Characters: Samurai Champloo

Characters: Samurai Champloo

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Mugen

Voiced by: Kazuya Nakai (JP), Steve Blum (EN)

Mugen's a murderous crazy break dancing pirate. While not the main character, Mugen is probably the face of the show, as he was voiced in the dub by Steve "Spike Spiegel"Blum. Despite Mugen picking fights with everybody, and generally being a total dick, he sticks with Fuu on her quest.

• No Guy Wants An Amazon: Inverted, Mugen prefers strong women to the more quiet ones that he meets.
• Afro Asskicker
• Anti Hero: Type V-> Type IV.
• Axe Crazy: Mugen's response to someone telling him to shut up? Cut off their arm of course.
• Bad Ass: Mugen pulled off a Ki blast with a month of training, and regularly kicks the crap out of armed soldiers with his feet.
• Balloon Belly: Tends to happen when he seriously overeats.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: Maybe with Fuu.
• Blood Knight: In one episode, he tries to start a fight with Fuu's pet squirrel.
  • In fact, the only time he ever turns away from a fight is when he goes to rescue Fuu from where she's being held on that island. And that said, he knew he was running towards another fight anyway.
• Byronic Hero
• Chaotic Neutral: Mugen pretty much does whatever the fuck he feels like. In the first episode alone he agrees to kill people for rice dumplings and start breaking a man's fingers one by one as a countdown until his friends come back in force... Before growing bored and deciding to break them all in one go. What makes him this alignment rather than Chaotic Evil, is that he doesn't hurt anyone who doesn't get in his way (all his victims are the Asshole Victim type), and he sometimes does heroic things for goodish reasons.
• Character Development: He slowly comes to care about someone other than himself, most notably Fuu.
• Combat Pragmatist: Mugen doesn't know the meaning of fair play.
• Cruel Mercy: To Kohza.
• Dance Battler: Break dancing to be specific, he even has steel plates on the soles of his sandals.
• Determinator: The man dies more than once during the course of the series, and comes back to life through sheer determination!
• Evil Counterpart: Mukuro.
• Foe Yay / Ho Yay: With Jin.
• Heroic Sociopath
• Hidden Heart Of Gold: A very small heart, but it is still there. Mugen may threaten murder against anyone who implies this.
• Jerkass Woobie
• Kavorka Man / The Leisure Suit Larry: He's both, most women find him a socially backwards ape, but some women find his skirt chasing endearing.
• Made Of Iron: He's been been in close proximity to massive explosions, had his belly slashed open, was shot in the back with a musket ball, tortured, mauled by a psycho with a scythe, and even died on more than one occasion. And each time he recovered completely within a short space of time with no apparent lasting effects.
• Noble Demon
• No Social Skills
• Perma Stubble
• Power Trio: Firmly in the Id.
• Red Oni Blue Oni: With Jin. They even have the clothing choices to match.
• The Rival: To Jin.
• Satisfied Street Rat
• Token Evil Teammate
• The Unfettered: He gives his all to every single thing he does.

     Mugen's Run 

Jin

Voiced by: Kirk Thornton (EN)

Jin is everything Mugen isn't: Polite, honorable, and introspective. A ronin who barely speaks, Jin helps Fuu on her quest out of a sense of obligation, while running away from his own past troubles.

