Try to define anime. You can’t, because your definition is redundant.
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I think the most quality fusion of hip hop and eastern stylings was and will continue to be Samurai Champloo.

I enjoyed the animation of Afro Samurai , it was top-notch. But everything else , from the haphazard "story" and poor voice acting , made me cringe. And am I the only one who thought Samuel L. Jackson didn’t say much..like..ever?

Oh I’ve never wanted to see a cartoon sidekick die more than that idiot that follows our protagonist around.

>> VHD:Bloodlust – "My problem is with the writing. For one, I think it’s horribly cheesy and needlessly overwrought."

Very true. It actually reminded me of the way movies used to be in the black and white era, when everything was so melodramatic and contorted, almost operatic. The whole "Vampires launching into space" with emotional narration thing at the end is a great example of cheese taken (or should I say spread? ) too far. Ninja Scroll is Kawajiri’s best work because it isn’t needlessly corny, just pure action and natural emotional resonance.

Anyway, re: VHD:Bloodlust – I actually rather like the English voice acting, the voice actors did a very good job with what they had to work with. My problem is with the writing. For one, I think it’s horribly cheesy and needlessly overwrought. Then there’s the excessiveness of the dialogue – American anime dubs have a tendency to feature twice as much dialogue as the original, and in case of VHD:BL it totally kills the mood for me (I mean, it’s basically a western!), not to mention that there are at least two scenes that I remember where the voice actors have to talk audibly faster to be able to say all their lines in time. Plus, the movie sometimes just doesn’t make sense in English. I watched it quite a few times, but I only realized what the deal was with the squirrel joke when I first watched it in Japanese. (Not to mention the differences in story and characterization – really, the English and Japanese versions are sometimes like two different movies.)

Hayao Miyazaki used a number of European locations when planning his films for instance, and the likes of Bubblegum Crisis and pretty much anything adapted from Masumune Shirow would be one heck of a lot different had Ridley Scott not read a Philip K Dick novel and made Blade Runner. Whether or not Afro Samurai is your ‘thing’ or not, its merely one example of an ongoing trend of Japan and the West influencing one another in turns.

Odd about the Vampire Hunter D BL dub, as that ’s one of my prime examples of a dub that I like, etc etc and I normally don’t like dubs at all.

I agree– one shouldn’t like it just because it’s been "Americanified". Of course. And the show’s obviously derivative. For sure. All of your points are valid. My standards are obviously just different than yours. Sometimes, I watch anime and movies just to hang out and have fun, rather than to be challenged. The ep I watched was absurd, true, but it delivered the "popcorn movie" goods.

But if it doesn’t for you, that’s cool. You do other things to get that fix.

My other problem with Afro Samurai is the same as with most “global manga” – it’s trying so hard to be “anime” that it forgets that in the end, anime are cartoons, too. One of the reasons I enjoy Teen Titans (aside from the fact that I find it genuinely funny, whatever this says about my sense of humor) is that it is, in essence, just what its anime counterparts are: “simply cartoons that don’t condescend, that don’t feature faultless personalities and aren’t boring moralistic treacle.” It doesn’t have an attitude, doesn’t have a point to prove (unlike Afro “I’m an American anime!” Samurai), and aside of the visuals, it doesn’t feature “anime elements” (which don’t really exist anyway, only clichés). It’s not trying to be “anime,” it’s content to be an enjoyable “cartoon.”

Meanwhile Afro Samurai, like so many OEL manga artists, falls into the trap of trying to approach the audience by being derivative so much that it forgets to be creative and going its own way (at least so far). And while I don’t condemn any anime just because it’s American, I don’t see why I should appreciate an anime just because it’s an American effort. (Kind of like how everyone is expected to love and appreciate the English dub of VHD:Bloodlust just because “it was intended to be in English!” That may be so, but the writing still sucks and the Japanese dub is much better.) That doesn’t make it any better for me, but then, I’m not American so maybe I just have less “built-in” sympathy.