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First Term Paper

The Rules of Physics Cut to Pieces



Afro Samurai is a five episode animated series. The look has been made to be a Japanese animated cartoon, but it was made for the US. It is an old style of story with many contemporary elements. It is not really in an imaginary world because t has a lot of real elements in it, but the show just tears into the laws of physics that a normal person would not be able to push. It seems like in many animations like this there is a lot of rule breaking, but it is mostly by the main character and the main villain. Afro Samurai is the main character and when he is young he sees his father, who is the number one fighter in the world, get cut down by justice, the number two. He has an imaginary friend that follows him and is like his conscience, but he really bends the laws of physics because he is meant to be seen as a real character. His imaginary friend is named Ninja Ninja and is the opposite of Afro, he is loud and white haired and even smokes a skinny cigarette, while Afro smoke a wrapped joint looking cigarette. Also in this animation the rules of physics are bent to make things more dramatic and look cooler. Through all of the outrageous acts in the series, there are elements that are real, but the laws of physics are broken often during fight scenes.

Main characters always have a way of bending the laws of physics. Afro always seems to out run anything that comes his way. There are times in the show that bad guys will try to shoot things at him or try to chase him down and he can run to the side and dodge anything that comes at him. When he fights a random bad guy that follows him from a bar, there is a scene in the fight where Afro jumps into the air and dodges arrows while he is free falling towards the bad guy. He kind of has a path of action like a leaf working around the arrows, but his fall is very slow as well. In one of the later episodes he is confronted with a robot copy of himself and within that fight there are many times when Afro breaks the jumping law. His crouch does not match the amplification of his jump height. He also doesn’t fall at a normal rate, he seems to float in the air. While he fights the copy of himself, he is blasted into the air with the copy because the copy has rockets on his feet. Afro is riding on the copy’s shoulders hitting it in the head with the handle of his sword and he stays on the copy’s shoulders the whole time in the same position. And when they start to fall, they fall at a very slow pace, which allows them to show more fighting and more law breaking of physics. Afro seems to be self propelled when he free falls because he can push himself to different areas while he is not on the ground, and he definitely is not a person that is capable of flying. He can also cut bullets and missiles in half with a swing of his sword. He has super human speed and strength to cut through metal so easily. There is a scene in the first episode where a guy shoots at him and he is standing in front of a group of other bad guys and he cuts the bullet in the middle and the bullet shatters in little pieces but keeps its momentum and continues to the men behind Afro. There is also a scene where Afro gets a missile shot at him and while he is stumbling forward he is still able to swing his blade upward and cut the missile in half. There are many things that this man can do, but the biggest thing that he does is defy physics.

Imaginary friends are capable of doing anything. Ninja Ninja is able to do a lot of law breaking things; although he is an imaginary character, he is meant to be seen as a real character and this makes him seem like he can bend the laws of physics. He can jump up into trees and sit on tree limbs with ease. While talking trash to Afro, he jumps onto anything to get out of the way but he can balance on anything while crouching and no arms out to balance weight. He is also capable of appearing anywhere. He doesn’t seem to walk a lot anywhere. He does stand and sit, but there are few times in the series that show him walking. There is a scene where he is holding on to a high pole and talking trash to Afro, and as Afro has a close up on his face for about 3 seconds and it pans out, Ninja Ninja appears right next to him while the three seconds before that Ninja Ninja was on pole, approximately 10 feet away. There is a scene that Afro is fighting a child hood friend and is about to be struck down, then as the camera pans out it shows Ninja Ninja as the one who was cut in the back. Ninja Ninja came out of nowhere, which shows how fast he is, and he was still able to save Afro and snap him out of his daze. As a “real” character, he would be the fastest character in the series because of his ability to appear and disappear from a scene, but it is believable without being over the top. If it’s believable then it is hard to pinpoint the law of physics being broken.

Rules are bent to make effects look cool. To create a more interesting scene I believe that laws of physics have to be broken a little. One of the bad guys named Brother Six jumps off of a cliff when he sees Afro injured and tries to take advantage of the situation. As he lands on the ground below he does have a long crouch, but the force that should have been enforced on the ground should have cracked the ground. Brother Six is a man that is about twice the size of Afro in width and about a foot taller than him. The ground does not crumble at all, especially for how long his crouch was as he landed from the top of the cliff. Also, in most samurai cartoons swords can cut through anything. It is no different in this cartoon, but Afro can cut off limbs with one swing. There is a scene where is master is surrounded by men and he takes a quick scene and all of the men’s bodies are cut in half and the top half slides off the bottom half and they all fall at the same time. Jumping off of walls is also a huge cliché act in most cartoons, it looks cool even though it breaks the rule of gravity. There are a lot of problems when the characters jump to heights that are not humanly possible, it has a Crouching tiger Hidden Dragon feel to it. They are floating up to heights to make a fight a little more aesthetically pleasing, to keep the interest.

Afro samurai has a lot of realistic qualities that make the cartoon feel really grounded, but it also goes over the top for fight scenes to make them much more interesting than watching two men rush at each other and just swing swords at each other. All of the jumping, dismembering, and flashy moves bring adrenaline to the average viewer. In shows like this the main character always seems to break the laws of physics the most, but it looks believable in some aspects and they are not such a bothersome thing. Although characters seem like they should do real things, there are also characters that break rules just because of what type of character they are and when one of the characters is an imaginary character then they can break rules here and there without it mattering. Rules and laws are also bent or broken to amplify effects and scenes to make them more interesting than they have to be. Through all of the outrageous acts in the series, there are elements that are real, but the laws of physics are broken often during fight scenes.

Outline Of First Term Paper

Physics in “Afro Samurai”

1. Introduction – Samurai can bend rules in normal circumstances
a. Main characters always have a way of bending the laws of physics
b. Imaginary friends are capable of anything
c. Rules are bent to make effects look cool
d. Thesis

2. Main Characters always have a way of bending the laws of physics
a. Afro samurai always seems to be able to out run anything that comes his way
b. He can jump high and move around in the air as if he were on the ground
i. afro jumps in the air and a random baddy points a crossbow at him and shoots a bunch of arrows at him and he moves around in the air dodging them
ii. afro fights a copy of himself and they go up in the air and the copy shoots things out of his mouth at afro and he dodges them and then ends up cutting him down on the way to the ground.
c. He can dodge bullets and swords but even cut through them as if they were butter
i. Afro cuts bullets into pieces and then they still keep going at he cuts them and they kill other people around him
ii. Afro gets a missile launched at him and he cuts it in half while stumbling forward

3. Rules are bent to make effects look cool
a. one of the bad guys jumps off of a cliff to fight afro
b. cutting off limbs with ease
c. jumping high and jumping off of walls

4. Conclusion
a. Summation of points
b. Restate thesis

i forgot to add in the imaginary friend part so here it is

3. Imaginary friends are capable of anything
a. Ninja Ninja can jump high and sit on tree limbs with ease
b. He can just appear anywhere what he wants
c. He even saved afro from being cut by jumping in front of the blade of another samurai

Stop motion ball drop

This is my first stop motion ever... something kind of new for me...