Ashi and Jack face their demons in Season 5, episode 7 of 'Samurai Jack'

Jack's real enemy isn't the demon Aku, but the demonic anger within himself. 

Samurai Jack has always depended on the moral goodness of its title character. If Jack weren't committed to righteousness and protecting the innocent, we viewers would not care for him, and he would not have rallied so many to his side. And if his skillful commitment to these virtues did not make him such a threat, then Aku and his minions would not care to oppose him.

But what if Jack were not worthy? As it turns out, this is more than idle speculation. For despite the journey we have seen Jack undergo, not just in this season, but in seasons 1-4, he is not perfect. This episode focuses on one of Jack's imperfections: the (understandable) frustration and anger accumulated from his many setbacks and disappointments. For Jack, in this episode, this is mostly a mental struggle. Meanwhile, Ashi demonstrates it physically, proving to herself and to the world that Jack's quest is worthy, and he is worthy of his quest.

As promised last week, the primary narrative drive of this week's episode is Jack's quest to retrieve his sword. We saw earlier this season that he had lost it, and how its loss had changed him, but we did not see exactly how he had lost it. But this episode opens with a flashback telling us how. At some point in the past, Jack discovered a time portal, but Aku (voiced by Greg Baldwin, who sounds basically indistinguishable from Aku in this flashback) destroyed it, and informs him it was the last one in existence. In his frustration, Jack ruthlessly slaughters some beasts Aku had summoned to distract him ("I know better than to mess with that sword!" Aku says as he flees). After Jack graphically kills the beasts, he realizes that they were merely transformed versions of the friendly lamb-like creatures who had led him to the time portal in the first place. In the resulting despair and confusion, Jack's sword plummets down the hole the time portal once occupied.

When we return to the present time, Jack and Ashi return to this place to search for the sword. But a glance at one of the skulls of the creatures Jack killed, a symbol of his wrath, makes him realize this is a fruitless search. "I did not lose the sword. But the sword left me."* In his anger, it seems, Jack became unworthy of the weapon. Thus, Jack must retreat inward, and sends himself, through meditation, on a quiet vision quest (that has some of the best animation and music of the show yet) to restore his proper mental state.

Jack, trippin' on his quest.

His lack of balance manifests in the boisterous, quasi-demonic, distorted version of himself that magnifies any negative feelings he might have. Early in the season, it magnified his despair; later, his guilt; and, now that he has returned to his quest, his frustration at being unable to complete it. This part of Jack wants the easy way out; when Jack's spirit guide tells him that "it is not for me to show you your path," demon-Jack demands it, especially "after everything we've been through...the death...the loss...the suffering!" But the real Jack discards these feelings of wrath and impatience, emerging from his inner ordeal as a triumphant restoration of his old self.**

Jack's back. 

Most of Jack's scenes in this episode take place in his own head; he mostly sits completely still. This leaves Ashi to guard him, and boy, does she have her work cut out for her, with loud and violent tasks that contrast directly with Jack's quiet but equally important inner quest. First, she fends off an entire army of orc-like goons come to kill Jack. But, more challenging, and more significant, is the attempt on Jack's life by Ashi's mother (voiced by Grey DeLisle, also the voice of Vicki, the evil babysitter of Timmy Turner in Fairly Oddparents, who is voiced by...Tara Strong, the voice of Ashi). The Mother trained Ashi from birth to kill Jack, and provides the first real test of Ashi's commitment to her new moral universe, as well as a significant physical challenge, as she is a formidable foe. And though the Mother tempts and guilts her back to her old life, Ashi proves her change of heart by valiantly defending Jack and killing her. And with her Mother gone, Ashi has now fully rejected the evil she once served.

Ashi, dealing with some mommy issues.

This episode ends with Jack restored to his old self, Ashi wholly committed to his cause, and both of them ready to move onto their next (and final) goal: defeating Aku. I was ever-so-slightly disappointed that this episode was structurally very similar to the previous one (Jack has a mental struggle and emerges from it, Ashi is the main focus in the physical world, and it ends with them announcing their next step: last week, finding Jack's sword; this week, defeating Aku). But I'd be lying if I didn't smile when Jack was back in his samurai garb, wielding the sword he has now once again proven himself worthy to wield. It is only a matter of time before he gets a chance to use it again.

