Line #44 Recap/SamuraiJackS5E2XCIII


1	%%As per Administrivia/SpoilersOff, it is expected that people will read the recaps after seeing the episodes, so using spoiler markup is pointless.
2
3	'''XCIII'''
4
5	'''Original air date:''' 3/18/17 ''(produced in 2016)''
6
7	Jack continues his travel across the world, but is going to face new opponents who aren't just "nuts and bolts".
8
9	The Daughters of Aku make their move, thrusting Jack into a wild run for survival against his deadliest enemies yet. The chase leads them to the tomb of a warrior-king where in the darkness, Jack finds that his longtime experience with robots will have a nasty surprise in store.
10
11	Meanwhile, Aku has grown weary of the battle against Jack. He's no longer the enthusiastic conqueror he used to be, and more or less putters around his lair like a tired old geezer, wondering what to do about that one loose thread that refuses to be cut.
12	----
13	!!Tropes:
14	* AlienBlood: The alien tigers killed by the wolf have green blood.
15	* AncientTomb: Jack and the Daughters of Aku have the bulk of their fight in an old temple that also seems to be some sort of mass tomb for an emperor and his army. At one point, Jack hides inside one of the coffins.
16	* AndThenWhat: Deconstructed in the therapy scene. Aku says he was quite proud of destroying all the time portals over the years and assumed Jack would then eventually die of natural causes. But 50 years later, Jack is not only still alive, but immortal, and Aku thinks he's trapped himself with an unbeatable opponent with nothing left to lose.
17	* AnimalMetaphor: Jack fighting the Daughters of Aku is interspersed by a subplot of a lone white wolf walking through the forest being ambushed by a pack of alien tigers. The episode ends with a shot of the tigers lying dead in pools of [[AlienBlood green blood]], and a trail of red blood leading to the body of the wolf a short distance away, itself lying seemingly dead in a pool of blood.
18	* BeingGoodSucks: Jack is even more of a mess than Aku, having spent 50+ years stuck in a BadFuture, and much like Aku, is at the point of talking to himself. But ironically, despite being evil, Aku's self-therapy sessions are ''much more positive'' than Jack's. While Aku's sessions essentially amount to giving himself a pep talk, Jack's involve self-loathing, despair, and thoughts of suicide. It's ugly to watch, to say the least.
19	* BlatantLies: Aku tells his scientist he no longer cares about killing Jack, then he immediately goes to have a therapy session with himself about just that.
20	* BroughtDownToBadass: The entirety of Jack's gear is destroyed, but he's still able to put up a fight in nothing but his undergarments.
21	* BungledSuicide: Jack's vision of himself tries to tell him to end it all.
22	* CallBack: The Evil Scientists who appeared in "Tale of X9" appear again briefly at the beginning of the episode to present their upgraded model of robot. (Which Jack destroys in about ten seconds.)
23	* CloseCallHaircut: One of the Daughters comes within inches of hacking into Jack's neck, but he tilts his head up and all she manages to do is give him a long-overdue shave, lopping off about half of his unruly beard.
24	* ClothingDamage: The Daughters progressively chip away at Jack's armor, eventually leaving him in nothing but his shorts.
25	* ConservationOfNinjutsu: Averted, the Daughters are manageable when there is one or two but Jack can't land a hit when they gang up on him. It's rather telling that Jack is only able to kill one when she's separated from the rest of the group.
26	* CurbStompBattle: At the start of the episode, Aku's scientists unveil a new and improved, house-sized model of beetle drone that they're sure will be able to defeat Jack. He defeats it in less than a minute.
27	** The Daughters of Aku deliver one to Jack en masse. All he can do is run and hide.
28	* DarkerAndEdgier: The grimmest episode by far, with Jack contemplating suicide, an explicit onscreen human death, and a lot of blood (both of the red and green variety).
29	* DavidVsGoliath: The wolf vs. the alien tigers. It wins, but seemingly at the cost of its own life.
30	* {{Determinator}}:
31	** Jack reminds the hallucination of this.
32	--->"It always seems bad at first, but then I find a way."
33	** The Daughters of Aku are truly relentless.
34	* DidntSeeThatComing:
35	** Even Aku admits surprise over effectively making Jack immortal.
36	** Jack initially thought he was fighting robots. Then came the SlashedThroat.
37	* DidntThinkThisThrough: Aku finally resorted to simply destroying all the time portals and wait out Jack until he succumbed to old age. Unfortunately for Aku, Jack was rendered immortal due to the effects of Aku's time magic sending him into the future. As Aku is unaware that Jack lost his sword, he has continued to hunker down inside his lair and is now bored to near insanity at being unable to kill his old enemy.
