The Elusive Samurai Season 2

Episode 3

I have to admit that I am of two minds about The Elusive Samurai's overall direction this season. On the one hand, I can't help but get the sense that we're starting to see the creeping symptoms of Too Much Goddamn Shit Is Happening Syndrome, what with all of the new characters and story developments that the show is juggling just a few episodes into the season. We already met nearly half a dozen new bad guys just a couple of weeks ago, and here we've got Yorishige dropping a trio of new Hojo-clan retainers for us to add to the growing roster of names and faces to keep track of. Then again, the show makes such a glorious farce out of all the nonsense that these heroes and villains get up to, so I can't exactly act like it is failing in its duties to entertain us.

The best comparison that my broken brain can conjure up is this: Watching The Elusive Samurai is basically the modern anime equivalent of catching an episode of The Muppet Show on the telly back in its heyday. Sure, the show technically has a story to tell, and there are plenty of concrete narrative goals for its characters to accomplish, but let's be honest: The real reason we're here is to watch the colorful troupe of freakish idiots cause chaos and make funny faces until we double over in laughter. We get the usual cutaways to our villains as they slaughter innocents and make grandiose monologues about their evil intentions, but it is impossible to take this literal gang of killer clowns seriously, and I mean that in the most complementary possible way. Even our heroes are little more than a rag-tag collection of vaudevillian street orphans who just so happen to be lethally skilled with traditional Japanese martial arts and military tactics.

The new allies we meet this week are no less ridiculous. General Unno, for example, is a 30-Year-Old Virgin who gets his superhuman stabbing powers from all of the pent-up sexual frustration that he has stored up over the decades. He announces this fact very loudly to his underage siblings-in-arms, and the show even throws in a few random shots of live-action metal workers handling a cauldron of molten lava to emphasize the raw, piping hot potential energy swelling up deep inside this man's humongous balled-up fists. If all of that sounds like made-up nonsense that would have made Jim Henson and his Muppeteers chortle with naughty delight behind those velvet curtains, well, you've clearly missed a lecture or two from Osawa Koichi, the esteemed research expert from The Japan Institute of Imaginary Sports Science. For the love of God, people, do your due diligence and educate yourselves about the proven medical and military benefits that come from locking that thing in your pants up tight and starving it to death.

This seemingly limitless font of energy from which The Elusive Samurai draws its goofy spectacle is probably why I can still be so charmed by the series even when the story doesn't give me a whole lot to work with. Sometimes middle-aged history geek part of my brain can get properly revved up over the movements of old armies on ancient battlefields, but I have to admit that I would be less enthusiastic about all of the maneuvering and strategizing we get in episodes like this if it wasn't for the fact that all of the main players were psychotic escapees from the Roger Rabbit Asylum for Deranged Cartoons who are constantly covered in blood and cracking stupid jokes.

Granted, it isn't like The Elusive Samurai isn't at least making an honest effort at getting us invested in the plot. We get some inklings into Kojiro's background and personal motivations near the end of the episode, which has the potential to make for some interesting (if not almost assuredly fleeting) drama. While I will appreciate it if the show can successfully ground us in some more traditionally compelling and satisfying storytelling, I don't know, would it be truly that terrible if we simply indulged in more wacky bloodletting every week? The more sensible and jaded part of me that has been down this road before knows that an endless parade of blood-yuks would inevitably grow stale, but we sure would have a gas until it did.

Episode Rating:

The Elusive Samurai Season 2 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on BlueSky, his blog, and his podcast.