OST Obsession: Samurai Champloo

Let me paint you a little vignette of my night:

Gilly Hicks sweatpants, sailing team sweater, no socks as usual. My pompom dog lies under my desk, my saxophone abandoned on the floor. I hold a Ticonderoga in my hand, printer paper in my lap, and my eyes filled with the hope of drawing a self-portrait that didn't make me want to cry. The Samurai Champloo Soundtrack fills the room with it's mixture of piano, beats, hip hop, and soulful melodies. So basically, I'm grooving out. 

BUT I DIGRESS.

I watched this show a while back---like, a year maybe? And although I fell in love with the show I didn't really appreciate the soundtrack as much as I should have. For you people out there who aren't otakus and actually have lives instead of sitting at home and watching anime, let me enlighten you as to what exactly Samurai Champloo is.

Awesome.

Would perhaps describe it.

But the plot is:

A teenage girl named Fuu is a waitress at a restaurant in like, Edo? era Japan. (Not so great with the Japanese history, don't take my word.) You presume she has no family. And she kind of has an attitude. 

Some sword-wielding hooligan named Mugen with puffy hair and super-skinny legs is in the same town. He wanders into Fuu's restaurant and says he'll take care of some thugs that are causing trouble for 50 dumplings. He ends up getting 100 dumplings and slicing up a ton of baddies in some cool samurai/break dance fusion style of fighting. It involves a lot of spinning on his head, in any case. 

An elegant wandering samurai named Jin is in another part of town. He wears glasses, in case you wanted to know that. He confronts some guys that are being big ol' bullies and basically the point of the scene is so you know he's super awesome too, except in a very refined way.

Jin ends up in the restaurant. Events occur. Some pyromaniac sets the place on fire. Jin and Mugen are caught and to be executed at sunset, and Fuu saves them. Thus begins the plot, where they have to accompany her to find the "Samurai that smells of sunflowers". Whatever that means.

IN ANY CASE.

The whole aesthetic of the show is this very cool, funky, hip-hop vibe going on while the story takes place in basically the olden days. It works, believe it or not. And this theme translates over to the music. Actually, I almost feel like the whole point of the show is to set the stage for the music. There is almost never a scene where there isn't music playing. So the music is this very cool hip-hop style, and it lends a very interesting feel to the show. So I searched Grooveshark for the music and picked some of my favorites from the dozens of songs in the show's OST.

1.) Shiki No Uta

I would just like to say that this was the only song of the OST that I added to my Grooveshark when i first watched the show. It's the end theme, and the rising and falling, plaintive vocals pair really well with the beat. I just can never get enough of this song.

2.)Deeper Than Words

3.)Kujaku

(While the drum is nice if you want to get to the actual riff skip to 38 seconds.)

4.)Sanctuary Ship

5.)Aruarain Dance

So I forgot about this one, I found it a few weeks ago on the Champloo tumblr tag. Someone extended it to be like an hour long and changed the tone, they call it the homework edit, so if you're doing your homework it is actually really nice to listen to in the background.)

So there are so many more great songs on the Samurai Champloo soundtrack, these are just a sampling. The show is so great as well, it's very stylistic. It's directed by the same guy that did Cowboy Bebop, which is one of my favorite shows, and it has the same kind of focus around music to set the mood. Sorry for my complete lack of eloquence in this post, I'm hungry. 

....Because that makes sense.