What's the work?

Samurai Jack, a Western Animation work by Gennedy Tartakovsky, is the adventures of a time-displaced samurai on a mission to kill an evil demon named Aku. The samurai, once the prince of his homeland, had been trained specifically for that mission after Aku had demolished said homeland, as Aku has Nigh Invulnerability to every weapon in the world sans a specific weapon that would be given to the samurai. Unfortunately, the samurai's haste allowed Aku to warp him to the future, where Aku would be in control thanks in no small part to the aforementioned Nigh Invulnerability. Admist the dystopian future, the samurai ends up Named By Democracy as Jack by some Jive Turkeys shortly after being warped and using his skills to escape danger, hence the work's name.

Jack soon gets backstory from a few friendly locals of the time period (to be specific, the Canine Archaeologists) and determines from how Aku spread his tyranny to the far reaches of the stars that he would have to get back to the past (Samurai Jack!) to undo the entire Bad Future, or failing that at least eliminate Aku in this time period. Of course, either task would ultimately prove easier said than done, because of efforts made by the very candidate, our Big Bad himself, Aku.

Who is Aku?

In the beginning, as shown in Birth Of Evil Part 1, there was a black mass in space that worked as an Ultimate Evil, how we can only guess, but whatever happened certainly led to it running away from Odin, Vishnu, and Ra, the 3 Gods of the setting, before the black mass got trapped in melee combat and ended up shredded by them. By sheer chance, one piece of the black mass that was cut off by Odin was not destroyed and consequently avoided the same fate as the rest of the black mass. That same piece would make its way to our fair, blue marble and crash into it causing a globe-spanning cataclysm that the dinosaurs, the rulers of it at the time, wouldn't exactly be happy about. Any surviving dinosaurs, of course, became food for the black force, which was a tar pit at the source, and so did members of various human cultures near ground zero for aeons, until Feudal Japan when the black force had expanded too close to the primary settlement and the humans got fed up as a result.

The Emperor, Jack's father, shortly before Jack's own birth, had taken a magical bottle and a battalion with him, though ended up losing the soldiers of his battalion to impalement by the black force's defenses before reaching his destination, the core of the black force's defenses, whereupon he fired an arrow infused with magic from the bottle, hoping to destroy the black force entirely. This seemed to work at first, but to the Emperor's horror, it turned the black force into the self-proclaimed Master of Masters, the Deliverer of Darkness, the Shougun of Sorrow, the shapeshifting master of darkness: Aku.

Aku, of course, upon his official birth, wastes little if any time committing the first of his many, many crimes as a more sentient being that make it clear that his name, which is Japanese for "evil", is a Meaningful Name.

What does he do?

Bear with me, there's a lot to go over, because good Ra does enough of it prove awful.

Continuing from where we left of in Birth Of Evil (there's nothing else to worry about chronologically inbetween the parts), Aku gloats about his virtual invulnerability off the bat, shrugging off the Emperor's attacks and then before long dragging him into the tar pit he was born from, after which he makes a pillar to restrain the Emperor to. Once this is done, Aku immediately attacks the Emperor's home for the Emperor to watch helplessly. Any resistance to Aku's attack is easily met with his powers, and Aku uses as much to pull wanton destruction, destruction he is all to happy to laugh about as he will do every time so I'll just mention this now and save myself the trouble of repeating myself.

Things look bleak until a divine horse named Sleipnir arrives to deliver the Emperor to the 3 Gods, who use the power of the Emperor's soul as a basis for making the weapon needed to destroy Aku, the sword that Jack would later inherit. The Emperor uses the blade to take on Aku at the Emperor's now burning home town. They fight until Aku turns into a bunch of ronin-armored soldiers and the Emperor takes out all of them, including the last one trying to get away to no avail, instead being absorbed into the sword. The Emperor thrusts his sword into the ground to seal Aku, to which Aku vows to return. Just after this, the Emperor hears a baby wailing and upon seeing the newly born Jack realizes to be vigilant with a plan should Aku ever break free.

And since that was an origin episode, break free Aku does, thanks to a solar eclipse about a decade later generating power that broke the seal on him. (On a side note, "Once again, I am free to smite the world as I did in days long past" was retconned because BoE couldn't have spanned more than a single day. I also noticed liberties with some of the stuff the Emperor tells a young Jack about what happened, but then again, that's a story the Emperor is telling anyway.) Aku attacks the Emperor's palace ASAP, and having wised up to the Emperor using the sword, keeps the Emperor from getting it and captures him, causing the Emperor to tell his wife to take Jack and invoke their plan. The plan? To train Jack to be able to use the sword efficiently enough against Aku.

It should be noted, by the way, that "Young Jack In Africa" revealed that Aku had external agents he promised great reward try to capture Jack dead or alive during the training period. We see the episode's examples of those agents in a materialistic tribe that raids the village Jack was in, capturing the residents including children, and their leader being willing to knock his subordinates around to get at Jack, who by the way is still young himself. For why Aku doesn't personally handle this, it's never stated, but I wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't know where the sword is and thus would be being wary about approaching Jack in case Jack's current overseer has it. Oh, and that "great reward" angle? Yeah, I'll be sure to talk about what makes that generally relevant enough when I get to it, especially when that is a VERY glaring highlight of Aku's evil.

Anyway, eventually, Jack completes his training and returns to his home to find his people being forced to work in mines by Aku's direct minions. Jack's father gets the worst of it: he is not only forced to work even harder, but is denied water in particular targeting by the minions, with anybody who tries to give him that much getting punished. Jack comes in just in time to intervene against one such denial, allowing his father to get a drink and a check on his eyesight accounting for pleasant shock as a direct result; and defeats the minions. After getting advice about spiritual stuff and a warning about how evil is fond of using deception, advice courtesy of his father, Jack then heads off to fight Aku and though he comes close to defeating him, he finds out the hard way what Jack's father meant by "evil finds a way" when he gets sidewinded by Aku spitting out the time portal that sends Jack to the time period the bulk of the series takes place in.

The time period in question, while having inventions such as flying cars very active, is dystopic, with Aku being the public face and morality standards being poor as Jack soon finds out the hard way getting caught in a bar fight with a group of aliens by angering them simply for staring at them from confusion, despite Jack's own apologies for the staring. This leaves Jack shaken enough after throwing off the attack that he ends up about to try to cut down Rothchild, the most reserved of the Canine Archaeologists trio, thinking he is an agent of Aku trying to catch him off guard when Rothchild approaches him over the bar fight, before Rothchild makes it clear to Jack that he isn't one of the bad guys.

Rothchild explains what has happened over the time Aku has had the world sword-free: Aku has been robbing the planet of resources, and unsatisfied, he has expanded his empire throughout the galaxy in the hopes of doing the same to them. This has drawn various characters to say the least to the Earth, making things worse. Jack in return reveals to the Canine Archaeologists his experiences in this currently confusing world and what he can deduce from that much, leading the Archaeologists to mention their proposal of needing a bodyguard.

To clarify, what is particularly going on with the Archaeologists is that they have been trying to learn more about their ancestors when they ended up hitting upon jewels that proved to be Blessed With Suck when they were able to provide power for Aku's war machine. As a result, Aku subjected the Canine Archaeologists and their fellows to slavery for mining these jewels, and we see some of the canines have been crucified as punishment for not meeting quotas that already leave the currently living canines overexerted. (And yes, Jack, we agree with what you actually mean when you were saying "even dogs should not be forced to live like dogs.")

Bad news, however, is that Aku is sending an army of Beetle Bots in the canines' direction, because a waitress named Narc (who is named as such in a later episode's credits) was snooping over Jack's conversation with the Canine Archaeologists in the bar and sneaked to Aku's castle to alert Aku of Jack being around. Right before Narc's news, by the way, is a group of aquatic aliens called the Vadaquians, hailing from the Mosconian Galaxy, who seek sanctuary on Earth with no other planets left to have the necessary water to sustain them. The reason for their migration is because their water has been taken, and big surprise, Aku reveals himself the gluttonous author of that. The liaison's son showcases outrage and despite the liaison's own begging to spare him, Aku zaps him and says he was simply sent to the Pit of Hate to learn respect for Aku. We never see what happened to the kid to at least determine whether or not he's alive, but with Aku's track record already, to say nothing of more to come, it's just as well. That aside, Aku allows the Vadaquians to live on Earth in return for building monthly statues of tribute to Aku to raise to the surface.