• Anti Hero: Type III
• Badass Normal: Doesn't use any Ki, even Mugen pulled off that weird spirit blast thing.
• Badass Longhair
• Bishonen: Is able to successfully dress up as a woman.
  • And he's ''hot'' as a woman.
• Blood Knight: Although he doesn't go out of his way to start trouble, Jin never backs down from a fight.
• Born In The Wrong Century: According to Jin, there isn't any worthy lord to serve nowadays.
• Character Development: Just like Mugen, Jin comes to appreciate becoming friends with others.
• Chivalrous Pervert: Jin is just as interested in women as Mugen is, he's just a little more quiet about it.
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique: He uses this to defeat Kariya. The move is supposed to be suicidal but he manages to survive.
• Deadpan Snarker
• Determinator /Made Of Iron: Gets a sword through his stomach and keeps going. Able to fight at peak level after being tortured for a whole day. Also falls off bridges a lot.
• Estrogen Brigade Bait: "Ohhhhh.... Master Jin!"
• Evil Counterpart: Kariya.
• The Fettered
• Foe Yay/Ho Yay: With Mugen.
• Honor Before Reason: See The Last DJ below.
• Knight In Sour Armor: He knows damn well that it doesn't pay to be good or honorable in the world he's been honed in. But he just can't help himself from doing the right thing.
• The Lancer: Jin is much less likely to instigate an episode's events than Mugen and Fuu are, and rarely involves them in his conflicts.
• The Last DJ: He could be a famous and wealthy warrior, but the lords aren't good enough for him.
  • Furthermore, Jin's old master told Jin about the shogunate's plan to turn their school into a corps of assassins for the government, and Jin vehemently protested on principle. For this his master was ordered to kill him, but Jin was the winner of that fight. He could probably clear his name in a second and do serious damage to the government by telling the truth. He'd also dishonor the name of his master and his school, so he goes Walking The Earth instead.
• Lawful Good/Good Is Not Nice: Card-Carrying Samurai. If there was EVER a better example of both tropes: He saves a damsel in distress from a life of prostitution (and it's heavily implied he'll marry her after her period of isolation ends), will not serve the currently corrupt Government in return for wealth and respect, and refuses to use force if he doesn't have to. Despite being polite, however, he is not exactly friendly, starts off with a small superiority complex, and in the first episode he saves a peasant from the the corrupt lord that was going to have the peasant beaten or killed for not giving the lord a sufficient bribe, but he takes the peasant's cash too. Of course, the peasant is probably happy to not be on the wrong end of katana.
  • Then again saving said peasant proved useful as he later gives Fuu the pipe needed to start the fireworks that would save Mugan and Jin from their executions.
• Lethal Chef: In "Gamblers and Gallantry", Jin mans a grilled eel stand alongside a woman he ran into earlier in the episode. After the dinner rush, he agrees to cook her an eel. Her reaction? "...Wow. Your cooking is really quite amazing. I'm pretty sure this the worst thing I've ever eaten! But I suppose that's a talent in and of itself..."
• Megane
• Mistaken For Gay: Both Mugen and some random assassin think he walks down the left side of the street, and there's some intimations that his old dojo friend Yukimaru was Jin's Uke. On the other hand he does have sex with several women and falls in love with one of them.
  • Mugen claims to be relieved when Jin hugs their money to go to a prostitute. Mugen had allegedly begun to suspect that Jin was gay.
• Not So Different: With Mugen, both highly trained fighters who don't really enjoy themselves (except in combat) and put a lot of emphasis on martial prowess. Neither experienced love in their lives until they met up with each other. Yes, that was intentionally hoyaytastic.
• Power Trio: Super Ego, he rarely shows emotion and is dispassionate about everything.
• Red Oni Blue Oni: Blue.
• Ronin
• Shirtless Scene: With torture scenes, hot springs and good old fashioned sword fights, he gets a couple.
• Slipknot Ponytail
• Stoic Spectacles: He's quite fond of them too.
• The Stoic
  • Stoic Woobie
• The Unfunny: (After being... entertained by at least two prostitutes, he gets up and takes out an attacking group of five men in two slices. Then doubles over. "My back!"
  • "I have heartburn..."

     Jin's Run 

Fuu

Voiced by: Kari Wahlgren (EN)

The driving force behind the story. Fuu is a nice girl looking for a samurai who smells of sunflowers, who is her father, Seizo Kasumi. She has some connections with the underground Christian movement, a movement she doesn't know about.

• Berserk Button: While not driving her into a murderous rage, she gets pissed whenever Mugen calls her ugly.
• Big Eater: Interestingly, she fits both the "surprisingly skinny" and "fat" versions of the trope, as she's normally pretty lanky, but will temporarily swell up and get a Balloon Belly after some particularly serious eating.
  • She is a teenager, a time when metabolisms are at their highest.
• Bodyguard Crush: Possibly on Jin, Mugen, or both. While most interpret her as being closest to Mugen, she's more openly affectionate with Jin.
• The Chick
• Curtains Match The Window
• Distressed Damsel: A fairly justified version, since while Mugen and Jin have pasts which justify their combat prowess, Fuu is just a normal teenager.
• Green Eyed Monster: She's angry whenever Jin or Mugen visits another woman.
• The Heart: She keeps Mugen and Jin from killing each other, and takes it hard whenever they try to leave.
• Memento Mac Guffin: The skull charm on her knife's sheath. It's a hint to her father's past, but she doesn't learn this until near the end of the series.
• The Messiah: Not a mean bone in her body, and due to her actions she saved both main's lives and an innumerable number of side characters.
• Near Rape Experience: There was a run of episodes that involved her being kidnapped and sold to Westerners or plain old brothels. She's also molested in ep. 25 by one of the brothers who is seeking to kill Mugen.
• Neutral Female: Not quite. She's weak, and probably should stay out of fights, but she intercedes on more then one occasion.
• Neutral Good: She's the nicest of the three by far.
• Pettanko
• Power Trio: The Ego - see above.
• Plucky Girl: She runs off with two guys she's never met, one of dubious morality, saves their asses from the government, to find some guy whose face she doesn't remember. Does she give up? No. Does she give in? Hell no! Face it, Fuu is stronger willed then either Mugen or Jin.
  • Or just plain insane.
  • For a specific example, in one episode a thug tries to threaten her with a knife and tells her if she screams, he'll kill her. She goes ahead and screams before he has time to actually put the knife in a threatening position.
• Spell My Name With An S: A single example—the Impression soundtrack CD has a song called "Who's Theme".
• Ted Baxter: She thinks the men are lining up to ravish her. She's usually wrong.