Yojimbo, Kaze No

I just finished up watching the run of "Kaze No Yojimbo". It is an anime cartoon, so if that's not your thing you might want to just skip the rest. For all two of you left, I'll go ahead and jot some reactions and stuff.

First things first, the story is based semi-loosely on Akira Kurosawa's famous samurai film, "Yojimbo" which translates as The Bodyguard. I've meant to see that for a while now, so watching this series gave me a good excuse. As is practically inevitable with Kurosawa films, "Yojimbo" is an excellent piece of craftsmanship. It showcases human flaws, psychology, and the bitter cycle of revenge. It's a film that will stay with me for a while, but I'm not really here to talk about that right now.

So you might ask yourself (paraphrasing Jay Sherman) "if this is a remake of a classic, why am I not watching the classic?" I answer that "Kaze No Yojimbo" is no more a remake of "Yojimbo" than "Westside Story" is of "Romeo and Juliet". While I sort through that grammatical mess I'll ask a few more questions.

"If it's not a remake, what is it?"
The term gets tossed around a lot, but I would call it a re-imagining. The makers take the basic backdrop, principal characters, and themes and flesh them out in a very different way. They keep the idea of the drifter (George) coming to a small town (Kimujuku) plagued with two rival gangs (Ginzame and Tanokura). He stirs up unrest and acts as a catalyst for the violence that was just waiting to break out. They keep the characters of the ineffectual policeman and the neutral confidant. The real threat, the gun obsessed brother of one of the rival gang leaders (Rin), is introduced at almost the exact same time. They even choreograph one of the final fights in a nearly exact manner (complete with a knife to the hand). You can tell that the creators had respect for Kurosawa's film and really wanted to base their vision around the premise of his masterpiece.

"What elements have they added to create a new vision?"
The basic answer is, they added a plot. One of the great STRENGTHS of "Yojimbo" is the LACK of any real depth of story. Doesn't that sound odd? Let me explain. We're with the lone samurai. We come to town and don't care who these people are or what their circumstances are, we just care about what they're doing at this instant and how to play all the angles. It seems that our hero is only ever looking to the future, eager to see things play out. The narrative works like a great jazz solo. If it is too planned or rehearsed, it can't be spontaneous and won't be great. The makers of "Kaze No Yojimbo" decided to take that same solo and carefully plan it out. Add compositional intricacies that would be impossible in a spontaneous work. It's no longer a great jazz solo, just a great solo. Instead of only looking to the end, the makers here are always focused on the past. What is the cause of the people acting this way? They tell a complicated story and put George right in the middle as an active participant. This choice, however, leaves the viewers on the sidelines and takes out the emotional charge and immediacy of Kurosawa's.

"Given this vision, is anime an appropriate choice?"
This is where I start to break with the creators. While true that anime gives you a much larger palette to work with (12 hours is a lot more story time than 90 minutes), in my mind anime demands a certain kind of story. Others may disagree with me, but in many cases if your only concern is for story telling or relational drama, you might be working in the wrong medium. Anime needs to be somehow fantastic. You have to show me something that you couldn't with live action or the written word, and to be frank, "Kaze No Yojimbo" doesn't do that. In my opinion, this is a mystery and would have worked a lot better in novel or manga (comic book) form. So much of the series is wasted as characters sit around and talk. Great on the page, but wasted in animation. Sure, you can use some flashy art direction (misguided) to make it look like something is happening, but you're still just sitting around talking...maybe smoking. It makes things feel very static a lot of the time. It's compelling almost like "Casablanca" or some Hitchcock films (not nearly that good of course), but that's not the way anime should be compelling.

So now, the anime itself. The artwork was pretty basic, but mostly consistent. Then again, they were portraying modern, or at least recent times. Realism isn't that hard, is it? 3-d graphics were used in only a couple of places and should have been left out completely. They didn't "feel" right and weren't necessary. Character design was pretty strong. Distinct features for all the mains with only a couple of inadvertent twins (I couldn't ever tell the difference between Ms. Araki and Mrs. Tanokura). The world was designed in a more realistic style suitable to the story they were telling. The plot was tight and moved at a relaxed, but reasonable pace. There's only one episode I can think of that didn't move the plot forward. Come to find out it was a huge piece of foreshadowing, but it was still a standalone episode that seems out of place alongside the rest of the series. The actual script was practically unnecessary. It was either blatant plot expositioning or things like:

George: (smirking, in a gravelly voice) Oh, really?

or:

Ginzame: (yelling) They don't know who they're messing with!

Apparently the head writer was also a writer for "Dragon Ball Z". Somehow the pieces are fitting together. Then again, I'm dealing with an English dub. It's hard to know what you're getting or who's to blame with those. The whole thing was directed by Hayato Date. He's also responsible for "Naruto". It's been making some ripples in the anime community, but I've yet to see it. I'm not really motivated from watching this.

The theme music was nice. This is the only anime series I've watched where I watched the entire opening credits sequence (exactly the same) for every episode (25 in all). I don't even think it was necessarily great music either. It definitely was addicting in a very "That Thing You Do" way, though. You may hate the song, but you just can't stop listening. As far as the soundtrack within the series, hmm...problematic. Fortunately there wasn't much of it, but I don't think there should have been any. Let the drama stand on its own. Maybe they tried that and decided they needed the crutch. Anyway you look at it, the soundtrack was unfortunate.

So, the final word. A good story, a mediocre presentation. If you haven't watched "Yojimbo", do that first. It, unlike this remake, is definitely worth your time. If you really really really like "Yojimbo" and want to step back and get a fresh perspective I might recommend this. Problem is, it's hard to recommend something like this to anyone. 12 hours for something that's only pretty good and that you might like?

C+