Afro Samurai: Art for art's sake?

Got around to watching "Afro-Samurai: Resurrection" the other night and was almost completely blown away. It's out on video and if you have the slightest enjoyment of anime, or action cartoons, or samurai movies, you owe it to yourself to see this film as soon as possible. Uncle Skippy flat out loved it. I have nits to pick, of course, but for the vast majority of the 90 minutes or so that the movie runs, I was in total awe of the cinematic experience.
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For me, the best part of the movie was not the plot, which was a little draggy and repetitive, or the characters (not Lucy Liu's best work), but the art. Oh, the glorious art! The beauty of drawings and the ink and the coloring in this film reminded me of how my love of comic books transcended from just being enthralled by the great heroic stories and developed into a more mature relationship where I appreciated each panel for the work of art that it could be. For me, way back then, it was examplified by my love of the X-Men and having my taste develop beyond the John Byrne X-Men and into more heady stuff like the Wolverine graphic novels. The art from Afro Samurai reminded me of high school friends and the hours we spent pouring over each panel and arguing about who the best comic book artists were. It didn't matter who won, of course, because we were appreciating art for art's sake. Afro Samurai reminded me of how I grew to love comics in the first place.
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Pretty heady stuff for nerdy 15 year olds.
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Anyway, Afro Samurai not only transported me back to those times, but also wrapped me in a compelling storyline and entertained me with over-the-top gory cartoon violence. Samuel L. Jackson's work on this series continues to be excellent as he voices both the title character and Afro Samurai's interior monologue personified in the outrageous Ninja Ninja.
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I had been looking forward to getting enough time to sit down and watch this movie and, for once, I was not disappointed.
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Did I mention I also saw "Hotel for Dogs?"