transcript
show notes
Guns, God, and a blind musician with a very bad secret.
This week on Toonami Absolution, Alyx, Jon, and Sam cover Episodes 19 and 20 of Samurai Champloo: “Unholy Union” and “Elegy of Entrapment (Verse 1).”
In “Unholy Union,” Fuu shelters a female fugitive who’s on the run from a bogus gun-slinging missionary. He’s been fleecing a community of hidden Christians, and Mugen and Jin help expose him. The episode also brings Fuu a step closer to the sunflower samurai and finally reveals an important truth that will change the story’s trajectory.
Then “Elegy of Entrapment (Verse 1)” opens on a rainy night in a restaurant, where the group watches Sara, a blind travelling musician called a goze, perform with a shamisen. Two thugs start harassing her and Mugen chases them off. Sara joins the group, and Mugen is smitten. Fuu bonds with her, and Sara says she hasn’t seen her son in a very long time. When the group splits at a fork in the road, Fuu picks Jin to escort Sara. The episode ends in the middle of a fight on a rope bridge.
We discuss how the show plays with Edo-period religious history, why Sara is one of the series’ best (and most hateable) one-off characters, and that cliffhanger.
🔔 Subscribe for our ongoing episode-by-episode watch-through of Samurai Champloo.
📌 Topics covered this episode:
– Samurai Champloo Episode 19 “Unholy Union” recap & review
– Samurai Champloo Episode 20 “Elegy of Entrapment (Verse 1)” recap & review
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Toonami Absolution is a weekly podcast where Alyx, Jon, and Sam revisit the Toonami and Adult Swim shows that made them, and you, you.
From the block's early days with shows like Space Ghost: Coast to Coast and Transformers: Beast Wars to the imported anime that made Toonami and Adult Swim appointment television for a generation of kids, such as Cowboy Bebop, Sailor Moon, and Dragon Ball.
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