Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: The Elusive Samurai
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AdditionalRamen
Posts: 42 |
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Didn't he completely behead a full-grown man in one stroke recently? I know this show requires a lot of suspension of disbelief but I'm finding it hard to square that with his inability to cut hay in episode 4. |
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FishLion
 Posts: 266 |
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I take the muscle talk to mean that he is flinching when striking instead of following through and that if he bulks up enough to handle extended sword fighting his agility or speed may suffer. The show is definitely running on dramatic logic though @AdditionalRamen, there is no way that full grown man could chop down trees in combat without missing a beat either unless the show is swinging between more realistic training and dramatic yet impossible action sequences.
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andramus
 Posts: 193 |
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Yeah I thought the "running away muscles" made sense in the context of the story and the explanation given. It doesn't neccessarily make sense in real life but in the heightened reality of the series with characters like Sadamune and his eyes it fits. I also think it could be a word choice issue. Like instead of "running away muscles" what if Yorishige had said "running away reflexes". The scene where Tokiyuki attempted to cut the straw bundle actually showed that he was pulling back at the last second as his "running away muscles" kicked in. Honestly I do think "running away muscles" makes some sense as the type of muscles you would use to dodge and pull back from an attack are different to the sort you would use to go on the offence. Like falling backwards to dodge a sword stroke and maintaining your balance would put a lot of strain on your ankles I think. |
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jdnation
Posts: 2127 |
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Absolutely loving this show, and the animation has been top notch and stylish, and the ED track and playful presentation is the best of the season!
But Episode 4 happened with the CG and... Oof! The still image of the horse with only the impact lines looked better. Shoulda shot it live and stylishly rotoscoped it. The series like to experiment with visuals, that coulda worked if done right. |
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ZiharkXVI
Posts: 388 |
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This show started out amazing, but I'm slowly falling off the interest train. The visuals are still amazing, but there's a lot of tonal change back and forth that I think we are supposed to believe is "complex" but it's just not working for me at all. You can't keep up the comedy, horror, drama, and historical adventure themes and make it all work by dialing them up to 11.
Actually, it's the eccentric comedy and horror that are just too wrong together. In the end of the first episode, I thought the shift to extremely serious after the lighthearted romp scenes was brilliant. BUT THEN...the clown show from that priest sort of destroys any weight to the scene. Plus, the side characters in episode 3 just come in like they were obligatory to the adventure tale - but utterly devoid of anything other than "she's strong, he's a good fighter - you'll need them". Then there is episode 4. It reminds me of the 90s where everyone thought the wide-angle lens shots of faces were comedic. They weren't. They were just stupid. Episode 4 needed some Ritalin. |
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yeehaw
 Posts: 591 |
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So I just catched up on this show and I'm here for it, even if the tonal dissonance is distracting. I am however seeing a lot of stuff that irratated me in Assassination Classroom and what little I saw of Neuro. Matsui Yuusei loves giving bad guys obviously evil faces that contorts into grotesque caricatures and I just hate it. That's just a personal gripe and I think one could argue it fits better here than in in Assclass. A child murderes face becoming an onis makes more sense than a teacher trying to give his kids F's
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malvarez1
Posts: 2148 |
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The latest episode has to be a top 10 directed episode of the season, right? Some of those animation cuts were crazy inventive.
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FishLion
Posts: 266 |
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Somehow this was the most over the top episode yet. From the actions sequences of the escape to the abstract body horror of ears talking with eyes to the massive amount of slaughter to the surreal dream sequence filled with infants to Genba swinging his dick around, this episode truly pushed the variety of tones to the limit.
I also like the detail of Genba signing on partially for money but also because a lord who runs away can truly appreciate his trickery, this show is shaping up to be so interesting so far. |
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Thesarum
 SubscriberPosts: 540 |
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This show is an absolute hallucinogenic fever dream.
Nothing quite sums it up quite like Takauiji calmly slaughtering 100 men in graphic detail with a smile on his face swinging right in to jokes about penises and inappropriate touching of shrine maidens. If you were going to be put off by that you'd have already checked out perhaps, but it's still vertigo inducing. Great to see Sadamune frustrated again. Couldn't happen to a better weird eyeball freak. And the fact that despite their weirdly intimate behaviour he and Ichikawa clearly hate each other was pretty funny. |
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Greed1914
 Posts: 4660 |
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That is fair. The shift in episode 1 does work well since it makes you think, "Oh yeah, that awful stuff did happen," and I sort of expected it would stay there with the priest dropping the slap stick. I did come away being entertained, but I can easily see people not enjoying a constant yo-yo between grim reminders of what happened followed almost instantly with something silly. |
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AdditionalRamen
Posts: 42 |
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The oddest thing about this show to me so far is the pacing - even though things are ostensibly happening in every episode, the plot doesn't really feel like it has any forward momentum, at least not compared to comparable WSJ series. I wonder if the magazine gave Matsui more leeway to goof around with the pace and the plot because of the success of Ass Class.
I think this is a series that will benefit from binge-watching once it's over. Binging will likely smooth out the weird tonal shifts and pacing. |
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OpenYourEels4TheNextFeels
Posts: 141 |
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Actually I'd say the CGI horses themselves looked great IMO, it was the CGI riders on top of them that are the problem. |
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lossthief
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 1440 |
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Honestly, I'd disagree. This pacing is pretty typical for the majority of WSJ series, including ones coming out now. We have the initial setup that establishes our hero and his immediate mentor/guide, then introduce new allies and have them bond over short arcs while building up a cast of recurring enemies. All the while there's a larger "final" goal that this is all incrementally building towards - in this case Tokiyuki becoming a samurai and lord capable of taking down Takauji. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11619 |
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Hmm, not sure who the winner is in the Dismemberment/Beheading Derby - this episode, or Goemon's Blood Spray (w/ at least 50 pairs of hands cut off plus assorted other murderings).
I kept expecting Genba to toss out a flash-bang to take care of both of them, but he just stuck with the flash part, which was a little disappointing. Still, maybe best episode since the opener. |
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ZiharkXVI
Posts: 388 |
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I think I'm done. There isn't anything I find particularly wrong with the latest episode, but as we switch to the side characters I realize there are only so many more episodes and I sort of know that those characters aren't really driving this plot...or even truly matter. Which made, if you can believe it, this episode kind of boring. I'll give the show props for it's animation, and by all rights I should love this show (right up my alley in terms of setting), but it gets a meh from me.
Comedy relief is a fine line. People don't realize its necessity, but even when they understand the concept pulling it off is another thing entirely. This show is not pulling it off. It's one thing to shift from tonal peace to disaster (first episode), but from borderline obnoxious humor to serious is not generally okay. I think I can safely say that the show fails to hit the mark there consistently. It's just not interesting or enjoyable. If that was the aim, the show failed there. And maybe the show is trying to say something about absurdity in reality...but that's not really coming through either. I think if that was the authors intent, they misunderstand the concept as the absurdity is often not something obvious. You have to think about it a bit when thinking of a tragedy, and really hone in on accepting it as real. Perhaps if the show did something more clever with its storytelling, they might have something brilliant. As it is, all I can think of when the clown is on screen is, "I suddenly don't know why I should care about the tragedy we spent time on - the characters clearly do not." That's not good in a story. |
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