Seriously though, Samurai Jack has got to be the coolest cartoon I’ve ever watched. With it’s comic-book style, brilliant musical scores, and intense story – Samurai Jack is without a doubt my favorite cartoon of all time. The premise is this: When Jack was just a boy, his village was attacked by Aku, the shape shifting master of darkness. Aku quickly caputres the Emperor (aka Jack’s Dad) who shouts to his wife “Take him and do what we planned”

So she grabs the magic sword (only thing that can harm Aku) and Jack, and gives him to some dude. (queue montage) Jack is raised by many different people learning MANY differnt styles of martial arts and feats of physical strength. Finally when Jack is an adult he ventures to a lone monestary in the mountains where he finds his mother and the sword. He takes the sword, frees his father and then goes to fight Aku. It’s an intense battle, but Jack eventually gets the upper hand. Aku is defeated and Jack is about to seal him inside the sword, when Aku casts a spell that sends Jack far into the future. Between Jack’s time and the future he arrives in, Aku has dominated the Earth, and begun conquering worlds outside ours.

This is all in the first episode, as well.

The rest of the series shows Jack wandering the land, following clues about many different ways he can travel back in time. He encounters a HUGE variety of people who he often helps. Every episode (or nearly every) has long moments without dialogue. We’ll just see Jack walking through woods, hearing lots of background noise. There is no cartoon like it! If you haven’t seen this yet, make the effort to. You won’t regret it!

First of all, I will say I’m glad I read it. However, it’s the worst book of the series because the main characters are very weak (the main chars of this book are new to the series). There’s a breif appearance of the good characters, but it’s a serious disappointment considering it follows Faith of the Fallen (my favorite)