Samurai Jack (TV series)

Samurai Jack is an American action-adventure animated television series created by Genndy Tartakovsky for Cartoon Network. It follows "Jack", an unnamed[a 1] Japanese samurai who, after nearly defeating the ultimate evil being known as Aku, is sent forward in time by him to a dystopian future ruled by the tyrannical shape-shifting demon. Jack, who is brought to the future with only a sword, a robe, and sandals, quests to travel back in time and defeat Aku before he can take over the world. Jack's search for a way back to his own time period transcends Aku's control, but Jack's efforts are largely in vain due to the ways back to his home being just out of his reach.

Tartakovsky conceived Samurai Jack after finishing his work on his first Cartoon Network original series, Dexter's Laboratory, which premiered in 1996. Samurai Jack was inspired by Tartakovsky's enjoyment of the Kung Fu televised drama starring David Carradine as well as his fascination with samurai culture. On August 10, 2001, Samurai Jack premiered with a three-part made-for-TV movie called The Premiere Movie. It ran for four seasons consisting of thirteen episodes apiece until September 25, 2004, without concluding the story. A revival was produced twelve years later, resulting in a fifth season that provided a conclusion to the overarching story. The fifth season premiered on Adult Swim's Toonami block on March 11, 2017, and the final episode, which served as the series finale, aired on May 20, 2017. Samurai Jack episodes are directed by Tartakovsky, often in collaboration with others.

The series has garnered critical acclaim, and won eight Primetime Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Animated Program, as well as six Annie Awardsand an OIAF Award.

Premise
Samurai Jack tells the story of a young prince (voiced by Phil LaMarr) from feudal Japan, whose father (Sab Shimono and Keone Young) received a magic katana used to defeat and imprison the supernatural shape-shifting demon Aku (Mako Iwamatsu). Eight years later,[5] Aku escapes, takes over the land and holds the Emperor hostage, but not before he sends away his son to travel the world and train so he can return and use the magic sword to defeat Aku. On his return, he faces and almost defeats Aku, but before he could land a finishing blow, Aku creates a time portal that sends the prince turned samurai into the distant future, with anticipation that he would be able to deal with the samurai by that time.[6]

The samurai prince arrives in a dystopian retrofuturistic Earth ruled by Aku. The first people he encounters call him "Jack" as a form of slang, which he adopts as his name.[4] His given name is never mentioned. Most episodes depict Jack overcoming various obstacles in his quest to travel back to his own time and defeat Aku, and his quest is prolonged occasionally by moments where either he nearly succeeds in returning to his own time,[7][8][9] or conversely, Aku nearly succeeds in defeating Jack,[10][11][12] only to be thwarted by the unexpected.

Setting
The retro-futuristic world is inhabited by robots, extraterrestrials, talking animals, monsters, magical creatures, and deities. Areas may have advanced technology like flying cars, while others resemble ancient times or industrial conditions. What's more, Aku has brought aliens from other planets to inhabit Earth, while destroying the habitability of the alien planets. Criminals and fugitives take refuge on Aku's Earth. Mythological and supernatural creatures make regular appearances, and coexist among the technologically-advanced inhabitants.

However, the planet has hardly been urbanized, and there are a number of episodes that take place in uninhabited areas of the world, such as forests, jungles and mountains, which have remained largely untouched even as Aku began his conquest and reign over every sentient being.[13][14][15] There are even a few communities that have not been affected by Aku's dominance, such as the Shaolin monks, who managed to hide and maintain their numbers in a secret place that is beyond the reach of Aku's seemingly omniscient vision.[16]

Development
Samurai Jack was created by Genndy Tartakovsky as a follow-up to his successful series Dexter's Laboratory. Cartoon Network executive Mike Lazzorecalled Tartakovsky pitching him the series: "He said, 'Hey, remember David Carradine in Kung Fu? Wasn't that cool?' and I was like, 'Yeah, that's really cool.' That was literally the pitch."[17] Cartoon Network billed it as a series "that is cinematic in scope and that incorporates action, humor, and intricate artistry."[18]

