Allankles
Kwisatz Haderach
Originally posted by ensatsu-ken
So, by quality, are you referring to action, sound, and animation? That's what I'm assuming, because stuff lilke music, characters, concept, story, and enjoyment, as well as several other aspects of different series, are all things which I consider to be based on ones personal preferrence, in terms of the quality which they see in it. Technical stuff is what I would consider quality. So, if that's what you mean, then I consider stuff like Cowboy Bebop, Full Metal Panic! The Second Raid, Death Note, Hellsing Ultimate, Black Lagoon, and at least a few other anime, to be equal in quality to Samurai Champloo, if we are only talking about the technical stuff here.
Character can also be analyzed using standardized criteria. You can analyze the layers of the character, their motivations, their personalities, and how those personalities react and evolve to certain situations.
Most animes fall far behind Champloo in how they present character progression and character depth.
Analyzing a concept can only be subjective, as that has entirely to do with your preference for style, and the creators/directors vision. A concept is really only portrayed successfully or not, according the creators viewpoint - unless of course that viewpoint is made clear to the critic.
As far as story is concerned that is also tied to the concept of the series. In Champloo's case it less about a continuous, active overarching story arch (although there is one) and more about compelling sub plots.
Every episode is its own "series" which makes every encounter, every supporting character that more compelling because they are treated like characters in a movie rather than a series. Every plot starts and finishes at the end of an episode, there's no thread leading to some other filler episode, or some prolonged and overdrawn plot resolution, the plot starts and ends in one episode. For most episodes anyway I'm aware there were some two part episodes towards the end and a couple in the middle.
Champloo was a brilliant series. I've watched plenty good animes (Wolf's Rain, Ergo Proxy, Black Lagoon, Record of Lodoss War Ova, Berserk etc) but Champloo is definitely at the top of the list as far as anime series go.