He has literally been broken as a man, believing himself incapable of saving anyone after losing his sword and feels that wherever he goes, death is sure to follow. He also contemplates suicide more than once in the show and again, it isn’t done out of some petty reason or just to seem edgy for the sake of it. He’s showing signs of PTSD, constantly having visions of his village people and his family taunting him for not fulfilling his promise to defeat Aku. However in the new season, you can see just how much the 50 years trapped in a hellish future has changed him.
Jack in the original series was your typical silent but honorable protagonist with a kindness and softness to his character that has never been seen in a cartoon at that time. The characters were matured similarly as well. They straddled that line between maturity and control very well and I applaud them for it. We didn’t have a Quentin Tarantino style massacre in every episode with it raining blood.
They didn’t go all dark and edgy on us, having characters being beheaded every 10 minutes. However, I also praise the creators for being realistic with their new found freedom. One problem Samurai Jack had back in the day was because it aired on Cartoon Network originally, Jack was forced to fight robots or other non-human entities. What do I like about Season 5 ? I loved the fact that it now aired on Adult Swim, meaning the show could take advantage of the more mature rating to really showcase just how hopeless and dire Jack’s situation was. Season 5 is a road to redemption for our hero as he slowly regains his resolve and his sword to finally put an end to his journey, all the while having his life threatened by the many foes the future has to offer including the Daughters of Aku seven deadly assassins trained from birth for only one purpose – killing Jack.
It doesn’t help that he’s lost his sword, the one thing that could kill Aku. The 5 decades spent in the future has somewhat broken our hero in spirit. However, he has become ageless from the spell that sent him forward into the future. Jack has been trapped in the future for 50 years now. Let’s dive into the plot of the new show. 2 months, 10 episodes came and went and honestly, I was blown away and somewhat disappointed at the same time. So anyway, 2017 came and I sat through the conclusion of one of my all time favourite cartoons. Low expectations, low chances of disappointment right ? So I made sure to keep my enthusiasm low. This was good and all, but by that point I was so used to revivals being pale imitations of the original just to make a quick buck. It was announced that the new show would be a continuation and a conclusion to Samurai Jack by the original creator himself, Genndy Tartakovsky.
Another godawful reboot or spin-off like Teen Titans Go or the new Powerpuff Girls”. Then, in 2015, it was announced that Samurai Jack would be returning. Did he ever make it back to the past ? Did he ever defeat Aku ? Was he doomed to remain in the future for all eternity ? These were questions I thought would go unanswered for the rest of my life. Season 4 ended in 2004 and for 13 years, we, the viewers, never got a conclusion to Jack’s tale. Just when things couldn’t feel more hopeless for Jack…the show gets cancelled. The original Samurai Jack aired for 4 seasons, each season seeing Jack occasionally finding a potential way back to the past but failing miserably at every turn. There was an overarching story with Jack needing to get home but none of the episodes ever linked to each other in terms of plot development. This allows casual viewers to come in at any episode and be able to watch the show without feeling lost. It’s a simple enough premise and the beauty of the show was that each episode was its own self contained story, with the only characters remaining constant are Jack, our titular protagonist, Aku, our comedic antagonist, and a handful of other side characters.