Today, I just finished watching Samurai 7, and here we are again.
Based on Akira Kurosawa movie titled Seven Samurai, this one takes place on the future where mecha is aplenty. A village is harassed by mecha bandits who wants to rob all their rice (yes, rice), and send their water maiden to get some samurais from the city to help defend from them.
Not your usual mecha anime, with the description above you would have think those bandit mechas ate rice 
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Story:-
I have not watched the original movie to compare with this anime, but even as a stand alone anime, the story itself is just your standard shounen samurai story. We got a pretty water maiden who comes to a hostile city try to bribe/recruit samurais (is that a correct plural form – can’t be arsed to check) to help defend her village with rice. Maybe if she use other methods that make full use of her assets, she will be more successful. Unsurprisingly (since this is anime after all), she managed to do just that and managed to get seven samurai to help defend her village.
Up to this point, I have mentioned 2 facts:-
1. This is a mecha anime.
2. The story is just a standard shounen samurai story.
This is because, despite this anime containing plenty of mecha, none of them samurais pilots one (and no, the water maiden is not an elite Coordinator Gundam Pilot even if she has some ESP powers). A big chance to make the story more interesting has just gone up in smoke, a pity considering one of the samurai is an emo kid (see what you got if you use rice only to hire samurais), and the captain of the bunch is also some emo indecisive wreck. Well, one of them is a mini-mecha muahahahaha.
Character design:-
Mecha design is great, a shame none of the samurais pilot one. Human character design is also the same, except maybe for the water maiden who deserve more efforts at the designer side to be more beautiful. Generally no complaints from me here.
Voice acting:-
From all entries in this blog, Samurai 7 has the best voice acting overall (so far). Ukyo and Rikichi has that quirky but great acting quality that will make their characters to be permanently etched in my mind. Others does not disappoint me either.
Animation/direction:-
One of the more expensive anime ever made, the quality of the animation does not disappoint. The CGI and traditional animations are all top-notch. The direction is also great, especially in the action scenes in the latter part of the series.
Music:-
The only thing that disappoint me. The OST itself is not that good (read: average), and the OP/ED themes are disappointing.
Conclusion:-
Great character design, voice acting, animation and directing, but not so good music and story. 7 out of 10 is what this one get.