And I, for one, can't wait.

*Jack's sword, in this case, seems to function a bit like Thor's hammer: If Jack is unworthy of wielding it, then he can't use it. We saw a trace of this in the original run episode "Jack and the Zombies," when Aku attempted to use Jack's sword to kill Jack, but could not, for the sword could only be used for good.
**I guess this means we'll never get to see Jack look like this:

Jack's looms large over season 5, episode 6 of "Samurai Jack," despite being (mostly) absent

The legend of Samurai Jack 

Who is Samurai Jack?

When I reviewed last week's episode, which focused on Aku's evil, I naturally focused on the shapeshifting master of darkness himself. And that made sense; Aku was actually in the first act, and the rest of the episode showed what evil Aku had wrought upon the Earth. This week's episode is a sort of mirror image companion to last week's, focusing on the goodness of Jack instead of the darkness of Aku. But while the previous episode opened with a demonstration of Aku's evil from Aku himself, in this episode, we don't see Jack directly until the final act. We instead see him indirectly, in the effect he has had on Ashi, and on the world at large. And even though Jack is technically absent from most of this episode, through these indirect expressions, he looms large over this episode.

We open on Ashi, a now-reformed Daughter of Aku, searching the world for Jack after he disappeared at the end of last week's episode. That she cares enough about Jack to go searching for him says much about how much (and how quickly) her character has changed from the homicidal monomania on which she was raised. Yet we get to see more of Ashi in this episode than just this. In a highly symbolic gesture, she uses a pool of clean water to wash off the dark costume that a flashback reveals to us was literally burned onto her as a child. When she emerges, she clothes herself in garments sewn from nature, a fitting culmination of her character's consistent wonder for the natural world (indeed, this is what drew her away from Aku, and toward Jack). The new Ashi is still a fierce warrior, but she has now fully separated herself from the darkness of her past. It's a fairly quick journey for Ashi's character, but credibly portrayed nonetheless.

Ashi, reborn through nature.

Ashi spends this episode following clues and leads to track down Jack. In doing so, she begins to get a sense of Jack's impact on the world. She has multiple encounters with people whose paths crossed Jack's in the past: the once-subjugated elephantine people Jack freed in "Jack, the Woolies, and the Chritchellites"; the once-cursed archers from "Jack and the Three Blind Archers" whose curse Jack broke at his own expense; the once-enslaved rave-dancing mob whom Jack freed (and taught how to dance...and they remembered the dance, and even made him a song!); the once-arrogant would-be samurai from "Samurai vs. Samurai" whom Jack humbled*. Ashi's search montage is not only a fun treat for fans (like me) who have watched the show from the very beginning, and clear proof of the advantage in a long-awaited sequel of returning virtually all of the on- and off-screen principals, who can then remember things like this.** The gratitude of those whom Ashi finds is also a testament to something the original series did not dwell on too much: the legend of Samurai Jack that has grown up in the world from all the people he has helped. It makes perfect sense in-universe that he would become a legend, and I'm glad the show is expanding on this idea. I have a feeling it won't be the last time we see some of Jack's old friends.

The legend of Samurai Jack even has its own Mockingjay symbol. 

When this episode finally does find Jack, he is in a dark place: a cemetery (possibly the one from "Jack and the Zombies," but I'm not sure). It turns out the ominous green samurai that has haunted his visions is a spirit who has been trying to convince him that seppuku -- samurai suicide -- is the only honorable course, that hope is "just a fleeting sentiment" while Jack's failure "is real" and "death follows in your wake." This spectral samurai says that Jack must "face the consequences of your dishonor, or bear the guilt of your failure for all eternity."

The end of Samurai Jack? 

Ashi confronts him just as he is about to give up. And this time, unlike last week, she's the one who dissuades Jack from an errant path. It is the proof she offers that he has made a difference in the world, in her life and the "countless innocents" that he has saved, that convinces him to stay his hand. That this new season of Samurai Jack would be willing to show Jack go down a path so dark shows how well it is taking advantage of a new rating and a new network to mature with its audience. But now that he has vanquished this inner turmoil, and regained confidence that there is hope, the conclusion of this episode leaves us no doubt that he will turn to Aku's evil next.

