The Visual World of 'Samurai Jack'
animationobsessive.substack.com

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513 points

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ani_obsessive

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3 days ago

94 comments

lelandfe ・ 3 days ago

For a lot of great behind the scenes artwork: https://characterdesignreferences.com/art-of-animation-8/art...

I used to have an artist roommate obsessed with the art style of the show. If anyone hasn't yet watched the rebooted season from 2017, I highly recommend it.

Edit: one great clip from S5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFDkcvrSaYU

  • schainks ・ 2 days ago

    I was going to post this link, too :)

    Balance is important!

  • thatguy0900 ・ 3 days ago

    I wasn't much a fan of the rebooted series, I thought the inclusion of the new character took too much focus. Almost felt to me more like a fan fiction ending with someone's OC

    • lelandfe ・ 3 days ago

      12 years on you can get the original creator back to storyboard everything, hire back the old VO team, and still have people complaining the show is too different :P

      • CursedSilicon ・ 2 days ago

        Most of the old VO team

        Makoto Iwamatsu (Aku) died in 2006 :(

    • usefulcat ・ 2 days ago

      I liked the fifth season because they needed to do something different with the story. I feel like they had hit the point of diminishing returns by end of the previous four seasons.

      • thatguy0900 ・ 2 days ago

        I think they could have honestly done the same thing but no new character, have jack retrace his steps to see old characters and that he actually had been making a difference the whole time before finding a time portal and beating aku.

    • k__ ・ 3 days ago

      I watched the whole series because of some clips from the new season.

      The new stuff felt more mature to me and the old stuff more like a kids show.

      Overall I liked both, but I get it, the new stuff felt a bit off.

      • AdmiralAsshat ・ 2 days ago
        ・ 2 more

        It's worth noting that the original four seasons were on Cartoon Network prime time, while the revival season explicitly aired on Adult Swim. So yes, the target audience was older (or, more likely, the target audience was the group of kids who watched the original series that aged into adults while the show was off the air).

        You always got the sense from the original that SJ was held back by the censors (Jack has cartoon Wolverine syndrome--he's got a legendary cutting edge, but is only allowed to use it on doors and robots). But I agree, after four seasons of borderline pacifist Jack, suddenly flipping to "Oh, I guess Jack kills people now" hand-waived away by a flashback of his father using lethal force when necessary, was a bit jarring and tonally inconsistent.

        • BearOso ・ 2 days ago

          You refer to it as Wolverine syndrome, but I also remember it with TMNT and Leonardo. With the cartoon version, they made all the foot clan robots to get around it. It's also quite the shock to read the original comics and find out the turtles love beer, and Leonardo stabs and kills the shredder (permanently) in something like the first issue.

      • Cthulhu_ ・ 2 days ago

        I suspect this is because the target audience is the original audience, which is now 12 years older; probably the same for all the other reboots.

franczesko ・ 3 days ago

Genndy Tartakovsky is a truly unique creator. Samurai Jack was so good, that I had to watch how it ends years later since watching the show on cartoon network

  • dyauspitr ・ 2 days ago

    Dexter’s Lab as well. What a fantastic show.

    • arrowsmith ・ 2 days ago

      I loved that show so much as a kid.

      It also produced some well-known cartoonists who went on to have very successful careers: most notably Seth MacFarlane, creator of Family Guy.

  • klondike_klive ・ 2 days ago

    He really set the tone for the late 90s/early 00s, everyone wanted to copy his style (me included) but few had the chops. I definitely didn't!

  • brcmthrowaway ・ 2 days ago

    What about Pantheon?

    • skavi ・ 2 days ago

      It doesn’t appear that Tartakovsky was affiliated at all with Pantheon. I would have been surprised if he was affiliated given the show’s fairly mundane animation.

      So what about Pantheon? It doesn’t seem relevant to this discussion apart from it also being animated.

      • close04 ・ 2 days ago
        ・ 3 more

        Maybe GP was thinking of Primal.

        • Papirola ・ 2 days ago
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          Primal was superb

          • aceazzameen ・ 2 days ago

            What a show. The finale wasn't my favorite, but I still liked it. Everything else was outstanding.

