~Beyond the Border~ > Sara's Audio-Visual Import-Overflow Retail

Samurai Jack Is Back!

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commandercool: Did anyone else watch the first episode of the long-awaited fifth season of Samurai Jack? Maybe not so long-awaited for me since I only watched the show last year, but I was still really looking forward to this and it did not disappoint. It definitely felt like a Samurai Jack episode, although it has its own identity too. Jack has a new design, there's a new villain(s) and the plot has kind of shifted in a particular direction. I'll be curious to see if the plot has more of a consistent narrative thrust than the original series tended to or if the arcs will remain short and self-contained. My one very minor complaint, and it's barely fair to even bring this up at this point, is Aku's new voice actor. He only had like one line and it was over a phone so it's not really possible to judge yet, but I imagine a lot of people were anxiously anticipating this and he didn't sound quite right. Time will tell though. Spoiler: So I have a couple of theories. The first is regarding that mounted shadow samurai Jack keeps seeing in his hallucinations. I'm guessing that's a premonition of what Jack could become if he continues to be consumed by battle and continues to lose sight of his objective. Even though his sword is gone he has to kill Aku, since skirmishing with his minions will never change anything, and this shadowy figure is Jack who has totally lost sight of how to end the fighting. Second is that Aku is dead/gone/hibernating/apathetic. Most likely the last one. His cultists said something about "making him grace them with his presence again" which makes me think he hasn't been seen in a while. That could just be by this particular group of followers that have lost favor with him, but I think nobody has seen him for years. Granted he did seemingly answer his phone when that robot called him, but that may not have been the real Aku. My best guess is that with the sword that was the only way he could die lost, presumably forever, he no longer feels the thrill of fighting Jack because he knows he can't lose, so he's just lost interest and retreated from the world. I think his followers are carrying out his last orders, and there may be one or more fake Akus directing some of them, but the real Aku is no longer taking a direct hand in the world.

Edible: I didn't know this had started airing again.  Neat.

BT: HWUAAA-JACK Oh man, they've been teasing this remake for a few years now, so I'm glad it's here already. Though after watching the episode I only feel like watching the old episodes again. If you don't mind me being a party-pooper, I'm gonna go over the stuff I remember about the old show and what made it great, and how the new season looks like it's preserving those elements: 1. The visual aesthetic Samurai Jack the original had a world with landscapes and beings that are kind of trippy. Like if you took a lonely kid's doodles and made a show out of them. All of the alien like designs, all the different robots (and how their guts looked like), and how every episode had a different place, like that time Jack went underwater and rescued Atlantis, or the time he went to Egypt to solve puzzles. Twice. Or the time he went to treasure island with the Scotsman, or all the places that looked really, really bad under Aku's influence, all the pointy black pillars and red sky and ravaged land, or the junk piles, dysfunctional futuristic cities, slums, or the occasional place that looks like it's getting by but you know something horrible is gonna happen to it in a few minutes. And the monsters looked so edgy and kind of bland, but really earnest at the same time. It was great. They stuck with me for years. Spoiler: The new series looks the same as the old one, which doesn't really matter to me, honestly. If they changed the art style but still kept conjuring those otherworldly societies and places, that would've been amazing. So far they're sticking to the old artstyle, but more than that, the people and places are inspired from older episodes, or are direct copies at worse. The one thing that felt new was with the weird out of place zombie people from Jack's nightmares that look like they were taken from a Gorillaz video. 2. Immersive episodes, worldbuiding, story The environment kind of helps here, but even just with the pacing, every episode of the old Jack was painfully slow. You couldn't speed through it, you had to take it all in and travel the lands along with Jack, and go with whatever happens to him. Each episode sucks you in really fast, and introduces a new place or new charcters, and at the end of the episode there's always some epilogue of what happens to the people you met, sometimes it's a happy end, sometimes Jack walks off to the sunset away from the ravages of what used to be a town, or a broken time portal, or a mountain of bodies, or sometimes it's just a quiet ending where you take it all in, because you were holding your breath for the entire episode and now it's finally over. Spoiler: Bzzt. I didn't really feel anything from the eipsode. Sure they're trying to set things up, reintroduce Jack and ease in new watchers, but the episode had no feeling of time or place. It just jumps from here to there and there's no worldbuilding. Every new scene rushes into its raison d'etre and thrusts you into the next. I don't know, there was also a lot more action than you'd think, maybe they want you to focus on that instead. 3. Oh man it was so subtle and an amazing character study oh man You know how the show is about a tragic hero who goes around a broken future fixing things wherever he goes but at the end of the day he's stuck where he started, no closer to getting back to the past and undoing the future that is Akuuu's, cue theme song? Jack is a strong character in the original. He's a nice guy who feels obligated to help everyone not only because he wants to and he can and it makes him feel good, but also because he's haunted shitless by his past. You know the whole, it's up to you to defeat Aku thing? Well, he failed. He fought the guy and he failed, and now he's stuck in the future. He has failed everyone, and he knows it, and the only thing he can do now is take little steps in the right direction. Every few episodes Jack gets a break and he finds an opportunity to go back to the past, some time mcguffin or another, but every time he gets so close and the opportunity slips between his fingers at the last second. And you know what Jack does? He walks it off. For a few seconds you can see the torture he's going through, but he fucking walks it off, because this is his life now. Baby steps. The original series had amazing patience with Jack's character. Not to mention all the lessons he learns from his failures, and the show handles it all with grace. Spoiler: Oy vey. Here's where I'm not expecting anything from the remake anymore. The first episode had no subtlety to it, anywhere, and missed every opportunity to make a statement. I was throwing what ifs at the screen the whole time, like what if they killed off that one twin that almost fell off the pillar to examplify that not everyone's built for Aku's world, and how cruel it is and people die and shit. They could have kept the sword as some kind of statement like Jack chose to throw it away, maybe because he lost faith in it, maybe because he lost faith in himself, or he's trying new things, or it's some deeper tragedy that's going on. Maybe this Jack is fundamentally different from the old Jack and he doesn't need his sword anymore. Instead they flashed in this scene where his sword falls into a chasm and Jack's all like ohhh noooo like are you serious? God. They tried making it obvious how Jack is haunted by his past, but there's no context. He looked fine a few minutes ago, or some scenes ago, why is he suddenly reminded of his failures by a falling leaf? No catalyst? Really, what's that about? What has Jack been doing all this time if he's always this hot and bothered? I can go on. I guess what I'm saying is that I love the old show to bits and will forever hold unrealistic expectations. But man, it feels like the remake doesn't even come close. On a meh, you tried scale of 1 to 10 it gets a 2 if generous.