What happens next? For the first time this season, I am beginning to get some idea. Jack and Ashi will search for Jack's sword. Meanwhile, Scaramouch, the musical assassin Jack thought he had dispatched in this season's first episode but who survived (as merely a head), will succeed in his comical*** quest to alert Aku that Jack is currently swordless. Who will win that race? Who knows. Whatever happens, though we now know that Jack has many allies willing to fight on his side. In the end, the main journey of Jack's character may be to learn to abandon the persistent, stoic solitude to which his mission has accustomed him, and to accept the help, the companionship, and perhaps even the love of others. It would be a fitting journey for the great samurai -- and the good man -- who is Samurai Jack.

*Ashi also encounters Demongo, a formidable antagonist from season 2 whom I hope we see again, and  a short, mysterious, cloaked figure whose identity is kept from us. I hope we learn who it was. I have no idea.
**Will they remember the Guardian?
***Scaramouch's journey provides us a Samurai Jack first: the appearance of the word "penis" in the show (also now the first time the word has appeared on this blog).

Aku's evil takes center stage at the midpoint of Season 5 of 'Samurai Jack'

The shape-shifting master of darkness himself. 

Who is Aku? 

The intro to the original run of Samurai Jack, narrated by Aku himself (then Mako, now Greg Baldwin, a great replacement), tells us almost everything we need to know about him: He is "the shape-shifting master of darkness" who "unleashed an unspeakable evil" into the world, inviting a challenge in the form of the show's title character. Jack nearly succeeded, but, "before the final blow was struck," Aku "tore open a portal in time, and flung [Jack] into the future," where Aku's "rule is law." The conflict at the show's center is Jack's attempt to "return to the past, and undo the future that is Aku." 

There is more to Aku than just this, though. In a two-part episode of the fourth season of Samurai Jack, we learn that Aku is actually a remnant of the primordial darkness thought destroyed by creation, taken root in the soil of Earth and feeding off its life. He is, as Jack describes him in this appropriately dark episode of Samurai Jack, "evil personified. The darkest soul from the pit of hate." To Aku, "all that is good and innocent must be decimated. That is his will, his desire." Aku is also often portrayed as a comic figure, all the more terrifying for the sadistic pleasure he derives from his tormenting. We've seen both sides of Aku in the show, his buffoonery and his psychosis. But now, at the midpoint of Samurai Jack's final season, we see his evil demonstrated more plainly than ever before.

The most obvious form of Aku's evil is Aku himself. This episode opens with a ruthless demonstration of his evil, and the power by which he abets it. The Scotsman (John DiMaggio, aka Bender from Futurama, Jake from Adventure Time, Drago from Kim Possible, and dozens of other roles; he's a member of the voice acting mafia in good standing), a ribald, exuberant warrior who became one of Jack's few companions despite (or because of?) being as different from him as one could be, has assembled an army to attack Aku's dwelling. (And he has brought his daughters, all tough warriors like their father, along with him.) It was wonderful to see the Scotsman again, even if his assault on Aku is an abject failure; Aku is simply too powerful to suffer defeat by any means other than the sword Jack must reclaim. In fitting Scotsman fashion, however, some of his novissima verba* do get under Aku's skin. But until Jack reclaims his sword, no one will get any further. 

Not even sword-wielding, wheelchair-bound, elderly Scottish man with a machine gun leg.

Yet Aku's evil takes other forms as well. There is the despoliation of nature that his reign has wrought. In stark contrast to Jack, who strives as best he can to live in harmony with nature, Aku replaces as much of the world's natural beauty as he can with perverse corruptions or mechanized horrors of his own making. In this, he somewhat resembles Saruman of The Lord of the Rings, he with the "mind of metal and wheels" in the Ent Treebeard's description. Aku's is the sort of evil that will destroy a forest of beautiful trees, but leave one as "a reminder of his power and oppression." It is precisely this aspect of Aku, and the contrasting behavior of Jack, that was the seed of Ashi's turning away from her brainwashed upbringing. 

