Samurai Jack Season 5, Episode 2: "XCIII" Review

the epilogue of my review for xcii (samurai jack’s opener for the fifth season) wondered about the whereabouts of the lord of darkness, aku, because he only appeared in the episode for five seconds, and he didn’t even appear in person, just over a phone call. i was also incredibly curious about greg baldwin, and how he would handle the task of being aku now that mako iwamatsu has posthumously passed the torch over to him (although apparently there was a cartoon network online multiplayer game that baldwin had already voiced aku in, so apparently this isn’t his first time doing the voice). and so, with all of this in mind, the opening sequence to episode two (titled xciii) is entirely dedicated to the acerbic, extra thicc lord of darkness himself, and it focuses on a side of aku that we haven’t quite seen before: bored, depressed, and exhausted with his seemingly never-ending cosmic duel against the samurai jack.

the opening sequence is just a typical, mundane day for aku (insofar as a day can be typical and mundane for the master of evil): it showcases him waking up, unenthusiastically stretching, and generally being very moody and uninvolved (the establishing shot of him getting his flaming eyebrows out of his nightstand drawer is my favorite comedic shot in this whole episode) while his many subjects offer tribute and present weapons of mass destruction for his approval. the whole scene is very silly and has a sardonic undertone to it, and it feels like a jarring punch in the face after the heaviness of xcii; but, personally, i don’t mind it at all. it helps not only remind us that samurai jack has a funny heart to it underneath its maturity and sincerity, but assures us that season five isn’t going to be doom and gloom throughout. aku moping around his lair and groaning when his scientists present him a weaponized beetle drone is troublesome – because this isn’t quite like the aku we know – but it’s also funny, and the humorous undertone makes it easier to sympathize with the guy.

you see, jack isn’t the only one that’s been suffering from this endless stalemate. aku reveals in his therapy session with himself (literally) that he was hoping that jack would eventually just keel over from natural causes after eradicating all the time portals in existence; he decided that, after failing time and time again to kill the samurai, playing the waiting game would be the best option. but jack has become immortal, growing only a beard and a couple thousand mental hangups, so not even waiting for jack to kick the bucket due to old age has worked. aku retreated from open conflict entirely and just sort of became… well, a guy that mopes around his lair. a guy that literally has therapy sessions with himself to cope with jack’s immortality, a guy that is pessimistic about his worshippers and indifferent to scientific and technological breakthroughs made by his own team of scientists. it’s so weird seeing aku beside himself, but honestly it’s kind of cool to see this new side of his character. it somewhat lessens his credibility as a threat (not once throughout this episode did i see “lord of darkness”, but that was likely the point), but we’ve got eight episodes’ worth of time to see if he overcomes his nerves and gets down to business again.

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the rest of the episode deals with jack’s attempts to outwit, outdistance, and survive the assassination efforts of the daughters of aku, who – after years of rigorous, brutal training in a cult temple – have finally been mobilized to take him out. this is where the episode takes a turn from being comedy-driven and dialogue-driven into the character-driven, action-driven, atmospheric samurai jack that season 5 promised to be, and it’s amongst the best fifteen or so minutes of the entire show. there’s minimal dialogue during jack’s many spats with the daughters of aku throughout this episode; the sound effects, music, and animation reign supreme here, and almost all of the tension and emotion packed in this very tense, emotional episode are expressed thusly. the music, which was already unnerving and tense in the first episode, becomes thrilling and hectic here, heavy on percussion and bass – the track that plays during jack’s first all-out battle with the daughters of aku has a very earthly, distinctly eastern feel to it, and it’s meshed together with industrial-sounding bass, strings, and heartbeat-like kick drums; that mix of earthliness and futurism describes samurai jack as a whole pretty perfectly. the sound effects and animation work hand-in-hand to keep you on the edge of your seat throughout the battle; the daughters of aku barely appear here, seeming more like shadows or forces of nature than teenage female assassins.

also, it’s worth noting that jack loses almost all of his new material in the first ten minutes alone. his bike, his guns, his armor – it’s almost all discarded or destroyed when the daughters fight him. just as quickly as we got used to seeing him use all of this equipment, it’s gone in a flash. very interesting directing choice.

