Character · Samurai Champloo
Mugen
A swordsman from Okinawa who fights like a breakdancer and has no interest in doing anything twice.
In Otakana the clue reads: Breakdancing swordsman from the Ryukyus
- Type
- Character
- Series
- Samurai Champloo
- Letters
- 5 · Normal
Mugen comes from the Ryukyu Islands, which in the Edo period meant an outsider to the Japanese mainland and a criminal to anyone who asked. His sword style has no school behind it and no manners in it. He kicks, spins, uses his heels, throws himself off walls, and holds his blade in whichever hand is free, which works because nobody trained against a fighter with no form to read.
He ends up travelling with Jin, a straight-backed ronin trained in an orthodox school, and Fuu, the waitress who saved both from execution on the condition that they help her find a samurai who smells of sunflowers. The two swordsmen agree to a duel once the search is over and spend the entire series failing to get around to it.
Shinichiro Watanabe directed the 26 episodes at Manglobe in 2004, and the show's central joke is anachronism. Hip-hop scores the sword fights, graffiti appears on Edo walls, and the soundtrack from Nujabes and Fat Jon does as much to date the series as any of the swordplay.
Spelling MUGEN
MUGEN is five letters and needs no translation gymnastics. The word means limitless or infinite in Japanese, which fits a fighter with no formal style and no plan. Watch the vowels rather than the consonants: it is MU and then GEN, with a hard G, and the common slips are MOGEN and MUGIN. Nothing doubles, nothing lengthens, and the N closes the row.