The story of Samurai Flamenco follows the adventures of Masayoshi Hazama as he does his best to become a super hero despite having no superpower or any access to technology. In short, Masayoshi and his suits are alone on the paths of herohood. That is, until they meet a nice policeman named Hidenori Goto.
To be honest, even after Masayoshi met Goto he still is more or less alone on his path; Goto just comes conveniently whenever Samurai Flamenco, that’s Masayoshi’s hero name, is in trouble. Goto basically is the prince to our heroic damsel in distress. (This sentence holds more meaning than it seems at first but I won’t spoil.)
Even now, after 22 episodes and three months or so since it finished I still don’t know what to think about
Samurai Flamenco. The whole plot is pretty basic, it throws all of the codes of super hero shows in a single anime. You get the secret identities, the unexpected villains, the trusted friends, the trusted comrades, the big boss of the heroes, the giant mecha, the whole saving the world part and a sad background for the hero.
The problem is that there is no consistency at all. It goes from one idea to another without anything to link those ideas. I still can’t tell you what the whole point of this thing was. I don’t know what it was trying to do beyond a generic hero show with funny moments. Sadly, the funny moments weren’t there all the time, seriously, the whole gorilla thing was hilarious, some other things, not so much. A big half of the anime was even pretty boring, it didn’t offer anything beyond the heroes’ fights (they multiply exponentially in this show). The plot was barely existent and even when it was, it felt pretty void and uninteresting.
Samurai Flamenco has been written by people on crack. Or there just wasn’t any written guideline at all and they made it as they went. Here, I said it.
That being said, the characters were pretty entertaining, or at least some of them.
I didn’t like Masayoshi, he was a bit too innocent for my tastes. I did like his seiyuu, Toshiki Masuda, though and I hope he gets more roles.
My favorite character was Goto, for his righteousness and his cuteness and his depth. Goto-san might have been the only well-written thing of this show. And he was voiced by Tomokazu Sugita, who always delivers a grand performance, no matter what roles he plays.
I don’t really know what else to say, this show had so many characters that were barely developed. I found Mari interesting but she felt a bit fake and Tomatsu Haruka’s voice can get on my nerves pretty quickly.
On the other hand, this show features my beloved Shou Hayami as King Torture and I hear him so little lately that I felt it is worth mentioning.
Samurai Flamenco is something you can definitely miss. It was amusing at times but there was never nothing much beside that. (Except maybe, what happened in the last episode …)
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Kuuki
Here is Kuuki, French 20-something anime-baka speaking. I watch too many things, read too much, eat too much and work too much. I'm writing Go for Broke and sometimes more for the Organization. Nice to meet you!
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