First off, suppppppper sorry guys that I've been on hiatus for way too long now, hope to get back on track. Now, this is way overdue, a review for Samurai Jack!
Samurai Jack was the only cartoon I listed on my 10 Favourite 90s Cartoons list (http://that90sguyreviews.blogspot.ca/2015/10/my-top-10-favourite-90s-cartoons.html) that I hadn't reviewed yet and it 100% deserved to be there. it was an amazing show that was cancelled too early and luckily enough for us, that bad decision is finally being reversed! That's right, on the off-chance that you hadn't heard about it yet, Samurai Jack will be revived later this year. And what better way to celebrate that than by looking back on the original show!
Samurai Jack aired three seasons from 2001 to 2003, meaning it's technically not really a "90s Cartoon" per say, but I think most of us can agree it was a great addition to our childhoods. The series followed the tale of a Samurai Prince who was thrusted into the far future by a demon and now has to fight a variety of baddies in the cyberpunk dystopia that is the future.We never actually get to know his real name but to the strangers he meets, he goes by the name "Jack".....and Jack is one of the coolest cartoon characters you will ever watch.
And he bares an odd resemblance to a certain Professor who....nah
Jack's was a show that was pretty unique for the early 2000s Cartoon Network lineup. You had shows like The PowerPuff Girls, Dexter's Laboratory, and Ed, Edd, n Eddy, all of which showed kids doing some pretty crazy stuff that most people probably never would. But they were all very humorous and you almost never had to actually worry about a problem not getting resolved. In Samurai Jack, the problem was already beyond resolution. The world has gone to hell and the only way for Jack to save the world is to get back to his own time and stop his archnemesis, the Demon Wizard Aku, from ever taking over the world in the first place. And speaking of Aku, he was one of very few villains in fiction who pulled off alternating between being an intimidating threat and a comic relief within the runtime of a single episode.
Aku had a crazy design and a backstory that basically put him on the same level of evil as the Devil himself (it's so good that I couldn't possibly spoil it), and yet he was hilarious and light-hearted when he felt like it. A lot of credit has to go to the legendary Mako who voiced him.
Another unconventional thing the series did was that it really didn't have much of a cast. It pretty much was just Jack dealing with a different sidequest every episode. Helping a new town or something of the like on his way back to the past every day. The only real constant was Jack and the only villain you could expect to survive to fight another day was Aku. Only one stranger Jack ever helped got to get a second (and a third) appearance and that was the big galoot called the Scotsman.
And damn, did he deserve it, another really funny character who could kick butt.
Because of the nature of this series, it was one of the only shows that really needed a conclusion....and it DID NOT GET ONE. The series ended in 2004 with a simple episode that really left everything about Jack's quest un-resolved. We thought we might get a more satisfying ending with the IDW Samurai Jack comic book series that ran from 2013 to 2015 but alas, we didn't. Let's hope this upcoming Season 5 can finally give us what we've all been waiting for!
All in all, Samurai Jack was a very funny series that knew when and how to tell a dramatic story, and if you haven't checked it out you should. It had a kickass opening theme song to boot and the animation is perfectly passable. I'd recommend the three-part premiere episode as well as "the Birth of Evil" Aku's two part origin story, if you're looking for a good starting place, but really this was a series with no truly bad episodes, ask anyone. To all my Samurai Jack fans, let's get hyped for Season 5!
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