Influences and design
The basic premise of Samurai Jack comes from Tartakovsky's childhood fascination with samurai culture and the bushido code,[19](42:56) as well as a recurring dream where he'd wander a post-apocalyptic Earth with a samurai sword and travel the world fighting mutants with his crush.[20] The show is meant to evoke 1970s cinematography, as well as classic Hollywood films such as Ben-Hur, Lawrence of Arabia[19](46:44) and Spartacus.[21] Thematic and visual inspirations come from Frank Miller's comic book series Rōnin, including the premise of a master-less samurai warrior thrown into a dystopic future in order to battle a shape-shifting demon. Similarly, the episode "Jack and the Spartans" was specifically inspired by Miller's graphic novel 300 that retold the Battle of Thermopylae.[21] The Japanese comic Lone Wolf and Cub and films by Akira Kurosawa were also an inspiration.[22]

Broadcast
The network announced the series' launch at a press conference on February 21, 2001.[23] Weeks leading up to the series were accompanied by a sweepstakes giveaway sponsored by AOL in which the grand prize was a trip for four to Japan. The promotion also included sneak peeks of Samurai Jack, behind-the-scenes model sheets, as well as exclusive Cartoon Orbit cToons.[24]Samurai Jack debuted on Cartoon Network on August 10, 2001, with the three-part special "The Beginning".[25] The premiere received high praise and four award nominations,[26][27] and was released as a standalone VHS and DVD on March 19, 2002.[17] As production of the fourth season was ending, with four seasons of 13 episodes each or 52 episodes of Samurai Jack in total, Tartakovsky and the crew moved on to other projects.[28] The show ended with the airing of the four final episodes as a marathon on September 25, 2004.[29]

Original ending
The original series was left open-ended after the conclusion of the fourth season.[30] Tartakovsky said, "coming close to [the end of] the fourth season, we're like, 'are we gonna finish it?' And I didn't know... The network didn't know, they were going through a lot of transitions also. So I decided, you know, I don't want to rush and finish the whole story, and so we just left it like there is no conclusion and then [the final episode is] just like another episode". Art director Scott Wills added, "We didn't have time to think about it, because we went right into Clone Wars. They even overlapped, I think. There was no time to even think about it."[28]

Cancelled film
A film intended to conclude the story of Samurai Jack had been in development at different times by four different studios.[31](2:50) As early as 2002, Cartoon Network was producing a Samurai Jack live action feature film,[1] in association with New Line Cinema.[32] Tartakovsky said in a 2006 interview that the live action version of Samurai Jack was thankfully abandoned, and that "we will finish the story, and there will be an animated film."[33] Fred Seibert announced in 2007 that the newly-formed Frederator Films was developing a Samurai Jackmovie,[34] which was planned to be in stereoscopic 2D[35] with a budget of 20 million dollars.[36] Seibert said in 2009 the film was being co-produced with J. J. Abrams' Bad Robot Productions.[32] Sony Pictures Entertainment expressed interest in developing a Samurai Jack film in 2012. Genndy Tartakovsky said in an interview with IGN the Samurai Jack movie is in pre-production: "I've been trying so hard every year, and the one amazing thing about Jack is that I did it in 2001, you know, and it still survived. There's something about it that's connected with people. And I want it, it's number 1 on my list, and now Bob Osher, the president, is like 'Hey, let's talk about Jack. Let's see what we can do.' And I go, 'You're going to do a 2D feature animated movie?' and he's like, 'Yeah. Maybe. Let's do some research and let's see.' So it's not dead for sure by any means, and it's still on the top of my list, and I'm trying as hard as I can." Tartakovsky said the loss of Mako Iwamatsu (Aku's voice actor) would also need to be addressed.[37] The feature film project never materialized, and eventually the series concluded with a fifth television season.[38]

2017 revival
Main article: Samurai Jack (season 5)

