Samurai Champloo Departure Reissue CD | FlyingDog

$30.00

Release June 26, 2024

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Samurai Champloo FlyingDog Anime Music

Samurai Champloo mixes period drama with hip-hop, Okinawan and mainland Japanese perspectives, and samurai with modern sensibilities in an unconventional action road story. Directed by Shinichiro Watanabe, whose work includes Cowboy Bebop and The Animatrix, the television anime aired in Japan in 2004 and 2005. Its combination of sword-fighting action and contemporary hip-hop culture, with a soundtrack devoted entirely to hip-hop, attracted attention around the world.

Watanabe's musical sensibility, already evident in Macross Plus and Cowboy Bebop, brought four producers to the project: Nujabes, fat jon, FORCE OF NATURE and Tsutchie. Each approached the music in a personal style, creating recordings that work like original albums in their own right. Their enduring appeal has made these tracks particularly influential among hip-hop listeners and artists.

The four music record albums originally released in 2004 return on CD in paper sleeves for the anime's twentieth anniversary. The series' first vinyl editions, released in 2022, sold more than 30,000 copies across the four titles.

Departure opens the music record series with Nujabes and fat jon. The seventeen-song album includes opening theme battlecry, featuring Sing02, and ending theme Shiki no Uta, sung by MINMI.