The Visual World of 'Samurai Jack'
93 comments
·June 1, 2025lelandfe
schainks
I was going to post this link, too :)
Balance is important!
thatguy0900
I wasn't much a fan of the rebooted series, I thought the inclusion of the new character took too much focus. Almost felt to me more like a fan fiction ending with someone's OC
lelandfe
12 years on you can get the original creator back to storyboard everything, hire back the old VO team, and still have people complaining the show is too different :P
CursedSilicon
Most of the old VO team
Makoto Iwamatsu (Aku) died in 2006 :(
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usefulcat
I liked the fifth season because they needed to do something different with the story. I feel like they had hit the point of diminishing returns by end of the previous four seasons.
thatguy0900
I think they could have honestly done the same thing but no new character, have jack retrace his steps to see old characters and that he actually had been making a difference the whole time before finding a time portal and beating aku.
k__
I watched the whole series because of some clips from the new season.
The new stuff felt more mature to me and the old stuff more like a kids show.
Overall I liked both, but I get it, the new stuff felt a bit off.
AdmiralAsshat
It's worth noting that the original four seasons were on Cartoon Network prime time, while the revival season explicitly aired on Adult Swim. So yes, the target audience was older (or, more likely, the target audience was the group of kids who watched the original series that aged into adults while the show was off the air).
You always got the sense from the original that SJ was held back by the censors (Jack has cartoon Wolverine syndrome--he's got a legendary cutting edge, but is only allowed to use it on doors and robots). But I agree, after four seasons of borderline pacifist Jack, suddenly flipping to "Oh, I guess Jack kills people now" hand-waived away by a flashback of his father using lethal force when necessary, was a bit jarring and tonally inconsistent.
Cthulhu_
I suspect this is because the target audience is the original audience, which is now 12 years older; probably the same for all the other reboots.
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franczesko
Genndy Tartakovsky is a truly unique creator. Samurai Jack was so good, that I had to watch how it ends years later since watching the show on cartoon network
klondike_klive
He really set the tone for the late 90s/early 00s, everyone wanted to copy his style (me included) but few had the chops. I definitely didn't!
dyauspitr
Dexter’s Lab as well. What a fantastic show.
arrowsmith
I loved that show so much as a kid.
It also produced some well-known cartoonists who went on to have very successful careers: most notably Seth MacFarlane, creator of Family Guy.
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brcmthrowaway
What about Pantheon?
skavi
It doesn’t appear that Tartakovsky was affiliated at all with Pantheon. I would have been surprised if he was affiliated given the show’s fairly mundane animation.
So what about Pantheon? It doesn’t seem relevant to this discussion apart from it also being animated.
close04
Maybe GP was thinking of Primal.
debugnik
You tell us. What about it?
consumer451
Not who you responded to, but what an interesting show!
I hate simulation theory, and even with that bias, that show had so many cool concepts.
rcarmo
Samurai Jack is one of my all-time favorite animation series. The sheer amount of creativity packed into any one episode and the consistency of the visual styling throughout (with a few outliers, as any other artwork) makes it doubly unique, and I cannot praise it highly enough.
duxup
Samurai Jack is so beautiful and being able to portray things / have the confidence in the art really seems to cut back on unnecessary / clumsy dialogue that so many shows have today.
stevenwoo
His first season of Primal has almost zero dialogue and works really well, but it's a caveman and a dinosaur buddy show.
BolexNOLA
The episode with the three blind archers guarding the well that grants wishes is a master class in gesticulates at everything
Whenever I think of Tartakovsky I also think of his clone wars micro series he did for Cartoon Network. The episode with the special forces clone troopers that has no dialogue after the first 30-60 seconds or show is just so unbelievably good. So much tension.
lazystar
> Whenever I think of Tartakovsky I also think of his clone wars micro series he did for Cartoon Network.
the episode with mace windu taking on an entire droid army - by himself - is what opened my imagination to the true potential that a jedi master has. it's a shame that neither the movies, nor any other tv show, have come close to conveying "why" everyone fears and respects force users.
Dracophoenix
> the episode with mace windu taking on an entire droid army - by himself - is what opened my imagination to the true potential that a jedi master has.
