Survey of Japanese Animation: Samurai Champloo and Paranoia Agent

If you want to make an ass of yourself at a geeky party, just crib my handy reactions to Adult Swim's Anime line-up! I'm watching these as Cartoon Network broadcasts 'em, so reactions are on what I've seen thus far:

Samurai Champloo:

From the folks who brought you Cowboy Bebop, except this time instead of Jazz and Space Cowboys its Hip-Hop and Samurai.

Pluses:

-What you'd expect from the Bebop team in terms of Animation and Soundtrack. Puuurty.

-As it turns out, (note to self: compose future post on the why "as it turns out" is a key phrase in English) the Samurai Swordfight can only be captured in an animated medium. Who knew? Blood 'n missing limbs aplenty.

Minuses:

-Characters seem (thus far) a tad repetitive.

-Episode pacing is a little off, things seem to only get rolling about 25 minutes into a 30 minute episode. Granted, the average "Buffy" episode only started resolving anything at minute 38 of 42, but it somehow got away with it.

Paranoia Agent

Here's the NPR review that first alerted me to the series:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4631905

After the first episode, I pretty much concur with the NPR commentator. Pluses and Minuses some other today, for tonight lets just say its a far more daring look at mediated culture than anything I've seen produced in this country, except maybe No Maps For These Territories but I'm not sure it should count.

Is it just me, or do characters in more recent Anime look a lot more Japanese (and more human, for that matter) than their earlier counterparts?