1x01 I

[9.2/10] What a debut! I’d heard good things about Samurai Jack, but this blew me away. Such style, passion, and artistry are on display here under the sure hand of Genndy Tartakovsky and his team.

I’ll admit, I had a little trepidation when the episode opened, and I saw an art style that mostly reflected the cartoonier confines of Tartakovsky’s other, more comic series like The Power Puff Girls and Dexter’s Lab. But soon the split diopter shots and simplified but eye-popping art style grabbed me and pulled me in. This episode-length origin story -- for both the series’ conflict and its title character -- is truly epic and mythic, something that comes through in the grandiose approach Tartakovsky and his colleagues take to the visuals and the story.

Being the Plebe that I am, I can’t help but draw parallels to two important stories in my life: the story of Moses and the story of, well, Batman Begins. The tale of a baby boy sent away from home for his own protection, only to return as a liberator is hard-wired into the minds of anyone who grew up learning about the Old Testament. So there’s resonance to the tale of Jack being spirited away when Aku returns, living among different peoples and learning their ways, only to return to his ancestral homeland with an eye toward liberating his people with holy tools at his side.

At the same time, there’s something just cool about seeing an endlessly badass hero develop the skills that make him nigh-unstoppable. The expertly-crafted montage where Jack slowly but surely absorbs and learns from ancient cultures all around the goal is thrilling to the end. These sequences are all but worldless, but have the wow-factor that comes from seeing our hero become an amalgamation of the best the world has to offer.

That wordlessness is a strength for the opening episode, which lets its visuals and the myth-arc carry the load. What we get rather than exposition and dialogue is the portentous mythspeak that carries the day in most fantasy stories and big emotions.

The biggest stretch of spoken dialogue comes from Jack’s father, both when he gives us the backstory of Jack’s home and the ancient threat posed by Aku at the beginning of the episode, and in his warning to his son to follow his own path toward the end. Both have power from the scarcity of words elsewhere, which mainly come from Aku’s antagonistics boasts.

Instead, “The Beginning” gives us moving images. The resoluteness of Jack’s mother. The tears on young Jack’s face. The warm reunion between mother and child. The once-proud but soon-beaten expression of Jack’s father. The solemness with which they speak. The determination in Jack’s eyes when he faces Aku. All of these convey the core emotions at play in what is at once both a very accessible and complex story of destiny and training.

That’s what’s so incredible about this episode. In twenty-four minutes, it feels more full of mythos, more laden with lore and history and meaning, than some three-hour movies. The tone and pacing of this is so good, breezing over some things in ways that nevertheless impart their significance to our hero and to the story. Tartakovsky conveys the momentousness of Jack’s journey through all of this, to where what’s at stake, for his family, his country, and himself, ring loud and clear.

The ensuing fight with Aku is a thrill all his own. The shredded paper aesthetic for Aku and his minions is visually interesting, and Aku’s own shapeshifting ways provide plenty of neat moments of transformation. The Kabuki mask visage that maintains consistency among all of Aku’s forms adds distinctiveness and a touch of fear to the fire-eyed menace.

Samurai Jack spends so much time establishing this world and its rules and stakes that it almost feels like a shame to send Jack away from it into the future. But given how boffo this opening salvo was, I can do nothing but trust Tartakovsky to make what lies ahead on Jack’s path as exciting and full splendor as this first chapter was.