AaaFrooooe!   Heard of the Afro-Samurai? Bet your kids have. He’s the puffy-haired, cigarillo smoking, sword swing, black samurai. He’s got discipline, skill, a bunch of enemies, a strange gray-haired hedonist for a “sidekick” and, of course, the fabled Number Two headband.

Anyway, he starred in an anime that was translated into English basically by hiring Samuel L. Jackson as the terse samurai and his annoying friend. There’s lots of blood, dismemberment and killing. The tone is dark, but the violence is extremely unrealistic and stylish (arm comes off=blood fountain!). Remove the blood and this cartoon would be Y-14 at most. As it stands, it gets the bloodier rating.

The show is pretty good. It combines “Man with no name” westerns and samurai folklore and mythology. Can’t go wrong there. It’s fairly empty story-wise but pulses with an amusing hipster vibe. A DVD movie came out recently, it’s just like the TV show.

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The game is “true to its source, and a lot of fun” said Zane J. (17 years old), a friend who I let take this one home with permission from his parents.

“It’s better looking than the show,” and you get to fight against themed opponents. Aparently this gets a little boring after a while. “You quickly learn the combos for each bad guy.” If the guy has one of those rice-paddy wicker hats, the same combo is needed to take him down. It takes a lot of the creativity out of it.

“Focus” is like Bullet-Time in a movie like the Matrix (or Max Payne). This is cool but it makes the violence even more graphic and does slow things down quite a bit.

This one isn’t for kids but if your kids would be allowed to see the anime – they’ll be the prime audience for this. It’s stylish, cool and hip, reasonably challenging and very violent in a balletic martial arts kind of way.

So, if your kids watch adult anime, 14+ seems to be a better rating than M-17+.

Tags: Game Reviews