Samurai Champloo

Samurai Champloo throws Edo-period Japan and modern hip-hop into the same blender and somehow makes it look inevitable. From the director of Cowboy Bebop, it follows three travelers thrown together by chance: Mugen, a wild, breakdancing swordsman with no rules; Jin, a disciplined ronin who's his complete opposite; and Fuu, the teenage waitress who ropes them both into helping her find "the samurai who smells of sunflowers." The story is a road trip, and like the best road trips it's really about the company. Each episode is a self-contained detour — graffiti artists, baseball games, doomed love affairs — scored to turntable beats that have no business fitting a period piece and fit it perfectly. The swordplay, when it comes, is loose and lethal and unforgettable. It's a complete 26-episode journey with no franchise homework attached, which makes it one of the easiest classics to recommend. If Cowboy Bebop is jazz, Champloo is the mixtape — looser, younger, and every bit as stylish. Watch it in order and let it wander; getting there is the whole point.