The story of the Afro Samurai is a long and tortuous one.

Basically, in a Japan that’s gone so far ahead it’s come back around to feudalism but with robots, Afro (named for the huge afro he wears) wears the Number Two headband, a headband supposedly imbued with magical powers.  There’s also a Number One headband, and its powers are allegedly godlike in nature.  But the only person who can kill the current owner of the Number One headband take it for his own is whoever happens to have the Number Two headband, so the Number Two headband is the most prized object on earth, in a roundabout sense.

Afro’s father, if you can believe it, was the old Number One, until he was defeated in a duel by Justice, a gunman and former Number Two who, as is the case, became the new Number One.  Afro witnessed his father’s death—a particularly messy one, since Justice took Afro’s father’s head off.  Thus, Afro, the current Number Two, wanders in search of a chance for revenge on Justice (who, in case you were wondering, is still Number One).

And this is about where we pick up in the game, with Afro off in search of Justice to duel him for revenge and the right to the Number One headband.  All the while, Afro will fight off pretenders to the Number Two headband, including the Empty Seven Clan.

I’ve got to hand it to the game right off—they really went all out in keeping to the anime.  They even got most of the voice actors in place. Ron Perlman is still Justice, the legendary Sam Jack himself is still Afro AND Ninja Ninja, and Kelly Hu still voices assassin Akiku.  The plotline seems to be at least largely intact, if somewhat abbreviated and with a few key differences, and even the graphic styles seem to mesh.

There’s only one real problem with this game—the gameplay.  It’s your basic op-standard hack-and-slash brawler, with Afro carving his way through legions of nearly identical enemies, occasionally broken up by a few new types every so often.  It gets to the point where you’re almost glad to see a ninja with a rifle show up because you’re sick of chopping up the guys with the basket heads.  Not to say that it’s not FUN, of course—you’ll have access to plenty of moves, including a surprisingly fun bullet-time sort of affair that lets you unleash a nasty attack that’ll often leave dismembered corpses in its wake.  If it contacts, of course; hit detection is another slightly weak point on this game.  Imagine a game where you jump at a wall, only to find that Afro won’t bother to grab onto it because you didn’t jump at it just right.  And if you said Tomb Raider, well, you’d be right…but it also applies to Afro Samurai.

In all honesty, I liked Afro Samurai.  Not a whole lot, but I liked it.  It’s very much a good rental, especially if you’re fond of the original anime.  There are plenty of problems with it, make no mistake—it’s monotonous, it’s a little dull in points, there are some technical issues to resolve—but they did do a solid job of keeping canon intact and respected while adding a few new touches that make it unique.  Not to mention fun—that’s the best thing to say about Afro Samurai.  The game is actually fun.  Not fun for long, of course; that’s where the monotony and technical problems make a hash out of things.  But there’s significant fun to be had in Afro Samurai, a fantastic new development.