As a kid, that was my favorite episode of the series first season. I still remember coming back after school catching the 5 minute micro-episodes on Cartoon Network.
> it's a shame that neither the movies, nor any other tv show, have come close to conveying "why" everyone fears and respects force users.
It stops becoming Star Wars as we know it and starts becoming Dragon Ball Z with laser swords. Quite a number of books and video games in the Expanded Universe/Legends veered in that direction, in many cases to the detriment of consistency in lore.
MattGrommes
Agree completely. The bit where Mace pulls the screws out of the droids with the Force and then uses them against the other droids is probably my favorite Force move in all of Star Wars.
eutropia
a million times this.
Clone Wars microseries did more for my love of star wars than all the movies put together.
pure effing magic.
kklisura
> The episode with the three blind archers...
Three Blind Archers is Tartakovsky's favorite episode. [1]
BolexNOLA
Wooo I have good taste maybe!
photonthug
Ok I’m rewatching that one soon, forgot about it. The flashback of like, all heroes including Vishnu and zeus fighting aku was also rad. Maybe even the pilot, or the start of the reboot? Awesome
usefulcat
Yes, I was going to mention that exact episode. The distinctive visual style is perhaps more obvious, but the show also makes excellent use of sound.
BolexNOLA
The way they walked with their heads static and their ears moving. So creepy
Marazan
That was the first episode I ever saw of Samurai Jack. I had never seen anything like it. I had tuned in after the initial exposition so I experienced zero dialogue until the very end.
It was spellbinding. When he dons the blindfold and everything goes black and silent for what feels like eternity...
h2zizzle
It's hard to understate what a revelation the relative thematic maturity of Cartoon Network's offerings was. Between shows like SJ and RAoJQ and Toonami-aired anime like SM and GW, you go from a period dominated by toy commercials to one filled with political and philosophical meditations masquerading as toy commercials. It's hard to imagine the popularity of today's prestige TV (which is probably the closest you're going to get to turning most Americans into creatures inclined towards the literary) without the generations that grew up watching (and creating) shows like "giant robot pilots argue the merits of pacificism" and "a samurai walks silently through many a beautiful and alien landscape for half the episode".
sometimes_all
The Ninja/Shinobi fight is burned into my mind. It's been so long, yet it's the best animation sequence I've ever seen. The art in Samurai Jack was truly next level.
TuringTourist
I never watched Samurai Jack when it was coming out as a child. I have begun watching it recently and it is absolutely a breathtaking piece of work.
GolfPopper
As an adult, I was fortunate enough to catch "Jack vs. the Ninja" on a hotel TV while on a trip. I was absolutely entranced, and tracked down the rest of the show. "Breathtaking" is a good description.
keeganpoppen
same. i did watch the more recent "last season", or whatever it is that they made, and i thought the artwork was absolutely fantastic.
Dem0ngo
I'm a huge fan of this show and Tartakovsky in general! You may be able to guess that by my username.. :)
Great analysis!
photonthug
Always loved these aesthetics. No mention of primal here, which is well worth checking out and pretty remarkable for being almost completely free of dialog and more oriented towards adults.
capnjngl
Hey! Love this show. I turned "The Birth of Evil" episode into a music video a LONG time ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhxebfw7Wso
lxe
Samurai Jack could easily be a a part of Death Love Robots because of its unique style and content.
KetoManx64
Except it's not nihilistic, which just about every episode of LD&R is.
coro_1
Slightly off topic, but I only recently discovered Samurai Jack. I found it through some old VHS archive recordings. The care with the animation is unreal. I'd love any links or suggestions for where to find more authentic versions. Commercials welcomed. The original airings have a different feel compared to the heavily processed versions on streaming platforms and archive.org
nntwozz
Glad to see Primal mentioned in the comments, still waiting for season 3!
underbluewaters
Oh my god they are continuing the story! Loved the first two seasons.
protocolture
Awesome. This made my day.
For a lot of great behind the scenes artwork: https://characterdesignreferences.com/art-of-animation-8/art...
I used to have an artist roommate obsessed with the art style of the show. If anyone hasn't yet watched the rebooted season from 2017, I highly recommend it.
Edit: one great clip from S5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFDkcvrSaYU