Samurai Champloo 1.04

Hellhounds for Hire (Part 2)

Mugen and Jin fight but the fight ends when Nagatomi’s men close in and separate the two men. Mugen is enraged but unable to get to Jin before he and Kawara’s son, Sousuke, escape. Jin tries to counsel Sousuke, who is angry over his inability to rescue his sister, to cool down. Sousuke doesn’t listen to Jin and soon thereafter is captured by Nagatomi’s gang and held hostage.

Heitaro Kawara, leader of the Kawara gang, proposes that the gang war be resolved by a game of dice. Nagatomi agrees to Kawara’s proposal. Fuu escapes from the Nagatomi brothel and inadvertently winds up being the one to roll the dice. Kawara loses the game and commits suicide, which wasn't part of the agreed upon terms of the bet. Chaos ensues in the aftermath of Kawara’s death. Jin kills Nagatomi. Mugen kills Ishimatsu. 

Samurai Champloo 1.03

Hellhounds for Hire (Part 1)

Mugen and Jin run away from Foo. They run in opposite directions but wind up in the same town. Two gangs are in the midst of a turf war. The Kawara gang have been there for decades and the Nagatomi gang are fairly recent arrivals. Mugen hooks up with the Nagatomi gang. Jin hooks up with the Kawara gang. Foo gets tricked out of the last of her money and then gets captured and locked up in a brothel that belongs to the Nagatomi gang.

The three are reunited at the end of the episode when Jin and the son of Heitaro the Buddha, the leader of the Kawara gang, try to rescue his sister who has also been captured and thrown in the brothel. Jin and Mugen are ready to cross swords when the episode ends. 

Samurai Champloo 1.02

Redeye Reprisal

The judge's son from the previous episode, who lost an arm fighting with Mugen, returns. He brings with him a large, ogre-like man who has killed a lot of people. The judge's son sets traps for Mugen, Jin, and Fuu.

Fuu passes out and has to be carried. Jin and Mugen drop her off in an abandoned shack. 

Mugen gets lured away from the others by a woman who invites him to spend the night with her. She poison's him and then explains that only the judge's son has the antidote.

Jin goes to soak in a spring and meets an assassin whom the judge's son hired. The two men fight. The assassin is impressed by Jin's skill with a sword.

Samurai Champloo 1.01

Tempestuous Temperaments

Mugen and Jin, two warriors of very different styles and temperaments, cross swords at a tea house. The tea house burns down. Mugen and Jin are arrested for pissing off the local magistrate. They killed several of his men before they started fighting with one another and the magistrate’s son was killed in the fire. Fuu, a waitress who used to work in the now destroyed rea house, offers to help them escape execution if they will put off picking up their fight where it left off and help her find a samurai who smells of sunflowers. 

Thoughts

There are 26 episodes in this series. I’ve seen it before, but it has been more than 15 years since I last watched it. There’s a lot that I don’t recall about this series. The rest of the series is about the quest to find the samurai who smells of sunflowers. There are side quests. I remember a little bit about how it ends but not much about the intervening episodes.