Saruman's got nothing on Aku. 

Far more profound, however, is the evil that Aku has unleashed among the sentient inhabitants of the world. To have a brutal industrialized hellscape is one thing, but to populate it with criminals and overlords who assist Aku in creating "a world where the innocent and the weak are always preyed upon," in Jack's description, is entirely different. The true evil of Aku is that he has dehumanized the world, reduced the inhabitants of Earth to a Darwinian struggle in which strength and cunning untethered from morality prosper. It is a world not merely of "catastrophe, devastation, and carnage," as Jack says, though it is certainly that. More devastating, though, is that it is a world where vices have become virtues, where children have become slaves to evil and manipulation (of particular import to Ashi, raised as a brainwashed child soldier), where restraint and mercy lead only to death and ruin, where the few pockets of innocence and joy are singled out for ruination, where underlings do not merely carry out evil orders but torture for pleasure (calling it "fun"). This is the unspeakable evil Aku has unleashed, and it is enough, in this episode, to turn Ashi definitively away from the life she was born into.

But not before coming into her own as a protector of the innocent. 

Samurai Jack, however, is full of surprises. And thus it is in this episode that Jack, who, "after all he's been through, still can't bring himself to hurt an innocent," in the words of one of his tormentors, finally breaks. (Falsely) believing his actions have caused the deaths of dozens of innocent children who had been brainwashed into ferality, he accepts the invitation of the ominous horseback figure that has haunted his visions in previous episodes. It is a continuing testament to the virtuosity of this final season of Samurai Jack that I do not know what this means; it could be a sort of symbol for a yielding to the suicidal impulse that has tempted Jack in previous episodes, or to his descent into a dark version of himself. Whatever it is, though, it doesn't seem good. It seems, in fact, like some form of giving up, the ground for which had been laid in Jack's nihilistic reply to Ashi after she has finally decided that Jack is right, that Aku is the evil one. When she asks what can be done against Aku's evil, Jack says: 

Nothing. I've fought Aku for ages. I've seen countless innocents die. I've lived this nightmare for what seems like an eternity. There is no way to defeat him. There is no hope. No way out.   

The Samurai has come a long way, and his journey has weighed on him. But whatever happens to Jack, we must hope, for the sake of the world of Samurai Jack, that either he, Ashi, or someone else continues to fight against the evil that is Aku.

*That's "newest words," in literal Latin; we would say "last words." Yes, the Scotsman dies, a fact spoiled for me this morning by YouTube. But we haven't seen the last of him; he lingers as a kind of Celtic Force ghost. I hope we see him again. 

Why I won't watch the trailers for 'The Last Jedi'

I don't want to know anything more about this movie than what this poster tells me. 

Earlier this week, I had a dream that it was the day of the premiere of Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi. I spent the whole of the dream frantically running around, trying to avoid the spoilers that were coming at me from seemingly every direction. Nowhere was safe. Eventually, I simply hid in the theater where I would eventually see the movie and waited for the premiere. (Incidentally, this dream strongly resembles what I did in advance of The Force Awakens.) And last night, I mentioned this dream to a friend. In the resultant discussion, we both decided that we would avoid not only spoilers for The Last Jedi, but even the trailers. We would go into the movie completely fresh, and every frame, every word of dialogue would surprise us.

Lo and behold, the very day after this conversation, and only two days after my dream (and this tweet), a trailer for The Last Jedi has come out. I will leave others to speculate what this says about my ability either to predict events or to bend reality to my will (or both?). But because I spend too much time on the Internet (and follow movie news very closely), it was impossible for me to avoid the news of this trailer's release. And because the Internet today functions as a shallow, impoverished, and conformist form of mass culture (albeit one of the few forms of mass culture we have left), it was even harder for me to resist the temptation to watch the trailer. All it would take is a click, I thought. And how much would it really reveal (the overly-revelatory nature of many modern trailers notwithstanding)? Nevertheless, I resisted. And here are the three reasons why.

