A severed head muttering words of vengeance, cell phones that download memories, and an imaginary friend with the mouth of a hard-drinking sailor in a locker room—if I hadn’t watched the anime a few days ago, I would swear that Afro Samurai is a Suda 51 game, which is exactly how much sense it will make to outsiders. If you don’t know about Afro’s quest for vengeance, the eternal struggle of the headbands, or the insidious plans of the Empty Seven, you won’t find an explanation here. If you do, you’re already primed for one of the better anime-inspired games on the market, which doesn’t say much.

I’ll be straight with you. I’m not what you would call a “fan” of Afro Samurai. “Tolerant viewer” is more like it. The bizarre combination of The RZA’s thumping soundtrack, the funky character designs, and the mash-up of time periods, including the wild west, feudal Japan, and modern society, strikes me as a definitive example of flash over function. It’s not the type of movie that I like to watch, and yet the same combination, albeit with a perplexingly fractured plot, works quite well in the digital realm. Perhaps it’s because Afro Samurai is above the abysmally low bar for adaptations, or because of the deliciously gritty, cel-shaded look, or because I’m a hopeless sucker for hack-n-slashers.

Love it or hate it, Too Human set a new standard for character-progression in the hack-n-slash genre, which makes Afro Samurai seem Coleco-grade primitive by comparison. Afro unlocks a few new skills like slicing bullets out of the air and new combos as he gains experience through combat, but most of them are either purely for show or automatically handed to you later in the game. As the list of available combos continues to grow, you begin to realize how little any of them matter from a tactical standpoint, and how much easier is to mash the three attack-buttons, sit back, and enjoy the mayhem.

Boss-fights excluded, this isn’t a hard game by any means. Whether surrounded by one sword-wielding crony or a dozen palette-swapped clones, combat rarely gets more complicated than tapping your thumbs around the controller and wrenching the analog sticks. Like a painting by Pollock, there’s pleasure in the visual manifestations of your seemingly chaotic contortions. The screen glows with spinning flourishes and the spiraling arcs of glimmering steel in true anime fashion. After a holiday season of serious games in dreadful landscapes, Afro Samurai is like a relaxing reprieve from weeks of working overtime.

Combat isn’t all mindless sword-swinging though. With a little practice, you can parry an attack, pounce on your opponent’s shoulders, and make a sloppy mess of his head. Again, it’s mostly for aesthetics, but it’s nice to be rewarded for your efforts. Performing such moves and combos builds Focus that allows you to slow down the clock and dice your opponents with a Perfect Slice. Like a laser-sight for your sword, a line moves across your opponent’s body in preparation of gruesome dismemberments. Arms, legs, torsos, and scalps are all ripe for the splitting in liquefied slow-motion, and they’re all part of a little mini-game called Body Part Poker, hosted by your ever-present companion, Ninja Ninja.