At any rate, Jack sets up several traps to help him destroy the entire army of Beetle Bots to liberate the canines, and then makes sure they'll get by before setting off to hunt down Aku, while Aku is keeping watch through a viewscreen in his castle, vowing to eventually bring down Samurai Jack, thus setting the tone of the rest of the series. And yes, this much and that's only the pilot.

"Jack In Space", while not having an appearance from Aku, showcases Aku having bugbots enforcing his law, specifically that they're as happy as they can be in their robotic indifference to deal capital punishment for violation of Aku Laws 101 and 203, respectively inhabiting an unauthorized facility, and building an unauthorized escape vehicle. Jack of course stops the mass-execution of a group of astronaut scientists that would have resulted, and ultimately aids in their escape, even giving up a chance to return to the past to ensure their safety. Oh, and for those wondering why the group has been trying to escape, it turns out that this group was conscripted into overseeing construction of Aku's robot armies and had already dealt with the involved slavery once, and didn't want to do it ever again. Yeah.

Aku has a major role in "Jack And The Warrior Woman", granted that first-time watchers would not understand until The Reveal unless they catch any of the big hints and figure out what to make of them, but people probably have watched it in addition to the entire series, and if anything early on pushes Aku past the heinous standard, this episode will. So the premise is that Jack has been given a lead by the Woolies (sentient humanoid mammoths who are cultured Gentle Giants who were enslaved by tech-powered abusive aliens called Chritchellites until Jack fixed that problem), and the owner of the desert shop that Jack has been directed to reveals about a magical jewel that has great magic but is only available for the pure-of-heart. As Jack finishes getting the information on the jewel's location, an attack occurs courtesy of robot assassins sent by Aku. Jack ends up reinforced by a warrior woman who has green skin and black clothing and hair. Soon after, the shop owner wakes up and realizes something about "the evil" that flies past Jack, who escapes with the warrior woman. Once the two are out of there, the robot assassins close their eyes happily....

The two camp out and interact with a mouse, who shows different reactions to each of them offering bacon: accepting towards Jack, and freaking out to the point of just burrowing away toward the warrior woman. (Somehow, Jack finds that funny. Guh.) The warrior woman introduces herself as Ikra, and says that she was trying to save her father, who opposed Aku and ended up punished by being trapped in a ring of fire. Ikra says she wants the jewel to save her father after a 5 year search. After the camping ends, the two continue to traverse the desert together, eventually reaching the oasis with the jewel. However, as Jack reaches the jewel, upon testing him and the warrior woman, the jewel goes berserk and turns into a 6-armed giant that attacks the duo, to Jack's protests about the pure-of-heart requirement. Ikra fights back, using flying and shapeshifting in the process. Ikra then makes herself match the giant's size to defeat him. Now the jewel is under is duo's control, all is fine and dandy despite a bunch of seemingly nonsensical things I pointed to, right?

Well, for those who haven't guessed that those seemingly nonsensical things I pointed to are hints to what is really going on, here's what happens next: the jewel is destroyed, by Ikra, who starts laughing. Ikra's voice transitions into a familiar one during the laughter and you can guess that Ikra is in fact Aku himself, who wanted to destroy the jewel to prevent its use by Jack, who Aku had manipulated into finding it, even using the sob story for his Ikra disguise. Aku then taunts Jack, to the latter's fury calling out the former's cowardice (in a humorous manner where you can Mondegreen it to "BITE MEE, COWAAAARD!"), and then leaves with Jack emotionally broken and defeated. Aku has won this round and in a theatrical manner that by the way gets convoluted by how at least a couple of points involve him in his Ikra disguise saving Jack from what would otherwise have been certain death to destroy an item he'd be trying to use later.

"Jack And The Three Blind Archers" once again doesn't have Aku make a direct appearance, but he does have a relevant role, though not revealed in this episode but in a Season 5 episode. Jack frees the titular archers from a curse inflicted upon them to have them guard a wishing well. Before Jack can make use of the well, he gets a warning from the archers about how they were cursed by making a wish to be the greatest of warriors, as the well forced them to guard it as just that for all eternity. Jack, to express how he feels about this, immediately announces a wish for the well: "I WISH THEE...*DESTROYED*!" Some time after Jack had granted himself that very wish after expressing as much, the formerly blind archers learned that the well was powered by Aku, something they would reveal to Ashi some 50 years later--long story and I'm easily getting ahead of myself.

"Jack VS Mad Jack" is where Aku starts showing more proactive attempts to just kill Jack because letting him die in a trek across a desert instead of trying to destroy an item that could have allowed Jack time travel makes too much sense. And they prove abhorrent quickly enough anyway. Jack enters a bar to the shock of its residents and simply orders water, when a fish alien confronts him. Remember that point I made with "Young Jack In Africa" with the "great reward" angle? Well, it comes back here, because Aku has put a bounty on Jack's head, a problem that will haunt Jack in more episodes to come. Now this could be taken as simply the villain trying to kill the hero, but what makes this particularly bad, makes the whole Made Of Evil excuse eyebrow raising, is the amount. It's ***TWO GOOGOLPLEX***.

I will admit that as a kid, I had seen the season 1 episodes out of order and ended up seeing one of the episodes where Aku's Chronic Backstabbing Disorder made itself clear before this one, and it's something I think about writing this. However, involving googolplexes at all when it comes to monetary reward makes it clear that Aku is offering an amount so ridiculous there is no way he shouldn't be expected to pull a fast one. What alerts me to this absurd sum is that the backstabbing would actually be planned to begin with. I doubt the "great treasure" the materialistic tribe was promised was said to be a googolplex, assuming it was even given a numerical value (though Exact Words could have been in play to begin with for them), but the mere promise of a googolplex at all, or even anywhere near that, is a red flag to anywhere who knows their math.

Naturally, these bounty hunters don't realize that much and fight Jack only to get owned, though strain from the continued fighting causes Jack to lose his temper, allowing Aku, who is watching, to realize to use his magic to create Mad Jack, an Enemy Without, to match Jack's own skill. Jack overcomes Mad Jack by calming down, and then continues on his way, vigilant if irked by Aku's constant tricks.

"Jack Under The Sea" is another episode with Aku having a significant role. The Triceraquins, sea monkey humanoids who are amphibious, albeit favoring water, were happy to make use of that for trade by living on the surface, but Aku changed that and forced them to live deep underwater. They are, however, happy to offer Jack access to their time machine. At least, it seems that way before they start showing unhappiness about what happens right after: Jack gets restrained in a bubble trap, and then the fisherman who had given Jack the lead on the Triceraquins reveals himself to have been a Triceraquin in disguise the entire time. The reason they have captured Jack is because the Triceraquins want out of their ill fate. You can clearly guess their plan to get free has something to do with appeasing Aku. Oh, and speak of the devil and he shall appear.

With Aku's appearance, the Triceraquins make it clear that they have made a Deal With The Devil, which Jack pleads they wash their hands of for their own sake, to currently deaf ears. Aku, of course, takes the opportunity to create a crack in Jack's trap to let water in, thinking that would be enough to cause him a slow and painful death by drowning. Just after that, the Triceraquins request that Aku hold up to his end of the deal. Aku's response is to say, in theatrical fashion, that he, surprise surprise, "changed (his) mind", declaring that the Triceraquins' "pathetic" city will remain underwater until he deems otherwise.

None too happy with this showing of Aku's Chronic Backstabbing Disorder, the Triceraquins wage war on Aku. Naturally, however, the result is the same as any Aku VS any army fight in the show. The Triceraquin leaders eventually call for retreat but opt to avoid abandoning Jack, whose trap has filled with water enough to force him to hold his breath as he is given attention by Aku. Aku tells Jack to yield to his demise, and laughs when Jack refuses thinking Jack is prolonging his suffering, only for Jack to get rescued by the Triceraquin leaders to Aku's disbelief. Aku gives chase, but Jack convinces the Triceraquins to let him attack Aku, and with their support successfully drives Aku off, liberating the Triceraquins.

