Samurai Jack

Samurai Jack was an interesting show, because it was made to be watchable by kids but still has a lot that someone older can enjoy, if they appreciate classic action cinema. I watched it again recently, and it still mostly holds up, especially later on. It's chock full of unique character designs, interesting landscapes, impressive fight animation, and homages to great moments that most kids probably wouldn't recognize. Like most Cartoon Network originals, it only lasted a few years, and never really built much on the story after the initial set up, but most episodes are enjoyable. There's a lot of variety, as they mix equal elements of science fiction, fantasy, and martial arts, with plenty of further tangents like a film noir episode starring a robot with feelings.

Genndy Tartakovsky has had his hands in lots of animation, and you can tell his involvement by a focus on visual humor and storytelling over a lot of dialogue, and Jack is sort of the epitome of that as any sort of verbal interaction often takes a backseat to constant action. It can get monotonous if you watch it in big chunks, but as a twenty minute diversion it can be fun to just turn your brain off and watch some bright colors flash around. The art has a unique style, with almost no outlines, and it has a very flat look, but still manages to have dynamic scenes with some creativity. They do a lot of screwing around with split screens and slow motion, with the balance of style and substance leaning heavily towards the former. The quality of the art also improves pretty drastically over the course of the series; it's hard to detect when you're just watching it through, but seeing some of the first episode again after getting through the third season was pretty jarring. Genndy hasn't really done anything since Star Wars: Clone Wars, the superior hand drawn predecessor to the current computer generated series, but I'm interested in whatever comes next.