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| From https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ samurai_flamenco_1705.jpg |
Director: Takahiro Ōmori
Screenplay: Hideyuki Kurata
Voice Cast: Tomokazu Sugita as
Hidenori Goto; Toshiki Masuda as Masayoshi Hazama/Samurai Flamenco; Chie
Nakamura as Sumi Ishihara; Erii Yamazaki as Moe Morita; Haruhisa Suzuki as
Haiji Sawada; Haruka Tomatsu as Mari Maya; Jūrōta Kosugi as Joji Kaname; Kenn
as Anji Kuroki; Kōji Ishii as Shintarō F. Okuzaki; M.A.O as Mizuki Misawa; Satoshi
Mikami as Akira Konno
Viewed in Japanese with English
Subtitles
Synopsis: By day, Masayoshi Hazama is a model, by night (fixated
since a child on superheroes) a wannabe crime fighter helping to fight even
against littering. Thankfully with the help of Hidenori Goto, a policeman he
bonds with after a chance encounter, his work starts to become more meaningful.
Starting with the idol singer Haruka Tomatsu wanting to join in however, the
story of his secret identity as Samurai Flamenco is going to get a life that is
more elaborate, threatening and strange as he becomes a media sensation.
Spoiler Friendly Review
Samurai Flamenco is a gem - I'm surprised to learn it has been
divisive for many. One detail that influenced this opinion, the notorious
struggles the production had on a low budget and a deadline to animate each
episode, leading to some notorious gaffs on the broadcast version, is just the
unfortunate nature of televised anime, someone clearly cleaned up for the Blu
Ray version I saw. The other issue is that Samurai
Flamenco wrong foots its viewer, abruptly doing a hairpin turn from its
modest, amateur vigilante beginning into something over-the-top and changing
the reality of the world depicted onscreen.
I know where, in episode seven to
be precise, the series "jumped the shark" for many, but from the
beginning Samurai Flamenco is a
tribute/meta commentary/pastiche of tokusatsu storytelling, in which even the
West will recognise the imagery of a colour coordinated team that appears in
various forms through the Power Rangers,
a series adapted from the Japanese franchise Super Sentai and still chugging along in Westernised versions since
the nineties. As a result, the idea of a character like Samurai Flamenco, and
the various ones that pop up, can be grasped and even then, with some noticable
differences from the American superhero, even that get briefly referenced in a
character, and exists within the concept that, for all the times Flamenco gallops proudly through every clichés
and plot twist it can sometimes pull out of its backside, it's also playing
with the trope of imagining these heroes as regular folks and the world around
them as a banal one, the titular Samurai Flamenco, Masayoshi Hazama, still
having to work as a model alongside the
growing pains of his awkward first attempts to stop crime. He doesn't even
begin the series with fighting abilities and how he finally does is as much
because he ended up with a crazed showboat, posing as him, as his mentor.
Screenwriter Hideyuki Kurata is known for some hyper imaginative work; I know
him warmly as the premise creator and writer on Read or Die (2001), an inspired smash hit which combined superhero
action based around unlikely (real) historical figures for such a work like entomologist
Jean Henri Fabre and aviation pioneer
Otto Lilienthal. It's not a surprise,
in lieu of this, he'd go for this series' whiplash inducing shifts and
ambition.
Thankfully, director Takahiro Ōmori was hired too, the man
who made Baccano! (2007) - a show
difficult to reveal a lot of too in case of spoilers, but an ultraviolent gangster farce in 1920s America with a
non-liner plot structure for most its length - perfect for keeping things
together. And he's helmed other work like Princess
Jellyfish (2010), a complete tonal shift as a comedy about female nerds and
a young man who dresses as a woman who befriends them, so he's as capable of
dealing with the grounded, everyday banality Samurai Flamenco has in character building and for comedy.
He's turning into a director of
an underrated virtue, especially as he comes off in a work like this as an
all-purpose figure able to work in any context. The production crew in general,
in spite of the known issues with getting episodes completed, were also clearly
inspired with a desire to make a great work, right down to the right soft jazz
piece in the score to contrast the abrupt and bombastic sentai theme tune to
proudly appears halfway though, everyone involved humanising the material. The
series, as a result, is absolutely worth tracking down; any further detail
would be spoiling it for the reader of this review.
