Samurai Jack Season 5

DVD Wholesale Quick Overview:

The writers and artists for this new season have gone above and beyond in this Samurai Jack revival. Storytelling is masterfully crafted, action sequences are heart-poundingly intense, and the atmosphere is set perfectly for each scene and draws you into the show. Of course, those familiar with Samurai Jack should not be surprised. The first 2 episodes of season 5 have certainly dealt with much darker themes than in the old seasons, but it suits the story incredibly well. Whether you’re a newcomer or have been watching Jack for years, this is a must-watch! I haven’t spent much of anything on online shows but I am buying this whole season!- Amazon Customer

Format: Prime VideoVerified Purchase
Among Western animation, one particular series stands tall. “Samurai Jack” was a four-season show focused on a Samurai warrior whose quest to destroy the evil of Aku, an evil shape-shifting overlord, thrusts him into the far future filled with strange creatures, technology, peoples, and minions of Aku, leading Jack to search the future for a way back to his time and destroy Aku before his evil can take over the world.

The style of sound design, cinematography, and pacing appears to be inspired by classic Japanese cinema (such as Akira Kurosawa, Kenji Mizoguchi, and Yasujiro Ozu) where the slow build up of quietly showcasing the environment, and setting up tension and stakes explodes into heart-pounding action. However, fitting the flexible style of the show, episodes showcased different genres and art styles, leading to a wide range of stories the show was able to tell. Despite solid ratings and critical praise, Samurai Jack was never able to finish up the story that the series so desperately deserved, and this fifth season gives the show a fitting conclusion to such a stellar series.

As the fifth season begins, Jack has been in the future for over 50 years. Due to his initial time-traveling, Jack has now become ageless, although not immortal. Aku has destroyed all the time portals in existence and has decided to withdraw himself behind the walls of his stronghold with the hope of merely outliving Jack. At the same time, Jack has lost his sword (although this is unknown to Aku) which was the one item that could destroy Aku. Jack can’t die of old age and Aku can’t be killed, so the two have a stalemate with both parties becoming increasingly despondent and depressed that their battle is without end. Jack has begun seeing hallucinations of himself and has begun straying from the path of the righteous as his hopelessness starts becoming stronger. At the same time, a cult that worships Aku has raised and trained seven female assassins to kill Jack to please Aku, led by the dedicated Ashi; all of this is going on while Jack’s allies and friends over the many years have begun marshaling their forces for a final confrontation against Aku. The psychological toll taken on Jack really takes center stage as a more mature and darker version of the story from where it began. However, don’t that let description lead to believe that it isn’t a continuation from the original series. Outside of the stylistic, tonal, and narrative continuity, the show also brings back old favorite characters and locations for a last hurrah for a season that looked like it may never come.

The fifth season maintains the show’s tradition of colorful characters and locals, striking visual presentation, terrific voice acting, balanced mash up between sci-fi and fantasy, intense combat, and side-splitting comedy. This season also showcases how far creator Gendy Tartakovsky and the excellent production team have come since the original. Make no mistake, the Samurai Jack production has always had a high bar for utilizing effective visual techniques (such as split-screen, aspect ratio changes, match-on action editing, etc), but this season makes all of the stylistic flourishes even more subtle and layered than even the original series could muster, which establishes a new high bar for a high bar series.

The only small gripes I have would be a desire to see at least two or three more episodes for this season. I also admit that I’m not sure if this is coming from a personal desire to see more of the world of Samurai Jack and I’m just placing that want of more as ‘critical analysis’, or if I genuinely think that the show’s story would have benefitted with a bit more build-up. I would have loved to have seen more exploration into what happened to the Guardian, the stranger in the shadows who aided Ashi in finding Jack, and other minor characters who I would have loved to have seen return even for a moment, but that’s a minor inconvenience at best. What is perhaps the most notable in terms of differences between this new season and the old is that many moments of visual storytelling are left for the audience to convey meaning, even if their effects are obvious; it’s hard to describe without the visual themselves, but things such as Jack remembering his father’s words or even the last shot of the of show have a level of storytelling ambiguity that leaves the audience to connect the moment to meaning for a character that is not explicitly conveyed, another mark of great storytelling from the creative team behind the series.

Make no mistake, Samurai Jack belongs among not only some of the greatest animated series of all time, but among some of the best TV shows ever created. It’s bold in experimentation, stunning in terms of visual storytelling, vast in creative depth, and emotionally resonant, Samurai Jack remains a high staple-mark of western television and what I can only hope to be a first salvo for the maturation of Western animation into action and drama. Gendy, you’ve given your magnum opus a fitting end, and I salute you on it.

– CH Gorog

DVD Wholesale Main Features:

Actors: Various
Directors: Various
Format: Animated, Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC, Widescreen
Language: English (Dolby Digital 5.1)
Dubbed: English
Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only.)
Number of discs: 2
Rated: NR-Not Rated
Studio: WarnerBrothers
DVD Release Date: October 17, 2017
Run Time: 220 minutes
ASIN: B074XTYMT2