Mecha Samurai: Kurosawa in the World of Anime (Akira Kurosawa) (Critical Essay‪)‬

Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (Shichinin no samurai, 1954) is one of the most influential films ever made, spawning numerous official and unofficial remakes around the world. One of the most ambitious of these is Samurai 7, a 26-episode anime television series produced in 2004 by Gonzo studio and aired in high definition in Japan on the satellite network Animax. Because anime commands a huge international audience, the series traveled far beyond Japan, via cable television and DVD. It aired, for example, throughout Southeast Asia and Latin American and aired in the U.S. in 2006 on the Independent Film Channel. The series melds Kurosawa's samurai period film with a science fiction setting and the free flights of fancy that animation enables and that the historical fidelity of Kurosawa's original inhibited. The series was neither the first sci-fi nor the first animated rendition of Kurosawa's tale. Roger Corman's Battle Beyond the Stars (1980) transposed Kurosawa's story to interstellar warfare, and Pixar's A Bug's Life (1998) was an animated feature remake. But Samurai 7 is more ambitious than these efforts, partly by dint of its length but mostly because of the intimidation that the anime filmmakers experienced in tackling the remake of such an imposing work. Their awareness of the long shadow cast by Kurosawa's classic drove them to work especially hard at their craft. The series demonstrates the powerful appeal of Kurosawa's narrative--the epic story of 16th century samurai warfare proved eminently adaptable into anime, one of the most popular genres of contemporary culture. Indeed, anime exists at what Susan J. Napier calls "a nexus point in global culture." (1) As she points out, anime is not only a major part of Japan's cultural export market but is also "a small but growing part of the non-Japanese commercial world, in terms of the increasing number of non-Japanese enterprises that deal with anime. These range from small video rental operations in big cities throughout the world to mail order houses up to and including such behemoths as Amazon.com." (2) And, one might add, such Western cable television enterprises as the Independent Film Channel. Furthermore, this nexus of popular culture includes such participant activities as cosplay at anime conventions, i.e., fans of the series attending costumed as their favorite characters. Photographs of fans dressed as the anime Kikuchiyo or Heihachi can be found on the Internet, and web-boards track fan discussion on the merits and appeal of the respective Samurai 7 characters. (See, for instance, http: / / manga, about.com / od / imagegalleries / ig / 2007-NY-Anime-Festival-Gallery / NYAF-07--Samurai-7.htm)