if he helps her catch the criminals. She never follows through on the promise, but at the end of the episode she tells a co-worker that she's in love with Mugen and will marry him some day. In fandom she's usually used either as a way to get rid of Mugen so Fuu and Jin can be together, or as evidence that Mugen's into S&M (he *really* seemed to like the way she kept beating the crap out of him.)
Okuru
A criminal on the run for killing a government official who ordered the burning of his village during an epidemic. He runs into Fuu after she falls off a cliff (yes, really) and gives her much needed aid until they meet up with Jin and Mugen and Okuru is killed (possibly -- we never do see his body, but between the arrows, the being on fire, and the fall of the cliff, he's probably dead).
Yukimaru
Another one of Mariya's students out to get revenge against Jin. Jin gives him every chance to walk away, but Yukimaru keeps tracking Jin down and attacking him until Jin is forced to kill him. Jin tells Fuu that Yukimaru was like a 'little brother' to him. Fandom interprets this as 'boy with whom I discovered my latent homosexuality in lots of hot and sweaty sexual encounters'.
Bundai
The man who teaches Mugen to read. In twenty minutes. He likes to yell a lot. And drink a lot. In fandom, Mugen tends to think fondly of Bundai, probably because he's the only teacher Mugen's ever had.
Niwa Kazunosuke & Tatsunoshin
Highly competitive twin brothers who are single-handedly responsible for an outbreak of graffiti in Bundai's town (Bundai's main complaint: the graffiti is not grammatically correct). Jin studied briefly with the twin's now-deceased father, and promised him that he would check in on them. They eventually end up in Edo with Uohori of Andouya (aka Andy Warhol).
Sara
Blind assassin hired by the government who kicks Jin and Mugen's respective asses. The trio meets her while she is in disguise as a troubadour, and agree to journey with her when she offers to pay for food and lodging. They all develop a bond with her (and Mugen possibly falls in love with her, though it's hard to tell because he's Mugen) and she clearly feels for them, but she fights both Jin and Mugen for the sake of her son (who is being held hostage by the government to make her kill). Once she realized that her son is dead, however, she lets Mugen kill her.
Kariya Kagetoki
Quite possibly the best swordsman in Japan and the man who masterminded the attacks on Jin and Mugen as part of his mission to find the Sunflower Samurai and to kill him and his entire family. He kills Seizou (the Sunflower Samurai) right in front of Fuu and would have killed her as well if Jin hadn't intervened. He is killed by Jin, though Jin is horribly injured in the battle.
The Brothers (Denkibou, Umanosuke, Toube)
Three brothers who were injured in Mugen's first attempt to be a pirate (a raid on a sugar ship). Umanosuke lost an eye (he wears an eyepatch), Toube was paralyzed from the waist down (he rides in a wooden wheelchair laden with explosives), and Denkibou is just plain nuts (he uses a three-bladed weapon that straps onto his hand, a-la Wolverine). They kidnap Fuu to draw Mugen to them so they can kill him in revenge. He defeats them all, but takes a beating in the process. Fanfic sometimes has him scarred where Denkibou slashed him in the face with his three-bladed weapon.
Kasumi Seizou AKA The Sunflower Samurai
Fuu's father, who abandoned her and her mother to protect them from persecution because he was a key man in the growing Christian movement. At one time he had been a famous samurai, but by the time Fuu finds him he is sick and near death. He apologizes to Fuu just before he is killed by Kagetoki.
Fandom
The vast majority of stories in the SC fandom are some permutation of the three main characters. Jin/Mugen, Fuu/Jin, and Fuu/Mugen are all popular, but at least as popular (maybe even more so) is Jin/Fuu/Mugen. There's also a significant number of Jin/Yukimaru stories, with a spattering of other pairings.
As a general warning for the entire fandom: Fuu's only fifteen years old in the series and, as such, is usually only fifteen in fanfiction. However, you should keep in mind that even today the legal age of consent in Japan is only thirteen and in Fuu's time girls considerably younger than fifteen were already married. Fuu is considered a young adult in her time and she behaves as such.
