Afro Samurai Review

Afro Samurai has a lot going for it. I’ll admit it: I was stoked at the idea of one of my favorite live-action actors being a voice actor in an anime. It seemed cheap and gimmicky, since Jackson was the Big Name that attracted a lot of attention to this series, hyping Afro Samurai above every other action release this year before it even premiered on Spike.

Jackson does earn his paycheck here though, as the voice behind Ninja Ninja, who is Afro’s companion throughout the series and the comedic foil. And while Ninja Ninja may at a casual glance seem like just another funny, fast-talking sidekick, viewers who pay careful attention to detail in the anime will find out something disturbing about him that’s never explicitly spelled out. That kind of subtlety isn’t something you’d normally expect from a hack-n-slash action flick, but it is very rewarding to viewers like me who appreciate being able to dig further into their entertainment.


The music is good and generally unobtrusive, which I honestly didn’t expect from a genre known for being loud, crass, and arrogant about how good it is at doing both. The animation by Studio Gonzo is lush in every detail, from the shining, sleek nudity of a temple maiden (and she will not stay that way for long once Afro comes to town) to the scarlet showers of blood. And in this anime, there is a fair amount of the former, and a generous amount of the latter.