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| From https://caraniel.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/commie-samurai -flamenco-06-a38f6e35-mkv_snapshot_19-54_2013-11-16_13-00-19.jpg |
Spoiler Heavy Review
Not bad for a series where, when
episodes even introduces actual monsters after just ordinary hoodlums, Samurai Flamenco goes into full blown villain
of the week twists with breakneck plot twists, but also contrasting it to
ordinary life in a Japanese city. Even in a series where Masayoshi Hazama later
encounters God, effectively so in the form of the voice of the galaxy who
points out (with a literal shelf of Samurai
Flamenco DVDS in a metaphysical store) his life as a hero is itself a story
to be viewed by other dimensions, the unpredictability is contrasted by the bureaucracy
of dealing with this even when they celebrate the heroes like Samurai Flamenco.
Even the conspiracy plot point of government corruption is skewered in what can
only be described as poll powered super armour. That sense of the banality
behind the story is a risk, alongside having episodes which then switch between
actual deaths and injury taking place against humour, but it works as it
imagines how, even when a monster is vanquished, the police still have to do
the paperwork. Where the final plot line, after literally invoking reality
itself, is based on our hero facing the idea of love for himself and others to
fight another figure.
And its kept together because the
characters in the centre of it all are sincere and deep, potential one joke
characters having newer layers to them as the series progresses with the
advantage that, playing off the averageness of the world in spite of the plots,
they have ordinary internal lives and all the emotionally baggage that comes
with it, just in the midst of dealing with crazy (frankly silly) monsters.
Alongside Masayoshi is his friend
and grumpy straight man Hidenori Goto, not only an implied homoeroticism played
upon throughout, but with the added fact they are utterly lovable figures, Goto
as a cop having his own right plot trajectory, both where his law enforcement
changes depending on the circumstances of heroes and monsters appearing, alongside
a huge subplot twist about his girlfriend and his mobile phone that turns Samurai Flamenco into even
psychological drama. They're followed in tow by various great side characters -
Sumi Ishihara, Masayoshi's strict but ultimately caring female manager, Joji
Kaname, his mentor and eventually revealled as the leader of the Samurai Sentai
Flamenger, a group of sentai heroes who (introduced halfway through) could've
been too many additions weren't it the fact they all have fascinating aspects
to them, from the stereotypical hot blooded anime lead if he was now nearing his
thrities, and the open animosity between the sole female memeber and Kaname's
wife visibly from a previous adulterous relationship. Even the Q of this
series, Jun Harazuka, is working in stationary, basing Samurai Flamenco's tech
on office supplies.
And then of course there is my
favourite characters Mineral Miracle Muse, an idol trio who starts with main
member Mari Maya, growing up with magical girls, deciding to become one by way
of a magical wand/cattle prod/spike mallet hybrid and kicking men in the testicles
a lot, eventually roping in Mizuki Misawa (serious minded) and Moe Morita (shy,
explicitly romantically attracted to Mari). Their plot trajectory, even when
they are sidelined for a chapter, are a great example of how the series in
general succeeds; immediate jokes about them subverting magical girl tropes
into violet interpretations, alongside the explicit yuri references and Mari's
uniform fetish, give way to Mari's own existential crisis, some of the darkest
material in the show, and the complex relationship between the three women
that, in them being just as complex and diverse, keeps the viewer on their toes.
The subversion of the genre
tropes allows Samurai Flamenco to
get away with its whiplash inducing plot threads, a fleshed out world with
ordinary characters that merely exist in this particular realm. It also, in
among ridiculous villains who look like children's show rejects, a lot of
serious moments and questions made of the tokusatsu genre itself. What it means
to be a hero and fight for good, enhanced by the fact that not only is there
real deaths, and even torture and psychological damage, but that two of the
main villains throughout were even influenced by these heroes, one from growing
up with sentai shows wanting to instead become a villain, the other inspired by
Samurai Flamenco himself to become his ultimate nemesis. Even the humorous
aspects of the jokes have weight to them, an early episode where a ransom being
made on the internet to unmask Flamenco leads to one night becoming a nightmare
for him, another in the From Beyond chapter, about such an evil group,
eventually leading to so many monster fights in the metropolis that everyone
becomes bored and apathetic.
As a result, I loved the series,
an utter spectacle which was cleverly written and with a sense of its
hecticness deliberately used to keep it being inventive and never slacking like
many anime series, especially in their middle chapters, can get. Major plot
threads in this series get finished in one episode in a way that's almost
hilarious, and yet I never dismissed anything throughout Samurai Flamenco as anything but inspired.
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| From https://caraniel.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/horriblesubs-samurai -flamenco-08-720p-mkv_snapshot_13-10_2013-11-30_14-41-48.jpg |
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