LJ Communities
Samurai Champloo
Unholy Union
Archives
Fanfiction.net -- as with most fanfiction based on anime, the largest archive for Samurai Champloo stories is FF.net. Quality varies; read at your own risk.
Yuletide -- Samurai Champloo has had quite a number of stories posted for Yuletide Treasures, and though short, they are well worth reading. (The archive will re-open after December 24th.)
Finally, I want to give a big kudos to whoever wrote the Samurai Champloo Wikipedia entry, which is where all of the pictures are from and which I used heavily while writing this overview. Thanks also to the folks at _Champloo and Unholy Union, who read this overview when I first wrote it a few months ago, and who gave me suggestions to improve it.
Fuu:
Fifteen years old and an orphan, Fuu makes a living working in her uncle and aunt's tea house. When that burns down, she saves the lives of Jin and Mugen and, in payment, demands that they help her find a samurai that smells like sunflowers. Despite being the youngest of the trio, she is the leader and generally manages to keep the boys in line through force of her will. Considering she spends most of the time nagging them about getting work so they can eat (and, in her defense, she is usually the hardest and most reliable worker of the group), it's amazing that she's only abandoned by the guys once and they came back to her within a couple of episodes. Fuu also demonstrates a remarkable ability to get into trouble. In fact, she gets into more trouble than Jin and Mugen combined, and most episodes revolve around them getting her back out of trouble. She's a resourceful girl, however, and usually manages to help in her own escapes. Her age does come though sometimes, especially when the boys encounter romantic interests or when something sets her temper off (which doesn't take much); at those times she is impetuous and tends to make serious mistakes (which leads to kidnapping. Of course.) There's slightly more canon evidence in the series that she's attracted to Mugen than to Jin, but an argument can be made either way.
Jin:
Jin comes from a very traditional background and it shows in his fighting style, which is brilliant but technically precise and works best in the confines of a building (like a dojo). Not much is known about his family, but it's understood that he spent the vast majority of his childhood learning sword fighting in a variety of dojos (most notably the one run by Mariya Enshirou -- see below), rather than living with his parents and having a childhood. He wears glasses, which were very unusual and highly expensive at the time and there is some debate as to whether he even needs them (Fuu says he doesn't, but, well, it's *Fuu*. Fandom is mixed on the issue). Either way, the glasses, his traditional and expensive clothes, and his very high quality swords all indicate that he's from a wealthy family, but we don't see said family during the course of the series and he never mentions them (certainly he doesn't have any familial funding during the series). Jin is level-headed and detached; even his grand romance with Shino (see below) is restrained and it's not surprising that he let her go. It takes nearly the entire series for him to open up enough to carry on conversations with either of his companions (and by 'conversation' I mean 'speak more than three words at a time'). He clearly has some feelings for Fuu (at one point it's possible he was about to propose, but then he could have been offering to style her hair for all we know for sure -- see below), but the only person he calls friend to the face is Mugen.
Mugen:
Take everything I said about Jin and flip it and there you have Mugen. Rude, crude, from a poor background (he was born and raised on a Ryukyu prison island), with a hot temper, and an insatiable lust for women, Mugen is disgusting and proud of it. He appears to have taught himself how to fight, and his style works best in open areas where he can move around, often jumping off of walls and ceilings in the process (he wears steel-soled geta (sandals) which he uses frequently as he fights). We know more of his past than anyone else's: his childhood was miserable, and his only childhood friends (who he called his family) talked him into helping them steal a ship and then tried to kill him; he was later scheduled to be executed for the crime. He has blue tattoos at his ankles and wrists to indicate that he was a prisoner, and his clothes are ragged and unkempt (and look a lot more like hip-hop clothing than anything someone would wear in historic Japan). Judging from the number of times he saves her life (he's not the type of guy who will rescue just anyone), Mugen has some feelings for Fuu, but he easily dumps her when there's any available female around (and often steals their food money to buy himself a prostitute). By the end of the series, Mugen has gotten attached enough to Jin that he decides to take back his vow to kill Jin as soon as the Sunflower Samurai is found (which is a lot sweeter in canon than it probably sounds here).