Samurai Jack returned to television thirteen years after the fourth season concluded. It began airing on Adult Swim on March 11, 2017. This fifth and final season was produced at Cartoon Network Studios with Tartakovsky as executive producer.[39] It has more mature elements and a cohesive story that concludes Jack's journey. The story takes place fifty years after Jack has been cast into the future, though he has not aged as a side effect of his time travel. Jack is in despair from the years of fighting Aku (Greg Baldwin) and from Aku's destruction of the remaining time portals; he is haunted by warped visions of himself, his family and an enigmatic warrior on horseback.[40]

Critical reception
In 2004, British broadcaster Channel 4 ran a poll of the 100 greatest cartoons, in which Samurai Jack achieved the 42nd position.[41] The show was ranked 11th by IGN for its Top 25 Primetime Animated Series of All Time list in 2006.[42] IGN also ranked the show 43rd in its Top 100 Animated Series list in 2009.[43]

Matt Zoller Seitz, a film critic for RogerEbert.com and television critic for Vulture, considers Samurai Jack, along with Tartakovsky's Star Wars: Clone Wars, to be a masterwork and one of the greatest American animated shows on television, mainly for its visual style:[44]

Samurai Jack would later be included in Seitz and Alan Sepinwall's 2016 book TV (The Book) as an honorable mention following the 100 greatest television series.[45]

Awards and nominations
Reviewers of the 3D animated feature film Kung Fu Panda (DreamWorks Animation) have noted that the stylized 2D opening sequence is either inspired by, or a homage to Samurai Jack.[53][54]

Home video releases
Like other previous Cartoon Network shows, Samurai Jack DVDs were released by Warner Home Video between 2002 and 2007. The DVDs include episode numbers in Roman numerals as they appear at the end of each episode but remain untitled. Season 1 was released on Netflix streaming service in 2013.[55]Samurai Jack: The Complete Series was released on Blu-ray and Digital HD on October 17, 2017, and contains remastered versions of the first four seasons of the series.[56]

Video games
The Samurai Jack world has been seen in the video games Samurai Jack: The Amulet of Time for the Game Boy Advance in 2003 and Samurai Jack: The Shadow of Aku for the Nintendo GameCube and PlayStation 2 in 2004.[73][74]

Several elements of the Samurai Jack concept were reused in several video games: the MMORPG Cartoon Network Universe: FusionFall features Jack, the Scotsman and Demongo as non-playable characters, while Aku is a Nano. The online game Project Exonaut features Jack only as a playable character for the Banzai Squadron. The brawler game Cartoon Network: Punch Time Explosion for Nintendo 3DS, Wii, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 features Jack and the Scotsman as playable characters while Aku is an assist character, a boss and a playable character.

Samurai Jack is voiced by Phil LaMarr once more for most games, and by Keith Ferguson for Cartoon Network: Punch Time Explosion. The Scotsman and Demongo are voiced by John DiMaggio and by Kevin Michael Richardson respectively in Cartoon Network Universe: FusionFall. Due to Mako Iwamatsu's death in 2006, Aku is voiced by Greg Baldwin in Cartoon Network Universe: FusionFall and by Fred Tatasciore in Cartoon Network: Punch Time Explosion.

Comics
Main article: Samurai Jack (comics)

In February 2013, IDW Publishing announced a partnership with Cartoon Network to produce comics based on its properties. Samurai Jack was one of the titles announced to be published. It was further announced at WonderCon2013 that the first issue of Samurai Jack would debut in October 2013.[75] The first comic in the series was released October 23, 2013.[76] The final issue came out in May 2015. On October 25, 2016, IDW re-released all of the issues in a compilation entitled "Tales of a Wandering Warrior".[77] Tartakovsky does not consider the comics part of the story of Jack.[31](4:58)

Jack also appeared in multiple issues of DC Comics' anthology comic series Cartoon Network Action Pack, which ran from July 2006 to April 2012.

Board game
A year after the series was concluded, a board game adaptation covering all five seasons was released, titled Samurai Jack: Back to the Past. Players work together to complete tasks to help Jack return to the past, while competing to earn honor for their actions.[78] It is possible for all players to lose the game if Jack loses his sanity and is driven to suicide, as he nearly does for the first half of season 5.