commandercool: Holy shit, 2/10, huh? The number of things I've ever seen in my life that I would rate a 2/10 are very, very few. So, uh, resounding complete dismissal then, huh? We won't know until we see more, but I suspect a lot of your issues come down to the fact that this season seems to be setting itself up to be one plot thread that plays out across multiple episodes, which is not something the previous arcs really ever did. This episode isn't a complete story, not even close, but personally I don't really fault it for that. I'm interested to see what it does with a different narrative structure than the series used to use. Spoiler: Regarding Jack's hallucinations, it seems like there are a few possibilities that might explain why he's just suddenly having them with no real particular trigger. One is that he's been worn down by fifty years of constant fighting and this is just the breaking point. It had to happen eventually, and the reason we're being shown the point where it happens is because it's important. Nothing else that happens in the episode is particularly out of the ordinary for him, so if we're going to jump back in after fifty years of adventures it makes sense that there's a particular important event to choose as a focus, and that point is the point at which he begins to go mad. It's not triggered by anything very specific because that's just how madness works. Two is that he's being mentally attacked by some kind of force or entity, and he's having these hallucinations because they're being inflicted on him. Maybe the mounted samurai is a character who's trying to destroy him mentally with magic. Three is that he's been doing this for a long time and it was triggered by something specific, but it's become so common to him that anything can cause it now. This seems unlikely since he has a pretty strong reaction to it, both being surprised and letting it slow him down in battle. If this has been going on for a long time then that probably wouldn't be the case, so I don't think this is the answer, but I guess it could be. Regardless, I think the fact that he has these hallucinations mostly during quiet moments is very relevant. He seems like he spends all of his time speeding around on his bitchin' motorcycle fighting dudes now, and as soon as he stops to take a break his past starts to catch up with him. He fights as a means to distract himself and escape his past, and as soon as the fighting stops it catches up with him. Maybe this happens occasionally or maybe it doesn't, but the fact that he's in a peaceful forest when it happens is interesting because places like that aren't common in Aku's world. It may have been quit a long time since he was in such a quiet and peaceful place, so maybe he hasn't had time to stop and notice the figurative ghosts in a while.

