Advance Review: The ‘Samurai Girl’ Saga Begins
Tonight is the night that ABC Family premieres the first of three installments in the Samurai Girl miniseries.
We begin with Parts One and Two of the “Book of the Sword” at 8pm EST, followed by “Book of the Heart” on Saturday and “Book of the Shadow” on Sunday, both two-parters that also air from 8pm to 10pm.
I had the opportunity to preview “Book of the Sword,” and although it indicates Samurai Girl has nowhere near the creative or visual appeal of its hugely successful predecessor Fallen, the miniseries will still probably entertain its intended audience of primarily female teenagers.
The plot, based on the books by Carrie Asai, is appropriately straightforward. Wealthy 19-year-old Heaven Kogo (Jamie Chung) is forced to submit to an arranged marriage, and the formal wedding ceremony is crashed by a group of black-clad killer ninjas who promptly murder her beloved brother Hiko (Jack Yang).
After he dies in her arms, Heaven wanders around San Francisco in a daze and eventually hides out with nerdy roommates Cheryl (Saige Thompson) and Otto (Kyle Labine), before tracking down the mysterious Jake (Brendan Fehr) her brother advised her to trust.
From there, the plot becomes more or less a revenge tale as Heaven trains under Jake to improve her fighting skills — especially with swords — and then uses them to kick butt while avenging her brother’s death and avoiding getting killed by the deadly Japanese mafia, aka the Yakuza. Oh, and the big bad enemy, at least at the outset, is her adoptive father, shady and filthy rich businessman Tasuke Kogo (Anthony Brandon Wong).
In addition to the expected incorporation of high-tech gadgetry and sleek settings wherever possible — this is the computer age, after all — there’s also much spiritual-sounding talk of destiny and ancestors and such to help establish the mood.
Yet, Samurai Girl plays more like a standard crime drama than a fantasy with genuine mystical aspects, something I find fairly surprising considering the miniseries claims André Nemec, Josh Appelbaum, and Luke McMullen as executive producers. All are former Alias contributors you’d expect to have an advanced grasp of how to make fare like Samurai Girl appropriately mysterious and intriguing.
Perhaps something got lost in translation from books to script. Nonetheless, I still consider Samurai Girl an agreeable enough option for weekend TV viewing. ABC Family definitely chose the right time slots for this particular miniseries.
Meet the cast of Samurai Girl in the series Photo Gallery.
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