"Jack And The Lava Monster" is another episode with Aku not making a direct appearance, but it's made clear he's responsible for the moral dilemma that has caused the lava monster's suffering. Some time after the eclipse that freed Aku happened, Aku devastated the once lush kingdom of the person who the lava monster once was, a resident warrior with a wife, 2 sons, and a dog. After resistance with the usual results, the man was the sole survivor of the resistance and tried to avenge his comrades, to no avail beyond, yes, Aku laughing at his futile efforts. Aku then forced the sole survivor to watch the rest of his village get massacred before sealing the sole survivor within a crystal that made him immortal but also immobile, and then forced him to live buried deep within the earth where he could not go to (at least his variant of) the afterworld. It's only by willpower that the man became the lava monster and made the labyrinth in the hopes that somebody worthy could kill him in battle, and it's by his fortune that Jack comes around and upon hearing this story basically Mercy Kills him, breaking Aku's spell on him and bringing him a happier if morbid ending.

"Jack Learns To Jump Good" starts with Jack reaching a time portal after battling his way through Beetle Bots, only for Aku to, deliberately, appear and grab it at the last second, and then taunt Jack about his inability to jump well enough to use the time portal, before leaving with the time portal. He tries this again at the end of the episode, only to learn the hard way that Jack has learned to jump good. The episode ends with Jack having obtained the advantage, though seeing as the series still continued, it's safe to assume that Aku still destroyed the portal and escaped.

"Jack And The Ultra Robots" has Jack go through at least 3 villages that have all been massacred. Jack finds the ones responsible: the Ultrabots, who had in fact destroyed the villages to bait Jack. Jack retreats when he finds out his sword can't scratch them, and is approached by the Ultrabots' creator, Extor, who had designed them to counter and assassinate Jack, because as you can guess, Extor was promised by Aku that Extor's village would be spared. Not surprisingly, Aku, after using his essence to fuel the Ultrabots, reneged on his deal by assigning the Ultrabots to test their power on Extor's village. In response to this betrayal, Extor gives Jack a power-boosting arm that allows him to destroy the Ultrabots, along with the portion of essence of Aku that was fueling them, which also caused Aku pain that had him realize what had happened, while Jack and Extor celebrate with a high-five.

"Jack And The Hunters" involves the Imakandi, a group of skilled wild hunter aliens, being enlisted by Aku to hunt down Jack with the usual promise of riches beyond their wildest dreams. The Imakandi comply, but for their own stated reasons of simple tradition, to which Aku shows appeal to at first, but when he comes back later in the episode after the Imakandi fully subdue Jack, he shows haste in wanting to take Jack. The Imakandi refuse, having been impressed by Jack's endurance, and Aku, in fury, tries to take matters into his own hands only for the Imakandi to escape with Jack using their own magic and set Jack free.

"Jack VS Demongo The Soul Collector" begins with Aku providing exposition about the evil he has gladly wrought upon the land and how Jack has made light of it simply by surviving. In response to this, Aku decides to "salmon" Demongo, a demon who Aku states is one of Aku's most powerful minions who can take warrior essence and use it to become increasingly more powerful, something he has done to great warriors. Aku sends Demongo against Jack, even encouraging Demongo to enslave Jack's essence. Demongo confronts Jack in a canyon and we see that the enslaved warriors are spawned under Demongo's direct control, they can and do feel pain that of course Demongo doesn't care about, and they can be respawned ad infinitum as well, as Demongo capitalizes upon. Jack ultimately overcomes this by freeing the warriors' essence to let the warriors get revenge on Demongo while Jack walks away in victory. Demongo finds himself being summoned back to Aku, and begs for forgiveness over his failure, which Aku seemingly considers for a few seconds before crushing Demongo in his hand. It's assumed this reabsorbed him, at least it was until Demongo actually made a Season 5 appearance, though said appearance was completely comedic with no standing on anything else in the plot.

"Jack And The Rave" is another episode where Aku doesn't make an appearance for his influence is felt. Jack enters a town that feels too empty and he gets nightly lodging from an innkeeper who is suffering a breakdown to the point of crying, revealing that the problem lies in "the music." We see a bunch of hypnotized teens, including the innkeeper's daughter, named Olivia, cause property damage and attack anybody who gets in their way, against their will. The innkeeper calls them the "children of Aku"--oh the irony, thanks to season 5--which prods Jack to get to the bottom of this over this case of Would Hurt A Child. To this end, Jack infiltrates the involved rave, using a ridiculous disguise that involves a pacifier and along the way inadvertently starting a trend with kung-fu moves (a trend that would last through at least 2 generations, at that), and manages to stumble upon DJ Stylbator, a loyal minion of Aku and the one responsible for this by using his music to hypnotize the participating teens. Stylbator finds Jack by seeing him not dancing and sicks the hypnotized teens upon him, forcing Jack to fight back. Jack outmaneuvers the teens to reach Stylbator's station and gets to fighting him, with the intent of stopping the bad beats, which like Jack I don't mean they're bad-good, they're bad-bad. Despite Stylbator's efforts to prove that "Aku will never be silenced", even summoning a giant robot out of his equipment, Jack defeats Stylbator and liberates the teens.

"Jack And The Zombies" has more of Aku being obsessed with Jack, asking "samurai, samurai, why won't you...DIIIIIEEE?!?!?" just before seeing Jack get stumped by where to go. Aku uses magic to trick Jack to heading to a graveyard, where Aku summons zombies to attack and wear down Jack. (By the way, these zombies actually run for those interested. So if you think Jack could just power walk away from them, yeah, that wouldn't be happening.) One of the undead creatures, a floating girl who looked like a child Jack thought he saw earlier, manages to possess Jack's sword and deliver it to Aku. Jack, now unable to harm Aku, tries to stave Aku's relentless attacks that follow, but eventually, Aku restrains Jack and tries to kill him with his own sword, even having his blood-lust show in his eyes. Fortunately, the sword is unable to even dent Jack, who uses the confusion to break free and get back his sword. As it turns out, the sword can only hurt evil beings, including Aku, who Jack proceeds to tear to shreds. Of course, Aku escapes yet again but at least the attack is repelled.

"Jack In Egypt" has Aku sick another evil force upon Jack, this time the Minions of Set, who had been sealed after terrorizing Egypt. The Minions of Set make use of the first moments of their freedom to devastate the robotic assassins Aku brought along for this task, who by the way are similar to the ones in "Jack And The Warrior Woman", and Aku's only reaction is to be impressed at the Minions' talent. Aku takes advantage of his having played his part in freeing the Minions to have them target Jack. Jack is fortunately able to repel them, though not before dealing with the Minions' ruthless, brutal attacking, and certainly not without summoning Ra to issue a Curb Stomp Battle to the Minions. Aku's only reaction to Jack showing signs of still living a rough life is to take it as evidence that he can't repel these attacks forever.

"Jack And The Swamp Monster" is next, and it involves Jack being directed to a hermit. The one who tells Jack about the hermit is a cloaked figure we find out happens to be Narc (the waitress spy from the second episode in case you forgot). We see the hermit and he happens to have green skin, red eyebrows that at least aren't great, flaming eyebrows, and black clothing, while for some reason his voice sounds familiar. At this point, I'm calling him Elder Nahtahkoo because we can already guess what's going on at this point. In response to Jack's request for time travel, Elder Nahtahkoo tells the tale of the Titans, who preceded Aku's birth, by the way mentioning how Cronus kept gaining power beyond what he already had and had a resulting insanity-inducing increase in arrogance and paranoia (gosh, that sounds familiar); and reveals that the Gems of Cronus could be used to let Jack manage the time travel. Jack gets to traveling with Elder Nahtahkoo, who during the initial raft ride panics over seeing Aku's reflection in the water where his should be.....

Jack and Elder Nahtahkoo get to the journey of snagging the 3 Gems of Cronus, and you might notice Elder Nahtahkoo use a club to casually beat on the head of the pterodactyl providing transport for them while getting the second item, the Fist Of Ability. Anyway, when all 3 Gems of Cronus are obtained, Elder Nahtahkoo sets up a ritual to use them to resurrect Cronus, and, you guessed it, sends Cronus to try to kill Jack. Elder Nahtahkoo laughs at how Jack had allowed himself to be blind to the truth as Cronus, who by the way for some reason doesn't have the Eye of Cronus in his helmet, beats on him. The bullet point on the Evil Overlord List that I allude to there is proven soon enough when Cronus falls apart from not having the Eye of Cronus's power. This was the result of Jack having taken the Eye of Cronus when Elder Nahtahkoo wasn't looking, because he had realized the truth from the start: that Elder Nahtahkoo is in fact Aku. Jack, who had learned from his experience with "Ikra", had played along to set up a countertrap capitalizing on Aku's obsession with killing Jack, a countertrap that succeeds in letting Jack cut Aku apart yet again, though still unable to land a decisive blow, but neverthelesss more confident that the day will come when that will happen.

