'Samurai Jack' Is Coming Back!
Adult Swim has announced the return of Samurai Jack, the ultra-terrific 2001-2004 Cartoon Network series from creator Genndy Tartakovsky. The new season of episodes, says an Adult Swim press release, “will premiere on Adult Swim’s Toonami block in 2016.” For anyone who doesn’t remember, Jack chronicled the adventures of the tight-lipped samurai warrior who traveled through space and time to battle his nemesis, Aku, the shape-shifting Master of Darkness.
At once set in the past and the future, Jack is a time-shifting wonder as well. Trying to stop Aku before he does evil things, Jack re-visits his youth and in the original series, we saw him at various ages. This elastic storytelling is now more than ever suited for a television audience that is ready — even eager — to see more experimentation with narrative than it was in the early 2000s.
The animation style of Samurai Jack immediately distinguished it from anything else on TV, then or now. It was Tartakovsky’s inspiration to use the minimal animation style that reached an artistic height 60 years ago with the animator John Hubley and a low a couple of decades later with the Hanna Barbera factory (Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear). In Tartakovsky’s hands, the style became something new. He uses the TV screen like a painter uses a canvas, across which he scatters square action panels, like a moving comic book. He deploys stylized backgrounds (vertical brown slashes for leafless trees, watercolor blue mist for the sky), and uses close-ups as abstract imagery — we see a slab of white streaks across a black background, for example, and when Tartakovsky pulls back, we realize it’s Jack’s sword being pulled out of the scabbard.
I used to watch Samurai Jack with my kids, and they loved it as much as I did. I’m really looking forward to a new generation discovering its excellence. Can’t wait.