    • debugnik ・ 2 days ago

      You tell us. What about it?

      • consumer451 ・ 2 days ago
        ・ 2 more

        Not who you responded to, but what an interesting show!

        I hate simulation theory, and even with that bias, that show had so many cool concepts.

        • debugnik ・ 19 hours ago

          Noted! First time hearing about it, I'll have to consider it even if I'm growing tired of "living in a simulation" stories.

rcarmo ・ 2 days ago

Samurai Jack is one of my all-time favorite animation series. The sheer amount of creativity packed into any one episode and the consistency of the visual styling throughout (with a few outliers, as any other artwork) makes it doubly unique, and I cannot praise it highly enough.

AtlasBarfed ・ 3 days ago

The star wars clone wars shorts are just amazing animation. The way he caught the essence of the characters in animation that was superior to the human portrayals was a testament to his talent.

It made the cgi clone wars look so amateurish.

The best sam jack imo is the light vs dark. My jaw dropped at that.

He's definitely one of the few creators where I can feel him tickling my mind, overwhelming me with creativity.

  • BolexNOLA ・ 3 days ago

    Clone Wars was so fun. The episode with the special forces troopers that’s mostly silent immediately comes to mind, as well as the one where General grievous just goes to town on a group of surrounded Jedi.

    It was also pretty cool watching Mace force crush grievous‘s chest lol

    • DanielHB ・ 2 days ago

      I really love that scene where Grievous starts monologuing while the Jedi ties his cloak to the train door with the force. When the train leaves he just looney toons out of there. Honestly the single best use of the force in the whole god-damn canon, cracks me up every time.

      And Palpatine just raises his eyebrows while she is doing it, amazing. Was hugely disappointed when I saw Episode 3 and what they did to Grievous, that dude was scary in the shorts.

    • throwaway422432 ・ 2 days ago

      Clone Wars was excellent, and a real departure for the brand under Lucas's watch. It set a lot of the canon for Windu and Grevious at the time.

      Never got around to watching Samurai Jack but really should.

    • aceazzameen ・ 2 days ago

      Tartakovsky's Grievous was awesome. That character ended up being such a disappointment in the film. But I still liked how they tied that series straight into the final film.

      I was at a talk with Tartakovsky a long time ago. I don't remember all the details, but he said when they first got their descriptions of Grievous from Lucasfilm, they didn't have much to go off of. Lucas said Grievous had a cough and that was it. Tartakovsky's team didn't know why he had a cough, so they created the Mace Windu scene.

duxup ・ 3 days ago

Samurai Jack is so beautiful and being able to portray things / have the confidence in the art really seems to cut back on unnecessary / clumsy dialogue that so many shows have today.

  • BolexNOLA ・ 3 days ago

    The episode with the three blind archers guarding the well that grants wishes is a master class in gesticulates at everything

    Whenever I think of Tartakovsky I also think of his clone wars micro series he did for Cartoon Network. The episode with the special forces clone troopers that has no dialogue after the first 30-60 seconds or show is just so unbelievably good. So much tension.

    • lazystar ・ 3 days ago

      > Whenever I think of Tartakovsky I also think of his clone wars micro series he did for Cartoon Network.

      the episode with mace windu taking on an entire droid army - by himself - is what opened my imagination to the true potential that a jedi master has. it's a shame that neither the movies, nor any other tv show, have come close to conveying "why" everyone fears and respects force users.

      • Dracophoenix ・ 2 days ago
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        > the episode with mace windu taking on an entire droid army - by himself - is what opened my imagination to the true potential that a jedi master has.

        As a kid, that was my favorite episode of the series first season. I still remember coming back after school catching the 5 minute micro-episodes on Cartoon Network.

        > it's a shame that neither the movies, nor any other tv show, have come close to conveying "why" everyone fears and respects force users.

        It stops becoming Star Wars as we know it and starts becoming Dragon Ball Z with laser swords. Quite a number of books and video games in the Expanded Universe/Legends veered in that direction, in many cases to the detriment of consistency in lore.