"Samurai VS Ninja" is another Aku sends henchman after Jack episode, the henchman being a robot assassin known as Shinobi. What Shinobi does to lure Jack into a trap is kidnap a boy in the chaos of a robot monster attack and drag him to a lighthouse in the vicinity. Shinobi then launches his attack upon Jack as Jack is freeing the boy. Fortunately, Jack applies some good ol' Affinity Play by using the light to overcome Shinobi's shadow-based gimmick and destroy him.

"Samurai VS Samurai" is yet another of the above, with Aku sending his newest bounty hunter robots to kill Jack. Aku uses the TV screen on one of the 3 in the initial attack to gloat, bidding Jack farewell. This attack fails, of course, and I would leave this episode alone because the attack just sets up Jack's absolutely hilarious Curb Stomp Battle against Da Samurai, who at that point had been an obnoxious chauvinist, that evokes a Just Here For Godzilla for the audience feeling even 15 years later, but after THAT happens, an army of the same robots ambush and surround the two. Before any fighting starts Da Samurai decides to be a Dirty Coward and just runs for his life toward the bar where the episode takes place around (this when Da Samurai, a racial stereotype clearly trying to have street cred, already had his disguise hiding his beer belly destroyed by a surprised Jack in the aforementioned Curb Stomp Battle), only for one of the robots, with no sign of provided reason, to fire a beam that materializes a heavy weight around Da Samurai's neck that locks him in place with his body bent back toward the ground. Jack repels the attack by the bounty hunter robots, but they are able to regenerate and form into a giant robot that soon after launches a surprise paralyzing attack on Jack. It's only because a now humbled Da Samurai, who Jack freed in the downtime, pushes Jack out of the way of the attack and takes the paralysis himself as a result, that Jack is able to survive the attack, ultimately trash the robot with a precise sword throw, and tell Da Samurai that his newfound heroism is what would lead him to being a true samurai--even if Da Samurai's response is comedically concerncing.

"The Aku Infection" has Aku, at least supposedly, dealing with an illness, one that leads to him coughing up a piece of himself that gets into Jack's body, before leaving without even being cut up under the pretext of being under the weather. What happens after Jack gets infected is that he unknowingly steals a bag of gems from the 2 hikers who help him, argues with himself about whether or not to save another hiker which causes the hiker to just decide to hang from a nearby stalactite, and ultimately kill a friendly robot for not apologizing to Jack for being in his way. When Jack realizes that a part of Aku has managed to take over part of his body, he seeks aid from the Lizard Monks to exorcise the portion of Aku. The Lizard Monks prove to have a time portal to work with, which the Aku portion destroys while also slaughtering the guarding monks, using Jack's body to do so in some brutal manners, before the head monk, Master Ning, uses magic to get it under control. The Lizard Monks are only able to treat Jack, but can't cure him--that falls on Jack, who is able to do so by remembering all the people he had helped throughout the show up to this point (actually including the African chieftain overseeing Jack's training, Foreshadowing "Young Jack In Africa") and using the power from that to destroy the Aku portion from within. Jack then continues on his quest, though not before correcting his wrongdoing from when he was infected.

"Jack And The Flying Prince And Princess" involves Prince Astor and Princess Verbina, alien royalty siblings hailing from a planet named Chrystallis, having escaped from from a siege on their capital involving some names I won't get into looking up, partly because they're a pain to pronounce and partly because that planet's war itself is not relevant to Aku's deeds anyway. What happens is, they crash-land on Earth along the way to get reinforcements for their war, and soon after that, direct agents of Aku (Beetle Bots and shadow mooks) arrive to capture the siblings and their robotic servant, Chitron 6 (with the "chi" pronounced as "kai"), to deliver them to Aku himself for (inadvertently) trespassing on a wasteland, treating Chitron's oblivious friendliness with hostility. Upon being delivered to Aku, Verbina humbly apologizes to the Deliverer of Darkness and explains about their situation of having to leave their homeland and everything, requesting only to be allowed to repair their ship to not have to intrude further.

Aku's response to this is to fake being saddened by Verbina's tale of the siblings' woes, and claims to have just realized what he can do: to order his soldiers to "have their ship confiscated" and "throw (Astor, Verbina, and Chitron) in irons and take them into the mines, where they can live miserably ever after!" When Chitron protests, Aku crushes him to death with his thumb, remarking about how he can do what he wants because he rules the world, causing Astor to call Aku the monster that he is as Astor and his sister get dragged off. It is only by the siblings' own fortune that Jack saw everything from when the siblings crash-landed on Earth, was hiding in a convenient alcove in Aku's castle, and chose, also to Aku's own ironic and unknowing luck, to rescue the siblings and escort them off the planet in a case of empathy, going against the temptation to just kill Aku on the spot in rage.

"Jack VS Aku" has Aku hire more "STUPID BOUNTYY HUNTEERRRRSSSS" and get tired of their incompetence, consequently coming up with an idea to challenge Jack to a duel at a given time and place, lampshading how things keep going between the two of them to make his case. The condition is that Jack may not use the sword, which Jack actually agrees upon, on the conditions that Aku doesn't use any of the following 3 things: superhuman powers, evil minions to help him, or shapeshifting, as he comes in human form. Yes, that last thing was a two-parter. The duel happens, and at first Aku is compliant with the rules, but as the fight drags on, he starts cheating, and it gets increasingly more blatant, until Jack actually watches Aku shapeshift, which leads Jack to get out his sword, which he hid in the area in wariness of this. Jack goes to the designated hiding place only to get beaten there by a minion, which Aku uses as an excuse for claiming Jack was the one who broke the deal first by going for his sword and remarked about how he's lucky that he won't have to live by his mistakes like most of us do because he will die by them, but as it turns out, the sword the minion grabbed was a fake because of Aku's predictability, and though Aku saw this coming and had extra minions to try to find the real sword, Jack actually layered his own end of the planning so thickly with too many fake swords that Aku would not be able to find the real thing. How? Because Jack is smart, and Aku is pure evil, and Jack proves it by getting the real sword from under the sand, where the minions didn't think to check, to chase off Aku yet again.

"Tale of X9" is the story of a robot assassin named X-49 who had been built alongside many for Aku's robot army, having the unique feature of being built with an experimental emotion chip by a scientist who followed random ideas, which resulted in X-49 being inflicted with self-induced psychological trauma over taking part in executing massacres of things such as anti-Aku parties, though the emotions did allow for X-49 to be more adept than the other robots that proved more willing to take hits than they should have been. When X-49 became the sole survivor of an attack, he met with a stray pup named Lulu, who he called "sweet thing." As a result, X-49 retired to live and enjoy life with Lulu. This got broken up by Aku, upon hearing about the experimental emotion chip from the scientist who implanted it, kidnapping Lulu to hold her hostage to make X-49 to come out of retirement and fight Jack. X-49 figured along the way to confronting Jack what would and indeed does happen: X-49's death at Jack's hands. X-49's last words is to request Jack take care of Lulu, who of course we never see what happened to her after, and Aku's track record thus far denies us any guarantee that he would have let her live whether or not X-49 succeeded in his final job.

So over 6000 words at this point and there's still season 5 to cover. Let's start with Aku's first chronological crime in season 5, which takes place in a flashback before the 50 year timeskip but after all of the previous season's episodes. Jack scales a mountain with monuments involving 3 friendly little rams who habitate it, and at the center he finds a time portal, which Jack jumps into, only to be grabbed out of it by Aku, who then destroys the time portal, and announces that there are no more time portals left in existence. We learn later that he actually means that much, as even the Guardian (a skilled fighter who guarded a time portal and kept Jack from using it before he could be deemed ready, even outmatching Jack himself easily enough to make sure of that much) couldn't stop this. Aku, seeing Jack's rage and encouraging it especially when he "realizes" it could give him a heart attack, then causes 3 monsters to grow to fight Jack and then leaves Jack to suffer. Oddly, he doesn't stick around to see what happens next: Jack, in frustration over the failure to be able to return to the past, ultimately stabs all 3 creatures on the head without thinking what they could be, killing them while turning them back into, what else, the aforementioned friendly rams. This causes the sword to get away from Jack due to the imbalance now in his soul.

