Samurai Jack
Cartoon Network

How can a televised cartoon transcend the limits of its medium? Even TV cartoons with artistic pretensions tend to be about as low as low art can get. They're blocky, kinetic piles of primary colors, all noise, all motion, farce without meaning, conflict without any real resolution, static characters frozen forever in exaggerated masks formed by the one or two traits of their simplistic personalities.

With the exception of "The Simpsons" and a few new-generation shows like "The Family Guy," "Futurama" they're about exploding cigars and falling anvils. They're about rayguns, and pirate ships. They're stoopid, yo. We love their simplicity, but it makes them easy to dismiss.

Cartoon Network's "Samurai Jack" is in a category all its own, however, and considerably harder to write off. Set in a future that weaves bizarre technological flourishes into a vast natural world that seems to come straight from the heart of ancient Japan, "Samurai Jack" is a tale of a dedicated warrior trying to find a way back in time to slay the villain who originally banished him from his own era.

From a cinematic perspective, "Samurai Jack" goes where few cartoons have trod before. During action sequences, the show often splits into three vertical rectangles of motion, directly recalling the classic artistic style of Japanese painted screens. Thin horizontal letterboxed shots play up moments of great significance. And mind-boggling perspective shots are used to render the immense height of towering trees, or the breadth of seemingly endless plains.

It would be one thing if "Samurai Jack" were merely a beautiful cartoon, which it is. It's clear that the program's art directors have earned their chops — its backgrounds are stunning combinations of color and pattern, impressionistic masterpieces that simplify classic Japanese landscapes and push them into the world of cartoons.

But the cartoon's gorgeous visuals are just the covering for the taut sinews of its stories. In their simplicity and rawness, the stories of "Samurai Jack" directly recall folktales, myths and fables. They combine a great hero, a great challenge, perilous opponents and unique, critical insights which provide hope amidst hopeless circumstances.

In a recent episode, Jack confronts a team of mysterious and deadly archers protecting a wishing well that might be his ticket back home. He soon figures out that while the archers are blind, they have incredibly acute hearing that allows them to unerringly hit their marks. He recalls his training, and blindfolds himself in order to rush the archers while relying only on his ears for guidance.

While Jack's confrontation with the archers is dramatic and nail-bitingly intense, the beauty of the sequence is that he proceeds his rush by meditating upon sound itself. A black screen represents the silence of a forest in winter. A deer appears — first the hoof, pawing at a bit of vegetation, then the mouth and head as the deer takes a bite. Birds fade into Jack's mental perspective as they twitter and rustle their feathers. The dripping of water paints an image of an icy stream, making its way through the woods. But not until Jack can hear the shimmering sound of snowflakes descending and crashing into the forest floor has he mastered hearing sufficiently to make his attack.

Jack's exploration of hearing is a visual representation of sound the likes of which has not been seen since Disney's Fantasia — it's slow, haunting and thoughtfully rendered. "Samurai Jack" uses silence and stillness to intensify the significance and impact of its smooth, shocking, visceral action sequences. It's a cartoon that doesn't fear silence; rather, it uses pauses and moments of tense inactivity to wrap its story in a tight blanket of suspense.

It's too early to see where the stories of "Samurai Jack" will roam, and whether the series will remain fresh and unpredictable as it enters new seasons. But based on a sample of two episodes, it seems clear that it has the potential to takes what can be expected of a cartoon, and blow it clear out of the water. "Samurai Jack" is a masterful combination of artistic craft and creative storytelling fused into one of the best shows on television today.

And it also has some really awesome sequences of robots getting blown apart by flying arrows. Tune in.

— James Norton (jim@flakmag.com)