In contrast to yesterday's nasty experience of watching anime, last night I downloaded episodes 1 and 2 of Samurai Champloo. o_o Man, this thing is just plain awesome. But I already expected it to be, learning that it's from the makers of Cowboy Bebop. So I had really high hopes for this anime, and thankfully, it really delivered and more!

The anime has an urban feel to it, even if it's an Edo era samurai story. One of the characters, named Mugen, is obviously using breaking (as in, b-boy) moves. And Jin, the other samurai, is cool in a calmer way. The opening song is some underground style hip hop (with some breaking moves by Mugen and Fuu). Throughout the show they use hip hop beats, and sometimes use scratching to switch between scenes. All this is just bonus (read: fan service) to people like me, and it's very much appreciated.

But all the fan service aside, the action scenes are also awesome. Just like Cowboy Bebop, they like fast, fluid fighting that doesn't use frame cheats or stills with moving backgrounds like 99% of all anime. They don't stop to explain their techniques. They don't stand there, screen goes black, you see a few flashes, and suddenly the fight is over. They just simply pwn. They pwn the lot of them and you see how they do it all the time.

Anyway, right now, even though I've only seen the first 2 episodes, this is already definitely one of my favorite anime of all time.