Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai is on the list of most popular movies among cinephiles, a rarity for a Japanese film from the 1950s given how influential it has been on even Western media. Not only has it influenced Star Wars to a degree it inspired a Western (as in cowboys with six shooters) classic, The Magnificent Seven from 1960. Tonight’s Showcase however is a science fiction series from Japan directly influenced by the Kurosawa film as well. If you haven’t been introduced to it before, here is Samurai 7.
By now you know most of this plot. Baddies rob a town blind on a regular basis and a village priestess decides to go into the city to find a samurai to defend them. She and her tagalong sister along with their bodyguard will find seven of them, as the name implies, and the series follows their trek to the village while dealing with a criminal’s posh son with a crush on the priestess. It’s all set to a sci-fi bend as the heroes include a robot as are the villains robbing the village of rice constantly. Despite Funimation’s channel on YouTube being rebranded as Crunchyroll Dubs this episode is in Japanese with subtitles. Yeah, I don’t get it either but at least it’s official. Enjoy episode one: “The Master”.
All twenty-six episodes are available dubbed and subbed over at Funimation…at least as of this writing. When it will move over to Crunchyroll as part of whatever Sony’s doing now that they own both I couldn’t say. So catch it while you can I guess.
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