Mule Pack – Samurai Jack Edition
Jack is back—the long awaited return of Samurai Jack is finally here. Originally debuting on the Cartoon Network in 2001, Samurai Jack won numerous Emmys and critical acclaim during its initial four season run. It is, in my opinion, not only one of the greatest animated series in TV history, but one of the greatest shows in TV history period. Imagine Akira Kurosawa and Sergio Leone getting together and making an animated series about a lone samurai fighting for a just cause, and you will have a general idea of what Jack is all about.
Engaging, intelligently written, funny, and above all beautifully drawn, Samurai Jack is an animated masterpiece. Its artistic achievement has no equal in television history—every scene of every episode is simply gorgeous.
If you’ve never seen Samurai Jack, you can currently watch a live stream of every episode on Adult Swim’s website. The fifth and (supposedly) final season begins this Saturday on the Cartoon Network.
Jack Is Back: After A 13-Year Hiatus, ‘Samurai Jack’ Returns For A Final Season
Anyone who watched Samurai Jack during its original 2001-04 run knows that rushing was never the show’s style. The story of a samurai flung into a dystopian future ruled by an evil demon named Aku, Jack stuck out from chattier, more frenetic shows like Dragonball Z and Pokemon in its willingness to let long silences and spare visuals drive its storytelling. The show just seemed to breathe different air than other series on the cable grid — air that mingled influences from many different narrative genres and art styles.
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Tartakovsky believes the series’ lingering cult status has a lot to do with his desire to make each episode “like a little movie, where you turn the lights off and crank the sound up and just let the experience draw you in.” Because the show often depended more on images than dialogue, viewers had to sit up and actually pay attention.
“TV and movies nowadays, they explain everything to you upfront. And then … you just want to shut it off, because you pretty much know where it’s going,” he says.
‘Samurai Jack’ Is Back, As Exciting and Beautiful As Ever
It’s the animation art that gives Samurai Jack its distinctive greatness. Tartakovsky deploys the minimalist animation style that reached an artistic height half a century ago with the animators John and Faith Hubley and does painterly, cinematic things with it. He’ll use close-ups of eyes so tight, they look like a Robert Motherwell abstract canvas. He’ll pull back to reveal a forest that consists of slashes of green, with a swipe of blue color indicating a narrow river.
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The move to Adult Swim allows for a more bleak and violent Samurai Jack, but the show never cranks up the violence for the sake of mere shock value. Indeed, there is one moment of lethal force in one of the two episodes made available for review that shakes Jack — and probably the viewer — to his core.
Samurai Jack Wanted to Show a Dog’s Butthole, but Adult Swim Said ‘Nope’
“We drew a dog’s butt. Just like a circle, little asterisks, very innocent, we didn’t think anything of it. We got it back, they’re like, ‘No dog anuses on Adult Swim,’” Tartakovsky said.
Samurai Jack returns deeper, darker, and more violent than ever before
Season five is visually striking, but the story packs bigger surprises. As always, Jack is called upon to protect innocents and dispatch Aku’s threatening, predatory robots, but now he does so with an undeniable streak of savage anger. As he stalks the land, he remains haunted by the screams and pleas of his long-dead parents. They show up as astral presences, or as hallucinated faces in running water and fallen leaves. Even though Jack says there is nothing he can do to return to the past, he cannot shake the torment these ghosts bring him.
The fans who were wooed by the show’s artistry are older, and because Samurai Jack is now in a later time spot on Adult Swim, rather than the kid-friendly afternoon block, the tone can accommodate more mature material. But Tartakovsky isn’t much interested in blood and guts. Yes, there is plenty of blood, but it’s not over used. Instead, the emphasis is on Jack’s decaying mind, his waning will. Even the opening credits — once of Aku reciting the legend of how he flung his nemesis through a time portal to the future — is now told from Jack’s perspective, reinforcing a more psychological story.
On Hulu: http://hulu.com/s/LOB