Afro Samurai (2007) and his Resurrection (2009)

As probably noticeable I still lack the time for new material so I decided to stop at something that I don't remember when or if I had on my blog = an anime. The difference to the usual anime range is that "Afro Samurai" is not an exclusive Japanese production, all the acting and most of the sound design being made in Hollywood. Probably that's why 10 years ago this mini-series had quite some success, having Samuel L. Jackson as lead on the poster. All the action is centered around a pretty straight-forward revenge story. The context is where the original part comes from: Somewhere in a dystopian future, there are two samurai head-bands - No. 1 and No. 2. The toughest samurai holds the number 1 + something like a "god status" = untouchable = he cannot be challenged by anybody else except number 2. Number 2, however, can be challenged by anybody who would like to become number 2, meaning that his life is mostly about fight, more fight and even more fight until he manages to get to number 1, if he lasts that long (because obviously neither number 1 nor number 2 are really the persons to find in a phone book). Well... the story starts with losing the No. 1 head-band along his own head by the father of the main character. The little Afro wants revenge, and from here a series of flashbacks tell us where he did grow up, where he learned to wield a katana, how he got the number 2 head-band and how many dead bodies he left behind in the process. All these come packed with lots & lots & lots of blood... (too much actually...). Anyway, as I said, the context plus some very original built characters (I didn't mention much about an imaginary alter-ego of Afro who's as talkative as silent the main character is) made "Afro Samurai" a decent anime, which is at least interesting. About his resurrection...

In a typical Hollywood fashion, considering the success the first part in the series had, two years after another anime was released basically repeating the whole story. Meaning that (spoiler alert) Afro also loses the No. 1 head-band (but keeps his head), that being taken by a person showing up from nowhere. The sister of one of his former victims, comes up with a diabolical revenge plan = cloning Afro senior as a sort of mindless cyborg and placing Afro junior in the place of killing his own father to get the number 1 head-band and to put him finally to rest. The bad part in all this story is that's a sort of reheated soup, which starts to get boring immediately after another series of endless fights starts... Either that, or I got old and I don't have the patience I had a while ago (I've watched this relatively recent). Therefore...

Rating: AS - 3 out of 5 ; ASR - 2 out of 5