5x01 XCII

[9.0/10] I didn’t really know what to expect from Samurai Jack’s revival season. Thirteen years after the show went off the air, would Tartakovsky pick up right where he left off? Would there be a time jump? Would it stay episodic or build more directly to a serialized conclusion to Jack’s epic quest?

The answer should have come with the title. I didn’t grok “XCII” at first, until the closing screen put up the roman numerals as so many prior episodes did. This is not episode 53, following the show’s last outing. It’s episode 92, and we’ve simply missed forty episodes’ worth of adventures, and the world our hero inhabits shows it.

It’s one hell of a reintroduction. The start of the episode is familiar -- a group of Aku-bots swarm a group of innocent locals. A hero emerges off from the horizon, ready to save them. Surely this will be Jack’s glorious return, the foolish Samurai wielding a magic sword, prepared to do battle with the forces of evil.

Or is it? Everything about the champion who emerges seems un-Jack-like. Gone are the white robes and the magic sword and the wooden sandals and the straw hat. In their places is a motorcycle with spikes on the bottom, an armored brute with a red gargoyle mask, a trident or pike with which he tears through his enemies, and a bearded, angry visage. He does the deed, with more fury and force than the hero of old, and doesn't even stop to check on those endangered when he finishes his brutally efficient rescue.

It is Jack alright. But he is a different person than the one fans last met in 2004. He has been fighting this fight for fifty years. He has become ageless. He lost his sword in a flashback battle. And, more importantly, he’s lost hope.

When we meet Jack once more, he is haunted, doomed, having struggled and failed in this quest for so long that he’s lost that spark of humanity and compassion that so defined the warrior even in harshest moments of self-doubt. He seems colder, crueler, treating his quest as though it were a curse, one he cannot break though seemingly impossible success or even the quiet retreat of age.

This is a darker show than we witnessed for four seasons. I paired Samurai Jack with Batman: The Animated Series for most of my watch, and didn’t think of much connective tissue between them. But this episode almost draws a direct line, of two fierce warriors tired from the fight, haunted by the specters of their lost parents, and the promise made to them that now seems harder and harder to keep. I have never felt as bad for Jack, never wanted some relief for him, as badly as when he suffers from their memory.

The show, naturally, hasn’t lost a beat visually. It conveys that deeply-felt regret with Jack’s mother and father as fallen leaves. It shows grasping corpses rushing down an otherwise idyllic autumnal river. It reimagines Jack’s father as a living flame, flanked by more lost bodies pleading with Jack to keep that promise. All the while he is haunted by a rider, the grim tableau of death or a past, harrowing encounter that gives him pause and turmoil with each remembrance. Amid the still incredible fight sequences, and the sheer impressiveness of the designs that always made this show visually striking, “XCII” also animates Jack’s fears, his gut-wrenching guilt, after decades of lost causes that make him wish he could let just one plundered village go unavenged.

But he can’t, so he engages in a fight with one of the show’s characteristically distinctive baddies. Scaramouche is instantly memorable as a foe, matching the affect of Sammie Davis Jr. with an attack style using musical telekinesis and gimmickry like bladed tuning forks that pose a challenge and give him a worthy place in the pantheon of Jack’s rogues. The fight, done up in HD splendor, matches up with Tartakovsky and company’s prior thrilling scraps throughout the series, with subtle changes in animation, but diminution in imagination.

At the same time, the show dramatizes the arrival of an ultimate threat to Jack -- the daughters of Aku. The glimpses we see of their harsh training (under a maternal figure voiced, appropriately enough for AtLA fans, by Grey Griffin), give them a legacy to the Master of Darkness (respectfully absent given Mako’s passing), and create a challenge that Jack will no doubt have to face down before he can return home.

It’s hard to know how to take these developments. On the one hand, there is something endlessly cool about seeing this grim, wearied version of Jack who has hardened over his years of combat and struggles with the ghosts of his losses. On the other, one of the boons of the show’s original run was the balance between Jack’s unrelenting prowess as a fighter and his sincere kindness and honor apart from it. There’s something hard to watch about him having turned into just another dour, grave combatant in an endless battlefield.

But that also gives Jack somewhere to go over the course of the season. Who knows if we’ll ever get the old Jack back. After fifty years of fruitless fighting, anyone would be a hollowed-out shell of their former self. But I trust Tartakovsky and company to affirm the man who Jack once was, to exorcise his demons and earn his way back to the bastion of warrior dignity and compassion he represented for so long. But it was a long road to get to “XCII”, and it will be a long road back.

Oh Boy, Oh Boy, feeling Nostalgia - WHAT AN EPI <3 Jack is back with a bang!!!! My Childhood is back!!!! =')
Animation is so much improved but wait, with same cinematic way. Everything is so much better Art, Action, etc & it become even more dark then before which is just my kinda genre!

* Start with same beadle robots we have seen in season 1 episode 3or4. That action scene is way different then before, more detailed. I mean slicing, torn to pieces etc animated so well..
* That flute/singing robot though comedy yet awesome!
* And how can i forget the best part of this episode - that scene of leaves falling apart and Jack's clan, family shown saying: u abandoned us, why u haven't came back. And same with his father appearance in fire BOY THAT SCENES!! We get to know why he became so berserk type in this series cuz he don't get age & these regret full thoughts keep coming in his mind which make him brutal.
* Last but not least 7 Daughters of Aku.. during there training, then they are kids that hitting scene though that was dark i mean forcing child like that G.G! in the end they gone grown and their mission starts Eliminate Samurai Jack lets see what will happen next!

I was wondering how Jack lost his sword =/ cuz that was not in previews seasons maybe in comics.. they should have add some glimpse of losing sword... <I know he will get it back cuz we have seen it in trailer> =D Can't wait for next episode!!!