BT: --- Quote from: commandercool on March 14, 2017, 12:16:36 AM ---Holy shit, 2/10, huh? The number of things I've ever seen in my life that I would rate a 2/10 are very, very few. So, uh, resounding complete dismissal then, huh? We won't know until we see more, but I suspect a lot of your issues come down to the fact that this season seems to be setting itself up to be one plot thread that plays out across multiple episodes, which is not something the previous arcs really ever did. This episode isn't a complete story, not even close, but personally I don't really fault it for that. I'm interested to see what it does with a different narrative structure than the series used to use. Spoiler: Regarding Jack's hallucinations, it seems like there are a few possibilities that might explain why he's just suddenly having them with no real particular trigger. One is that he's been worn down by fifty years of constant fighting and this is just the breaking point. It had to happen eventually, and the reason we're being shown the point where it happens is because it's important. Nothing else that happens in the episode is particularly out of the ordinary for him, so if we're going to jump back in after fifty years of adventures it makes sense that there's a particular important event to choose as a focus, and that point is the point at which he begins to go mad. It's not triggered by anything very specific because that's just how madness works. Two is that he's being mentally attacked by some kind of force or entity, and he's having these hallucinations because they're being inflicted on him. Maybe the mounted samurai is a character who's trying to destroy him mentally with magic. Three is that he's been doing this for a long time and it was triggered by something specific, but it's become so common to him that anything can cause it now. This seems unlikely since he has a pretty strong reaction to it, both being surprised and letting it slow him down in battle. If this has been going on for a long time then that probably wouldn't be the case, so I don't think this is the answer, but I guess it could be. Regardless, I think the fact that he has these hallucinations mostly during quiet moments is very relevant. He seems like he spends all of his time speeding around on his bitchin' motorcycle fighting dudes now, and as soon as he stops to take a break his past starts to catch up with him. He fights as a means to distract himself and escape his past, and as soon as the fighting stops it catches up with him. Maybe this happens occasionally or maybe it doesn't, but the fact that he's in a peaceful forest when it happens is interesting because places like that aren't common in Aku's world. It may have been quit a long time since he was in such a quiet and peaceful place, so maybe he hasn't had time to stop and notice the figurative ghosts in a while. --- End quote --- Hear me out, that's not an objective score, it's what I expected vs. what I got. I got the sense that this installment won't deliver on any of the fronts I'm looking forward to. Specifically, the folks in the background aren't exactly breathing new wind into the series, instead they're following the original whenever they can like they have no confidence in what they're doing, and what they did try feels flat and predictable. Spoiler: Those are some interesting points about the hallucinations, Jack's not only experiencing them in calm moments though, he had one mid battle when they poked fun at him for talking to stones. I feel like there's no grace to it. I see what they were trying to do: Jack sees a pillar of smoke over the forest, he doesn't go and investigate it though because he's turned apathetic.... Except for that one time he saved the deaf family from the ladybugs just now, but whatever. He neglects the innocents (we can make the assumption, right? Maybe it's some dude neglecting a bon fire. Sure) and that neglect haunts him immediately when he sits it through. There's no grace to it though. See that leaf? Bam. Superimposed faces of the people you love. Now their bodies are being swept downstream. How does that feel, you jerk? I don't know man, it feels so trite. My case is that they could have gone for a smarter approach. If Jack's a bum now, which doesn't seem that way but whatever, how about having him thrust into a situation where he has to be the good guy, but he can't save everyone? Or maybe he beats up some drones but slacks off, neglects some innocent bystander who gets crushed beneath debris, and now he keeps seeing that person's image and all the other people he doesn't save anymore because he's just not good enough, or because he lost his sword and his confidence. What I'm saying is, what about the cool, motorcyclist Jack who saved the deaf family should we pity? What does he do or not do that haunts him so? Jack always missed his home and lamented his failure and used that as fuel to journey and return to the past, what changed now to cause him to be functionally insane? The voices in the fire scream out to Jack. You forgot about us. Everything is burning. Jack didn't forget, though, he fees like he can't do anything anymore. But you just showed us that he's clearly still capable of fighting, and that he's going around helping people. That's what he's always done. Sure I get it. It's the passage of time. He still hasn't gone back and it's eating him up. He's never stopped being the hero though, so what gives? At least exemplify how worthless his journey is. All we saw is that he's still kicking ass. I don't know...

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