Yoroi-Shinden Samurai Troopers

Episode 8

My critical eye is starting to formally question why the storytelling of Yoroi-Shinden Samurai Troopers is…the way it is. I think there's value in holding some irreverence for one's source material—Jun's rapid reintroduction last week and the skimming over his fall from grace with some knowing old-school style was worth a sensible chuckle, at least. But then this week's episode seeks to go back for more details, and while it's not exactly fraught, it is messy.

Part of the zig-zagged reaction to this might be on me—I neglected to ask what happened to the tiger from the original Samurai Troopers, after all. I mean, tigers generally don't live for 35 years, but White Blaze was a magic tiger, so plausibility was there. But Yoroi-Shinden whizzes past that point to detail White Blaze and Jun's shared story with a comical montage of the tiger tagging along with the kid all the way up through adulthood—with the punchline that Jun just yeeted the tiger off a cliff one day because God told him to. Except then it turns out that didn't take, and the tiger isn't even dead, as stated just a couple of minutes earlier, Jun just sold him to the zoo for drinking money. I've discussed this series as "all over the place" before, but this goes beyond that. This is Aqua Teen Hunger Force pacing.

It plays like Yoroi-Shinden trying too hard to be unserious. Or maybe misguidedly couching everything around Jun as some sort of unglamorous deflation because they've got a hatred for the tagalong kid from the old cartoon. It's giving that time a Transformers fan-convention comic violently killed off Daniel and Wheelie; it's a cringe look. It's also not the only example in this episode of a swerve, as the writing also introduces a whole bonus faction of folks from the Divine World that Jun communicates with. A gracious addition as I'm still working to keep track of the Ten Braves before more of them get killed off—oh this episode also lets slip that the villain crew have a subsection going by the "Last Name Group," whatever that means, and shows some of them out of their armor for the first time. I already take notes for my reviews of these shows, but if I didn't, at this point I'd feel like I had to take notes.

Look, I'm not stupid, I can still follow the introductions and inclusions of characters in this samurai superhero show geared to eight-year-olds. But having this Lucky Charms box of a cast shotgunned at the screen with wildly varying tones and paces across the board causes whiplash, and that's before I even address the point that this is all crowding out what's ostensibly supposed to be a focal arc for Kaito, who's had a hard enough time getting anything to do in the show lately as it is!

Rounding back to Kaito, it does make clear that everything Samurai Troopers is throwing at the wall here isn't wholly random. Kaito's questioning of his Grandmother's connection to him comes out of last week's revelation that all the Troopers were adopted, and ties in with the irreverent but still present point about Jun's treatment of White Blaze. It's similar to the sheer number of layers the show stacks in its whole theme of generational insecurities. So I can appreciate the density of the writing in theory, it's just that using this as a framing element for Kaito's grandparental struggles ironically crowds out his own parts of the plot, and the sincerity of his side clashes mightily with the shitpost structure of Jun and White Blaze's backstory.

At least the zoo setting of the attempt to retrieve White Blaze lends itself to some fresh action for Samurai Troopers. Monster animal puppets are a neat move from the humanoid opponents they've dealt with thus far, and lead to fun battling of big beasties like Kaito blasting a big ball of birds. They're even getting more subversive with the song selections as well, as this week eschews an actual 80s-90s hit for "Okiraku Jodo e," an apparently made-for-the-series tune by an in-universe group played by a gaggle of Aikatsu! performers. Somehow, even then, they still can't clear getting the lyrics subbed on-screen, but it is something that gets my gears turning about where, if anywhere, Yoroi-Shinden might be going with all this.

At this point, I honestly don't know. I think there's a version of this show where its sensibilities trend properly gonzo, and it clicks into place as an outlandish good time. Shōgo Mutō might need to be more of a Toshiki Inoue for that to work, and I don't know that he's quite there yet. Maybe Yoroi-Shinden can become a place for him to flex that as it goes on. But at this stage, so much of it feels like smashing expensive, armored action figures together, banging out something that functions while still having, oddly, an awareness of overarching themes and connective ideas. It's at least interesting to watch, in a way that's unrefined and continually falling well below its original potential.

Rating:

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Yoroi-Shinden Samurai Troopers is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Chris loves transforming heroes, but hasn't been able to make time for Toei's stuff recently, so he'll settle for following these Warriors what are Ronin. Follow him on his BlueSky if you're interested in his opinions on other niche nerdery.

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