38	* DownerEnding: While escaping the daughters of Aku, Jack [[SlashedThroat kills]] one of them believing she was a machine (the first time he kills a person) and later collapses on a river after being stabbed. Meanwhile, the white wolf kills the tigers but seemingly at the cost of it's life.
39	* DramaticIrony:
40	** Aku is depressed and fearful of an effectively immortal Jack eventually killing him, but viewers know Jack's already lost the one weapon that could actually do that.
41	** The Daughters of Aku are the most effective assassins sent to kill Samurai Jack, coming closer to their goal further than any of Aku's previous minions, and Aku apparently doesn't know they exist, let alone have any faith they would succeed.
42	* ExcaliburInTheRust: During the mausoleum scene, Jack grabs the Battle Axe of the King/Warlord/General at the center of the crypt. In another story, a legendary blade would be a hero's salvation during their DarkestHour. Unfortunately, ''legendary'' also means ''old'', and it breaks after a few hits.
43	* FakeUltimateMook: The trio of scientists hype up their latest Beetle Drone to Aku and are confident it will provide an edge in taking down Jack. When it actually shows up to fight him, he simply throws his spear through the robot’s head, which dismantles its inner workings and immediately destroys it.
44	* {{Foreshadowing}}: A subplot in the episode shows a lone wolf going up against three tiger-like creatures, only one of which the wolf kills on-screen. Jack himself only manages to kill one of the Daughters of Aku.
45	** A lone ladybug is seen crawling across a leaf and then flying away right before the white wolf appears. Ladybugs will become an important motif to the series very soon.
46	* GoMadFromTheIsolation: Downplayed example. Aku has become depressed with Jack being immortal because of him, and after destroying all the time portals he has holed himself up in his lair and hasn't confronted Jack in years. This has taken a toll on him and he now is seen depressed and uncaring to his subjects and scientists. The only person he can talk to about his problem with Jack is [[MesACrowd himself]].
47	* {{Hammerspace}}: The Daughters all wear skintight black catsuits, but also pull large weapons out of thin air. In fact, after Jack kills one, the weapon she took from him suddenly appears.
48	* HollywoodMidLifeCrisis: Aku has gotten depressed because although he's destroyed all the time portals, Jack has stopped aging, and since his robots will probably never kill Jack, he'll probably be around forever.
49	* ImplacableMan: The Daughters relentlessly, continually, and tirelessly hunt Jack like predators, attacking from every angle as a team, in utter, cold silence.
50	* InternalReveal: Jack learns [[SlashedThroat the hard way]] that his opponents are not "just nuts and bolts" this time.
51	* JustAMachine: Jack has this opinion on all the robots he's been fighting. Even killing the sentient ones rarely bothered him at all, at least not as much as killing one of the Daughters.
52	* LeaningOnTheFourthWall:
53	** When scientists say they've built new beetle drones to kill Jack, Aku ignores them--saying he's a new Aku. This is a subtle acknowledgment of both [[TheOtherDarrin a new actor playing the character]] and of the despair brought about by years of hunkering down.
54	** During therapy, Aku openly wishes that someone would just take care of Jack for him. We, of course, already know the Daughters of Aku are gunning for Jack.
55	* LongGame: After all of his failed attempts to kill Jack, Aku decided to simply destroy every source of time travel on the planet, and then retreat back to his lair, planning to just wait it out until Jack died of old age. Sadly, Jack is now [[TheAgeless biologically immortal]] due to a side effect of the initial time travel, and now Aku's just hunkered down in his lair, because that was his last resort.
56	* TheManInTheMirrorTalksBack: After fighting the Daughters for the first time, a vision of Jack's younger self talks to him in a way that doesn't sound like him at all, telling him it's pointless and that he should give up (Amazingly, the "real" Jack sounds more lucid and more in-character than the vision, even though the vision resembles the younger one).
57	* MoodWhiplash: Possibly the darkest episode in the entire series opens with Aku getting out of bed and having a therapy session [[ItMakesSenseInContext with himself]].
58	* MundaneSolution: Attempted by Aku. After many failed attempts to kill Jack, he figured that destroying all the time portals and letting age finish the job would rid him of Jack. Jack being TheAgeless foiled that plan.
59	* MyGodWhatHaveIDone:
60	** Jack is horrified to discover he has been fighting actual humans, and has killed one of them.
61	** PlayedForLaughs with Aku who's ''seriously'' regretting accidentally making Jack immortal.
