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"The Beginning" is the first episode of Samurai Jack ' s first season. It was shown as a feature length episode with "The Samurai Called Jack" and "The First Fight", which was then released as Samurai Jack: The Premiere Movie. The episode aired on August 10, 2001.

Synopsis
The episode begins by telling the story of a young prince (Jack) from medieval Japan whose father's empire is destroyed by the demon Aku. The emperor (voiced by Sab Shimono) orders that the young prince be evacuated to safety and gives him a magical sword. His mother obeys, and frantically takes him down to the shore, and the two of them escape in a small boat. Somewhere on the ocean, they rendezvous with a ship, and Jack is taken aboard.

He learns astronomy from the sailors who evacuate him from Japan. Afterwards, the sailors take him to Arabia and he is put under the protection of the sultan. In the desert, he learns how to ride horses, and more importantly, how to have animals trust him. After his stay in Arabia, the sultan takes him to Africa, where Jack begins his studies in the martial arts. After he learns how to properly use a quarter-staff and to always be on his guard, he's taken to Egypt, where the priests of the temples educate him in writing hieroglyphs. Afterwards, he goes to Rome, where he learns how to wrestle in the Colosseum. After this, he goes to England where he learns archery under the legendary hero Robin Hood. After he proves his skills with the bow, he goes to Scandinavia, where he learns proper seamanship from the Vikings. Then, he goes to Russia, where he learns how to precisely throw axes. After Russia, he goes to Mongolia, where he is taught how to hurl javelins while riding on horseback. His last period of training is in China, where he fine-tunes his skills in martial arts, and more importantly, how to focus his body and mind in harmony with one another.

The segments with Egypt and Rome are the two major historical inconsistencies with the show, considering that this is supposed to take place in the Medieval period.

When he reaches adulthood, he makes a journey into the Himalayas of Tibet, where he visits a well-protected Buddhist monastery, where his own mother is the abbess. When he first arrives, the monks, who are apparently skilled in martial arts as well, view him as an intruder, and prepare to fight him. However, when he shows them his true identity and that he is not a threat, he is welcomed. His mother is thankful that he is alive and has made it to adulthood. In this monastery is housed his father's katana and his ritual kimono. Under the watchful eyes of the statue of Buddha, Jack prepares to face Aku.

For his first act, Jack locates his father, the emperor, who is by now an old man sentenced to a life of slavery by Aku, doomed to forever turn a rotating statue of Aku along with other slaves. The cruelest part of the punishment is that the emperor is singled out by Aku's demonic minions for not getting any water to quench his thirst. Jack slays the minions and frees his father from slavery. The emperor informs his son that Aku has turned all the people of Japan into slaves, forced to mine for precious minerals that help Aku strengthen his powers so that he can undertake his plan for world domination. Jack, full of courage, announces that as long as he has the magic sword, he can destroy Aku. His father, however, scolds him for being over-eager, claiming that it is not the sword, but the person who wields it, who has the real power.

Then, taking his father's magic katana, he challenges Aku to a duel and defeats the demon. However, before Jack can deal the killing blow, Aku creates a time portal and sends his opponent into the distant future, anticipating that he would be able to amass sufficient power to deal with the samurai later. The protagonist arrives in a hostile, futuristic Earth ruled by Aku and filled with his robot minions. The first people he encounters in the future call him "Jack" as a form of slang, which he adopts as his name.