The Elusive Samurai is Good When It Stops Trying to Be Funny

After finishing up Blue Miburo a while back, I was looking for another historical samurai anime to watch. I’ve always liked historical stuff, and samurai are particularly interesting because there’s so much actual history to draw from without needing to make everything up from scratch. While browsing AniChart, I came across The Elusive Samurai, a series set during the fall of the Kamakura shogunate in 14th century Japan. It looked interesting enough, so I decided to give it a shot.

The Elusive Samurai follows Hōjō Tokiyuki, the young heir to the Kamakura shogunate, whose relatively comfortable life comes crashing down when Ashikaga Takauji betrays the Hōjō and helps bring down the shogunate in 1333. Tokiyuki manages to escape the destruction of Kamakura with the help of Suwa Yorishige, a strange Shinto priest who claims to have divine powers and can see glimpses of the future. Yorishige tells Tokiyuki that he’s destined to become a great hero and eventually retake Kamakura. There’s just one small problem: Tokiyuki isn’t much of a fighter. What he is exceptionally good at is running away, hiding, and generally being almost impossible to catch. Under Yorishige’s protection, Tokiyuki begins gathering a group of young retainers known as the Elusive Warriors while learning how to use his unusual talents in actual combat. From there, the story follows Tokiyuki and his allies as they navigate the wars and political upheaval surrounding the collapse of the Kamakura shogunate and the rise of Ashikaga Takauji.

The series is a very loose interpretation of actual historical events, but that historical foundation gives it a pretty good story to work with. Hōjō Tokiyuki, Suwa Yorishige, Ashikaga Takauji, Ogasawara Sadamune, and many of the other characters were real people, even if the anime obviously takes plenty of liberties with their personalities and abilities. The political situation surrounding them was also real, and having that basic framework keeps the story moving in a direction that feels bigger than just Tokiyuki and his friends fighting the villain of the week. You know these characters are caught up in an actual period of Japanese history where governments were collapsing, alliances were shifting, and everyone was trying to figure out who the hell was in charge. The story is easily the strongest part of The Elusive Samurai.

The fights aren’t bad either, particularly because the historical setting forces them to be a little more grounded than what we normally get from anime. There aren’t a bunch of guys jumping 30 feet into the air and swinging swords hard enough to cut mountains in half. Characters are obviously exaggerated and Tokiyuki’s ability to dodge attacks borders on supernatural sometimes, but most fights are still decided through strategy, positioning, deception, and understanding what the opponent is going to do. Tokiyuki in particular has to fight differently because he isn’t some amazing swordsman who can just overpower everyone standing in front of him. He survives, waits for an opportunity, and lets the opponent exhaust themselves or expose a weakness.

I actually like that approach quite a bit because it fits the historical angle. Good warriors didn’t survive because they could scream louder and swing their sword harder than the other guy. Battles were won through tactics, training, logistics, positioning, and knowing when to fight and when to get the hell out of there. Tokiyuki’s entire philosophy runs against the romanticized idea that a samurai should gladly die in battle for honor, and that gives the fights a different flavor from most samurai anime. Running away is treated as an actual skill rather than cowardice, especially when staying alive means you can come back and fight another day.

So we’ve got a good story and good fights. Sounds like I should love this series, right?

Here’s where The Elusive Samurai starts falling apart for me: this show has absolutely no idea when to stop trying to be funny.

Most serious anime has humor. There’s nothing wrong with that. Even extremely dark series usually give the audience a break once in a while because watching people suffer for 12 straight episodes gets exhausting. Assassination Classroom was filled with comedy, and that was created by the same guy who wrote The Elusive Samurai, Yusei Matsui. The difference is that Assassination Classroom generally understood when it was time to quit screwing around and let an important moment be important.

The Elusive Samurai doesn’t seem to understand that concept.

Serious moments rarely get enough time to breathe before somebody starts screaming, making a stupid face, or throwing out some goofy joke. Characters will be in the middle of an important conversation about war, death, betrayal, or the future of the Hōjō clan, and suddenly someone turns into a cartoon character. During battles that are supposed to carry real stakes, people start screeching or making jokes that completely undermine whatever tension the scene was building. A little comedy would have been fine, but the show keeps hammering you with it until the jokes start getting in the way of the story.

The biggest problem, by far, is how fucking annoying some of these characters can get.

Imagine watching an anime where Zenitsu from Demon Slayer isn’t one character. He’s everybody.

Characters are constantly yelling at the top of their lungs, making ridiculous expressions, and acting like annoying jackasses. I can tolerate that kind of exaggerated anime behavior in small doses, but The Elusive Samurai seems terrified that the audience might go more than three minutes without somebody screaming. After a while, I found myself wanting everyone to shut the fuck up so I could get back to the historical drama that initially got me interested in the series.

Yorishige is the one character where this behavior actually works for me. He’s a bizarre Shinto priest who claims to be possessed by a god, can partially see the future, and regularly makes references to things that won’t exist for hundreds of years. Of course this guy is going to act weird. In fact, I kind of like Yorishige and his constant references to the future because there’s an actual reason behind his behavior. His insanity is part of the character.

The problem is that everyone else keeps doing the same shit.

Sadamune’s eyes constantly bug out of his skull like he wandered in from a Tom and Jerry cartoon. Other characters make ridiculous faces in the middle of fights that are otherwise being presented as serious battles between actual historical factions. At one point Kojiro literally references how the characters are being drawn during an important battle. Fourth-wall jokes can be funny, but when I’m trying to get invested in a fight where people could potentially be killed, reminding me that I’m watching animated characters immediately takes me out of it.

That’s what frustrates me so much about The Elusive Samurai. There’s a genuinely good historical action series buried underneath all the noise. The story works. Tokiyuki is an interesting protagonist because his greatest strength is something his culture considers cowardly. Takauji is an intimidating antagonist, and knowing that many of these characters and conflicts are based on actual history makes me want to see where everything goes. Even the battles manage to distinguish themselves from the usual anime sword fights by focusing heavily on tactics and unconventional abilities.

But then somebody starts screaming again, and I’m taken out of it.

It’s especially hard to believe this came from the creator of Assassination Classroom. That series could be incredibly goofy, but when the story needed to get serious, it usually knew how to put the jokes away. Matsui clearly knows how to balance comedy and drama because he’s done it before. For whatever reason, The Elusive Samurai goes way too far in the other direction and seems determined to shove a gag into almost every available opening.

I want to like this series more than I do. I certainly don’t hate it, and there’s enough good stuff here that I don’t regret watching the first season. The story is strong enough that I can look past the badly timed jokes, excessive screaming, and characters occasionally acting like they escaped from a Saturday morning cartoon. When The Elusive Samurai takes itself seriously, it can actually be a very entertaining historical anime.

Unfortunately, it just doesn’t take itself seriously often enough.

Season two is currently airing as I write this, and I’ll probably get around to watching it eventually because I’m still interested in Tokiyuki’s story. I’m just not exactly dying to jump into it. If the series could dial the comedy back about 50 percent and allow its dramatic moments to actually breathe, I’d probably be recommending it pretty highly.

As it stands, The Elusive Samurai is a good story constantly interrupted by characters who desperately need to shut the fuck up.

AJ’s rating: 6/10

Angry_Jerk

Adam “The Angry Jerk” Baker is the CEO of The AJnet Organization and Editor-in-Chief of AJnet Magazine. A grizzled internet veteran of over 20 years, he writes about politics, culture, and whatever else manages to annoy him that day.

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