Forgotten Childhood: Samurai Jack
In 2001, while I withered my youth away in secondary school, I picked up a little bit of an addiction. Truthfully, I watched Samurai Jack to the point of near obsession, even going so far as to keep a babysitting job with what was possibly Ireland’s creepiest father for the sole purpose of watching the show. Through some miracle of unholy cable science, those children had access to the Cartoon Network, among a wide variety of other kids channels. As a child growing up in an era where there were two television stations in this country and you were lucky to even have them, that in itself was something wondrous. I got them hooked on it, too. For the simple reason that when I arrived they would already have control of the remote and the TV guide listings of all the Samurai Jack episodes for the next twelve hours. I trained them well. Even better was the fact that, outside of normal operating hours, Cartoon Network and the rest filled the wee hours of the morning with it. Samurai Jack back-to-back. If the house burned down around my head I’d have died happy, still watching Samurai Jack.
Those were the days. Before the Leaving Cert years killed the parts of me that felt joy and knew peace.
For all you incredible young or undeniably lame people who are unaware of Samurai Jack, it is the heart wrenching tale of an out-of-time Samurai on a mission to save the world from an evil entity called Aku. Unfortunately, while Jack almost defeats Aku at the beginning of the series, the crafty demon throws him into the distant future: the future where Aku has already won and has had a millennia to shape the world in his image. Armed with just his sword, Samurai Jack now wanders through a world filled with robots, talking kung fu gorillas and paid assassins and mercenaries looking to take him out, all the while searching for a way to return to his time and stop Aku from taking over the world. Littered between the far and wide reaches of Genndy Tartakovsky‘s imagination were heartbreaking moments of silence as Samurai Jack often faced, head on, the grim knowledge that his world and everything in it was gone and might very likely never return.
Now
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve binged on Samurai Jack. With its current availability on Netflix, I watch it at my desk, at home, on the bus and sometimes while I’m falling over garden walls on the way to work. It’s still a staple of my modern life. People might ask ‘Does Samurai Jack stand the test of time?’ and I can only respond with time failing the test of Samurai Jack. I want my kung fu robots, damn it! Time ever 
proves a disappointment but that is something that Samurai Jack will never be. It’s still as captivating and awesome as it was the first time I watched it.
Watch the episode in season two where he stumbles across his home town, ruined, buried and desolate and tell me you don’t feel anything. See him playing with his childhood sweetheart in the long grass and not feel an ‘awww’ bubble up. Samurai Jack is a quirky show with a deceptively simple design belaying its staggering emotional depth, complexity and beauty; its cinematic style creates an atmosphere unlike any other show out there. In some episodes there’s little to no dialogue. Think about that for a moment. No one speaks. A lot of the time it’s not even noticeable. The story, visuals and music carry it effortlessly.
The only unfortunate thing about Samurai Jack is that there aren’t more episodes. It tragically ended in 2004 before its story’s conclusion, though they did eventually continue it in book format. When it ended it marked one of the saddest parts of my teenage years. There were whispers of a movie but for years they proved empty promises.
Hi, my name is Emma and I’m a Samurai Jack addict. This week I’ve watched about six hours of Samurai Jack. I know, I was weak and bored and I couldn’t help myself and Netflix….it was Netflix. I just can’t get away from it.
And I really don’t want to.