jack’s struggle is contrasted and interspersed with scenes of a lone wolf fighting against a horde of alien-looking tigers; if that sounds like a metaphor for jack’s situation, that’s because it one hundred percent is, obviously lmao. the scenes with the wolf are a little too on-the-nose and unsubtle for me, but the wolf does make an appearance in the next episode that helps justify its existence here, so i don’t particularly mind; plus the animation and body language on the animals is pretty superb.

and then the scene involving jack’s confrontation with his inner self comes into play. once again, the episode lapses into the uncanny-valley, the psychological realm; and, once again, the episode becomes truly fantastic once it does this. this is one of the darkest scenes in the episode both literally and figuratively; jack is debating with his inner self about the pros and cons of giving up and (implied) seppuku within the dark confines of a beetle drone’s metallic corpse, through which very little light pours through. phil lamarr does a wonderful job distinguishing between the real jack and his intrusive mental self; they both definitely sound and act like the same person, but the performances he gives are varied enough to tell the difference between the two, demonstrating that the jack buried deep down is much different compared to the jack on the surface. the whole confrontation also brings up an interesting point: when will aku find out that jack’s lost his sword, and what will he do once he learns this?

jack flees into a temple, which leads to yet another exciting, atmospheric scene: the daughters’ attempts to hunt him down in the dark temple. the whole sequence is very cat-and-mouse, filled mostly with jack trying to use the environment and the darkness to his advantage and the daughters’ intermittent, brief clashes with him, culminating in a slow-burning, intense, wonderful scene where the daughters finally zero in on him hiding in a hall laden with tombs.

the music turns into a haunting, minor-key ballad with quiet strings and icy piano notes, the color scheme dominated by dark, ugly greens and limes, and shots of jack hiding in a stone tomb, looking visibly scared for the first time in what seems like a long time. the tension builds to a boiling point, and when the daughters finally discover his tomb and get into a climatic fight with him, it feels like releasing a breath you weren’t even aware you were holding in. atmosphere in this episode: superb.

the whole thing culminates in jack managing to kill one of the nameless daughters of aku (it certainly doesn’t look like ashi, given the contours of the face and hair), and the shock and horror is clear as day on his face when the moment actually happens. we learned from jack’s confrontation with himself that he had been running under the assumption that the daughters of aku were just another squadron of robots that aku had mobilized to deal with jack, like aku always does. but jack learns too late that they’re very much human, and the revelation that he’s killed his first human being is as shocking to him as it is to us. there’s blood and everything, bright red blood, both on a stab wound that jack got in his stomach and on the corpse of the fallen daughter. if it wasn’t already obvious that season 5 was committed to being much more adult than its seasonal predecessors, xciii’s ending makes it stark.

it’s the final scene that really drives everything home. jack slowly, bloodily limps towards what might be a fatal dive into a waterfall, using the last tool he has in his kit to stop the daughters’ progress for the time being: the explosive tuning fork he scavenged off of scaramouch in the previous episode, which turns the temple into a smoldering pile of debris as he takes the plunge (both narratively and metaphorically). it’s the look on his face that sells it: pained, feverish, and maybe angry, but above all? exhausted. after the uninterrupted tension and action of the previous twenty minutes, this final scene feels, once more, like a breath being drawn. we can now breathe.

if it sounds like i’m just making this episode out to be a series of great moment after great moment, that’s because it basically was. the animation is fluid and slick; the daughters have an airy, sleek, shadowy quality to their animation compared to the weight of jack’s movements or the jaggedness of aku’s lousing around. the music is absolutely wonderful throughout this episode; there’s a dark, sinister aura to even the more gorgeous tracks, pianos and spacey synths and contorted percussion all working in tandem to create a restless atmosphere. phil lamarr and greg baldwin are quite good in their respective roles, the former bone-tired, guilty, and furious with himself deep-down, the latter pathetic and indifferent to everything and even a little petty. it’s well-paced and well-directed, and it leaves you chomping at the bit for more. and hell, that’s really all it had to do.