"Once there was a cute little girl with GREAT FLAAAAAAAAAAMING EYEBROWS!"
So I've been watching Samurai Jack.
I picked up the DVD more or less on a whim. I'd heard good things about the show for years, but it was only released in Australia very recently - in fact we still only have the first and second seasons because distributors hate us ex-convict bastards - and it is good, very good, but not precisely in the way I was expecting.
There is action, which I expected, since it was made by the same guy as made Clone Wars (no, the good one). I wasn't expecting it to be so...visceral, as literally as possible given the rating.
And there's comedy too, but I was expecting more of it, somehow, because it's a Cartoon Network show and they love their comedy.
But instead it's one of the most unusual Western cartoons I think I've ever seen. It's perfectly content to spend fifteen seconds' focus on a single burning tree in a forest, which is a long time in a twenty-two minute animation, and most shows fill it in with talking and rapid-fire cuts. But Samurai Jack is slow. Not in a bad way; simply not hurried, and the dialogue, characterization and animation is so spare and sparse that it never has to be. It's fascinating.
Jack makes for an odd main character because he's really not very interesting, outwardly. He's made likeable enough by being polite, compassionate, honourable, determined, open-minded and highly skilled, but you know right from the beginning that:
a) He's not going to reveal that he has a troubled past. We know his past, and it's very sad, but it's not dark.
b) He's not going to start wisecracking. The guy almost uses normal words the way other people use curse words; only at moments of great need or high emotion.
c) He's not going to reveal any unusual powers (and neither is his sword): he's human and he's good at fighting by virtue of being quick, agile, skilled and smart. His sword can cut through anything as long as he has the strength, and it can hurt Aku. That's it and that will remain it. Sometimes he gets brief upgrades, and once he learns to 'jump good', but in the former case it's never permanent and in the latter it's just a handwavey explanation for some of the more crazy action sequences.
d) He's not going to get a sidekick or a friend. Maybe allies, for a while. Sometimes he helps train people so they can save themselves. But he is, generally, alone, and I don't think he minds that much.
All functions of e) He's probably not going to change. Maybe a little, in slight, subtle ways, but there's no arc. There's just a man, a goal, and the obstacles; never anything more complex.
That excludes several sets of normal plots and opens up others. It's an unashamedly episodic, formulaic show, which is why I'm a little surprised that I enjoyed it so much; I love arcs and continuity and development. But then I read a review that pointed out the show uses its formula to experiment, to vary on the theme, with some really rather fascinating results. There's the episode where Jack fights three blind archers, for example. The one where Jack fights a clone made up of his rage, which is the one with the burning tree; that long focus hammers home that this fight is destroying everything around them. The one where Aku reads fairy tales.
It's also, by that token, quite often extremely weird. One episode opens with Jack mounted on a giant flying insect being chased by a bunch of blue, anthropomorphic cat-robots in red Napoleon hats also mounted on giant flying insects, over a desert with cactuses the size of hills, and we get absolutely no context for any of it until the very end of the battle. It's not even important to the story, it's just a funky action scene at the start of an otherwise thoughtful and melancholic episode.*
I think I adore it. Even if it does insist on being pretty much entirely targeted at boys, I love it anyway because it's beautiful and because Jack loses his shirt a lot and is completely mystified when somebody offers him a high-five. And Mako clearly loved and hammed the hell out of being Aku. He's a joy to listen to.
*On that topic, you know what I'd like to never hear again? Any variation on the phrase "But cartoons are supposed to be funny!" Well, yes, most mainstream Western animation is comedic. Not all of it has to be, you know. Who has ever insisted that live-action movies be nothing but comedy, or that every book should include some humorous pratfalls, or expressed surprise when a song is about lost love or attempted suicide rather than something funny, for god's sake? The assumption is completely ridiculous. Yes, the medium lends itself well to comedy (and weirdness), but that doesn't mean it's the only thing it can or should do.
I picked up the DVD more or less on a whim. I'd heard good things about the show for years, but it was only released in Australia very recently - in fact we still only have the first and second seasons because distributors hate us ex-convict bastards - and it is good, very good, but not precisely in the way I was expecting.
There is action, which I expected, since it was made by the same guy as made Clone Wars (no, the good one). I wasn't expecting it to be so...visceral, as literally as possible given the rating.
And there's comedy too, but I was expecting more of it, somehow, because it's a Cartoon Network show and they love their comedy.
But instead it's one of the most unusual Western cartoons I think I've ever seen. It's perfectly content to spend fifteen seconds' focus on a single burning tree in a forest, which is a long time in a twenty-two minute animation, and most shows fill it in with talking and rapid-fire cuts. But Samurai Jack is slow. Not in a bad way; simply not hurried, and the dialogue, characterization and animation is so spare and sparse that it never has to be. It's fascinating.
Jack makes for an odd main character because he's really not very interesting, outwardly. He's made likeable enough by being polite, compassionate, honourable, determined, open-minded and highly skilled, but you know right from the beginning that:
a) He's not going to reveal that he has a troubled past. We know his past, and it's very sad, but it's not dark.
b) He's not going to start wisecracking. The guy almost uses normal words the way other people use curse words; only at moments of great need or high emotion.
c) He's not going to reveal any unusual powers (and neither is his sword): he's human and he's good at fighting by virtue of being quick, agile, skilled and smart. His sword can cut through anything as long as he has the strength, and it can hurt Aku. That's it and that will remain it. Sometimes he gets brief upgrades, and once he learns to 'jump good', but in the former case it's never permanent and in the latter it's just a handwavey explanation for some of the more crazy action sequences.
d) He's not going to get a sidekick or a friend. Maybe allies, for a while. Sometimes he helps train people so they can save themselves. But he is, generally, alone, and I don't think he minds that much.
All functions of e) He's probably not going to change. Maybe a little, in slight, subtle ways, but there's no arc. There's just a man, a goal, and the obstacles; never anything more complex.
That excludes several sets of normal plots and opens up others. It's an unashamedly episodic, formulaic show, which is why I'm a little surprised that I enjoyed it so much; I love arcs and continuity and development. But then I read a review that pointed out the show uses its formula to experiment, to vary on the theme, with some really rather fascinating results. There's the episode where Jack fights three blind archers, for example. The one where Jack fights a clone made up of his rage, which is the one with the burning tree; that long focus hammers home that this fight is destroying everything around them. The one where Aku reads fairy tales.
It's also, by that token, quite often extremely weird. One episode opens with Jack mounted on a giant flying insect being chased by a bunch of blue, anthropomorphic cat-robots in red Napoleon hats also mounted on giant flying insects, over a desert with cactuses the size of hills, and we get absolutely no context for any of it until the very end of the battle. It's not even important to the story, it's just a funky action scene at the start of an otherwise thoughtful and melancholic episode.*
I think I adore it. Even if it does insist on being pretty much entirely targeted at boys, I love it anyway because it's beautiful and because Jack loses his shirt a lot and is completely mystified when somebody offers him a high-five. And Mako clearly loved and hammed the hell out of being Aku. He's a joy to listen to.
*On that topic, you know what I'd like to never hear again? Any variation on the phrase "But cartoons are supposed to be funny!" Well, yes, most mainstream Western animation is comedic. Not all of it has to be, you know. Who has ever insisted that live-action movies be nothing but comedy, or that every book should include some humorous pratfalls, or expressed surprise when a song is about lost love or attempted suicide rather than something funny, for god's sake? The assumption is completely ridiculous. Yes, the medium lends itself well to comedy (and weirdness), but that doesn't mean it's the only thing it can or should do.