n the opening episodes of Samurai Jack, an aging Japanese warrior tells his tiny son how he and his magic sword once defeated an ancient, evil, immensely powerful shape-shifting wizard named Aku (Mako). But the story's barely finished when Aku comes seeking revenge. As the warrior's city burns, his wife escapes with the sword and their child, whom she sends around the world for training in all forms of knowledge, crafts and martial skills. As an adult and a formidable warrior, the child returns to free his people from Aku. But before he can slay the demon, Aku sends him forward in time to a bizarre high-tech future, the result of a cosmos where Aku has ruled uncontested for countless centuries. On an Earth covered in robots, aliens and mutants, the samurai gains a new name—Jack—and a new mission: Find a way to go back in time and defeat Aku before the horrible future ever happens.
Through the 13 episodes of the first season of Samurai Jack, Jack (LaMarr) pursues a number of possible leads. He partners with a mysterious assassin to seek out a magical gem. He journeys to a deadly island to find an enchanted wishing well, and to the bottom of the ocean in search of a fabled time machine. And he allies with a group of human scientists who believe their escape ship will help Jack surpass light speed and go back in time.
But many of the first-season episodes are incidental events from Jack's travels. Swearing to oppose Aku and all he stands for, Jack winds up fighting armies of robots and evil aliens to defend the helpless. He joins some mobsters for a chance to get close to Aku, their boss. He encounters a belligerent cyborg Scotsman and a desperate ensorcelled Norseman. He even fights a manifestation of his own inner rage. And he does so well at all of this that the increasingly enraged Aku, in the season's final episode, attempts to even the score by forcing a vast group of children to listen to twisted fairy tales starring a good-natured, heroic demon and an evil samurai.
A new form for familiar ideas
Like Dexter's Laboratory and The Powerpuff Girls, the other two Cartoon Network series that Samurai Jack creator-producer Genndy Tartakovsky has been closely involved with, Samurai Jack is animated in a very simple, iconic, angular style that often suggests that its characters were painstakingly assembled from layered geometric shapes cut out of construction paper. The simple animation, distorted, cartoony figures and "everything a 10-year-old boy might find cool" grab-bag of genre tropes (monsters! robots! swords! aliens! talking dogs! explosions! fire! astronauts! martial arts! more monsters!) may make it easy to initially dismiss Samurai Jack as kid stuff.
But that would be a mistake. The show is surprisingly serious and sophisticated, and clearly aimed at viewers with both patience and an interest in samurai cinema. Most of the episodes contain lengthy sequences with no dialogue, which in some cases entirely dominate the story. Some are action sequences, where Jack's grim, silent determination in battle says all that need be said. Others are Japanese-style environmental exposition sequences, where Jack wanders through bleak or oppressive scenery that sets a particular mood. In either mode, Tartakovsky and his small stable of writers, storyboard artists and directors hew closely to some aspects of traditional samurai stories and to Japanese cinema styles, while updating them for a future full of creepy critters and The Fifth Element-style high-tech bustle. In particular, it's refreshing how often they operate at a slow, thoughtful pace, letting Jack take in the sights of their cunningly animated dystopia.
And the stories tend to be cunningly told as well. The plot gimmick leads toward obvious patterns: It would be easy enough to center each episode around a plot device that should get Jack home but doesn't. (Shades of the old Dungeons & Dragons Saturday-morning cartoon.) But the creators look for ways to spice up the formula, varying the plots and telling each tale in a fresh, colorful way. It's terrific to see all these episodes together, in order, so the story they tell merges into one of the samurai movies Tartakovsky is so capably emulating.
