Avatar: the Last Airbender and Samurai Jack seem to be highly regarded on this board as good quality animated series produced in the US over the past few years. Now is the time to see who is the champ: if forced to choose, which would you rate as your favorite: A:TLA or Samurai Jack? And what would your reasons be?
I think it's apples and oranges, since they were trying to do very different things. Avatar is the better all-around show in terms of writing, characterization, story arc, and animation; but Samurai Jack was a remarkable achievement in its more specialized way, focusing less on story and character and more on the sensory experience, doing extraordinary things with graphic design, sound design, and stylized action. A:TLA was about crafting an epic narrative, using artistry to tell a story, but SJ was primarily about creating mood and stretching the boundaries of design, with the storyline being just an excuse to create art.
Well I've only seen the first season of Samurai Jack, but Avatar is definitely the best. I'm just watching it for the first time myself. With a little reflection and time passed I think it's probably going to rank as my all time favorite animated series EVER. Better than Justice League... better than Gargoyles...
Yeah, I agree 100%. Don't ask me to choose between an Astno Martin and Ferrari, they are both great at what they do. My wife will watch very few cartoons, both of these are on the list though. She thinks the Scotsman with the machine-gun leg is the greatest thing ever.
I think Jack is better for people who don't usually watch anime. It can be tedious to try to watch a lot of anime for the first time. This is true for all the reasons that serialized drama can be tedious ["Who's that? What's he doing? What is this all about, damn it?"] but also because a lot of it employs Pokemon-style animation conventions that are hugely visually confusing, too. [In the way lampooned by South Park.] But Jack just reaches off the screen and grabs you. If you are a helpless, unsuspecting channel surfer and accidentally click past one of those letterbox "shots", it makes you stop and watch it. And you can instantly immerse yourself in it, since the whole point is that it's a slightly tongue-in-cheek spin on immediately recognizable storytelling archetypes.
I never watched much of avatar. but i remember watching Samurai Jack and enjoying it. Though it was a long time ago i saw it.
I agree with Chris in that they are quite different. Jack makes a great visual experience but due to the characterisation and narrative I'm going with Avatar
I hated Samurai Jack, but Avatar is one of the best shows I've ever seen. Avatar easily gets my vote.
They are very different shows, but Avatar is my pick too. I got totally absorbed in that world and its character after watching two episodes. I can appreciate Samurai Jack for what it is, but it dind't always grab my attention.
When I was babysitting my nephew, Samurai Jack was one of the few cartoons I could actually enjoy watching. I loved its style and odd sense of humor. My nieces like Avatar, but frankly, I find it irritating. I don't get all the love for it. *shrug*
Avatar is a show I wanted and expected to like, but it just never grabbed me. I wasn't interested in the three main characters and found them to be annoying a lot of the time. Samurai Jack was somewhat inconsistent, but when it was good I enjoyed it a lot. The two shows aren't very much alike, but I like one and couldn't get into the other, so it wasn't too hard to vote.
Well, I'll try, but it's been a long time since I've seen the show (three or four years), so expect my explanations to be vague and unsatisfying. It was boring. The show seemed to focus on its visual spectacle to the detriment of its writing and plot. Oh, sure, its visuals were impressive (despite me personally finding them unappealing), but there was little else to the show. It was just bland.
I wouldn't say "to the detriment"; it was just exploring animation as an art form more than as a story form. Or rather, it was exploring alternative ways of telling a story, through image and sound rather than through words. I'm normally more a "words" person than a "pictures" person; when I read comic books, I focus on the text and have to remind myself not to skim over the pictures. But Samurai Jack often engrossed me with its ability to create mood and atmosphere through striking visual and sound design.
We agree on a lot. The imaginative quality of the worlds he explores, the strange creatures, the colour palette and the sound (or lack of) was very engrossing. The often silent nature of his quest was fitting, he was a humble man of few words on a solo mission to fight evil, not a wise-cracking superhero.
^I'm still amazed by Jack's training montage in the pilot episode, where the maturing Jack travels around the world gaining new fighting skills from all the different cultures he visits. It's something like nine minutes long without a single word being spoken, just visuals and really excellent music by James Venable. But it's a superb exercise in storytelling nonetheless.
Wow, this is exactly what I thought when I first read the thread title. It's like asking, "Which do you like better? An apple strudel or the Justice League of America?"