The premise of an idealistic heroic oriental man wandering through strange worlds has been used and reused since the beginning of oriental storytelling. 'Samurai jack' - although not his real name - takes this to a whole different plane of exploration with the brilliant combination of many different sources. Our hero is A master-less samurai warrior, who has wandered the the earth to learn and master as many ways of combat as possible. From Vikings to Zulus and from shaolin monks to Robbin hood (literally). He is learned in philosophy from Egyptian and Greek scholars, adding to his own ingrained way of Japanese tradition. He is humble, naive, helpful, sacrificing, and deeply spiritual. He prefers his 'GETA' over other footwear. He rarely wears anything else but his 'KIMONO'. A simple minded but highly skilled hero, he wields a magical sword forged by three gods, whose primary goal is to return back to his own home, in his own time.
Aku. The dark Demonic immortal wizard -(the Japanese absolutely hate wizards!!)- is the the spawn of a tiny fragment of a long past evil destroyed almost completely, but for this fragment, by three gods. Odin, king of Asgard (thor's dad). Ra, the nameless Egyptian king of gods (who used to be the sun in his spare time). And the Hindu deity RAM, the seventh reincarnation of Vishnu (who is literally the boss of everything in Hindu mythology).
That little fragment fell on earth and destroyed a lot of things, including the dinosaurs, and over time grew into forest on the area that became japan.
Aku was born as a reaction to an arrow of fire burning with magic oils. Before that he was just an evil forest infected by the tiny fragment of forgotten dark evil slowly making life miserable for the wilderness (yeah, Japanese hate dark forests too). The arrow was fired by the hero's father, who was king of the land at the time.
After a while, an eclipse gives him some power and he is released again. This time he abducts himself and the sword falls in to the hands of his son, the prince, who is very young at the time, but manages to escape destruction. The prince travels far and wide to train himself in combat, To avenge his father and kill Aku. When he returns, Aku has seized most of japan and aspires to rule the entire world with his evil plans. He finds and challenges Aku to a duel. The fight is epic and largely in his favor, but just before the final swing of the sword, Aku uses magic to open a time portal and sends him in to a distant future. Having no one to stop Aku, the dark kingdom grows, till all of the world is under his rule. And so is the future, to which he sends the prince. A quantum paradox in forward time travel.
The prince finds the future to be highly advanced in technology and full of alien life forms that immigrated to earth and are now intrinsic. He also finds many mythological beings and objects in his regular quest to find a way back to his won time.
Aku rules the world with minions, robots and fighting machines. And only when the prince is weak, he attacks. But most often has to run away to save himself.
The entire series is also unique in that the dialogues are kept to a minimum, with some episodes entirely void of any spoken words.
The music and background is provided by George Pajone Jr. And Will.i.am, in compositions by James L. Venable, we'll known for their work in the music industry.
The quest of the prince is never concluded through all 52 episodes, although he come very close to succeeding many a times. The last broadcasted episode concludes with the prince, being taken away after a fierce battle with the guardian of a steady time portal who would not let him pass, leaving the audience with a cliffhanger.
The series was first aired from August 10th 2001 to September 25th 2004 on Cartoon Network as Four seasons. With frequent reruns on Boomerang of all four.
With the produces announcement that a full length 2D animated feature is in pre-production, the fans hope to hear again soon "they call me jack....."
The best of this lot.
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