So the dudes at Funimation (which has to be the WORST name for any company ever) sent me the director’s cut DVD of Afro Samurai a week or two ago. Just got around to checking it out, and for those of you into (A) hiphop, (B) anime, or (C) Samuel L. Jackson doing his “I’m a badass” routine, it’s a solid weekend DVD rental.

Jackson voices the main character, a black samurai who goes around fighting robots and acting all badass. Aaaand… that’s about it. The five-episode series is based on a Japanese fan-made manga, and it originally aired on the testosterone-laden cable channel Spike TV. Afro Samurai is talked about a great deal in Roland Kelts’ pretty good book on the popularity of anime in America, Japanamerica, and for good reason—the show’s pretty much an American anime, an unwieldy but entertaining Frankenstein of Japanese and American pop cultures, one that retains the visual trappings of anime while cramming in American voice actors and hiphop.

Speaking of which, the score is by the Wu-Tang’s RZA (who also soundtracked two other Japan-influenced American epics, Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill and Jim Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, both of which are, as you probably already know, excellent), and is one of the main reasons to check this out. The series itself is mostly fun but it’s also overlong—wasting a killer aesthetic and some fun characters on an overdrawn, half-assed narrative—but RZA’s beats are predictably great, sharp and heavy every time they pop up. Anyway, I wouldn’t recommend going out and buying Afro Samurai or anything, but it’s worth renting if you’ve got some time to kill this weekend and if you like any or all of those (A), (B), or (C) things. Here’s the trailer.