Note: This review was written in late 2017 for Electric Review. John, perhaps because of unfamiliarity with the series, elected not to run this one, presumably because Electric Review is aimed at a more sophisticated readership. I happened across it while looking for something else on my backup drive, and decided it would be suitable for my own review page, which didn’t exist when I wrote this. Minor changes, and an add on at the end, since this was written after the first episode. Enjoy.
This review has been further supplanted and supplemented by a review of the overall series, posted in August of 2019.
Gotta get back
Back to the past
Samurai Jack
“…and now the fool seeks to return to the past…”
Samurai Jack was a kids’ cartoon that aired 52 episodes between 2001 and 2004 on the Cartoon Network. It was one of hundreds of such shows that have populated the television landscape over the past 70 years, and most of them have been quickly and wisely forgotten. There’s perhaps two dozen that were good enough to develop a following, mostly amongst college stoners and people seeking to recover their childhood. There’s even shows that have an ironic following, such as Scooby Doo.
There are two shows that gained an adult audience despite being written for kids. One was Avatar, a series with rich and fully-realized characters, amazing choreography, a beautiful alternate world, and vivid flashes of humor and drama. Forget the dismal movie; the cartoon series was superb.
The other was Genndy Tartakovsky’s Samurai Jack. The Samurai was raised by royal parents and trained world-wide to take a magic sword and with it, oppose Aku, “the shape-shifting master of darkness”. Aku, originally voiced by the incomparable Mako, is a demon lord (‘aku’ is Japanese for ‘evil’) who flings the unnamed Samurai into the far future “where my evil is law”. The entire series is devoted to the Samurai (“Jack” is just a nickname some local hoodies lay on him) trying to return to his time so he can defeat Aku.
The series was cancelled after four seasons, plot unresolved. Cartoon Network never could figure out what to do with this strange, beguiling show.
It was gone, but far from forgotten. Between YouTube and videos, the number of people following the cartoon continued to grow, and it grew what is probably the strongest cult following of any animated series.
And it should have. Written for children, it featured incredible art work, amazing and stylistic depictions of an extraordinary world, and incredibly good action sequences that served the plot rather than in lieu of a plot. While Jack’s efforts to return to the past are the overarching storyline, the episodes were stand-alone, which allowed for an amazing variety of tone from one episode to the next.
One episode starts with Jack walking through the woods. For six minutes, it’s just Jack walking though the woods, with a sound engineering background that would do credit to an Attenborough documentary. Another episode was done in black and white. Not greyscale. Monochromatic black and white. In some episodes, the Samurai doesn’t speak at all.
It’s a patient and reflective cartoon. Yes I just said it was a patient and reflective cartoon. Usually. It could also be pretty goofy, in a pleasantly weird sort of way.
For years after the demise of the show, there was increasing demand for a movie that would resolve the story. Genndy Tartakovsky, the show’s guiding genius, tried for years to make the movie, but it was stuck in development hell.
Finally, last summer he called Cartoon Network and said, “Look, I have some free time. Can I do a Samurai Jack mini-series that wraps up the story?” A deal was struck within two weeks, and work began the following day.
The first of the series premiered this week, directed by Tartakovsky and with the title character voiced by Phil LaMarr. Many of the same artists and writers returned to finish what for many was a career capstone.
The original Jacks were after-school fare, with bloodless violence. Jack was clean cut, squared jawed, ridiculously virtuous—which contributed to the humor in the series.
The new Jacks are written for Cartoon Networks nighttime “Adult Swim” which features some of the most adult television to be found outside of premium cable. Thus the new Jack is darker, his motivations much more muddied, a man who has clearly lost his way.
Jack was notorious for preferring to walk whenever any other mode of transportation was available. The new Jack rides a scoot, a hog that makes the biggest Harley look like a skateboard. The white robe, always immaculate at the start of each episode, has been replaced by outlandish samurai armor. The magic sword has been lost.
Jack himself no longer struggles to keep his wild mane pinned under a man bun, and has grown a ZZ Top beard. Like most cartoon characters, he doesn’t physically age, but decades of wandering Aku’s dystopian world have taken an emotional toll. Called upon to save a mother and three young children from an onslaught by Aku’s demons, he heaves an audible sigh.
But this is not Sesame Street turned into a Tarantino movie; this is still Samurai Jack, and the changes are necessary, credible, and inevitable.
It bodes well. I think this remarkable series will finally get the great ending it deserves.
With any luck, the Scotsman, the greatest ethnic smear in animation, will appear at least once.
The entire series can now be viewed for free on Adult Swim.
NOTE: The Scotsman does indeed appear, although in a face-to-face against the demon Aku, he does not do well. Despite significant changes in tone, this was an excellent finale to a brilliant series. Just remember (sorta spoiler follows) that time travel paradoxes are like running off a cliff in cartoon physics; nothing happens until the coyote looks down.
https://www.adultswim.com/videos/samurai-jack/