By some miracle, Aku never learns over the span of 50 years that Jack lost his sword, even though he has seen Jack grow a beard. Granted, he hasn't been the most observant fellow, but anyway, whatever the reason, Aku falls into an ennui after thinking to just camp out at his castle where he expected to let old age eventually kill Jack, only for that plan to crumble when Jack didn't age due to the time travel that had been used on him. He becomes too despondent to do more to some mud aliens than shoo them out, or think much of an "ultimate" Beetle Bot (it's subjected to a Curb Stomped Battle by Jack, but Aku wouldn't be sure whether or not that would happen), and even resorts to making a clone of himself to be a therapist to give him advice to not care about Jack, still having hope that somebody will kill Jack regardless.

In Episode XCVI, Aku is alerted to a battalion attack being launched by the Scotsman (a recurring one of Jack's allies, who I hadn't mentioned thus far because Aku hadn't been involved in his episodes thus far) could be used for snapping himself out of his depression by eliminating "this scum", referring to Scotsman and his battalion. Aku makes short work of the tanks, causing the Scotsman to order a retreat while he stays behind to cover the escape of his many, many daughters. Scotsman draws Aku's attention using trash talk that calls him a coward who has been scared off by Jack inspiring potential supporters. Aku, in mere annoyance with Scotsman's talking, uses his eye beams to disintegrate Scotsman, and then falls back to his depression because Scotsman talked about Jack. (And yes, Scotsman actually dies. It's even telegraphed by his ordering his daughters' escape, I called it on that, and it makes it clear the show is playing for keeps at this point. He's able to work as a Force Ghost of sorts thanks to Celtic magic, but Aku doesn't know that.)

XCVI concerns itself more with showing more of Aku's influence on the world, as Jack is doing with a girl named Ashi who had been raised along with her 6 sisters to be complete, disconnected Tykebombs with Jack as their target, by an Abusive Parent known only as the High Priestess, who led a group known as the Cult of Aku before having the adult members killed by the septuplets, called the Daughters of Aku, as a test of their power. Ashi is of course the sole survivor of the Daughters of Aku after Jack acted in self-defense against them and by sheer luck she has enough interest in nature on her own that she starts trusting Jack when he shows far more benevolence to a ladybug than the High Priestess ever did. Anyway, one example of Aku's abhorrent rule that Jack shows to Ashi is that Aku had destroyed an entire forest except for a lone sakura tree that was left surrounded by spikes specifically to remind people of his present despair-spreading tyranny. Jack shows as much to Ashi, along with what happens in a City of Aku, where pencil-pushers will gladly welcome sadistic intergalactic criminals with open arms, even letting them rampage in the more vulnerable, friendly villages. The resulting destruction in such a system, which has created moorland after moorland, is enough to convince Ashi to find a solution against Aku's tyranny, incidentally as they are visiting the village massacred by the Dominator, a robot-suited human who also kidnapped the village's children residents to turn them into mind-controlled feral animals, and then happily exploited Jack's unwillingness to hurt innocents and applied Electric Torture to Ashi. Though Ashi breaks free with unexpected durability and flexibility, kills the Dominator, and breaks the control over the children, the situation is what finally breaks Jack, who was already in despair from being unable to end Aku's iron-fisted rule for the longest time, after he thinks he killed the children in his efforts to save them due to them not waking up soon enough. It is only by Ashi revealing that Jack did succeed in saving the children in addition to the general benefits of his various actions throughout the show that Jack snaps out of committing Seppuku.

Jack ultimately recovers his sword after a spiritual journey that restores balance to his soul, during which the High Priestess tried to assassinate Jack only for Ashi to intercept her and an orc army who proves themselves one of the most Genre Blind armies I have ever seen, the latter implied to have been sent out by the High Priestess for distraction; call the High Priestess out for the abuse toward the Daughters of Aku; and kill them, preventing Jack's death. With Ashi alongside him, Jack attempts to get into a showdown with Aku. As the hunt for Aku happens, the final battle is set up (FINALLY!) when Aku gets information from Scaramouche, a robot assassin ranking consistently high on Aku's top assassins who served as a Wake Up Call Boss for season 5 and had massacred a village to (what else) bait Jack only to get reduced to a hopping head in the fight with Jack, that Jack had lost his sword. Aku holds a finger to Scaramouche's head as if threatening to destroy him for annoying him, and asks Scaramouche if he's sure, to which Scaramouche remarks about how he will bet his life on it, unaware that the intel is of course outdated because Scaramouche struggled to get anywhere fast in his state. Aku restores Scaramouche's body and then with Scaramouche in tow heads for the Guardian's place where Jack is. Aku and Scaramouche gloat about how Jack has finally been caught defenseless with no sword left, but Jack draws his sword, contradicting this. Before Scaramouche can get more than 3 words out in an effort to explain that Jack actually didn't have his sword before, Aku telekinetically blows up Scaramouche's head, collecting on Scaramouche's earlier bet, and then not giving Scaramouche any more thought, tries to leave before he sniffs something strange coming from Ashi.

As it turns out, Aku had years prior left behind some of his essence in a goblet for the Cult of Aku as a moment of humor, not expecting the High Priestess to actually drink it. The essence is how the High Priestess was able to birth the Daughters of Aku, making Ashi a literal daughter of Aku, which Aku immediately exploits to control her body into fighting against Jack, claiming all the way that Ashi is doing what she is forced to do out of loyalty to her biological father, at best ignoring how she would not be doing it at all if she could control her body. Aku forces even more control upon Ashi, even remarking how her best part is Aku himself, by having her engulfed with Aku's essence. Jack ends up parrying against the now possessed Ashi and upon breaking her weapon ends up hurting her from grazing her, which allows Ashi to momentarily break some of the control to beg Jack to just kill her so that he can do the same to Aku, but Jack, not having that, instead opts to surrender. Possessed Ashi only avoids killing Jack then and there on Aku issuing an order to stop because now that Aku has secured Jack's sword, he has a better idea...

In CI, the final episode (THANK RA), the whole world is summoned to their televisions (including in places where you wouldn't expect them, just roll with it) because of a special event. The event in question opens with this little speech you might be familiar with if you have seen the first 4 seasons:

"Long ago, in a distant land, I, Aku, the shape-shifting master of darkness, unleashed an unspeakable evil, but a foolish samurai wielding a magic sword stepped forth to oppose me. Before the final blow was struck, I tore open a portal in time, and flung him into the future, where my evil is law. Now, the fool seeks to return to the past, and undo the future that is Aku!"

Aku subverts it with a "not" right after that, as the event turns out to be a public execution of Jack at the Pit of Hate, with his sword, the one weapon that can even hurt Aku, placed in a nearby katana display stand where he thinks it can never threaten him ever again. Aku is doing this to permanently demoralize all of Jack's supporters in one fell swoop, and make it clear how he can and will put an end to any future hope and resistance with even more ease than he had managed before. But of course, Aku has to pull yet another failure to adhere to the Evil Overlord List like he already did so much that it transcends his Nigh Invulnerability and intergalactic tyranny, as he didn't even think to cover the theatrics more thoroughly, and ends up indecisive on how to finally kill Jack. He finally decides on having Possessed Ashi do the deed, but then suddenly, before he can at last get Jack's execution going, Aku's castle falls under attack.

In the time Aku had taken to choose how to kill Jack, Jack's various allies, and even offspring of them--at the very least, Rothchild's grandchildren, who are still remarkably young, inside some of the canines' flying digging machines, as well as the current generation of the rave teens--have rallied together to rescue their hero, starting by causing an explosion that ends up freeing Jack from his restraints. Aku heads off to battle, leaving Jack to Possessed Ashi (who by the way is an opposite sex guard, Aku, or did you forget?), while Aku takes on the allies, even smashing a few of the "insects" to transform them into miniature versions of himself to fight as his soldiers, while laughing at how futile this resistance seems as his mini-me soldiers give the allies some brutal beatings, also notably skewing toward swarming one of Rothchild's grandchildren over attacking Rothchild himself. Eventually, when the Robo Samurai (again from an earlier episode that doesn't involve Aku) comes into play and tears off Aku's antlers, Aku has had enough and gathers all of his essence except that of Possessed Ashi's to turn into a Flechette Storm. This Flechette Storm is shown to kill combatants who are without sufficient protection, with no chance of evasion, and it is made clear that standard armor is not that at all as we see the Robo Samurai get pierced for the pilots to all get hit by spikes, and Rothchild's digging machine get shot down. The only allies of Jack's we see survive this attack are the Spartans (yet again, from an earlier episode that doesn't involve Aku, though I may be wrong in this case) due to their shields, and Scotsman's daughters due to Ghost Scotsman using Celtic Magic to repel the spikes in a Papa Wolf moment. Even then, their own fates are uncertain.

