Samurai 7 (Season 1)

Samurai 7 (2004) is a 26-episode anime series from studio Gonzo — watch it online on iFILM. The premise lifts its bones from Akira Kurosawa's 1954 classic and transplants them into a distant future where feudal Japan persists, but rogue samurai have merged with war machines and turned into the mechanized marauders — the Nobuseri — who strip villages of rice and take women as tribute.

Young priestess Kirara sets out into the city with a handful of grain as payment, looking to hire seven warriors to protect her village. The seven she finds are a ragged lot: one has been chopping wood for a living, one is quietly hunting his own end, one is something other than human. The show is slow and deliberate about it. Twenty-six episodes, each character given room to breathe and a past worth carrying. For an action series it spends a lot of time asking what a soldier does when the fighting stops. Stream Samurai 7 online on iFILM.