5/5 One of the best I have ever seen
  by Bushosensen
I watched the anime Samurai 7 long time ago !!! One of my real favorites. The fighting scenes are awesome , the characters close to Kurosawas movie !
I`m happy I could buy now the complete box set.

4/5 Echoes of Kurosawa.
  by I. G. Howe (Calgary, Canada)
I'll be honest and say that when I ordered Samurai 7, I wasn't really expecting to get Kurosawa's brilliance encapsulated in animated form. That said, the great man himself was fond of trying the impossible and I believe that he would have found the basic theory of the idea perfectly acceptable.

For my review I'm going to assume that you've watched the original movie, Kurosawa's 1954 classic "The Seven Samurai", a period movie set in the 16th century in Feudal Japan. A period of great unrest, many of the Samurai were forced to turn Ronin, masterless soldiers willing to fight to the death for a bowl of rice and a cup of water. Seven restless warriors turn their hands to defending a village of helpless peasants not for honour, not for profit - for all the rice they can eat.

Samurai 7 preserves that basic idea, but the details of the story are chopped around. You'll recognise each of the seven and some of the peasants too, but the rather wet love interest in Kurosawa's work is replaced by a stern young priestess and her irrepressible young sister. Whacky hijinks ensue. More time is spent on each of the characters backstories and additional plot arcs are whacked in around and beneath that central plank that is the spine of the story.

The writing is good, the dubbed version is actually pretty watchable and the animation itself mixes traditional and CGI elements acceptably, if not seamlessly. Although the tale twists and turns a bit, the bad guys are the bad guys and the good guys are always the good guys - and the central tenets enthroned in Kurosawa's work are held up here too - Loyalty, Bravery and daring to make a difference.

That said, this IS an action Anime show. The replacement of the eyepatch wearing and horse riding bandits with giant Mecha and battleships stretches credibility at times. You really have to understand Zen and Bushido to 'get' why the sword of a true Samurai can affect the biggest of these gigantic foes - even then it can look a little over the top. It is undeniable, however, that the makers had a healthy respect for the original work and looking for the many little homages that are densely scattered within this 'reimagining' of the original story warms the heart of an old fan.

I heartily recommend this Anime for any Seven Samurai fanatic or Otaku who likes action and Mecha anime. If you haven't seen the original movie and aren't a fan of mecha anime I rather more cautiously recommend it. If you're simply a fan of well made Anime looking for a new series, you can do a lot worse than try this out - especially at this price.

Above all, if you haven't seen the Kurosawa film and you really enjoyed this anime - go buy it!

5/5 Worth a watch
  by J. Hunt (940 Mountcastle Cres Pickering ON L1V 5J9)
There's a few complaints about the series....varying quality in the art at some points is probably the main one but as for the rest of the series....if you watch episode one and you're even slightly like me then you'll be hooked all series. Does this anime break my top 5? No it doesn't but I'd still strongly recommend it since the action and characters are about as good as you can get.

3/5 The first two thirds are awesome. Then.....meh.
  by Raspywolf (GA)
So I just got done watching this and the first two thirds of this series were amazing. I was watching it thinking I had finally found the perfect anime. They truly did honor to Akira Kurosawa with their adaptation. Then they finished up Kurosawa's storyline and things quickly devolved into "What? Huh? This is crap!" I was quite disappointed. So I give it 3 out of 5 because the part that adapted Kurosawa's 7 Samurai was truly worth of 5 or even 6 stars if you could rate it that way, but afterwards it was less than a 1 star anime.

5/5 "On the battlefield, there were samurai. On the land, there were peasants."
  by H. Bala (Carson - hey, we have an IKEA store! - CA USA)
Absolutely, Akira Kurosawa's SEVEN SAMURAI is one of the great films of all time, and, in attempting a remake, one would require a hefty set of stones, as well as ample funding and talent. In 2004, with the approval of Akira Kurosawa's estate, a top notch anime version, SAMURAI 7, was created and debuted on Japanese television. In this DVD box set, we get the entire series, consisting of 26 episodes on 7 discs. SAMURAI 7 takes Akira Kurosawa's original masterpiece and transports it from the 16th century to a war ravaged, sci-fi future setting. However, the tweaked storyline still chronicles the tale of seven samurai who come to the aid of a tormented farming village that has been subjugated by bandits; this time, however, the bandits are the Nobuseri, mechanically-integrated predators who themselves were once samurai.

You don't need to have seen the 1954 film to enjoy SAMURAI 7, though viewers of both will make rapid connections between the two. The makers of this anime did a great job of instilling into their project the same heart and intent of the original SEVEN SAMURAI. This isn't just a meaningless point A to point B anime action flick. Emphasis is thoughtfully placed on character and plot development as we actually get to know the players in this series, from the ragtag samurai, which the last great war has largely reduced to a jobless and purposeless state, to the lowly farmers, who are insular, abhor fighting, and fear the samurai almost as much as the bandits.

Although palpable throughout the series, it's in the samurai's stay at the Kanna village where the distinction between the two social classes become most pronounced as the bushido code clashes with the villager's less "noble" but infinitely more realistic principles. The bridge between the two castes lies in the form of Kikuchiyo, the boorish but exuberant mechanical samurai who used to be a farmer; this was the role originated by the great Toshiro Mifune. Don't get me wrong, this animated Kikuchiyo version doesn't even come close to bringing to the table what Mifune did. It just underscores how bigger than life Mifune made his character that this incarnation actually had to be in a mechanical shell to halfway compete. Honestly, Kikuchiyo here is adequate and, at times, nerve grating.

But there comes a time when plot and character development must give way to serious hind kicking. And, in these moments, the samurai do NOT mess around. The action scenes are astounding! You almost believe a regular-sized guy can take out a mechagiant. These key sequences are significantly emphasized by the blood-pumping score, which uses a healthy dose of Japanese taiko drums. The animation is very, very nice to look at, even if, at times, the CG doesn't quite harmonize with the 2-d animation.

Along with the sci-fi trappings, there are a few other significant changes that were made from Kurosawa's original film. There's a more impactful role played by the love interest Kirara the water priestess, as well as the introduction of her younger sister Komachi, who, along with Kikuchiyo, serves as comedy relief (Kirara and Komachi, by the way, are also Japanese brands of rice). Another change made is that, here, the samurai actually take the battle beyond the village bandits. But, listen, even with the sci-fi elements, the cool animation, the awesome battle scenes, I feel that the best thing about SAMURAI 7 is that it somehow retains the humanity of the original film. This really is anime for grown ups. The ending is still appropriately bittersweet as, ultimately, it's the villagers who win. There will always be harvests and harvest songs for the farmers. The samurai, on the other hand, just drift away. And the samurai leader, Shimada Kambei, who claims to have lost every war he's been in, has just lost another one...