        • lazystar ・ 2 days ago
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          > It ... starts becoming Dragon Ball Z with laser swords.

          this is a billion dollar idea. i wish i had the capital to get it off the ground, sigh.

          > in many cases to the detriment of consistency in lore.

          "Somehow, Palpatine returned" is the current state of the lore. it literally cant get worse, so why not have some fun?

        • anthk ・ 2 days ago
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          Dragon Ball had Star Wars as inspiration too. Akira Toriyama loved SW.

          • Dracophoenix ・ 2 days ago

            And in turn, Star Wars was inspired by the film-work of Akira Kurosawa. Kurosawa's film noir period dramas are different in tone and scope from Toriyama's action-comedy flare and they both differ in subject matter and characterization from Star Wars. For Star Wars, going too far in the pursuit of cool overpowered characters creates difficulties for meaningful plot resolution.

      • MattGrommes ・ 2 days ago

        Agree completely. The bit where Mace pulls the screws out of the droids with the Force and then uses them against the other droids is probably my favorite Force move in all of Star Wars.

      • eutropia ・ 3 days ago

        a million times this.

        Clone Wars microseries did more for my love of star wars than all the movies put together.

        pure effing magic.

    • photonthug ・ 3 days ago

      Ok I’m rewatching that one soon, forgot about it. The flashback of like, all heroes including Vishnu and zeus fighting aku was also rad. Maybe even the pilot, or the start of the reboot? Awesome

    • usefulcat ・ 2 days ago

      Yes, I was going to mention that exact episode. The distinctive visual style is perhaps more obvious, but the show also makes excellent use of sound.

      • BolexNOLA ・ 2 days ago

        The way they walked with their heads static and their ears moving. So creepy

    • Marazan ・ 2 days ago

      That was the first episode I ever saw of Samurai Jack. I had never seen anything like it. I had tuned in after the initial exposition so I experienced zero dialogue until the very end.

      It was spellbinding. When he dons the blindfold and everything goes black and silent for what feels like eternity...

      • h2zizzle ・ 2 days ago
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        It's hard to understate what a revelation the relative thematic maturity of Cartoon Network's offerings was. Between shows like SJ and RAoJQ and Toonami-aired anime like SM and GW, you go from a period dominated by toy commercials to one filled with political and philosophical meditations masquerading as toy commercials. It's hard to imagine the popularity of today's prestige TV (which is probably the closest you're going to get to turning most Americans into creatures inclined towards the literary) without the generations that grew up watching (and creating) shows like "giant robot pilots argue the merits of pacificism" and "a samurai walks silently through many a beautiful and alien landscape for half the episode".

        • cosmic_cheese ・ 2 days ago
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          In case others might not be aware of what the acronyms used in this post refer to (they weren’t immediately obvious to me, even as someone who watched Cartoon Network/Toonami/Adult Swim):

          - RAoJQ: The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest

          - SM: Sailor Moon

          - GW: Gundam Wing

          • h2zizzle ・ 2 days ago

            Thanks! (Though part of my cheeky intent was to get the uninitiated to search the acronyms and maybe discover a new series to watch.)

  • stevenwoo ・ 3 days ago

    His first season of Primal has almost zero dialogue and works really well, but it's a caveman and a dinosaur buddy show.

sometimes_all ・ 2 days ago

The Ninja/Shinobi fight is burned into my mind. It's been so long, yet it's the best animation sequence I've ever seen. The art in Samurai Jack was truly next level.

thatguy0900 ・ 3 days ago

For anyone who liked samurai Jack's art style, there's a newer show called primal made by some of its creators that has a very similar style to it. Similar to the low dialogue in samurai jack it has no talking at all

TuringTourist ・ 3 days ago

I never watched Samurai Jack when it was coming out as a child. I have begun watching it recently and it is absolutely a breathtaking piece of work.

  • GolfPopper ・ 2 days ago

    As an adult, I was fortunate enough to catch "Jack vs. the Ninja" on a hotel TV while on a trip. I was absolutely entranced, and tracked down the rest of the show. "Breathtaking" is a good description.

