Once Again I Am Free to Smite the World as I Did in Days Long Past

March 17, 2022 Post a Comment

"Be Careful, Samurai." This commodity contains potential spoilers for this folio! If y'all don't want to get spoiled, you can leave this folio.

"Episode I: The Beginning" ^[1] is the beginning episode in the first flavor of Samurai Jack. This episode is near Aku who devastates a young boy'southward land, forcing him to travel effectually the world to train as a samurai.

Plot

The Emperor telling well-nigh the war against Aku to his son.

The episode begins with a solar eclipse. The eclipse has a strange issue on what appears to exist a warped expressionless tree in the middle of a wasteland. The tree springs out of the ground and grows into a tall nighttime figure with flaming eyebrows. The effigy states, "Over again I am free to smite the world as I did in days long past."

Non far from there, an Emperor of a Japanese homeland tells his son nigh a war he fought against an evil, shape-shifting demon named Aku. He continues to explicate that Aku arose from the Pit of Detest to ravage land when the emperor was all the same young. On his ain, he was helpless against the magician's powers. Withal, he remembered a tale he had heard from his corking-granddaddy about 3 monks gifted with mystical powers. The emperor rode to the highest top of the mountainside where the monks agreed to forge a magical sword for him. Armed with the sword, he battled Aku and defeated him, implanting him into the very wasteland he created in the form of the same black tree from earlier. Since and then, the people have rebuilt the land in hopes that Aku would never return. The Emperor finishes his story with a alert to his son to always be alert, for evil might be lurking right behind him.

Impressed by the tale, the immature Prince begins to play with a wooden sword, when all of a sudden a corking shadow falls over the state. The alarm sounds as Aku forces his manner through the palace wall. The army tries to fight him off using arrows, javelins and catapults, but to no avail as Aku absorbs their weapons and fires them back at the men. Aku farther displays his overwhelming power past blasting the land with his laser eyes, setting everything afire. The emperor tries to fetch his sword, but Aku captures him. While he is beingness carried away, the Emperor shouts to the Prince'south mother, "Mother, Aku has returned! Do equally nosotros have planned, our future depends on it!" The Empress grabs the immature Prince and the sword, carrying them away from the burning palace by boat while Aku laughs victoriously over the destruction of his former slayer's empire. The Empress hands the Prince over to the helm of a ship which bears the emblem of his male parent, while the sword stays with her.

The prince spends his babyhood and teenage years in diverse cultures. The ship'south captain teaches him about astronomy. He trains in equestrianism in the camp of an Arab Sheikh.He learns stick fighting from the Master of an African tribe. In Egypt he studies hieroglyphics. In Greece he learns the art of wrestling. He learns marksmanship from a European bandit known as Robin Hood. The noesis of seamanship is instilled during his fourth dimension on a Viking ship. A Russian Boyar teaches him axe throwing. Mongol warriors teach him spear throwing. He then reaches to the temple of Shaolin to study Kung fu.

Having finished his bout of the old world, the Prince, now grown up, heads to a designated rendezvous betoken where he reunites with his mother. The mother and child embrace after their long separation, and she returns to him his birthright: the sword of his father, and a white gi. The Prince trains with the sword before he is gear up to return home and free his people.

Meanwhile, the people of his state are enslaved. The countryside is riddled with likenesses of Aku, and the Emperor, similar all his subjects, has been put to piece of work in the mines, though he is being tormented by Aku's evil minions far more than anyone else. Earlier the Emperor is virtually to be punished, the Prince arrives and battles Aku's minions. He easily defeats them and frees his male parent from his shackles. The Emperor tells his son that Aku ways to utilize the riches constitute in the mines to strengthen his powers and have over the entire globe. The Prince promises that he will vanquish Aku by the power of his sword, merely his father berates him, proverb that the sword is just a tool, and that the truthful power lies in the hands that wield it. He warns his son how evil is clever and that deception is its most powerful weapon. The Prince sets off on horseback, promising his begetter not to fail him. Simply the Emperor is worried, for he knows evil always "finds a way".

The Prince arrives at Aku's tower and calls him out. Aku rises from within his lair and meets the Prince. The Prince reveals himself to the son of the country and challenges Aku to reclaim it. Aku boasts that no mortal weapon tin harm him, simply the Prince cuts him with the sword. Aku then remembers the sword and recognizes the Prince's heritage from the scent of his blood. Aku says neither the sword nor the Emperor had the power to slay him forever, and neither will the Prince.

With those words, Aku decides to battle the Prince and shape-shifts into the form of a large gorilla. Aku attacks the Prince with furious claw swipes and powerful punches, managing to harm the Prince's back. But soon enough, the Prince manages to cut Aku, forcing him to shape-shift into a scorpion. The Prince states that Aku will never be able to defeat righteousness, no thing what form he takes. Aku continues to attack with his pincers and stingers, just is cutting downwardly by the Prince once once again, and is sent tumbling in the darkness of his lair. Aku and so emerges in the form of an octopus. He tries to assault with his tentacles, but the Prince cut his tentacles ane by one, eventually taking to higher basis. Aku then shape-shifts into the course of a caprine animal and charges at the Prince, who dodges and cuts Aku in half, forcing him to shape-shift into a bird. The Prince so prepares to finish Aku and throws his sword into the air, piercing Aku and trapping him within the sword. The Prince then forces Aku onto their floor with his power diminished. Aku is reduced into a shadow that lies defeated before the Prince and he declares, "You might take beaten me now, but I will destroy yous in the future." The Prince exclaims that there is no future for Aku, but he disagrees. With a sonic screech, Aku tears a portal in time through which the Prince is flung into the afar futurity, where Aku is the supreme ruler of the planet for millennia and his evil is law. Aku promises they volition meet again, just next time he will destroy the Prince once and for all.

Credits

Written by
- Paul Rudish
- Genndy Tartakovsky

Directed past
- Genndy Tartakovsky

Storyboards by
- Paul Rudish
- Genndy Tartakovsky
- Chris Reccardi

Voices
- Phil LaMarr every bit Samurai Jack / Baby-sit
- Makoto Iwamatsu every bit Aku
- Sab Shimono every bit The Emperor
- Jennifer Unhurt as Girl

Casting by
- Collette Sunderman

Errors

When Jack saves his father he cuts through his father'due south handcuffs after killing the guards, just his father hadn't been shown wearing handcuffs before and then.

Trivia

The Prince's voice sounded more serious than subsequent episodes that follow which adds the Asian accent.
Aku'southward tone likewise has inverse, from serious and dark to having some form of humor in after episodes.
The series began with Aku as a warped dead tree in the heart of a wasteland and it ended in Episode CI with Jack in a beautiful wood, showing the reverse personalities of both characters.
The roof is yet there when the shadow of aku appears, and also, Jack ,looks up when the roof is closed
The rich man the Prince steals the bag of money from slightly resembles the one from Robin Hood Daffy, simply with a slightly dissimilar outfit, a pointed olfactory organ and brusque night hair instead of long blond hair.
Jack'southward begetter existence forced to button a giant, wooden wheel is an homage to Conan the Barbarian, where Conan is similarly forced to push button a "Cycle of Pain" for years.
- Similarly, his dialogue stating that "...the sword is simply a tool. What power has it compared to the hand that wields it?" is paraphrased from Thulsa Doom's "What is steel compared to the manus that wields information technology?" also from the 1982 moving-picture show.