The Plot (Warning: MAJOR spoilers):
How much should I include in this summary? I've debated this with myself since writing this overview several months ago and I'm still not sure everyone will agree with my decision. The problem I'm facing is that 90% of all SC fanfic is post-series, which means you'll only understand the vast majority of the fandom's offerings if you know everything that occured in the series. While I highly recommend that you all go out and watch the entirety of Samurai Champloo today (It's only twenty-six episodes and Netflix has all of them! There's no wait for the first disc!), I'm realistic enough to know that that isn't very likely for all possible readers. Since my goal is to attract as many folks to the fandom as possible, I've decided to go ahead and summarize anything and everything that you might find in fanfic.
So. If you are planning to watch Samurai Champloo in the future, stop reading. I also recommend that you wait to read any SC fic until you are done with the series, as chances are you'll a) not understand what's going on and/or b) get thoroughly spoiled for the series anyway. This overview and the subsequent recs will be waiting till you are done.
That said, The Plot (and, I can't emphasize this enough, MAJOR SPOILERS):
Samurai Champloo is mostly composed of stand-alone episodes and 2-3 episode arcs, so much of the content of each episode has nothing to do with the overall storyline. Since the focus of the series (and fandom) is the main trio, I'll only be describing the plot as it relates to them over time.
In the opening episode we meet our characters in their typical lives: Fuu, a tea house waitress; Jin, a seemingly wealthy young samurai; and Mugen, a vagrant. By the end of the episode, Jin and Mugen are scheduled to be executed for killing the local magistrate's men (despite the fact that that was all Jin) and the death of the magistrate's son when the tea house burned down with him still in it (despite the fact that Jin and Mugen didn't start the fire, though Mugen did break all of the son's fingers prior to starting a duel with Jin in the tea house). Fuu tries to help them escape on the condition that afterward they help her find the Sunflower Samurai (i.e., a samurai who smells of sunflowers), but she's not able to break the lock on their cell and eventually has to flee to avoid the guards.
The next day, Fuu starts putting a plan together to stop the execution though it doesn't look like she'll make it in time and seconds before they are beheaded, Jin and Mugen end up breaking free of their bonds on their own and start massacring the magistrate's men. They might have gone on to escape without assistance, but the explosives (i.e., fireworks) that Fuu starts chucking around don't hurt, and she uses that to talk the guys into accompanying her on the trip.
Over the next few episodes, Mugen joins the mafia (Jin promptly joins a rival gang), Fuu is sold into sexual slavery (twice), Mugen is betrayed by a beautiful woman (twice), the entire group meets up with multiple gay men (one of whom tries to kill Jin), and they run into one of the students of Jin's sensei (who tries to kill Jin). They start poor, starving, and homeless and they end the same way.
Finally they (by which I mean 'Momo', see below) win some money in gambling, but Fuu's pocket is promptly picked. They spend most of the day tracking down the pickpocket (Shinsuke). Fuu finds him first, only to discover that he is stealing money to pay for medicine for his dying mother. Unfortunately, he also picked the pocket of an opium dealer, and is currently on the run from Jin, Mugen, opium dealers, *and* the police so, despite some touching scenes between him and Fuu, he dies by the episode's end.
Then Mugen burns an entire field (literally!) of marijuana and gets high. (Yes, really.)
After Mugen defeats yet another undefeatable bad guy, they wander into a new town looking for work. Mugen joins a beetle fighting gambling league (yes, really), Fuu gets another food-service job, and Jin meets a mysterious woman (Shino) while trying to manage an eel stand (yes, re...*sigh*) and they fall in love over killing and skewering eels. So, of course, Shino has been sold into prostitution to pay for her husband's gambling debts and this is the last night before she enters the brothel. Jin takes Mugen's winnings from the beetle fighting and buys some of Shino's time (Mugen is happy to learn that Jin is actually interested in women -- overcompensation?) He eventually helps her escape and despite her protests that she wants to go with him, he leaves her at a divorce temple, where she has to live alone for at least three years to free herself from her husband.
