Blood gushes in hack-and-slash ‘Afro Samurai’

He is Afro Samurai, so named for his sweeping, gorgeous 'fro swaying in Japanese breeze, like so much tousled cherry blossoms. This samurai aims to avenge the death of his father, beheaded in front of him when he was a boy. He's got daddy issues.

It is impossible to overstate the loveliness of the curves of grown-up Afro Samurai's tall, terribly svelte body. Standing still, he hunches forward, his torso concave, his arms bulldogish. When he swings two swords at lesser foes, he moves with a gymnast's grace. His clothes flap with the wind.

He seeks to slay the "No. 1" samurai, who killed his father. En route to No. 1, everyone sinister comes slicing for Afro, taking up most of the game.

"Afro Samurai" is, as we say, a hack-and-slash. You stab a steely red sword through rivals' throats. You kick them to death with tae kwon do efficacy.

Blood gushes out of necks. Gushes! The hack-and-slash is entertaining enough, although the game controls are sluggish at times (don't get me started on the lack of an "X-axis" swap), and things get clumsy-hard late, marring what could have been a classic game.

It's your good fortune, at least, to fight foes with comical fighting variations. A "hairsplitter" is when you cut someone in half vertically. "Trimming the fat" is when you cut someone in half horizontally. "Where's My Money" is a beat-down using your "Afro-kwando" kicks.

The beauty of "Afro" is all that hair, that magically drawn body, those Japanese settings of temples and rooftops topped with iconic-stone dragons breathing fire, homes lined cleanly with dark wood and paper walls, and rocky terrains, sunlit brighter than day.

Give credit to its original manga artist, Takashi Okazaki, for turning his manga into a miniseries, now this game. But it took a full crew at Namco Bandai's Surge Games to make "Afro" playable cinema.

Afro and his constant companion, Ninja Ninja, are voiced by Samuel L. Jackson, who produced the miniseries. If you remember the 12-letter cuss word Jackson used for laughs in past movies, imagine it here, too, as he spouts randy, insulting and hilarious rants I dare not quote.

Oh, and a slew of villains early in the game are pole-dancing stripper-swashbucklers, topless and voluptuously so. They're bouncing, but not behaving.

There's more to applaud. Exquisite music was created or inspired by the musician, the RZA, who scored Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill" films. Between the RZA's lush trip-hop and the mix of comedy and blood-squirting revenge, it's easy to think "Afro Samurai" couldn't have existed without "Kill Bill."

Dialogue is shockingly good. You encounter a melancholy woman who loves Afro as a romance poet would.

"I am a ghost dreaming of being a woman dreaming of being in love," she says. "I could feel your eyes on me, feeling like hate, feeling like desire."

That melts the heart. It seems, to put it technically, brilliantly illustrated, acted, paced, scored, directed and written, although that hack-and-slash game play is merely good and sometimes frustrating. But art is not merely technique, yet the spark of enchantment. "Afro Samurai" is flawed, yes, but enchanting.

("Afro Samurai" by Namco Bandai's Surge retails for $60 for Xbox 360 and PS 3 -- Plays fun, though there's no multiplayer and controls can be frustrating. Looks astonishing. Moderately challenging. Rated "M" for blood, gore, drug reference, intense violence, partial nudity, sexual themes, strong language. Three and one-half stars out of four.)

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