Teen Samurai

Teen Samurai (Japanese: ティーンサムライ, Hepburn: Tīnsamurai) is a 2000 Japanese animated drama film produced by Time Warner Entertainment Japan and animated by Studio Deen. It was directed by Hiroshi Watanabe and written by manga writer Ryotaro Sekizawa; The story revolves around a boy in contemporary Japan, who has flashing memories and dreams of having lived in a different time period. He eventually realizes he was once a samurai who died in battle and had reincarnated and now he ends up using what he remembers of his skills to help others around him, while also having to put up with a corrupt headmaster.

The film was released in Japan by Warner Bros. on August 12, 2000, and was later released in the US in select theaters on May 10, 2002. It was the first anime project that Warner Bros. was directly involved in the production of. The film received positive reviews from critics, with praise towards Sekizawa's writing, the characters and animation. It grossed a worldwide total of $6.8 million at the box office. The film's US box office performance had exceeded Warner Bros.' expectations, and partly led to the creation of Warner Independent Pictures in 2003. Similarly, the film's success prompted Ryotaro Sekizawa to allow anime projects based on his works, having previously been largely hesitant about the idea after his dissatisfaction with the 1991 Quincy OVA.

Plot
Coming soon!

Additional Voices

 * Kirk Baily
 * Lex Lang
 * Dwight Schultz
 * Kate T. Vogt
 * Candi Milo
 * Johnny Yong Bosch
 * Pamela Adlon
 * Emilie Brown
 * Bob Papenbrook
 * Gary Martin
 * Debbie Rothstein
 * Scott Menville
 * Steve Kramer
 * Julia Fletcher

Production
The idea for Teen Samurai came from producer Hiroyuki Fukumoto at Studio Deen, which he presented to director Hiroshi Watanabe. It was initially envisioned as an anime television series, but in 1996, it was instead decided to produce it as a feature film and production planning began at Studio Deen. Not long into planning, Fukumoto lobbied the studio to get manga writer Ryotaro Sekizawa as the screenwriter, as he felt Sekizawa's dramedy storytelling approach shown in Quincy and many of his other works fit what Fukumoto imagined for the feature. Sekizawa was initially disinterested, due to his dissastifaction with the 1991 Quincy OVA, but after seeing the anime adaptation of Ranma ½ and the movie The Life of a Boy, Sekizawa changed his mind and agreed to join the production. This would be Sekizawa's first screenwriting credit and his first direct involvement in the production of an anime.

According to Sekizawa, the story notes he received from Deen were literally just "high school student finds out he was once a samurai through a conscience in his head." Because of this, the spec script he wrote largely contained ideas of his own, such as the parallel between Kazuhiro and Jurou regarding their situations, the conscience essentially being Yukio's spirit, and the idea of the headmaster being the villain. Various personalities for the characters, such as Yukio, Manami, Shika, Katashi and Hideki, were inspired by the personalities of some of the characters in Sekizawa's previous works. In addition to writing the screenplay, Sekizawa designed the characters himself, with the assistance of Norika Shimazawa. Chikako Shibata served as the film's art director and Akemi Hayashi was the chief animation director. Kodansha, who had worked with Sekizawa since creating Parody World, also helped to co-finance the feature. Whilst presenting the film's screenplay to potential distributors, it eventually fell into the hands of Time Warner Entertainment Japan, and upon impressing executives there, it would be passed on to Warner Bros. Pictures. Warner Bros. would agree to help finance the feature and secured not only the Japanese distribution rights, but also the distribution rights outside of Japan, including the United States and the United Kingdom. This marked the first time Warner Bros. was directly involved in the production of a Japanese anime film, which they would later do again with the anime anthology film The Animatrix in 2003 before eventually their Japanese production arm was established proper in 2006, and began producing and distributing anime films and shows beginning with the release of Brave Story that same year.

The English language version of Teen Samurai was directed by Jack Fletcher, who brought on board the project Cambodian-American actor François Chau as Yukio Otake and Gilmore Girls star Alexis Bledel as Shika Asato. The English version also features the voices of Dave Wittenberg, Amanda Winn Lee, Michael Reisz, Ralph Votrian, Crispin Freeman, Daran Norris, Michael McShane and John Hostetter.

Japan
To promote the film, Ryotaro Sekizawa wrote a manga adaptation of the film, which was serialized by Kodansha from September 2000 to May 2001. It was released to theaters on August 12, 2000.

Teen Samurai was released on VHS and DVD by Warner Home Video on February 14, 2001. An "International Version" DVD was released on February 6, 2002, which contained multi-language subtitles. A UMD version was later released in 2005, followed by an HD-DVD release on August 9, 2006. The movie was released on Blu-ray on March 14, 2007.

Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Japan released the 4K remaster of the film on Ultra HD Blu-ray and regular Blu-ray Disc on June 13, 2018.

North America
Warner Bros. released Teen Samurai in select theaters in North America on May 10, 2002, in both Japanese with English subtitles and an English dub. Despite the film's American release being quite limited, being released in 6 theaters before expanding to 74, it did fairly well at the box office, making back $2.3 million at the box office, exceeding Warner Bros.' profitability target. The film's success partly led to Warner Bros. establishing the Warner Independent Pictures banner in 2003, though only a handful of animated films were released under the label.

On September 24, 2002, the film was released on VHS and DVD by Warner Home Video in the US. While the VHS release is dub-only, the DVD version utilizes both the English and Japanese audio tracks, though visually it is the US theatrical version, with the opening and closing credits replaced with English-language ones. In addition, the American release's end credits are longer than the Japanese version, with an additional music piece being used to fill out the remaining fourty-five seconds of credits, thus resulting in silence when the Japanese audio track is selected.

The film had it's television premiere on Cartoon Network's Cartoon Theatre in an edited version censoring some violence on June 21, 2003. It was later broadcast uncut on Adult Swim on March 12, 2005 and again on October 14, 2005 to promote The Story of Quincy.

Warner Archive released the film on Blu-ray on April 5, 2016. Unlike the DVD release, the Japanese version was presented separately from the English version due to the minor edits in comparison between the two versions. This marks the first time the Japanese cut had been released in the United States since the initial theatrical release.

Box office
Coming soon!

Critical response
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, Teen Samurai has an approval rating of 78% based on 95 reviews, with an average rating of 7.7 out of 10. The site's critical consensus reads, "With its dynamic characters, lovely animation and a well put together screenplay, Teen Samurai is a delightful and even heartfelt tale about coming to terms with who you are that'll appeal to both newcomers and fans of Ryotaro Sekizawa's works." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 74 out of 100, based on 30 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews." The film was nominated at the Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association Awards 2002 for Best Animated Film, but lost to Lilo and Stitch.