Now that Jin's demonstrated some personality, we promptly get a bit of Mugen's background, as the trio stumble across Mukuro and Kohza, two people that Mugen had grown up with and the closest thing he currently has to family. Despite the fact that Mukuro double-crossed Mugen last time they saw each other, Mugen agrees to play pirate and help Mukuro steal some gold from a government ship. Unsurprisingly, Mukuro double-crosses Mugen again and blows up the ship with Mugen on it. Jin restrains a nearly hysterical Fuu from doing anything regrettable. Once she's under control, he goes off and kills Mukuro (which is revealed to have been Kohza's plan all along, since she wasn't able to get rid of him herself). Meanwhile, Mugen drowns, ends up in an afterlife filled with upside-down people (called the crows in fanfic -- I suspect that's information from the Japanese script that didn't make it into the English subtitles), and decides he wants to live after all. He is rescued by a fisherman and limps off after Kohza. He kills her current protector (a corrupt government official who had helped orchestrate the attack on the ship) and leaves her behind, alive but alone.
There's a brief respite where nothing much happens except Fuu gets monsterously fat (for about half an episode), Jin puts his back out through too much sex, and Mugen demonstrates a possible love of S&M with a female ninja (Imano Yatsuha) who decides she's going to marry him someday (eventually -- see below). We never see her again.
Then our heroes have a huge fight, where Mugen demands to know why they're looking for the Sunflower Samurai and Fuu refuses to tell him. Mugen and Fuu stomp off in opposite directions and Jin stands around looking lost before taking a third direction. He promptly gets attacked by another one of his sensei's former students and after a couple of duels laden in (homoerotic?) tension, Jin kills the latest attacker. In the process, we learn that Jin killed his sensei and that all of the sensei's other students have sworn to kill Jin or (more likely) die trying.
Meanwhile, Mugen gets chased by the police though, for once, it's not actually him they're after. The criminal they *are* after (Okuru, see below), finds Fuu, who was injured in a fall, patches her up, gives her food, and delicately turns her down when she asks to accompany him on his trip (time between leaving the boys and deciding that she was lonely? Eight hours.) Eventually the trio stumbles into each other just as the police catch up with Okuru. Jin and Mugen fight off the police while Okuru is shot twice by arrows, set on fire, and stumbles off of a cliff into a deep river gorge. Once the trio is alone, Fuu admits that the reason she's looking for the Sunflower Samurai is because she wants revenge. Turns out he is her father (not a shock to anyone who'd watched tv before, but Mugen and Jin seemed surprised), who abandoned her and her mother when Fuu was just a baby. That's good enough for Mugen and Jin and the three of them continue on their journey together.
After a couple of pit stops where Mugen learns to read in twenty minutes at Bundai's Educational Institute aka Boot Camp for the Mind, Fuu is kidnapped again, Jin goes around saving the day for all and sundry, and Christianity makes a surprise appearance on the scene (being a Christian is punishable by death), our trio meets up with a blind troubadour (Sara) who is willing to pay them in food and lodging if they'll act as her bodyguards for the next leg of her trip. For the length of a montage all is happiness and light, until Sara asks Fuu if one of the men, either one, could accompany Sara to find her son, who had been taken away from her because she was blind. Fuu is devastated by this request, but eventually asks Jin to accompany Sara. Jin agrees and Fuu, who had thought he would say no, cries in front of Mugen (who is distinctly unsympathetic, as he'd been all fired up and ready to be the one to go with Sara).
As it turns out, however, Jin went with Sara because he had figured out that she was an assassin sent to kill one of the trio, though Jin isn't sure who. He and Sara fight on a rope bridge over a river and Sara proves to be a formidable opponent despite her blindness. Just as she's about to deliver the killing blow, Jin cuts the bridge supports and they fall into the water.