62	* NeedleInAStackOfNeedles: Jack hides himself in a coffin in a mass tomb of identical coffins. The Daughters find him, but it takes a while.
63	* NoodleIncident: Aku states he destroyed every possible time portal on the planet.
64	* OrcusOnHisThrone: Aku has pretty much given up on trying to stop Jack after the plan to kill him via old age failed when Jack turned out to be TheAgeless, and seemingly just stays in his lair. Jack hasn't even seen him in years.
65	* PetTheDog: Aku was unusually merciful towards the mud people. Normally, he'd vaporize people for committing even the slightest offense, but here, he just tells them to scram.
66	* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: The hallucination of Jack reminds him of his failures and problems: forced to run from danger, losing the sword, that Aku will eventually learn of that, and being trapped for all time in a BadFuture.
67	* RuleOfSymbolism:
68	** The wolf vs. the alien tigers parallels Jack's struggle: a lone wolf against multiple, powerful foes. In the end, Jack is gravely wounded after killing one Daughter of Aku, and we see that the wolf was seemingly mortally wounded after killing the alien tigers.
69	** Jack's battle with the Daughters moves from the forest into a crypt, with Jack hiding in a stone coffin. This is the closest Jack has come to death.
70	* {{Seppuku}}: Obliquely referenced when Jack's hallucination of his past self points out that in his situation, there's really only one honorable thing to do.
71	* ShoutingShooter: Jack while using the machine gun.
72	* ShoutOut:
73	** The song playing during the tomb search is a remix of Music/EnnioMorricone's [[https://youtu.be/PYI09PMNazw "The Ecstasy of Gold"]] (from ''Film/TheGoodTheBadAndTheUgly'').
74	** The climactic scene where Jack jumps into the river recalls a similar event from ''Film/TheFugitive''.
75	* SlashedThroat: How Jack kills one of the Daughters.
76	* SoundTrackDissonance: Despite ending on the biggest DownerEnding in the show's history, they still play the theme song as normal.
77	* StatusQuoIsGod: Deconstructed; both Jack and Aku are tired of their stalemate, which has changed their personalities a lot.
78	* SurvivalMantra: Jack tells himself "They are just nuts and bolts. Just nuts and bolts." while hiding from the Daughters of Aku. Unfortunately, as he later learns, the Daughters are not the machines he is used to fighting.
79	* SuspiciouslySpecificDenial: Aku tells his scientists that he doesn't care about Jack anymore. They can try to kill him if they want, but he doesn't care, not one ''bit'' at all.
80	* TalkingToThemself: Aku is undergoing "therapy" sessions, which consist of him talking to a clone of himself that talks, acts, and is dressed like TheShrink giving a therapy session. Meanwhile, Jack hallucinates a blue-tinted hopeless and suicidal version of himself.
81	* UnroboticReveal: For his whole fight with the Daughters, Jack fights like they were just more machines thrown at his way. Then he slashes at one of their necks, and sees blood. After she dies, the Daughter's mask breaks showing a human face.
82	* VictorGainsLosersPowers: Jack takes the weapon of the Daughter of Aku that he killed. Unlike with Scaramouche, this is out of desperation for the situation he's in.
83	* VictoryByEndurance: Aku had hoped that he could trap Jack in the future and wait for him to die of old age, but Jack's initial temporal jaunt making him TheAgeless sent that plan the way of the Dodo like all the others, and now he's given up hope of ever defeating the samurai.
84	* VillainsOutShopping: The episode begins with Aku starting his day, getting visited by his subjects, and having a therapy session with himself for his depression.
85	* WhamLine: "There's no more honor! Come to think of it, [[{{Seppuku}} the only honorable thing to do is—]]"
86	* WhamShot: Jack slicing the throat of one of the Daughters... and getting a spray of blood in response.
87	* WhyWontYouDie: After Aku destroyed all the time portals, he simply assumed that if he or one of his assassins didn't kill Jack that he'd just die of old age. The fact that Jack hasn't died or even aged has deeply shocked Aku and sent him into a deep depression.
88	* TheWorfEffect: Almost, but ultimately downplayed. Jack's first battle against the Daughters doesn't go well, with Jack wounded, outmatched, and actually frightened. However, Jack manages to kill one of them, and trap the rest in an exploding tomb - plus, for all the threat they presented, the Daughters only ever land a single blow against Jack. It's a deep stab wound, sure, but still.
89	* WreckedWeapon: Jack's bike, armor, and all his weapons except Scaramouche's dagger (which he still ends up losing when he falls into a river) are destroyed by the Daughters of Aku.

Context Recap / SamuraiJackS5E2XCIII