(Potential spoilers for Samurai Jack and Legend of Korra ahead)
After a long twelve year
wait, Genndy Tartakovsky’s “Samurai Jack” has finally had its 5th
season premiere on television in order to bring the series to the conclusion
that fans have so desperately wanted since the original series ending back in
2004. On the Adult Swim programming block as opposed to the younger audience
focused Cartoon Network, Jack found a home again. This past Saturday, about
thirty thousand people watched the first episode on Adult Swim’s official
stream, where I was watching, and I’m sure plenty more watched on the actual
cable channel. The load on Adult Swim’s
stream server as people tried to ask Tartakovsky questions during the thirty-minute
Q&A he held just before the episode was enough to bring chat down for most
of the actual episode. The enthusiasm in
the chat during the hours leading up to the new episode, as Adult Swim ran a
marathon of the original Samurai Jack series, was a testament to just how
beloved this cartoon was for many of the viewers. The episode itself was a tasteful mix of old
and new Jack, and the series as a whole has the potential to help push American
animation in a new direction.
In a behind the scenes
video leading up to the premiere of the new season of Samurai Jack, Tartakovsky
brings up the question that many people were curious about concerning just how
much he was going to take advantage of the new tone, themes, and violence
allowed in the show thanks to the last season airing on Adult Swim instead of
Cartoon Network. His response was that
he did, of course, want to put this new artistic license to use, but that he
did not want to stray too terribly far from the tonality and theming of the
original series. Even though he now can
certainly show blood and approach situations from a much more adult-oriented
perspective, he mentions that he still wants this last season of Samurai Jack
to be something that viewers can hopefully sit down and watch with their own
kids some day. The result has proven
itself to be a very interesting mix of what made the original series so
charming, and the new ability to show a darker Jack.
The old cinematography of
Samurai Jack, inspired heavily by 70’s films as Tartakovsky stated in his
Q&A, is alive and well as we’re treated to a very Star Wars-y opening
sequence in a desert canyon, complete with strange little creature being
focused on long enough to make a noise.
This directing continues as one would expect throughout the episode, lending
a wonderful maturity to the series as it always has. Jack’s new look is strikingly different. He is first seen on a motorcycle gunning down
robots, wearing full armor, and sporting a long, scruffy beard. Taking place fifty years after the end of
last episode of season 4, it is clear that time has been unkind to Jack and his
purpose has become muddled. His new look
seems to perhaps suggest that of a Ronin, a Samurai that serves no lord or
master. Throughout the episode we are shown that Jack is struggling against himself and
his guilt at the thought that he has abandoned his father, mother, and people
that he vowed to return to from the future and save from Aku. This internal struggle is a very different
sort of Samurai Jack than what we’ve seen in the previous seasons so many years
ago, and makes available to the crew an array of new themes that this season
may potentially explore.
Thankfully, those old
Jack vibes are still around as we’re introduced to the villain of the episode:
a wise-cracking, singing robot assassin named Scaramouch sent by Aku to track
down Jack, voiced by none other than Tom Kenny. As one would expect, Tom Kenny
brings to life another ridiculous, over the top, fun and quirky character that
fits right in with the original plethora of similar antagonists throughout the
old seasons of Jack. A large portion of
the episode is devoted to their fight, which both reveals that Jack has somehow
lost his legendary sword and ends with Jack essentially executing the Tom Kenny
bot to show us that we are, indeed, dealing with a Jack that follows a very different
set of morals than the one we all grew up with over a decade ago. Sadly, there was no glimpse of Aku and his
new voice actor, Greg Baldwin, who also took over for Mako in Legend of Korra, although
we are treated to a new collection of trained assassin women who will surely
prove to be the main recurring antagonists throughout the season.
One thing that Genndy
mentioned during his Q&A was that he was ultimately unhappy with the
current state of the animation industry in America and seems hopeful to perhaps
continue working with Adult Swim even after Samurai Jack finishes as he said
that his experience with Adult Swim thus far has been one of the best of his
career. If I had to make a guess, Genndy
is wanting to push more serious, artistically focused animation in America and
if I’m right, that is exciting because I absolutely agree with and support him
in his endeavor. While I was still in
college working on my undergrad degree, I wrote a senior thesis over the
current state of the animation industry in America and how I felt that,
eventually, we would start to see a gradual shift to more serious animated
programs geared toward adult audiences that did not rely on comedy. Adult animated drama has been plentiful in
Japanese animation, but severely lacking in America and I feel that Samurai
Jack is our first glimpse into a radical shift in what is popular in animation
here at home. If this is true,
Tartakovsky’s next project could very well be another animated, dramatic Adult
Swim animated series that is geared toward an older audience. Regardless, this helps open the door for any aspiring animators who have been wanting the chance to find an audience for a more serious, drama-focused animated show on an American network.
All in all, Samurai Jack
met my expectations, which were somewhat shaky because the work that
Tartakovsky directed in Hollywood during his recent years working with Sony
Pictures Animation has not been my favorite.
The show, however, seems to be off to a great start and my faith in Tartakovsky
has absolutely been renewed under the assumption that he has finally been given
the creative freedom to do things his way again and we’re all enjoying the
result with a new, much less content restricted 5th season of
Samurai Jack.