When Mugen and Fuu hear about the destroyed bridge, they immediately search for Sara and Jin. They find Sara, who seems to be seriously injured, but there's no trace of Jin, aside from his glasses. (Meanwhile, Jin was rescued by an insane man with red hair.) Mugen finds Sara's weapon and they go out to fight and Sara defeats Mugen as well. This time as she's about to deliver the killing blow, Fuu throws herself over Mugen. Mugen is too injured to push her away and Sara can't make herself kill Fuu in the process of killing Mugen, so they arrange to fight another time. Before their next fight, Sara learns that her son (who was being held by the government to compel her to act as their assassin) had died long ago. In the following duel, she allows Mugen to kill her.
Then there's a stupid episode about zombies, but the show is immediately redeemed with a brilliant episode called Baseball Blues, wherein a boat full of Americans show up and decide to play a game of baseball against Japanese in exchange for trading rights. The American team (nine men) immediately start cheating against the Japanese players (Fuu, Jin, Mugen, an octogenarian, the guy who suggested the game in the first place, Momo, and a dog), who promptly use their Super!Samurai!Power!s to play five positions each and hit a home run every time. The game degenerates from there. (Best part? The Japanese voice cast playing the Americans, one of whom speaks English intelligibly with a fantastically overblown Kentucky accent, one who speaks English intelligibly with a Japanese accent, and a gaggle of extras who apparently learned their lines phonetically. Good stuff.)
Finally, in the last arc of the series, the trio learn that Fuu's father is a major figurehead in the Christian underground and find out where he lives. Unfortunately, a lot of people find the trio. First, we have three brothers who were seriously injured by Mugen back when he was a kid and boy are they pissed. They spent the last decade or so learning various weapons so that they could get their revenge and they kidnap Fuu (shocker!) to compel Mugen to come to them. He does, they fight, Mugen's ass is kicked, but he prevails. Then he gets blown up. Again.
Meanwhile, an assassin by the name of Kariya Kagetoki makes an appearance. Turns out that he's been behind all things evil since the dawn of time, including telling Jin's sensei to kill Jin (a flashback proves Jin killed his sensei in self-defense). Jin and Kagetoki fight and Jin loses.
Once Fuu is freed from the brothers who want revenge against Mugen, she finally gets to her father's hut, only to find him sick and near death. He just has time to apologize for abandoning Fuu and her mother (he did it for their safety, as Christians were being persecuted everywhere and he was too high profile a Christian to disappear with his family) when Kagetoki appears and kills him. Since his mission was to kill both the Sunflower Samurai *and* his family, he starts after Fuu. Fuu runs away (Kagetoki follows in the typical slasher film killer walk) and gets trapped at the edge of a cliff. Just before Kagetoki kills her, a seriously injured Jin appears. He takes a sword in the gut, but manages to kill Kagetoki.
Amazingly (and, let's face it, improbably), Mugen and Jin survive and, in fact, have enough energy to swing at each other one last time. Their swords simultaneously break and they collapse to the ground, barely alive.
Some time later, they wake up in Fuu's father's hut (which now belongs to Fuu). Too injured to move or to even look at each other, they have a little heart-to-heart. Mugen admits that Jin is the first strong fighter that Mugen's met that he doesn't want to kill. Jin admits that Mugen and Fuu are the only true friends he's ever had.
And then they go their separate ways. No, I'm not kidding. Yes, it is frustrating. But that's why fanfic exists.
Important Minor Characters:
Since this is a series of one-shots and short arcs, most of the minor characters are only around for an episode or two. Despite this, a few of the characters made a big impression. These are the guys you're most likely to come across in fanfic.
Momo
Fuu's pet flying squirrel. Oftentimes demonstrates the most practical, mature thinking of the group.
Manzou the Saw
Okay, so you're not actually going to find this guy in much fanfic. However, he has the distinction of being one of the very few characters to appear in multiple episodes/arcs. If you find any references to an overweight, mostly incompetent cop who kept tangling up with our trio, this is the guy.
