Samurai Jack

Samurai Jack is an American animated television series created by Genndy Tartakovsky for Cartoon Network. The series follows time-displaced samurai warrior "Jack" (voiced by Phil LaMarr) in his singular quest to find a method of traveling back in time and defeating the tyrannical demonic wizard Aku (voiced by Mako Iwamatsu). Episode plots range from dark and epic to lighthearted and comic, but often contain little dialogue. Stories instead rely on the series' highly detailed, outline-free, masking-based animation, as well as its cinematic style and pacing. Many battle scenes in the series are reminiscent of samurai films and since Jack's robot enemies bleed out oil or electricity and his monster and alien foes bleed out slime or goo, the action of these films can be exhibited while avoiding censorship for blood and violence.

Samurai Jack premiered on August 10, 2001, on Cartoon Network and has since garnered high critical acclaim. It won fourPrimetime Emmy Awards, six Annie Awards, an OIAF Award, as well as received eight additional nominations. Cultural influences on the series range from the 1970s TV series Kung Fu to the works of directors Akira Kurosawa and David Lean. The series ran for four seasons, totaling 52 episodes and the series ended on September 25, 2004. All four seasons have since been released on DVD byWarner Home Video. Reruns had frequently been aired on Cartoon Network's sister channel, Boomerang, until the series moved toAdult Swim's Toonami block for reruns on February 1, 2014. The series is currently being continued as a form of Samurai Jack comics.

Plot

Samurai Jack tells the story of a young prince (Jack) from Feudal Japan whose father's empire is destroyed by the shape shiftingdemon Aku. As a child, the prince escapes destruction and travels the Earth training his mind and his body for years until he reaches adulthood, becoming a legendary samurai. After taking his father's magic katana, he challenges dystopian, retro-futuristic Earth ruled by Aku and filled with his robot minions and a large number of alien immigrant races of various appearances. The first people he encounters in the future call him "Jack" as a form of slang, which he adopts as his name (his true given name is never mentioned in the series).
Aku to a duel and d
efeats the demon. However, before the prince can deal the killing blow, Aku creates a time portal and sends his opponent into the distant future, anticipating that he would be able to amass sufficient power to deal with the samurai later. He arrives in a Standard episodes follow Jack's search for a way to travel back to his own time, where he hopes to stop Aku before these events come to pass. The cartoon depicts Jack's quest to find a time portal, while constantly facing obstacles set by Aku in a classic battle of Good versus Evil. Typically each time Jack believes he has reached the end of his quest, something causes him to dramatically miss his chance. In one attempt Jack locates a stable portal to the past, but the guardian of the portal (voiced by Kevin Michael Richardson) defeats him after a long but noticeably mismatched battle. The guardian is about to crush Jack when the portal starts to flicker and glow, seemingly giving the guardian a message: the guardian has a giant pterodactyl take the unconscious Jack away. After Jack leaves, the guardian states that it is not yet time for him to return to the past and an image of what is implied to be an older Jack is seen in the portal: indicating that Jack is predestined to succeed, but it will take years for him to do so.