First, as mentioned above, I genuinely do wish to experience this movie with as little advance information, and as much surprise, as possible. Thanks in large part to the Internet, movies today are so thoroughly reported on, pre-sold, pre-advertised, pre-marketed, discussed, speculated on, cross-promoted, overexposed...in short, it's hard to avoid learning almost everything about a movie before its release. Spoilers leap out at you uncontrollably, in clickbait headlines, in ostensibly unrelated comments, in the social media feeds of friends and family, and from people who want to ruin things for everyone else. On the other hand, if you want to spoil a movie for yourself in advance, it's never been easier. We are long removed from the days when blockbusters consistently, truly surprised people. The original Star Wars might have been one of the last such movies, although its success simultaneously destroyed that template forever. We had gone so long without even knowing the name of Episode VIII, and, until today, even a trailer, that I had begun to hope that Disney/Lucasfilm had planned to give us no official information about the movie other than its title and the date of its release. It would have been a fascinating experiment in brand power, a revealing study of consumer behavior, and, above all, a refreshingly retro return to an era when blockbusters could surprise you. Alas, it was not t to be. But I am still going to do my best to simulate the experience for myself.

Imagine if this had remained all we knew about the movie. 

Second, I wish to protest the conformist, in my own small and surely insignificant way, the mass culture of the Internet. You might think that I created this blog, in part, to comment on things that become things on the Internet. And yes, looking at this blog's history, you would be partially correct. Yet lately, the oppressiveness of the Internet's social apparatus has begun to weigh more heavily on me. From nowhere, in unpredictable intervals and with unpredictable durations, there emerges a sudden, compelling necessity to have an opinion on whatever happens to be "trending." Why? Why does one of our only remaining forms of mass culture have to be simultaneously so arbitrary and so demanding? I'm not sure. It's not that I'm opposed to having an opinion per se. I'm sure I'll review The Last Jedi on this blog eventually, despite my growing loathing of Star Wars-based takes (of which I, of course, have produced plenty). I suppose it's simply that I dislike the idea of having a view of something simply because one is expected to have a view of it. I bristle and chafe at such an obligatory culture. And if not watching the trailer for The Last Jedi can postpone my inevitable participation in this culture's rituals, well, I think that's a good thing.

Finally, I'm not going to watch the trailer because I already made every prediction I wish to make about The Last Jedi in a September 2016 blogpost titled "My prediction for 'Star Wars Episode VIII': Rey turns to the Dark Side." You should read it. If you don't feel like reading it, here's a quick summary: Rey turns to the Dark Side, Snoke abandons Ren and takes up Rey as his new pupil, and Ren storms off on his own in a tantrum as a result. I have no idea if I'll be right, or even if the new trailer possibly refutes my speculation. But I am content to say nothing about The Last Jedi until after I've seen it regardless.

For these reasons, then, I shall avoid all manner of spoilers for The Last Jedi, even trailers. It will be hard; I expect to fail in some way(s), even if it isn't my fault (such as being stuck with a trailer before a theatrical movie I see before The Last Jedi). But I would rather fail in trying to adhere to this standard than let the potential magic of this movie all but disappear before I sit down to watch it in theaters.

Season 5, Episode 4* of "Samurai Jack" slows down, deepens its characters

BFFs? 

What if everything you had been taught, everything that you had grown up believing, and everything you thought was true were actually a lie? Would you accept the uncomfortable truth when it confronted you, or would you resist it, fight it, perhaps even deny it?

We all like to think that we would take the former course. But humans are creatures of habit and custom. We cling to what we know in a world that often doesn't make sense. And even if faced with logical, irrefutable evidence that we had been misled, we might stick to what we know. The effort to adjust to a new reality might simply be too much. I certainly am not sure how I would fare.

This difficult question provides the main drama of what seems, superficially, to be a much more restrained episode of Samurai Jack. And it was, by the standards of the episodes in this season so far. But even a relatively calm episode of this new season of Samurai Jack can reveal much about its title character and his new, somewhat unwilling female companion, in a fun story set against some of the best animation of the series yet.

