Thoughts on Samurai Jack (Season Two)

Today I sat down and watched Season Two of Samurai Jack. Needless to say, it definitely delivers. It not only keeps the intensity of the fight scenes, but also keeps the balance between action and quiet, keeps the overarching storyline, and contains some of my favorite episodes so far: Episode XIX, Episode XX, Episode XXIV, and Episode XXV. I will go over these four episodes in particular, explaining why I consider them my favorites (so far).

Episode XIX: "Jack Remembers the Past"

In his travels, Jack comes across the ruins of his former village. He wanders through it, seeing all the broken, worn-down buildings, and reminisces about his life as a child, before Aku spread his evil over the land. He remembers his first kiss, from a girl who was chasing locusts through a field with him. He remembers his father teaching him about fighting for what's his and what he believes in. He remembers his mother's embrace and the cherry blossoms falling gently in the spring wind. He remembers the grandness of the Imperial Palace.

Yet he is far in the future, and everything there has been deserted for years. Nothing remains except the hollow structures themselves. All Jack's friends and family are gone. The skies are overcast, the land is foggy and dark. All the happiness which his childhood memories brought him was taken from him in a single day, the day when Aku appeared. It's a poignant episode that reminds me of the Buddhist notion of impermanence. That is, everything passes away: people, animals, buildings, villages, emperors, cherry blossoms--they all pass away, sometimes in the blink of an eye. It reminded me of a well-known haiku by Issa:

In this world
we walk on the roof of hell
gazing at flowers.

That is, even though we see beauty all around us, we are still capable of losing it to imminent destruction; we gaze at the flowers in bloom, but we still stand on the roof of the underworld regardless. Impermanence is around us. Jack grasps this when he sees his village in total shambles, uninhabited and forlorn. He can't restore it, so he must soldier on and continue in his quest, constant in a world of impermanence and flux.

Episode XX: "Jack and the Monks"

In this episode, Jack meets three mysterious mountain-dwelling monks after telling himself that his quest to destroy Aku is impossible. He is at his lowest point so far. He has given up, he sees no point left in continuing his quest. However, he follows the three mysterious monks whom he met on the road. He tries to keep clearing a path for them, but they find their own way across the body of a steep, steep cliff. They end up in snow-capped mountains, where Jack can barely go on. This scene is what makes the episode a favorite of mine. Picture our hero, the seasoned swordsman, defeated, half his robe torn from his body, his hat gone, his body beaten and bloodied, lying in the snow. He shuts his eyes, ready to accept defeat and death. Then, a voice comes into his head:

Will you abandon their hope? Can you not feel their desperation? Will evil forever rule the world? Have you forgotten?

Suddenly it comes flooding back to Jack: the happiness of his old village, the people he has helped along the way, and his mother and father and fellow villagers slaving away in Aku's mines, building idols to the master of darkness. Will Jack let all the world be overrun by Aku's evil? Can he allow such things to pass? Never! Heaven forbid it. Jack picks himself up, despite the beating his body has taken, and he travels up the rest of the mountain, making it to the peak, where according to the monks there lies truth, and he cries to the winds that he will find Aku and destroy his darkness once and for all. This is a beautiful scene because it is archetypal. This is what a hero does when he is at his lowest; a true hero lets himself be reminded of why he is on a quest in the first place. Yes, he may hurt, and he may have strayed from the path, but his is still a noble goal, and his are still noble precepts. Discipline, resilience, dedication, control--these are the markings of a true hero. Jack picks himself up and climbs the mountain, ready at the end of the episode to live another day, to find Aku and purge the world of his darkness forever.

Episode XXIV: "Jack is Naked"

In contrast to the previous two episodes, which were more meditative and heroic in their themes, this episode is more of a frolicky one. Jack is bathing in a spring when a mysterious white rabbit steals his clothes. He follows the rabbit into a Wonderland full of weird-looking characters and wanders through their topsy-turvy city in search of the thief who stole his clothes. The key thing to remember is that Jack is totally nude for a substantial portion of this episode. Therefore, he has to find ways to conceal himself from the townspeople. He steals a cat burglar's outfit (and his bag of cats), wanders into a stage play dressed as a princess, and runs through town in a torn blue loincloth until he finds his clothes and sword.

While I enjoyed the previous two episodes for their more serious themes and atmosphere, I enjoyed this one for its surreal and comical premise. A seasoned samurai must chase a white rabbit while totally naked in order to get back his clothes and his sword. Seeing Jack try to hide his (admittedly handsome) body is fun, honestly. It's a classic nudity gag that you see in a lot of cartoons but with a twist on the nude character himself. A modest, stern samurai having to chase a white rabbit around Wonderland is certainly something to laugh at.

Episode XXV: "Jack and the Spartans"

This episode is more akin to the first two in this list. The story is narrated by the aged King of the Spartans, and details how Jack encountered a force of 300 men fighting mechanical minotaurs. The Spartans' kingdom is guarded by a narrow passage in the mountains which the minotaurs cannot cross (Thermopylae all but in name). Each day these robots attack the Spartan phalanxes, the phalanxes fend them off, and the robots pick their shattered comrades up, piece them together, and come back the next day. This has been going on for years and years. Jack tells the Spartans that there is another passage by which they could attack the minotaurs. The King decides to bring fifty of his best men with him and Jack as they go round that way, while the rest (including the King's son) stay at Thermopylae. The next day, the battle begins, and the phalanxes march boldly forward in rigorous Spartan form, launching small missiles from the ends of their spears (which I thought was a nice touch). Jack, the King, and the fifty men go round the other passage and assault the robots there. Jack and the King fight the robot's central complex and cause all the machines to shut down in a great explosion. The King and his men survive, but it seems that Jack does not. The final scene is of the aged King on his deathbed, telling all gathered around him of the "300 + 1", and how he believes that the one survived and is still out there.

This episode was special to me because I've always had a love of classical Greek culture, be it the myths, the history, the literature, the arts, etc. I always found the story of Thermopylae inspiring. These men died to protect the freedom and prosperity of their whole city-state, to prevent their state (and the other Greek poleis) from becoming subsumed and subjugated by the massive Persian Empire. To see a samurai help out the Spartans against their seemingly impossible foe in a fight ostensibly to the death made me, well, kind of geek out, in a way. My eyes were glued to the action the entire time. (Note: a neat effect that Tartakovsky does during his fight scenes is to change the animation's ratio to get a close-up, so that you view it in widescreen rather than full screen. It adds to the intensity of the scene, and I wish more animators did something like it.) The fight choreography was smooth and quick (as always, Tartakovsky's animation cuts through the viewer's field of vision like a katana cuts through a silken handkerchief). I highly recommend the entire show, this season, and these episodes in particular, as an examplar of truly great animation and storytelling!