Shinsuke
A pickpocket who steals from the trio to buy medicine for his dying mother. He's killed by the police at the end of the episode, but he finds time to bond with Fuu before then (and she finds time to bond with his mother). Usually you find him as a guy from her past, the first boy she ever really liked.
Mariya Enshirou
Jin's sensei (instructor, in this case for sword fighting) and mentor. Under orders from Kariya Kagetoki (see below) he tried to assassinate Jin, but Jin killed him instead. As a result Jin is the target of many of Enshirou's former students, none of whom know the whole story.
Shino AKA Kohana
One of the dozen or so women in the series who are sold into prostitution. Jin meets Shino on her last day as a free woman and, according to canon, falls in love with her. (According to fanon, she is further proof that he's gay, which just goes to show that you can lead a fangirl to the well of heterosexuality, but you can't make her drink.) Whatever his motivations, he helps Shino escape from the brothel and her husband, but leaves her behind to continue his journey with Fuu and Mugen.
Mukuro
A not-so-welcome blast from Mugen's past. Also born on the prison islands, he turned out be a very bad apple. Convinced Mugen to moonlight as a pirate at least twice and double-crossed and tried to kill him both times. Probably the closest thing Mugen has to family other than Kohzu (see below). Jin kills Mukuro after the second double-cross; at the time, he thought Mugen was dead.
Kohza
Mukuro's 'sister' though the canon support of this relationship is vague at best and it's heavily implied that she was sexually involved with Mukuro (and she wasn't happy about it). The same upbringing that turned Mugen into a petty thief with a nasty temper and Mukuro into a back-stabbing pirate made Kohza believe that the only way she could survive was to find a man to be her protector and to manipulate him through sex. She survives the series, but unlike Mugen, there's no evidence that she will ever find a way to rise above her past.
Imano Yatsuha
A female ninja working undercover at a brothel to help expose a counterfeiting ring. Mugen falls in lust with her and she promises him sex if he helps her catch the criminals. She never follows through on the promise, but at the end of the episode she tells a co-worker that she's in love with Mugen and will marry him some day. In fandom she's usually used either as a way to get rid of Mugen so Fuu and Jin can be together, or as evidence that Mugen's into S&M (he *really* seemed to like the way she kept beating the crap out of him.)
Okuru
A criminal on the run for killing a government official who ordered the burning of his village during an epidemic. He runs into Fuu after she falls off a cliff (yes, really) and gives her much needed aid until they meet up with Jin and Mugen and Okuru is killed (possibly -- we never do see his body, but between the arrows, the being on fire, and the fall of the cliff, he's probably dead).
Yukimaru
Another one of Mariya's students out to get revenge against Jin. Jin gives him every chance to walk away, but Yukimaru keeps tracking Jin down and attacking him until Jin is forced to kill him. Jin tells Fuu that Yukimaru was like a 'little brother' to him. Fandom interprets this as 'boy with whom I discovered my latent homosexuality in lots of hot and sweaty sexual encounters'.
Bundai
The man who teaches Mugen to read. In twenty minutes. He likes to yell a lot. And drink a lot. In fandom, Mugen tends to think fondly of Bundai, probably because he's the only teacher Mugen's ever had.
Niwa Kazunosuke & Tatsunoshin
Highly competitive twin brothers who are single-handedly responsible for an outbreak of graffiti in Bundai's town (Bundai's main complaint: the graffiti is not grammatically correct). Jin studied briefly with the twin's now-deceased father, and promised him that he would check in on them. They eventually end up in Edo with Uohori of Andouya (aka Andy Warhol).
Sara
Blind assassin hired by the government who kicks Jin and Mugen's respective asses. The trio meets her while she is in disguise as a troubadour, and agree to journey with her when she offers to pay for food and lodging. They all develop a bond with her (and Mugen possibly falls in love with her, though it's hard to tell because he's Mugen) and she clearly feels for them, but she fights both Jin and Mugen for the sake of her son (who is being held hostage by the government to make her kill). Once she realized that her son is dead, however, she lets Mugen kill her.
