I'm big on cartoons; often when I'm not watching GSN, I find myself watching Cartoon Network. In recent years, Cartoon Network has begun to pile original series (which they refer to as "Cartoon Cartoons") into their lineup. The best known of these series is undoubtedly Craig McCracken's The Powerpuff Girls. Admittedly, this is the show that really hooked me on the Cartoon Cartoons, and it is a very fine series, but it is NOT their best or even their funniest. The funniest is another show, Ed, Edd and Eddy (but that's another article), but the best, hands down, is a show called Samurai Jack. Added a few months ago, it was conceived by Genndy Tartakovsky, the gentleman who heads their original series division, by virtue of his creation of the "first" Cartoon Cartoon regular series, Dexter's Laboratory (originally all but the more recent series, like Samurai Jack and Ed, Edd and Eddy, started as short subjects). Tartakovsky experimented with his unusual sense of humor and magnificent cinematic, comic-book-like, animation style on this series (and still does), but it with Jack that he has perfected it.

At first I wasn't really into it myself, but I was flipping through the channels of DirecTV one fine day, and stopped to watch the last few scenes of an episode, and liked it okay. I'd heard of it through the network's constant promotion, but didn't think anything of it, until that day. What hooked me? Surprise: it was the theme song. The main title theme is actually an intoxicating rhythmic techno-tune that got my head bobbing. I couldn't wait until the next episode to hear it again.

Later, I watched an entire episode, and later the 90-minute premiere, and have been a fan ever since. The basic premise is that of a young man (whose real name we never really know) who escapes from his homeland under siege from the shape-shifting sorcerer Aku, and is sent on a journey around the world to learn many ways of fighting and of the cultures of the world, and returns to reclaim a magic sword, and then tries to use it to kill the sorcerer. Unfortunately, as most of know, if he were to kill Aku in the first episode, there wouldn't be a series now, right? So, at the instant where the warrior is about to triumph, Aku cheats, and casts a time warp spell on the hero, who finds himself whole millennia into the future, where the sorcerer has conquered all of Earth, and has even started to attack and conquer other worlds. The warrior, who takes the name Jack, after meeting three future inhabitants who keep calling him "Jack," swears to return to his own time and defeat the wizard before he is able to succeed. The entire series is about Jack's attempts to find his way home. Along the way he meets many unusual people and learns as many nifty skills as those he learned on his first trip (something foreshadowed in the first episode with that first trip).

The animation is unbelievable, full of reds and blacks, many angular edges, and characters one will not soon forget. Jack himself (voiced by Phil La Marr, an African-American actor, which is only strange because Jack is Asian; truthfully this is immaterial, since La Marr, a veteran actor known most recently for his work on the Fox sketch comedy show MAD TV, does a great job as Jack and as many of the other voices he performs on the series) is the stereotypical samurai warrior with his angular lines and constant intense expression. However, great pains are taken to reminds us that he is still human, still mortal and still capable of being defeated; in short, an epic hero if ever there was one. He is endlessly adaptable, as the viewer quickly learns. In one episode, for example, he develops super jumping ability from a group of intelligent apes (when he faces Aku later in that episode, when the villain falsely believes that Jack has learned to fly, Jack tells him simply, "No. I jump good."). Basically, this guy is Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Jet Li and Toshiro Mifune all rolled into one package; in other words, a Grade-A Number One USDA Prime Badass.

The villain, the demon sorcerer Aku, voiced by veteran character actor Mako, is the stereotypical foil for Jack; an evil, physically monstrous character, with every intention of sucking the Earth dry and humiliating and destroying Jack. However, he is also capable of being comic relief, as evidenced in an episode where he tries to twist several fairy tales into stories where Jack is the villain, and where he is the good guy, but the children he is telling the stories to simply won't believe him.

Samurai Jack is basically the ultimate kung fu movie, only in animated form. Frankly, it is one the best examples of American animation in existence, and I highly recommend it. If you have Cartoon Network, you should watch Samurai Jack.

Make sure to tell 'em that the Game Show Man sent you.

Back the Game Show Man's joint.