Samurai Jack

You've never seen a cartoon like Samurai Jack. It's not so much that it's a wholly original concept, but more that it appropriates from so many different sources spread across so many different cultures and media that it almost becomes something entirely unique.

In feudal Japan, a young boy's village is laid waste and his father is killed by an evil shapeshifting demon named Aku, in a beautifully stylised scene that looks like a series of Japanese woodcuts brought to life.

He is sent overseas to train with various masters of martial arts, before returning as an incredibly skilled warrior ready to vanquish the evil that has engulfed his home. Holy familiarity, Batman!

Our hero, armed with a magic sword, engages in an epic battle with the demon. Just as victory seems within his grasp, the villain casts a spell which propels the samurai into a dystopic sci-fi future, stranding him in a city filled with flying cars, towering skyscrapers and bizarre creatures. If you've read Frank Miller's graphic novel Ronin, this will sound eerily familiar.

Now things get really weird. Jack (as he is christened by three mutant beatniks who welcome him to the future) teams up with a band of alien archaelogists who just happen to look like talking dogs. They are being threatened by Aku, who is now the all-powerful ruler of the entire planet.

The visual style is a bizarre but effective mixture of anime (the limited movement, frequent use of split screens, big eyes), John Woo (hyper-kinetic slow motion action scenes), Bruce Timm (ultra-stylised and angular characters with relatively realistic proportions) and even South Park ("cut-out" style graphics, sans outlines).

The story is perhaps a little too surreal for its own good - the cutesy dog characters are especially jarring - and the overlong and abundant action scenes get a little repetitive, but you can't criticise the makers for not trying hard enough. Surprisingly dense and complex for a kid's show, Samurai Jack is well worth checking out for young and old alike.

Why do Warner Bros. continue to treat its Australian audience with such contempt?

The first Warner DVD releases were notoriously characterised by poor transfers, zero extras and those god-awful snapper cases.

The recent Harry Potter debacle, wherein they released a PAN AND SCAN version of a big budget special effects blockbuster (and are just about to bring out a widescreen edition for those who feel like forking out again), was similarly disgraceful.

And now Warner have released a slew of titles in NTSC format (with poor transfers at that), resulting in a shocking loss of picture quality and compatability problems for viewers without an NTSC-compatible television.

This would be a poor showing from any distributor, but from a major studio like WB, it's a breathtakingly rude slap in the face to Australian viewers. Can't they afford to do PAL transfers any more?

The good news is that Samurai Jack is watchable, unlike the atrocious Justice League disc. There is still a terrible judder whenever the image zooms or pans, and some noticeable aliasing that can be very distracting. Perhaps the fact that the characters are not outlined, but are composed of flat "cut-out" style blocks of colour, lessens the damage caused by the aliasing (the cartoon outlines in Justice League become terrible pixellated messes because of this problem; they're less lines then a series of dots and dashes in some cases).

Samurai Jack is presented in full screen (which, unlike Justice League, is the original aspect ratio).

Dolby Digital 2.0 is the order of the day. It's a nice mix, with crisp dialogue, brilliantly evocative sound effects that really add to the film, and a nice oriental/electronic hybrid of a music score.

Behind the Sword is a ten-minute documentary featuring Samurai Jack creator Genndy Tartakovsky. It's a decent little puff piece with Tartakovsky talking about his desire to make the kind of kick-ass action 'toon that we don't see much of today, with the butt-kicking taking precedence over gags, cutesiness and preachiness.

The Samurai Jack Archives consists of nine minutes of pre-production sketches set to music - it's basically a moving photo gallery. Mildly interesting.

The big extra is a bonus episode, actually the sixth in the series. Jack finds a new ally in the form of a peg-legged, kilt-wearing, bagpipe-playing, caber-tossing Scottish swordsman who helps him battle a group of robots and mutant pigs. This is really funny stuff, possibly even better than the main feature.

This DVD was originally advertised as containing a sneak peek at the new Powerpuff Girls feature film, but that seems to have fallen through the cracks...

This is one weird show. Samurai Jack is a bizarre action-packed sci-fi cartoon that occasionally crosses the line separating the bizarre from the ridiculous, but that's part of its charm. It won't be to everybody's taste, but it's worth checking out - especially for those unphased by below-par video transfers.