After several years off the air, Samurai Jack is back, but this time its fifth and final season is darker and grittier. I never watched the show when it first aired on Cartoon Network. I was always a PowerPuff Girls and Sailor Moon gal. But years later I finally decided to see what the fuss was about. I first watched the fifth season trailer out of curiosity and that definitely solidified my interest, and so I spent the next few weeks bing-watching the show. I didn't watch all the episodes since it's not necessary to know everything in order to watch the new season ( most of the episodes are episodic after all), but the stylized animation and cinematic-like quality of the show kept drawing me back in.
Samurai Jack is the story of a samurai who's thrown into a dystopian future by a shapeshifter named Aku. Through out the series, Jack attempts to get back to the past in order to stop Aku, but season four ended prematurely, leaving viewers wanting more. Fortunately, fans finally got their wish after over a decade. This reboot now takes place fifty years in the future, and due to the effects of Aku's time travel spell, Jack is unable to age and is stuck in a hopeless state as he drowns in his past failures. The world has fallen to ruin, and death and destruction is everywhere. Aku doesn't appear in the first episode but his presence lurks everywhere.
In the original show, Aku had a lot of comical moments despite that he's an evil shapeshifting demon, but the comedy is definitely going to be slim here. There was comedy in the last half of the episode with the monster-of-the-week calling Aku on a phone, bringing audiences back to a more innocent time, but the grittiness of the situation overall will surely outweigh the lightness that the show once brought.
The show has matured with its audience, and I appreciate that since other reboots like the new PowerPuff Girls failed to attract attention to its older viewers. Plus, unlike other reboots, the new season managed to maintain the same stylized animation it had years ago. I think it's very admirable for the animators to do that, especially since 3D animation is everywhere while 2D is slowly dying.
I also like that Jack’s thoughts are clearer. In the original, Jack was exceptionally reserved, keeping his thoughts and feelings to himself. Now, his past is haunting him, providing us with a handful of disturbing imagery such as the skeletal remains of Jack's ancestors, and his parents wondering why he forgot them. Through out the episode, Jack is being tormented by his failures and it makes viewers hope that he can finally be successful in the end.
