Neko zamurai: Samurai Cat (both seasons)

February 13, 2020 9:04 AM - All Seasons

A humorless samurai, nearly desperate for work, agrees to assassinate a goblin cat that is accused of possessing a man's soul. (Japanese tv original, streaming on Amazon Prime)

Nerdist - There’s a Japanese Show About a Samurai and the Adorable Cat He Wouldn’t Assassinate

AV Club - Well, hello, here's a TV show about a "cat samurai"

Neko Samurai movie trailer on YouTube

posted by oh yeah! (6 comments total)

I remember the trailer and some gif-sets for this show went viral a few years ago, and I so wanted to see it, but I've never been any good at finding places to download overseas content, and after checking every now and then to see if someone had uploaded them to Youtube, I kind of forgot about it. But then last week it just popped up in the "Included with Prime:TV shows we think you'll like" category when I was poking around in Prime, and I finally got to watch it.

Whoever encoded this for Amazon screwed up in several of the season 1 episodes and didn't edit out the commercial blacks, so, be warned, the screen just goes to black and stays there for a minute or two between scenes. I thought it was buffering or I'd lost my internet, but, nope, looks like someone just dropped the ball up somewhere in the deliverables process, hah.

It was everything I'd hoped for and more. Highly recommend this to any fellow cat-crazy people. Season 1 is more grounded in reality, but in season 2 they go full bonkers with the comedy such as a body-swap episode between the cat & the samurai. I don't know where they found such a chill cat(s) as the ones playing Tamanoje. Maybe there's sedation involved, but, I don't really think so. There were some shots of cats that seemed a bit anxious -- ears a little back, eyes very wide, but, it never looked to me like there were cats in outright distress.
posted by oh yeah! at 9:37 AM on February 13, 2020 [2 favorites]

Do you happen to remember which episode is the body swap episode? There are no descriptions on Amazon video, and the imdb summaries are vague/incomplete.

Episode 1 didn't grab me, a bit too budget TV. However, greater silliness could push it over.
posted by fleacircus at 10:09 AM on February 13, 2020

It takes a few episodes before the cat starts to work her heart-melting magic on the samurai, episode 1 isn't the most representative of the series tone, definitely. From the imdb descriptions, it looks like S2 ep 8 was the body swap.
posted by oh yeah! at 10:27 AM on February 13, 2020 [1 favorite]

Seeing this post confused me for a moment! In the eighties and early nineties there was a series of books by American artist Mark Rogers featuring, well, a samurai cat, called, um, Samurai Cat.

The Japanese series and the book series are unrelated.
posted by mwhybark at 12:15 PM on February 13, 2020 [1 favorite]

I watched the first 10 min of episode 1 and it was draaaaagging. I'll give this another shot when it's not close to midnight and I have more energy.
posted by numaner at 10:08 AM on February 24, 2020

Sorry if I've overhyped it -- I was just so excited to have finally gotten the chance to watch it so many years after first hearing of it. And I am very much of a crazy cat lady, so, other people's mileage may vary.

Not a lot happens in episode 1 besides setting up the premise, the samurai+cat encounter isn't until the very end. Also, pretty much every episode starts with a recap of previous events, so, if skip ahead to episode 2 or 3 to get past the setup, you won't miss much continuity-wise.
posted by oh yeah! at 4:15 PM on February 24, 2020