The acclaimed, final season of the hit animated series “Samurai Jack” hits Blu-Ray for the first time and boy is it pretty
I was a latecomer to the “Samurai Jack” party. It was a series that I was always interested in and had mostly heard good things about, yet it remained a blind spot for me. When Adult Swim announced that they’d be airing a final, concluding season of the show (after the program had been off the air for over a decade), I finally made the effort to binge on the previous four years of the show. I thought this might be a fun, slow endeavor that I could work through over a few weeks.
I was done in two days.
“Samurai Jack” is just that different and good. It’s often mind blowing in multiple ways at the same time and I can only imagine what that experience would have been like if I was watching it in HD, something that is now possible thanks to these gorgeous “Samurai Jack” Blu-Ray sets.
“Samurai Jack”’s fifth season is undoubtedly its most mature, and not just in terms of the violence. The property shifting from a Cartoon Network title to an Adult Swim vehicle is not something that creator Genndy Tartakovsky wastes. There are plenty of the show’s trademark fights and action pieces in this final ten-episode season, but it also explores some heady topics for the show, such as the nature of violence and Jack trying to incorporate LOVE into his singularly focused mission.
Tartakovsky makes this final season a standout for long-time fans as well as newcomers. The season is full of loving Easter eggs to past installments (a whole episode is even devoted to such a thing) and many fan favorite characters pop up to aid or deter Jack in some way. This final season offers by far the biggest dissection of Aku and what he’s up to in his off hours and more Aku is never a bad thing.
The new special features on this set choose to focus on the show’s growth and changes through the years as well as highlighting some fascinating “What If?” scenarios when “Samurai Jack” was lost in limbo post-cancellation. The five movie pitches demonstrate some of the avenues considered when the best means of concluding “Samurai Jack” was via a feature film. All of these looks at Tartakovsky’s rejected ideas help show the process he would go through that ultimately leads to season five. Hushed whispers regarding a “Samurai Jack” movie were minimal over the past decade so it’s nice to finally be able to fill in some of those gaps. The other feature here, “The Evolution of Jack,” digs into the subtle changes “Jack” saw between seasons and how season five’s “new direction” came to be. It’s nice to see Tartakovsky and company all discussing the massive expectations that were in place for season five and how they didn’t want anyone to be let down here.
While this new features are informative and have a lot of love put into them, I certainly would have liked to have season some audio commentaries on here. There are only three commentaries on the 62 episodes of “Samurai Jack”, so making up for it in this final season where there clearly is an audience for it would have been nice. Even if it wasn’t Tartakovsky or LaMarr doing the commentaries, this is a show where the storyboard artists have tremendous power and hearing their take on things would be worthwhile. This might ultimately come down to a space issue on the Blu-Ray but even on the Complete Series Blu-Ray, the special features are the same ones from the old DVD sets (most production art and looks into the show’s conception and style). New commentaries that can talk about these old episodes in the new context of things would certainly be interesting (although the Complete Series set does come with an awesome, limited edition metal art print).
Really though, the big thing here is to be able to watch this stunning show in HD and this set does not disappoint in that regard. All of the big moments from the season pop especially well and it’s a dream to be able to watch episodes like “Samurai Versus Ninja”, “Tale of X9”, and “Jack and the Zombies” in crisp new quality on the Complete Series Blu-Ray. In that sense, whichever set you’re getting here, neither of them are going to let you down. The show’s team has even gone the extra mile to release a soundtrack from season five that features Tyler Bates, Joanne Higginbottom, and Dieter Hartmann’s music, so it’s safe to say that the “Samurai Jack” drought is over. Thankfully this groundbreaking series is now finally plentifully available, in its entirety, and it looks so good you’ll go wa-chaa.
4/5
‘Samurai Jack: Season Five’ retails for $29.98 SRP on Blu-Ray and $24.98 SRP on DVD
‘Samurai Jack: The Complete Series’ retails for $112.99 SRP
‘Samurai Jack: The Complete Fifth Season Soundtrack’ is available digitally on Oct 20th
