Welcome to Animation quick look, you probably know the drill by the now, I watch something animated and tell you if it’s worth your viewing time.

Young Justice is a lot different from previous animated shows I have reviewed on Screensnark thus far. Not only have I seen bits and pieces to it prior to just putting it on for actual review, but for most shows I just go in cold with little to no knowledge of what the show is even about. I have been watching animated shows based on various DC properties since the seminal Batman: The Animated Series premiered over twenty years ago. Simply put, DC may be a goddamn mess when it comes to big budget live action movies, but they’ve dominated the animated scene for decades.

Batman, Superman, Justice League, Justice League Unlimited, Batman Beyond, Teen Titans. All ridiculously awesome shows, some of which have continuity tied within series. DC did the whole connected universe thing years ago. It’s basically the high bar standard for western animation, and very little matches up to it.

Young Justice takes arguably the biggest risk of a DC show to date by focusing on the lesser known sidekicks. Because seriously, who the fuck cares about Aqualad or Kid Flash? Especially going up against D-List villains like Sportsmaster (seriously, the guy’s whole deal is deadly sports-themed gadgets and weapons). How can this possibly be good?

But what the DC Animated universe has done incredibly well it’s entire run is bring lower-tier characters in and make them interesting. In Batman: the Animated Series guys like Mr. Freeze and Scarface became storied deep characters who weren’t gimmicky jokes. In Justice League, minor heroes like Hawk & Dove, Vigilante and Booster Gold all got some fantastic spotlight episodes that made them actually interesting.

Young Justice continues that tradition, and plays well with the fact that this is a team made up of heroes that while trained and powerful, are still kids that no one takes seriously(and people even get their names wrong sometimes). Often villains underestimate them and wonder when the “real” heroes are going to show up. It’s a pretty good dynamic. As is their interaction with their mentors on the Justice League, which they resent for treating them like kids. And Superman is arguably at his most dickish in this series, completely blowing off his clone, Superboy. It’s great.

My only big issue with Young Justice is that at least as far as I’ve watched (10 episodes) is that not only do they often manage to defeat enemies on their own that give their mentors huge problems (essentially it boils down to someone on the team saying they should call the League for help and someone else going, no it’s ok this villain only almost killed half the heroes in the DC universe, but we can take him on our own!) but they don’t really establish their own villains, borrowing others. I mentioned guys like Sportsmaster, but he’s often working for a bigger villain like Lex Luthor or Ra’s Al Ghul. They really should’ve establish their own rogue’s gallery to contend with, even if it is mostly comprised of cheezy lower-tier villains. Teen Titans managed this quite successfully, no reason Young Justice couldn’t have done the same.

Regardless, it’s a very awesome show that continues the pretty great track record of DC animated shows. Basically if it’s animated and based on a DC property, you should give it a shot you’ll most likely get hooked.

Final Rating: 4/5 C-List Superheroes

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I’ve seen some of the anime that crossed over and became a hit in the US, but Samurai Champloo evaded me, most likely because it was on at odd hours as part of adult swim, which admittedly I rarely watched. But this came stateside in 2005 and had a lot of buzz, but 9-10 years ago there wasn’t the easy access to anime we have today, so I as wondering how it would hold up.

The storyline itself is pretty basic, in ancient Japan two wandering Samurai, Mugen and Jin, don’t really care about much except fighting worthy opponents (or anyone who pisses them off, really). This gets them in a load of trouble up to the point they are set to be executed, but they are rescued by a plucky young waitress named Fuu, on the condition that they help her find a mysterious samurai who “smells of sunflowers”.

Samurai Champloo is tagged as a “hip-hop anime”, but whoever did that probably has no fucking clue and was just trying to make it “hip” to American audiences. It’s supposedly unique hook is these “record scratch” moments where it’ll make the sound of a record scratch like a DJ was playing and either pause or rewind for a second. I just found it off-putting and annoying, and there’s nothing else that would fit the label of “hip-hop”, the music is solid but nothing that stands out as particularly “hip-hop” style.

And it’s too bad that Samurai Champloo feels it has to do this stuff to be different, because it’s a perfectly solid and fun anime. The trio of characters are fun and interesting, the swordfights are stylish and great to watch, and the humor is mostly well done, albeit with a few bits that run for whole episodes and fall pretty flat (like one where an artist who tricks girls into slavery suddenly becomes comedically panicky or the episode with a “European” disgusing himself as a samurai). That record scratch stuff just feels completely unnecessary. If you are looking for a deep and complex story you won’t find it here though, through the six episodes I watched, there wasn’t much in the way of character or plot development to the point where I occasionally forgot  what the protagonists main goal even was. Often the episode has them coming into a town and something distracting them like a rice eating contest or Mugen and Jin getting bored and tired of Fuu and going off to do something else for a whole episode before happenstance brings them together again, with maybe one bit of info thrown in about the samurai they are searching for at the end of the episode. Up to this point, it’s not even explained why Fuu is looking for the Samurai, but admittedly it’s only 6 episodes in of a 26 episode run, that’s plenty of time to explain things. And I enjoyed their distractions, but I could see it be maddening to somebody who wants to find out the mystery behind the samurai and why Fuu needs to find him. I suspect you could watch the first episode to get the basic setup and watch the last few episodes and not miss out on much in the way of important developments. But I would also argue that Mugen, Jin & Fuu are a fun trio to watch no matter what they happen to be doing in a particular episode so it makes up for the overall pacing.

Final Rating: 3.5/5 Samurais who smell of sunflowers…

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