Characters
Samurai Champloo tells the story of three strangers in the Tokugawa era (also known as the Edo Period) who come together on a journey across Japan.
- Mugen: A brash vagabond from the Ryukyu Islands, Mugen is a 19 year old wanderer with a wildly unconventional fighting style. He wears metal-soled geta and carries an exotic sword on his back. In Japanese, the word mugen means "infinite" (literally, "without limit" or "limitless").
- Jin: Jin is a 20 year old reserved ronin who carries himself in the conventionally stoic manner of a samurai of the Tokugawa era. Using his waist-strung daishÅ, he fights in the traditional kenjutsu style of a samurai trained in a prominent, sanctioned dojo. Jin wears glasses, an available but uncommon accessory in Edo era Japan. Spectacles, called "Dutch glass merchandise" ("Oranda gyoku shinajina" in Japanese) at the time, were imported from Holland early in the Tokugawa period and became more widely available as the 17th century progressed. Although pictured in advertisements as smoking a kiseru, he was never depicted with one in the series. He is named after one of the seven virtues of the samurai in Bushido, "Jin" (Benevolence).
- Fuu: A feisty 15-year-old girl, Fuu asks Mugen and Jin to help her find a sparsely described man she calls "the samurai who smells of sunflowers." A flying squirrel named "Momo" (short for momonga, "flying squirrel") accompanies her, inhabiting her kimono and frequently leaping out to her rescue. Her name, Fuu, is short for fuukinchou, which is Japanese for "tanagers".
Apart from this trio, other characters tend to appear only once or twice throughout the series.
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Famous quotes containing the word characters:
“No author has created with less emphasis such pathetic characters as Chekhov has....”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“My characters never die screaming in rage. They attempt to pull themselves back together and go on. And that’s basically a conservative view of life.”
—Jane Smiley (b. 1949)
“His leanings were strictly lyrical, descriptions of nature and emotions came to him with surprising facility, but on the other hand he had a lot of trouble with routine items, such as, for instance, the opening and closing of doors, or shaking hands when there were numerous characters in a room, and one person or two persons saluted many people.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)