[animation] Animation created by Gennedy Tartakovsky. In a Fantasy version of ancient Japan, the world is menaced by evil shape-shifting wizard Aku, never defeated, and having attacked other nations before Japan. Aku captures the head of a local tribe/city. The leader's son trains throughout the nations of the world in every martial arts discipline. He learns bow and arrow from Robin Hood, wrestles with the best in ancient Greece, masters spear-throwing in the Congo. At last he arrives at a temple of mythical beast/demigods. Grown up, he rejoins his mother, who gives him a sacred sword, which is the only weapon that might defeat Aku. The samurai prince attacks Aku, but is thrust through time to our future, a sort of dystopian "Jetsons" world where Aku is overlord to a panoply of aliens, high-tech robots, spaceships, and other things beyond the samurai's cognition. The samurai adopts the name "Jack" after inner city aliens first address him as "hey, Jack..." His quest is to defeat Aku, free the future, and somehow find his way back to his home country in his own time. The martial arts are the best in any animated series. The graphic style varies from episode to episode, ingeniously combining visual motifs. This moves a hundred times faster than "Dragonball-Z" and is gorgeous to look at, in a minimalist way.