Fortunately, the ensuing chaos is enough to give Jack, who was trying to get past Possessed Ashi and at the time of the Flechette Storm was covered by Possessed Ashi's Aku essence already, leg room to ultimately break through to Ashi with a declaration of love, which allows Ashi to break free of Aku's influence and have full control of the same powers Aku has. Ashi uses them to stave off Aku's attacks when Aku returns his attention to the couple, before Jack realizes Ashi has Aku's powers, which causes a Eureka Moment for Ashi, who grabs Jack's sword--by the blade, no less--give it to Jack, and generate the same sort of time portal Aku had used at the beginning of the series. Take a wild guess as to the destination time. When Jack and Ashi are warped out by the time portal before Aku can intercept, Aku freaks from realizing what is going to happen, and sure enough, it does: Jack and Ashi arrive to Aku's castle when Aku had just originally sent Jack to the future. Jack wastes no time rampaging upon the evil overlord, who is already worn down from the encounter with Jack just before, gives Aku no chance to succeed in escaping his proactively very, VERY, ***VERY*** well-deserved fate, and completely destroys Aku and his castle, erasing the Bad Future and preventing all the evil he had caused ever since Jack had been teleported. (The lava monster business could have happened before, sadly, though at least Jack may remember that problem.) Unfortunately, the indication that this happened is from the result that killing Aku in the past erases Ashi's existence thanks to her genealogy, but some time after that happens, Jack ends up in peace because of a ladybug, the same insect Ashi liked, as he stands under the no longer lonely sakura tree he had once shown her, now content because there's hope for the world again.

*PHEW!* ***THANK ODIN, VISHNU, AND RA IT'S OVER!!!*** (Just to clarify, yes, Samurai Jack is a good show. What I'm thankful for is getting all this DONE.)

Heinous standard

Before I start, I will say that as indicated at various points, yes, Samurai Jack involves plenty of welcome humor, intentional and unintentional alike, and Aku provides a good chunk of it. Of course, it's more levity than anything, as there is definitely a clear amount of seriousness, and when Aku gets dark, he gets dark FAST.

Really, over 8500 words at this point and that's deliberately leaving out a few episodes for reasons I will go into.......oh Ra, YES Aku clears the heinous standard. He doesn't even just clear it, he SMOKES it. In fact, keeping a writeup terse enough would be the challenge, because Aku pulls a LOT of nonsense. Slavery, unreasonable laws with the death penalty attached, constant backstabbing, coercion, and general tyranny all come to mind. Even if I cut out my digressing, some of which was caused by exhaustion, it won't change how the laundry list of atrocities will STILL be massive. While some are tame and more focused entirely on Aku trying to kill Jack for the umpteenth time, which is ultimately why I didn't mention his brief appearance in "Jack, The Monks, And The Ancient Master's Son", there's still problems such as what he does to the Chrystallis royalty, which by the way, reeks of Would Hurt A Child.

This is where "Aku's Fairy Tales", since that's the elephant in the room that I didn't mention before, has problems as an effective argument in saying that Aku is too laughable to qualify, because Aku still forces the children to listen to his tales, and only doesn't kill the children for being smartalecks because he was too frustrated to try. Not helping its case is that, as you can see above, you can literally ignore it and it won't impact any other episode. You can argue the same for "Jack And The Flying Prince And Princess", but certainly not the final episode where Aku's Flechette Storm would have surely killed Rothchild's grandchildren and the rave teens.

That's not even getting into why I also ignored "Jack And The Gangsters", because I wanted to write something about it because of the gangsters' protection racket (where the gangsters murder anybody who doesn't pay up without much regard to collateral damage; Jack stops one such instance using a bomb from happening to a kindly old animal shelter owner and his pets during his manipulation of the gangsters) and how that could even be considered small-time, but the plot ended up proving to be too confusing on a bigger scale simply because of the MacGuffin's mere existence and what happend with it in general. In fact, on the episode's own scale, trying to make sense of given things made my head hurt from Jack's haste to trust the gangsters with a clearly omnipotent item. That's why I'd rather not treat these given episodes as valid arguments where I can, because the episodes themselves are too comedic. It's not like they make any effort to counterbalance against Aku's list of deeds anyway.

I covered virtually every other appearance made by Aku, and you can see how while he is hilarious, he's definitely not Played For Laughs nearly as often as people may think. In fact, he has a significant hand, without even making a direct appearance, in some of the episodes I talked about such as "Jack And The Lava Monster", and you can't very well expect humor from those episodes. Even in episodes such as "Samurai VS Samurai" where Aku gets hilariously overshadowed by a wannabe from a place like MySpace, Aku finds a way to be the top dog threat and sneak in some vile stunt. It's fair to hold the more indirect episodes against him when he's responsible for the entire Bad Future. There's a reason I bring up "Jack And The Rave" for example, because he also allows the likes of the High Priestess and the Dominator to run around.

Speaking of, neither of those two are eclisped: High Priestess still works within her laughable technology level to turn her own daughters into tools to use specifically to kill one freaking person, and Dominator is a Monster Of The Week who combines the worst traits of Aku's less personal agents, even also mixing in a tint of sexual lust that thankfully never goes anywhere. However, that the Dominator borders on coming across as bog standard in villainy as far as SJ's standards go, even being used as an active example of who Aku allows free reign for Ashi to see without crossing into any sort of bad writing, makes it clear just how easily Aku lives up to his name, pseudo-deity or no.

You might argue that Aku has moments of being passive in his evil, most notably with his ennui in season 5. This has the problem that Aku is only passive when he gets disinterested, or else Scotsman's daughters would have been vaporized in XCVI. When he perked up in C, he became all too happy to exploit Ashi's blood heritage. That's not getting into how he still is responsible, directly or indirectly, for practically all the terrible stuff in the series, without a single shred of remorse. There are episodes I didn't even check, which is because I am confident Aku's influence on them is simply too indirect and nothing would come up as a result. The arena episodes come to mind. Why bother caring that Aku has passive days when he already has enough of a rapsheet to need nearly 9000 words on that alone, and problems like the active backstabbings, the deliberate reminders of his iron-fisted rule, the extremely taxing slavery that comes with an equally unpleasant punishment system, and the general attempts to issue Fates Worse Than Death to maximize the suffering are around anyway?

Oh, and in case you think I'm being too overconfident, I actually checked some of the episodes that Aku wasn't even mentioned in that I wanted to be sure of, such as "Jack And The Haunted House" where a family got trapped by a demon. It is implied that Aku was behind that, though nothing was ever made explicit, and I wasn't going to pad out his actions with anything that didn't have a proven connection, especially not when I could be committing my efforts to getting back to learning how I can design my own game (long story). It's just as well I don't check episodes I'm confident in not needing to check, because it turns out for example "The Princess And The Bounty Hunter" only reveals that Aku enslaved Princess Mira's people, which doesn't get expanded upon, and it's standard fare for Aku anyway, so I couldn't write much for that. That's the problem: that Aku's evil gets to the point where freaking slavery is bog standard, and with Aku's penchant for twisting the knife he stabs and backstabs with as hard and often as he can and does, there's no way that he fails to push the envelope.