  • keeganpoppen ・ 3 days ago

    same. i did watch the more recent "last season", or whatever it is that they made, and i thought the artwork was absolutely fantastic.

photonthug ・ 3 days ago

Always loved these aesthetics. No mention of primal here, which is well worth checking out and pretty remarkable for being almost completely free of dialog and more oriented towards adults.

Dem0ngo ・ 2 days ago

I'm a huge fan of this show and Tartakovsky in general! You may be able to guess that by my username.. :)

Great analysis!

Marazan ・ 3 days ago

A truly breathtakingly daring show booth visually and sonically.

I adored if at the time and it still looks and feels unique to this day

  • dfxm12 ・ 3 days ago

    The article only touches on the visual world and even quotes Genndy Tartakovsky as saying we’ve almost forgotten what animation was about — movement and visuals, but I agree with you about the sounds. The background music sets the scene as much as any background visual.

    • Affric ・ 3 days ago

      Mm, we live in such a world of words that they are often the default method of communication we use but there are so many more symbols available and even non symbolic ways to communicate.

      Sonics is so much wider than language and music but in a lot of real time art takes a back seat.

lxe ・ 3 days ago

Samurai Jack could easily be a a part of Death Love Robots because of its unique style and content.

  • KetoManx64 ・ 2 days ago

    Except it's not nihilistic, which just about every episode of LD&R is.

throw_a_grenade ・ 3 days ago

Tangential: does anyone know if there is a site that collects backgrounds from cartoons? Those would be gorgeous wallpapers.

coro_1 ・ 3 days ago

Slightly off topic, but I only recently discovered Samurai Jack. I found it through some old VHS archive recordings. The care with the animation is unreal. I'd love any links or suggestions for where to find more authentic versions. Commercials welcomed. The original airings have a different feel compared to the heavily processed versions on streaming platforms and archive.org

bitwize ・ 2 days ago

Samurai Jack always struck me as a 90s-modern, anime-and-Kurosawa-film-influenced update of another animated classic, Thundarr the Barbarian. The premise is quite different, but the vibe of "quasi-solitary warrior wandering through a ruined future, righting wrongs" is very much in force.

  • blacksmith_tb ・ 2 days ago

    Except that Thundarr, while having some great weird and zany plotting, took itself seriously, while Samurai Jack is a parody, an homage, and also _really beautiful_ compared to the extremely lumpy animation that seemed cool in the 80s (and I watched it on Saturday mornings back then, so I should know).

stonecharioteer ・ 2 days ago

The core story of Jack is so similar to the Wano arc in One Piece. It's amazing when people say they don't see the similarities. Aku and Kaido are so similar.

javchz ・ 3 days ago

I loved the small segments of behind the scenes the did for Samurai Jack back in the day in CN. It was my first time as a child to appreciate visuals and sound in a new perspective.

Even to this day a beautiful work of art.

farmdve ・ 2 days ago

I always enjoyed the near silent Samurai Jack Episodes. Especially the one with the Tower and three possessed soldiers.

CHB0403085482 ・ 3 days ago

Chinese animation is catching up too ~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skIoRG4B2hU

  • Cthulhu_ ・ 2 days ago

    This is cool and all but it's unrelated to Samurai Jack and based on the false premise that it was "behind" somehow. This is also CGI whereas Samurai Jack and its inspiration is based in traditional animation techniques. Probably computer aided / digital but there's no escaping that.

  • ivm ・ 2 days ago

    This is my new favorite, thank you. Not just animation quality, the writing is incredible.

crawsome ・ 3 days ago

The backgrounds are really impressive. Right after hand-drawn animation stopped being common.

He never topped this effort in the rest of his work. He's been taking animation shortcuts ever since.

  • aceazzameen ・ 2 days ago

    The backgrounds in Primal were stunning. Phenomenal hand drawn animation too, especially the creatures. No shortcuts there.

    • troyvit ・ 2 days ago

      I feel like one could make a beautiful poster by pausing almost any random scene of Primal

arminiusreturns ・ 2 days ago

The meat squad used to call me "the perfect mix of Johnny Bravo and Samurai Jack" That's a compliment I'll take to the grave. =)

“There is always hope.” - SJ

otikik ・ 2 days ago

Peak art