Samurai 7: V.2 Escape from the Merchants [DVD]

Features

• Type: DVD
• Studio: Funimation Prod
• Language(s): english, japanese
• Director(s): Futoshi Higashide, Hiroyuki Okuno, Makoto Sokuza, Mitsuo Kusakabe, Shunsuke Tada, Tôru Yoshida, Yasuhiro Kuroda, Yoshikata Nitta
• Actor(s): R. Bruce Elliott, Christopher Sabat, Sean Teague, Colleen Clinkenbeard, Luci Christian, J. Michael Tatum, Toru Kusano, Kong Kuwata, Fumiko Orikasa, Romi Pak

As the 2004 broadcast series Samurai 7 continues, "water priestess" Kirara and the peasants from Kanna village try to hire samurai to protect them from crop-stealing bandits. They find two new recruits: wood-chopping Heihachi, who works with machines, and Kambei's former comrade, Shichiroji. When an imperial agent is murdered, Ayano, the ruler of the merchant city, orders all samurai arrested. His fey son Ukyo pursues the villagers and their hired swords into a series of caverns controlled by the Shikimori, who trade "energy cells" to both the merchants and the bandits. As the characters and plot twists multiply, the filmmakers move farther away from their supposed model, Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (1954). Kurosawa's classic film stressed the shared humanity of the peasants, the samurai, and even the bandits; the often grotesquely designed people and mecha in this derivative sci-fi adventure lack that essential bond. The Limited Edition includes bound volumes of the storyboards for each episode, but in Japanese with no translations. (Unrated, suitable for ages 12 and older: violence, brief nudity, alcohol use) --Charles Solomon