Just to shortlist Aku's atrocities as best I can for the nonbelievers, here you go, excluding simple attacks on Jack for opposing him unless they involve any sort of notable collateral damage; and sorted into directly on-screen (Aku is directly shown committing the deed, no flashbacks needed), committed by direct agents (this refers to the shadow mooks, the more mindless robots such as the Beetle Bots, or demons like Demongo), committed by clearly enabled indirect agents (covers the likes of DJ Stylbator, Scaramouche, the High Priestess, and the Dominator), and mentioned by a reliable enough source (for a certain part of "reliable" for a given case's source being evil):

Directly on-screen:

-Massacred multiple towns in the Feudal Japan era, forcing the Emperor to watch in one case

-Used eye beams to zap the Vadaquian liason's son for mouthing off to him, allegedly sending him to reeducation in the Pit of Hate with no real assurance that he's alive, and then only allows the Vadaquians to live on Earth on condition of building tributes to Aku

-Used his Ikra disguise to destroy a MacGuffin intended for the pure-of-heart and then traumatize Jack

-Betrayed his deal with the Triceraquins after they had delivered Jack to him, and then smashes their enraged army

-Crushed Demongo in his hand for failing to kill Jack

-Freed the Minions of Set, borderline Hero Killer baddies who had terrorized Egypt in days long past, to have them kill Jack for him, disregarding them massacring his robot assassins in the process

-Animal abuse such as whacking a pterodactyl with his club while in his Elder Nahtahkoo disguise

-(Most likely) Feigned being ill to get Jack infected with his essence, which lead to Jack-Aku's actions

-Sentenced Verbina and Astor, already under hardships from war, to miserable slavery after faking sympathy toward their plight, and killed Chitor 6, who would otherwise have been included, for protesting

-Transformed 3 innocent rams into monsters to fight Jack, causing Jack to kill them (that Aku didn't know the latter part happened makes no difference)

-Killed Scotsman in an effort to relieve his boredom, and only didn't kill his daughters because he was too depressed

-Killed Scaramouche without allowing him to explain about his outdated intel

-Used his essence to control Ashi, who he had just found out is his own daughter, into fighting Jack against her will

-Killed various people rebelling against him, including Rothchild's grandchildren and a group of rave fan teens

-Tries to kill Ashi, again Aku's own biological daughter, for defiance

Committed by direct agents:

-Forced slavery on Jack's homeland populace, with the Emperor getting the worst of it (shadow mooks)

-Forced slavery on the canines, with punishment for not meeting extremely taxing quotas being crucification, and then left them to be collateral for killing Jack (Beetle Bots)

-Outlawed escape vehicles without authorization under penalty of capital punishment (Bug Bots)

-Massacred villages just to bait Jack (Ultrabots, as well as Scaramouche even though he's simply a robot assassin with his own personality)

-Enslaved warriors for direct control and ad infinitum respawning with no regard to how they feel (Demongo)

-Kidnapped a boy to take as hostage and then treated him as easily acceptable collateral for killing Jack (Shinobi)

-Restrained a fleeing man in a painful way for no stated reason (bounty hunter robots)

-Caused Jack to do increasingly bad deeds leading to deliberately slaughtering the Lizard Monks (Jack-Aku)

-Enforced trespassing laws with callous disregard to what is going on, even arresting a war-torn group who had clearly crashlanded and showing arbitrary enmity to their friendly demeanor (shadow mooks and Beetle Bots)

-Enforced his tyranny by massacring the likes of anti-Aku parties (emotionless assassin robots)

-Tried to kill the Emoji family for unknown reasons even after they already fled the local city (Beetle Bots, although Aku wouldn't have had the initiative to issue a command at the time)

Committed by indirect agents who are clearly enabled by Aku:

-Disregarded collateral damage including to children to procure money for delivering Jack to Aku (materialistic African tribe as well as the bounty hunters)

-Established a system that allowed various evil intergalactic beings clearly willing to commit their own atrocities (bureaucrats, one of whom is shown on-screen doing this; this was already basically mentioned by Rothchild by the way)

-Hypnotized teens into wanton violence before attempting to use them as meatshields against Jack (DJ Stylbator)

-Subjected the Daughters of Aku to 2 decades of single-minded Training From Hell for the express purpose of killing one person, ending with a test resulting in the massacre of the Cult of Aku's general adult members, and then later trying to kill the sole survivor of the DoA for defiance (High Priestess, the DoA's own biological mother)

-Kidnapped the children in a massacred village to brainwash them into feral beasts, taking pleasure in that Jack doesn't try to kill them, and then subjected Ashi to electric torture with sexual undertones (Dominator)

Mentioned by a reliable enough source:

-Placed a bounty on Jack when he was still a child, and did so again in the Bad Future with promise of an absolutely ridiculous sum (mentioned by materialistic African tribe talking about the "evil spirit" for the first, and then bounty hunters for the second)

-Turned the Earth into a living hellscape (mentioned by various, effects shown at enough points)

-Plundered other planets' resources potentially forcing them to relocate (mentioned by Rothchild explaining the Bad Future, as well as Aku gloating about one such case, which is what enraged the Vadaquian liaison's son in the first place)

-Conscripted scientists into traumatizing labor for making Aku's robot armies (mentioned by the scientists in their frustrations in their escape efforts)

-Created a corrupt wishing well that would force anybody using it to guard it (mentioned by the archers grateful to Jack; they eventually learned about the Hijacked By Ganon part by season 5)

-Massacred a town, forces a sole surviving warrior with a family living there to watch Aku finish doing so, and then subjected the survivor to an intended eternal Fate Worse Than Death (mentioned by the lava monster who proved honorable enough while his actions and fate lined up with his story)

-Betrayed Extor by testing the Ultrabots on his village after promising not to harm it (mentioned by Extor, who helped Jack destroy the Ultrabots)

-Took Lulu (sweet thing) hostage to send X-49 on a suicide mission while what happened to Lulu after X-49's (sad) death is never revealed (mentioned by X-49 himself when revealing his story)

-Destroyed an entire sakura tree forest deliberately leaving only a single tree alone surrounded by spikes as a reminder of his iron-fisted rule (mentioned by Jack while explaining Aku's evil to Ashi)

-(Most likely) Killed the Guardian and the Lizard Monks (inferred by Aku mentioning destroying all of the time portals in his gloating, with the Guardian's broken glasses shown leftover from a battle scene, and the Lizard Monks having promised to rebuild their own time portal)

Good Ra, I am sorely tempted to think that Ashi's erasure from existence, and possibly the same happening to the likes of Rothchild, was a worthwhile cost for most of this never getting to happen in the new timeline.

Verdict: Seriously? PASS, PASS, ***PASS!!!!!***

Moral agency

Now this point is also contentious, because Aku was born from a big black mass that seems mindless, and thus is Made Of Evil, allegedly unable to be anything but evil as a result. First off, I need to copy and paste this YouTube comment by R R ( https://www.youtube.com/user/CallOfBrawl ) that makes a very good point about the black mass's own agency:

"To all who have feelings for Aku when he's running away, I can understand but I'll tell you why it's wrong to act on those feelings. Evil is like a serpent - runs away when weak and tries to find cunning ways to continue its doing. Remember the giant mass running away from the three gods? It's because it knew it was screwed. It was smart enough to know that. But if left uncharged, it could be very dangerous, as seen 1000 years later when the future was Aku. The cowardly behavior is a basic manipulative behavior of evil-doers. It is also a sign that at core, evil is cowardly, as also presented through Aku's lair, standing like a pillar ever since the age of the dinosaurs."

While I am confused about that very last point about Aku's lair, it does point out that the black mass isn't something like Lavos from Chrono Trigger, who it never would have occured to pull quite a bit of the convoluted nonsense Aku pulled, because Lavos was driven only by seeking sustenance, thievery or no, and then rage at being deemed unfit to live. No, the implication is that the Black Mass itself had committed evil on its own accord, and, most likely unwittingly, still spawned the same guy who would deliberately issue Fates Worse Than Death for nothing more than laughs.

But say we can ignore that argument on the grounds of conjecture by a random user. Aku still immediately "thanked" the Emperor for birthing him by forcing the Emperor to watch his home be destroyed, and this also brings to mind, yet again, the lava monster, who could very well have been dealing with this before being sealed in the mountain. There's also that Aku tries to kill Jack in fancy ways to maximize the amount of suffering his death involves, and then start backstabbing any support who was involved (Extor and the Triceraquins) before the ink has even dried on Jack's death warrant. Speaking of perfidy, in case you don't realize that Aku has that pesky Nigh Invulnerability and an army of Bettle Bots to stave any bounty hunter who succeeds in killing the one guy who can get past the Nigh Invulnerability, how do you imagine Aku would pay a hundred digit amount of money, something that would take literal aeons just to count up, especially when Aku is stealing resources to begin with? I can tell you any bounty hunter who didn't think ANYTHING of the exact sum on Jack's head is a freaking moron.

