[9.2/10] What an episode! I love the shift to showing the origins of Aku. But this isn’t a fanservice-y, technical, gap-filling type deal that tells the audience things it doesn't really need to know or which don’t matter. It’s much more an impressionistic origin story, one that does tie into Jack and his family, but which is more about the epochal changes and shifts that heralded Aku’s arrival.
As in the last episode, you can basically divide this one up into two segments: one that is more about backstory and lore (albeit in a very loose and ambiguous way), and one that is more about present action. Both are great in their own way.
I love the detailing of how Aku (or the seed of him) arrived on Earth. The opening sequence of a big blot of evil emerging from the sun, only to be chased and fought through the heavens by a trio of cultural gods, was superb. THe imagery of these bright shining beings flanked against the mass of tentacled malevolence made for striking imagery.
At the same time, the image of a slice of that evil, some severed limb, drifting through space until it crash lands on Earth is just as strikking. I really like the notion that Akus arrival is what killed the dinosaurs, not as part of some conquest, but as a tectonic event that changed the atmosphere on this planet and ended their lives less directly.
Frankly, that’s what I like the most about the early parts of the episode. There is a sense of Aku as less of a deliberate evil during these years, but as more of a force of nature. There’s a sense of him as pollution or degradation or other concepts manifested. But it also just presents him or his primordial stage as a lurching blight on the land, one that sucks up the life force of everything it touches. The way that black death creeps slowly across the landscape, with angled, trident like protuberances jutting out of the ground, gives you the sense of this evil spreading and growing before it was conquering.
Then we shift to seeing (I think?) Jack’s father going off to fight it with his men. What follows is another one of the show’s superlative sequences. The image of all these armor-clad warriors racing through a black, desolate forest, only to be thrown from their horses and otherwise neutralized by their environment, adds a sense of both dread and excitement. At the same time, for a mostly wordless episode, the show once again injects each scene with a raft of excellent sound design. The crunching and crackling wood sounds in particular nicely toe the line between naturalistic and inhuman, and give the black branches that emerge from Aku’s enst a more tangible quality.
I also enjoyed what little explicit backstory we do get here. When Jack’s ancestor approaches the black pool, there’s something visually striking about the way the green elixir he carries matches the colors on Aku’s face, or the way the flaming arrow matches Aku’s signature eyebrows. There’s a sense of both grave misfortune -- through the chance encounter this slice of evil has with our planet, and a sense of making our own grim beds here -- through Jack’s ancestor, his weapons, and his chants, accidentally giving Aku sentience.
What follows is cool and scary, with the ancestor’s horror at what he’s done, Aku’s immediate retribution and desolation, and the image of him stretching out of the ground and attacking the cities.
Overall, this is a hell of a way to add lore and mythos to your show’s signature baddie without getting too cute or over-explain-y. An excellent episode, and I can;t wait for part two!
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2020-03-20T21:05:39Z
[9.2/10] What an episode! I love the shift to showing the origins of Aku. But this isn’t a fanservice-y, technical, gap-filling type deal that tells the audience things it doesn't really need to know or which don’t matter. It’s much more an impressionistic origin story, one that does tie into Jack and his family, but which is more about the epochal changes and shifts that heralded Aku’s arrival.
As in the last episode, you can basically divide this one up into two segments: one that is more about backstory and lore (albeit in a very loose and ambiguous way), and one that is more about present action. Both are great in their own way.
I love the detailing of how Aku (or the seed of him) arrived on Earth. The opening sequence of a big blot of evil emerging from the sun, only to be chased and fought through the heavens by a trio of cultural gods, was superb. THe imagery of these bright shining beings flanked against the mass of tentacled malevolence made for striking imagery.
At the same time, the image of a slice of that evil, some severed limb, drifting through space until it crash lands on Earth is just as strikking. I really like the notion that Akus arrival is what killed the dinosaurs, not as part of some conquest, but as a tectonic event that changed the atmosphere on this planet and ended their lives less directly.
Frankly, that’s what I like the most about the early parts of the episode. There is a sense of Aku as less of a deliberate evil during these years, but as more of a force of nature. There’s a sense of him as pollution or degradation or other concepts manifested. But it also just presents him or his primordial stage as a lurching blight on the land, one that sucks up the life force of everything it touches. The way that black death creeps slowly across the landscape, with angled, trident like protuberances jutting out of the ground, gives you the sense of this evil spreading and growing before it was conquering.
Then we shift to seeing (I think?) Jack’s father going off to fight it with his men. What follows is another one of the show’s superlative sequences. The image of all these armor-clad warriors racing through a black, desolate forest, only to be thrown from their horses and otherwise neutralized by their environment, adds a sense of both dread and excitement. At the same time, for a mostly wordless episode, the show once again injects each scene with a raft of excellent sound design. The crunching and crackling wood sounds in particular nicely toe the line between naturalistic and inhuman, and give the black branches that emerge from Aku’s enst a more tangible quality.
I also enjoyed what little explicit backstory we do get here. When Jack’s ancestor approaches the black pool, there’s something visually striking about the way the green elixir he carries matches the colors on Aku’s face, or the way the flaming arrow matches Aku’s signature eyebrows. There’s a sense of both grave misfortune -- through the chance encounter this slice of evil has with our planet, and a sense of making our own grim beds here -- through Jack’s ancestor, his weapons, and his chants, accidentally giving Aku sentience.
What follows is cool and scary, with the ancestor’s horror at what he’s done, Aku’s immediate retribution and desolation, and the image of him stretching out of the ground and attacking the cities.
Overall, this is a hell of a way to add lore and mythos to your show’s signature baddie without getting too cute or over-explain-y. An excellent episode, and I can;t wait for part two!