Jack is Back! Could He Help Usher in a Possible New Future for American Animation?

(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 5^th 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 5^th season of Samurai Jack.