I have looked over the series to see if I have missed anything, and I have seen not ONE sign that Aku could dislike being as evil as he is. In fact, he makes a mockery of how a moral person would feel in his position, as Astor and Verbina can attest to. Heck, the sakura tree business highlights how Aku is a proud tyrant.

You might point again to "Aku's Fairy Tales" where Aku tries to portray himself as a hero and simply doesn't understand what a good guy does, but those things are very obvious lies, it doesn't take long before he starts portraying Jack as a bad guy, and Aku is forcing the kids to listen at all because he had been openly mocked by kids. Nothing about it counterbalances more important episodes, where he indeed Would Hurt A Child.

There's also argument that there was one time Aku tried to actually follow a deal only to subconsciously break it. By all indications, it seems to be Jack VS Aku when that apparently happened. If it is, here's the thing with that episode: Aku had come up with a trap from the start, which is why he even confronted Jack, because being Stupid Evil doesn't change how he's a Dirty Coward, among various other things. Even if we don't know what he was exactly planning from the start since Jack provided his own conditions, he had multiple layers on his end of the planning, which means he had intended to cheat from the start, and simply looked for pretext to not play fair.

Additionally, one might point out that the black mass's essence affects the person's base morality. Seriously? What about Jack himself in The Aku Infection. Jack was able to fight back to get support from the monks, and when Jack-Aku was doing sadistic things, it was the Aku side in control. In fact, what about Ashi as well? She speaks for herself having been a good soul even before Jack came along and made sure she wasn't so misguided by her own vile mother, who even made HER own effort to stamp out the good in Ashi, preventing Ashi from having literally anything in her upbringing to let her have her sense of morality without her own clear-cut effort, something to keep in mind next time you think about when Ashi put the blame for her sisters' deaths on the High Priestess where it belongs. Additionally, she grabbed Jack's sword by the blade, unthinkingly, and did not suffer from the Holy Burns Evil effect the show is built around, even though she used an arm extended by Aku's powers, by the way handling a plan that she knew could very well result in the erasure of her own existence. If this was an animation error, it's way too likely this would have been caught, because even ignoring how important this scene is, Ashi is shown gripping the sword by the blade in multiple sets of animation, which means the choreography is deliberate. And if it was simply because of her human side that she was immune to the blade's power, then that's a serious plot hole in the previous episode where Jack surrendered to avoid killing her, because by all counts, she should have been immune then too, possessed or not.

Also, when High Priestess drank Aku's essence, it was a lot more than what went into Jack in The Aku Infection, yet High Priestess never sounded like Aku, instead maintaining her own personality and by all indications her own looks. All Aku's essence did was impregnate her. That's it. No corruption attempts because High Priestess was already a nutcase. The Daughters of Aku not being affected can actually be explained even more easily by the inevitable DNA mix confusing the Aku essence in THEM into dormancy, which would allow for how they generally dropped like flies in XCIV.

Say you can still claim that Aku is innately programmed to be evil. Guess what? Aku's robot armies are by that logic even more programmed to carry out Aku's will. Nobody made X-49, a direct creation of mass production for enforcing the law of Aku's regime, care for Lulu (sweet thing); all the emotion chip installed into him did was give him capacity for general emotion, nothing more, as it was experimental. X-49 says that emotions are innately bad for his profession as an assassin because they directly lead to morality, but Aku himself as well as some of the robots on his payroll, such as Scaramouche, are walking contradictions to that brand of logic. It particularly comes up when Aku is making the robots anyway and the robots will do nonsensical actions such as putting somebody already abandoning Aku's most hated enemy to the wolves under painful restraint simply for being there before even trying to deal with Jack himself.

So no, I'm not buying that Aku is Made Of Evil is why he's evil. Rather I find he's Made Of Evil because he's evil on his own choices to begin with. And good GOD does it show when there's incidents where Aku will go the extra mile in his depravity instead of settling for an already evil enough choice that would clear the Moral Event Horizon as-is, like what he did to Astor and Verbina: a more simplistic evil taskmaster would have been enforcing the already bogus law in indifference instead in that case.

Verdict: PASS!

Freudian Excuse

He's the sole remaining piece of the black mass. It's only relevant to his moral agency, and that's already covered above.

Also, the Emperor made it clear upon birthing Aku by mistake how he wanted to destroy him. Problem is, for starters, we see the spikes from the black force Aku came from piercing homes, which is what the Emperor was seeking to stop. And it's not like Aku was even deeply offended, and yet Aku sees fit to force the Emperor to watch him burn the Emperor's home for the Emperor's defiance, which is at best Disproportionate Retribution.

BTW, Aku does say this as if talking to Jack himself upon Jack's arrival to the future: "you will pay for my pain in the past with your pain in the future." Okay, sure, Aku. Anything to help you sleep at night when your pain in the past was from a guy who arrived none too happy about you destroying his homeland when he was 8 and then subjecting the people of said homeland to slavery with the guy's father getting the worst of it. Oh, and nice touch using a robot army to get your revenge for you forcing him to build sophisticated traps to throw it off with a high amount of effort while you sit comfortably in your abode. And last I checked, you directly attacked him first anyway, by placing a bounty on his head when he was still a kid.

Nothing else to even try to justify what he did to all the various other people he has hurt, even without the involvement of Jack and his family--yet another point against Aku's treatment of Verbina and Astor.

Verdict: PASS!

Redeeming qualities

If you count Laughably Evil as one, he does at least have that in spades, even once talking with Jack without either party being too aggro. In general, however, Aku is clear-cut Faux Affably Evil on a good number of occasions, including in the final two episodes, and "Jack And The Hunters" is a good example of that with Aku displaying the standard thought process of a sociopath, in that they'll turn on the charm to coax potential recruits, and in truth actually not care to think anything of their tradition and other such things as shown in Aku's easily contrasting second meeting with the Imakandi, after Jack had been captured, so no, that doesn't disqualify him in the least. It's because of that that Aku's "illness" in The Aku Infection can just as easily have been extensive faking.

Verdict: PASS!

Loved Ones

With the way he treats Ashi once he learns of her biological heritage? Don't make me laugh. In fact, he applies to her the bog standard sociopath's use-and-toss-away strategy, and this is with somebody who he thinks he can control simply because she happens to have his essence. Yes, he's willing to kill a portion of his own essence just for developing their own will.

And if you're a subordinate to Aku, you better not fail or anything, or he will execute you without caring to hear any explanations. Just ask Demongo and Scaramouche. Scaramouche, while he deserved to be killed, especially needs to be talked about, because Aku joined Scaramouche in doing a happy dance, but that was because the news that Scaramouche delivered about Jack being swordless broke Aku out of his funk. When Aku finds out about that not being the case, Aku immediately blows Scaramouche's head without allowing him to explain about the outdated intel and never even thinks about him again.

Verdict: PASS!

Other mitigating factors

Aku does keep Jack, the one guy who can even hurt him, from being killed a few times both of the times he was disguised. However, this is because Aku was trying to be convincing, and was overthinking the given disguise's purpose as a result, most likely because how he's into theatrics to an absurd point that bites him hard over and over and OVER again. Add to it that he's fond of issuing Fate Worse Than Death, even wanting Jack to suffer as much as possible to return the favor for Aku's (already deserved) pain in the past with Jack's pain in the future, and you can see how this isn't mitigating. That's not even going into how the instances involved natural hazards so there's also the possibility of Pragmatic Villainy in that Aku would not have wanted to intentionally do nothing just to watch Jack survive with heightened suspicions from nothing Aku can explain without privileged knowledge.

Nothing else comes to mind.

Verdict: PASS!

Conclusion

I was at around 3500 words when I finished the segment about the lava monster episode from freaking season 1 in a 5 season show. I don't doubt it could be shortened and maybe better better written, but it doesn't change how much Adult Fear is in Samurai Jack, and it still makes it clear that Aku's potential excuses, for all that they're plentiful, are so flimsy when given active scrutiny. Aku doesn't even pull nonsense that makes me see red on nearly as big a basis as Roger Retinz from Ace Attorney Spirit of Justice does (for the record, I don't buy that Retinz fails to be heinous enough, given his own scale and deeds), and yet here we are. I had a feeling that Aku's excuses for not qualifying needed active scrutiny that people were not willing to give. How right I am, something I especially realize from the googolplex bounty business. Problems like the treatment of the Chrystallis royalty siblings are just icing on the cake.