Samurai Jack
Dec. 18th, 2007 02:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meganbmooreSo, to take a break in brain breaking meta between the manga I did not read and Princess Tutu, I...started a series(well, the prequel movie) about a samurai transported from medieval Japan to the future that's a mass homage to samurai movies.
Clearly, there is something wrong with me.
Samurai Jack is about the son of a great warlord who once banished an evil demon named Aku with a Magic Sword. Years later, Aku returns and enslaves the kingdom, and only the samurai's wife and son escape. The mother enters a temple while the son is sent away to learn the art of war from around the globe(including from an Errol Flynn-esque Robin Hood.) Years later he returns, takes up his father's sword, and challenges Aku. In an act of desperation, about to lose, Aku flings the young samurai into the far future, where the young samurai finds himself overwhelmed in a world populated by demons, advanced technology, and walking, talking animals. He takes on the name "Jack," which several bystanders called him when he arrived in the future, and soon find himself recruited to aid a group of canine archeologists. They are, literally, walking, talking dogs who are blatantly based on late 19th century archeologists. While researching the history of dogs, they stumbled across crystals that give Aku power, and now are forced to dig the site for more crystals. The plot of the movie from then on is essentially an homage to Seven Samurai, ending with Jack setting out to find a way to return to his own time.
I'm honestly not quite sure how to describe it. The art is very, very stylized and resembles classical Japanese art...and also doesn't. It often has the same "It moved! It actually moved!" quality of the Bakeneko arc of Ayakashi, and there were several times where it doesn't seem to be moving...and then you realize it is. In seconds, it will switch from the "stranger in a strange world" theme to a serious samurai movie. The movie is 70 minutes long, but maybe half of it is spent with the characters talking. There are long montages(Jack growing up, preparing the dog archeologists' dig site for Aku's attack and arming Jack, the big fight, etc) that have no or almost no dialogue, instead playing like a silent film, with music reminescent of old samurai movies playing through them. The music will sound like it's directly out of an Akira Kurosawa film, and then suddenly break into modern music for 5 seconds, only to return to samurai film music.
It's also very, very violent...Jack regularly lops off limbs and is sprayed with "blood," but as most of his opponents are robots and machines, he's bathed with oil instead of blood, and limbs shoot sparks instead of gush blood, allowing Jack to hack, maim and go on samurai rampages without losing his G rating. Jack himself is the most stoic of the stoic samurai and is essentially interchangable with Ogami Itto of Lone Wolf and Cub in that regard, and is actually a dead ringer in all ways with Daigoro(I swear, that was the most stoic 3 year old ever) as a child.
In a lot of ways, at least based on the movie, it's a case of "style over substance," but it's an extremely effective use of style, and it's style over substance with a purpose.
Uhm...basically, I'm glad I also ordered season 1.
Clearly, there is something wrong with me.
Samurai Jack is about the son of a great warlord who once banished an evil demon named Aku with a Magic Sword. Years later, Aku returns and enslaves the kingdom, and only the samurai's wife and son escape. The mother enters a temple while the son is sent away to learn the art of war from around the globe(including from an Errol Flynn-esque Robin Hood.) Years later he returns, takes up his father's sword, and challenges Aku. In an act of desperation, about to lose, Aku flings the young samurai into the far future, where the young samurai finds himself overwhelmed in a world populated by demons, advanced technology, and walking, talking animals. He takes on the name "Jack," which several bystanders called him when he arrived in the future, and soon find himself recruited to aid a group of canine archeologists. They are, literally, walking, talking dogs who are blatantly based on late 19th century archeologists. While researching the history of dogs, they stumbled across crystals that give Aku power, and now are forced to dig the site for more crystals. The plot of the movie from then on is essentially an homage to Seven Samurai, ending with Jack setting out to find a way to return to his own time.
I'm honestly not quite sure how to describe it. The art is very, very stylized and resembles classical Japanese art...and also doesn't. It often has the same "It moved! It actually moved!" quality of the Bakeneko arc of Ayakashi, and there were several times where it doesn't seem to be moving...and then you realize it is. In seconds, it will switch from the "stranger in a strange world" theme to a serious samurai movie. The movie is 70 minutes long, but maybe half of it is spent with the characters talking. There are long montages(Jack growing up, preparing the dog archeologists' dig site for Aku's attack and arming Jack, the big fight, etc) that have no or almost no dialogue, instead playing like a silent film, with music reminescent of old samurai movies playing through them. The music will sound like it's directly out of an Akira Kurosawa film, and then suddenly break into modern music for 5 seconds, only to return to samurai film music.
It's also very, very violent...Jack regularly lops off limbs and is sprayed with "blood," but as most of his opponents are robots and machines, he's bathed with oil instead of blood, and limbs shoot sparks instead of gush blood, allowing Jack to hack, maim and go on samurai rampages without losing his G rating. Jack himself is the most stoic of the stoic samurai and is essentially interchangable with Ogami Itto of Lone Wolf and Cub in that regard, and is actually a dead ringer in all ways with Daigoro(I swear, that was the most stoic 3 year old ever) as a child.
In a lot of ways, at least based on the movie, it's a case of "style over substance," but it's an extremely effective use of style, and it's style over substance with a purpose.
Uhm...basically, I'm glad I also ordered season 1.