Episode 4 continues more or less right where the last episode left off, after Jack had brutally dispatched all but one of the remaining Daughters of Aku, the assassins trained from birth to hunt and kill him. The lone survivor wishes to continue the fight, despite Jack's defeat of her after a short sortie.* Jack is prepared to move on, but then the two are swallowed by a giant creature and have to escape from it. The trope in situations like this is easy: "Enemies forced to work together to escape." But Ashi (Tara Strong, sounding quite different from her more famous role as Timmy Turner of the Fairly OddParents), the last living Daughter of Aku, has no interest in helping Jack escape; in fact, she laughs when they find themselves trapped in the beast's belly, thinking this seals their mutual fates, and works against Jack at every turn as she journeys through the beast's bowels chained helplessly to Jack's back. Aside from a few creature fights, that's all that really happens in this episode.

But the emotional journeys this narrative drives are as compelling as anything in the show so far. Jack continues to struggle with various hallucinations: a feminine Aku, threatening to attack him; a murder of crows pronouncing his homicidal guilt (a defiant Jack shouts back that the people he has killed chose this path); his past self, urging him to leave Ashi behind to die (Jack refuses, calling her an "innocent" who has "lost her way" and is "here because of me"). But Jack struggles most with the very real Ashi. For she not only works against him as much as she can in his attempt to escape the beast, as mentioned above***; she also continues to taunt him. Propagandized from birth to believe Jack her world's greatest evil, she has great trouble giving up her delusions, even as Jack continues to point them out as such.

And despite the free piggy back rides.

Ashi herself, however, has the more intriguing emotional journey over this episode. This season has already established the Daughters generally, and now Ashi specifically, as dark mirror versions of Jack himself. Like Jack, they were raised from birth with a single purpose. Like Jack, Ashi is driven to her goal by hallucinations. And like Jack, Ashi is loathe to give up on her goal: "to undo the evil that is" Samurai Jack (a surely-deliberate reference to Aku's opening monologue in the original series, in which he says that Jack's goal is to "undo the evil that is Aku").

This is why she refuses Jack's many attempts throughout the episode to convince her that he is not evil. How would you react if someone told you, as Jack tells Ashi, that "Everything, every word, every thought that you know is wrong!" We viewers know that Jack is right, of course. But Ashi knows no other life than the one she has lived up to this point. Ultimately, it is not anything Jack says that persuades her, but something he does: He shows himself to be in tune with the natural world. We had seen small but meaningful hints in earlier episodes, and earlier in this episode, that Ashi had a very un-Aku-like appreciation for the delicate wonders of nature. And it is one such wonder in particular that opens her mind to the possibility that Jack might be right after all.

It's the little things. 

Speaking of the wonders of nature, this episode is full of them. Setting most of the action inside of a gigantic living creature supplies a striking diversity of backgrounds, colors, and environments for the animators. We see our characters walk along arteries, beneath neurons, and around pools of acid, all drawn brightly and clearly. Samurai Jack is hardly the first work of fiction to go inside of another living being****, but its foray is certainly one of the more impressive.

Just one of many colorful scenes from this episode. 

Where does Samurai Jack go next? I have closed most of my reviews with this question, and it thrills me that I do not have a good answer (except what I know from the teaser for next week's episode). This week's episode was a bit of a breather, and a bit less exciting than what I have come to expect from the new season of Samurai Jack. Yet it was just as revealing, and just as beautiful, as any of the preceding episodes. And so I say yet again: If Samurai Jack persists at this level, then the 13-year wait will have been more than worth it.

*This week's episode was supposed to air last week, but, in a bizarre April Fools' Day prank, Adult Swim aired the Season 3 premiere of Rick and Morty with barely any announcement instead. I am a recent convert to Rick and Morty fandom, so I wasn't too mad about this, but Samurai Jack is my first love. Besides, Rick and Morty fans were complaining about having to wait 18 months for their new season. Samurai Jack fans like me have waited 14 YEARS.
**One of Jack's more impressive moves in this fight is to kick a blade away from him, which is how the Bruce Lee movie The Big Boss ends. 
***I think this is meant to be at least partially an Empire Strikes Back reference.
****Jack reacts to Ashi's persistence with an exasperated "Are you kidding me?" It reminded me of the "you gotta be f*ckin' kiddin' me" from The Thing.
*****To name a couple off the top of my head: Jonah, Pinocchio, Fairly OddParents, Kingdom Hearts, Rick and Morty