Kariya Kagetoki
Quite possibly the best swordsman in Japan and the man who masterminded the attacks on Jin and Mugen as part of his mission to find the Sunflower Samurai and to kill him and his entire family. He kills Seizou (the Sunflower Samurai) right in front of Fuu and would have killed her as well if Jin hadn't intervened. He is killed by Jin, though Jin is horribly injured in the battle.
The Brothers (Denkibou, Umanosuke, Toube)
Three brothers who were injured in Mugen's first attempt to be a pirate (a raid on a sugar ship). Umanosuke lost an eye (he wears an eyepatch), Toube was paralyzed from the waist down (he rides in a wooden wheelchair laden with explosives), and Denkibou is just plain nuts (he uses a three-bladed weapon that straps onto his hand, a-la Wolverine). They kidnap Fuu to draw Mugen to them so they can kill him in revenge. He defeats them all, but takes a beating in the process. Fanfic sometimes has him scarred where Denkibou slashed him in the face with his three-bladed weapon.
Kasumi Seizou AKA The Sunflower Samurai
Fuu's father, who abandoned her and her mother to protect them from persecution because he was a key man in the growing Christian movement. At one time he had been a famous samurai, but by the time Fuu finds him he is sick and near death. He apologizes to Fuu just before he is killed by Kagetoki.
Fandom
The vast majority of stories in the SC fandom are some permutation of the three main characters. Jin/Mugen, Fuu/Jin, and Fuu/Mugen are all popular, but at least as popular (maybe even more so) is Jin/Fuu/Mugen. There's also a significant number of Jin/Yukimaru stories, with a spattering of other pairings.
As a general warning for the entire fandom: Fuu's only fifteen years old in the series and, as such, is usually only fifteen in fanfiction. However, you should keep in mind that even today the legal age of consent in Japan is only thirteen and in Fuu's time girls considerably younger than fifteen were already married. Fuu is considered a young adult in her time and she behaves as such.
LJ Communities
Samurai Champloo
Unholy Union
Archives
Fanfiction.net -- as with most fanfiction based on anime, the largest archive for Samurai Champloo stories is FF.net. Quality varies; read at your own risk.
Yuletide -- Samurai Champloo has had quite a number of stories posted for Yuletide Treasures, and though short, they are well worth reading. (The archive will re-open after December 24th.)
Finally, I want to give a big kudos to whoever wrote the Samurai Champloo Wikipedia entry, which is where all of the pictures are from and which I used heavily while writing this overview. Thanks also to the folks at _Champloo and Unholy Union, who read this overview when I first wrote it a few months ago, and who gave me suggestions to improve it.
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Just one correction. You say about Jin that His lack of money during the series indicates that said family cut him off. But in fact, any lack of funds he has at the start is directly the result of him being on the run after killing his dojo master.
Other than that, this is really, really well done. And as you point out, the three characters - and many of the minor characters - can be put together in any number of romantic couplings!
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Thanks for the feedback!
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Thanks again for the very entertaining read.
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Fuu's pet flying squirrel. Oftentimes demonstrates the most practical, mature thinking of the group.
*dies laughing*
Oh, and also? Thanks so much for including info on the minor characters, as well!
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I actually added several minor characters during the last week while reading fic, as several characters I hadn't thought important began popping up in fic everywhere:) My approach to fanfiction is that not everyone who is going to read will have seen the canon. In some cases, that's not a big deal (see: The Sentinel, which I've never watched, but the main points of which I got in the very first piece of fic I've read -- and that was an extended PWP!), but with Samurai Champloo it is a hurdle. As a result, I wanted to give as much information as possible, just in case folks aren't willing to give the show a try (which, what a tragedy -- maybe they'll be so impressed by the fic that they'll get the show. One can only hope:)
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Great overview, and I really love your commentary on the fanon interpretations (especially Yukimaru's role XD). I've already found this to be true!
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Anyway, I'm always happy to spread the SC love -- if you haven't done it already, you should check out the anime series. Definitely worth a rental.
Wow, I'm babbling. Time for bed:) Thanks for the feedback!
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You are AMAZING.
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