Characters / Samurai Jack - Cult of Aku

Index: Samurai Jack | Scotsman & Family | Other Allies | Aku | Cult of Aku | Ashi | Other Enemies | Comics

General

An all-female religious sect that worships Aku. They were led by the High Priestess, and helped her raise and train the Daughters of Aku.

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• Amazon Brigade: All of them are evil female ninjas.
• Evil Wears Black: Every single one of them wear dark robes.
• Faceless Goons: No one's face is seen (aside from the Daughters), due to always wearing their creepy dark pink masks.
• Giant Woman: In a flashback, the Daughters are pitted against a massive, roaring hulk of a woman, who gives them a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown as part of their training.
• Horns of Villainy: In an attempt to mimic Aku, their cowls are horned.
• Knight of Cerebus: As a whole. There's nothing funny about them (not even a brief gag), which is quite rare, which is a heavy contrast to Aku himself. In fact, the contrast becomes clear when Aku pays them a visit, and the moment becomes one hell of a Mood Whiplash.
• Malevolent Masked Women: Almost all of the cultists (including the High Priestess) wear pink noh-like masks. The Daughters of Aku start wearing similar masks (except white) just before their mother sends them out to hunt down Jack.
• Mook Depletion: Suffer from this big time.
• More Deadly Than the Male: Being a malevolent all-female cult means that they get to target Jack with little-to-no consideration at all.
• Nothing Is Scarier: Probably the scariest thing about the cult is simply how little is known about it—there's so many questions for it. For starters, but the High Priestess is the most prominent one out of all of them.
  • How long has the cult been going on?
  • How, where and why did it begin?
  • Are they the only Aku-worshipping cult? Or are there others out there?
  • Have they ever killed (or at least attempted to kill) anyone who opposed Aku aside from Jack?
  • Are the women in the cult brainwashed? Do they truly believe that Aku is a benevolent entity and that Jack is evil? Or is it a combination of the two?
• The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: Their purpose is to kill those who defy Aku's rule, or who don't fit in Aku's world, but apart from Jack, they have not been seen doing that to others.
• The Power of Hate: Hatred is what fuels their environment. They know no love or friendship.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: They wear black robes and dark pink masks. Makes sense, since their uniforms seem to be loosely based off Aku's appearance.
• Religion of Evil: The Cult of Aku are a convent of nuns who literally worship the God of Evil himself. It's no surprise that this whole group is comprised entirely of crazy psychopaths who are just as ruthless as the demon they admire.
• Ret-Gone: In the altered timeline, the cult (presumably) never emerged due to Jack successfully slaying Aku before he could inspire any kind of future worship. The Daughters of Aku in particular, being Aku's literal (as in "biological") daughters, disappear from existence.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Any member of the Cult apart from the High Priestess and her daughters is subject to this, including the giant brute among them, who all disappeared after the Daughters of Aku finished their final test. The logical assumption is that the High Priestess pitted them all against each other and her daughters picked everyone else off, the "weak" ones being the ones who got killed, thus having no place in the cult.
• White Mask of Doom: Each member wears a feminine one not unlike a noh mask. The ones worn by the Daughters are pure white, while the ones worn by the High Priestess and her peers are always shaded in red/pink.
• Would Hurt a Child: They practiced extreme physical abuse in order to turn a bunch of little girls into trained killers.

The High Priestess

"Are you weak?"

^{Click here to see her second look (minor spoilers).}

Voiced by: Grey DeLisle

The leader of the Cult of Aku, and the mother of the Daughters of Aku, a set of identical female septuplets whom she has raised to become loyal warriors for Aku.

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• Absurdly Sharp Claws: When she fights Ashi, her fingers are tipped with claws sharp enough to slice through rock.
• Abusive Mom:
  • She subjects her children to Training from Hell and has them beaten for any failures (such as looking outside).
  • A flashback in the sixth episode makes this worse, where a cruel ritual is shown where she made them bathe in a symbiotic-type substance, creating what essentially amounts to glorified Body Paint. It clearly didn't look pleasant, and Ashi is shown screaming in agony.
• Action Mom: Giving birth to septuplets didn't affect her physical skills at all. She's strong enough to give Ashi, the strongest and most skilled of her daughters, some trouble (at least more than the orc army).
• All for Nothing: She spent the better part of two decades training her daughters into a weapon to kill Jack and curry Aku's favor, only for six of them to die trying. Furthermore, Aku doesn't even remember her cult (although he did visit one time to bless them with his essence, which the High Priestess drank to give birth to the daughters). And just to give off one big karmic double deuce to this delusional dingbat, her only surviving daughter learned about the real Jack. Soon enough, said daughter was the one to kill her. Not only does she not even get the chance to actually fight Jack, Jack never even sees her alive, since Ashi kills her before his meditation ends. Double Subverted, as Ashi becomes an unwilling pawn of Aku, possibly his deadliest ever, and this was exactly what she intended her to become...only for Jack to not only successfully snap her out of it, but Ashi returning the favor by sending him back to the past, the result being that due to the timeline changes, her cult (presumably) never existed in the first place.
• Aloof Archer: Although she is by no means weak in melee, her weapon seems to be her bow. Her archery skill and especially her ridiculous firing rate is comparable to that of the Three Blind Archers in their corrupted states, and they were magically cursed to be undefeatable! She does not have the typical Archer Archetype personality at all, though, being more of a Cold Sniper in that regard.
• Ambiguously Human: While her daughters are straight up Half Human Hybrids, it's not clear if the High Priestess is fully human anymore either. She consumed Aku's essence to conceive them and exhibits similar superhuman abilities as them, making it ambiguous whether she was also mutated.
• Ambition Is Evil: It seems that she wants to kill Jack so that she (and by extension, her cult) can earn a place in Aku's inner circle.
• Antiquated Linguistics: Downplayed, but she definitely has an overly clear, proper, and outdated way of speaking.
• Asshole Victim: Ashi kills her mother when she sends an arrow right through her spine while the latter was inches away from killing Jack. Given everything the High Priestess put Ashi and the rest of her daughters through, let's just say no one will be shedding tears over her death anytime soon.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Ashi defeats an entire army with ease, but when her mother confronts her, she proves to be far more of a threat.
• Ax-Crazy: Was the fact that she is the leader of a cult that worships the evolved form of a demonic entity, who abusively trains her seven daughters to be assassins of that entity any indication? When even Aku is surprised by her willingness to drink his essence, it says something about her (in)sanity.
• Badass Normal: "Episode XCVIII" shows that she's perfectly capable of matching Ashi in combat, despite their age difference and the Training from Hell the latter was subjected to. She lasts longer than the entirety of the orc army that Ashi slaughtered just minutes before, and actually manages to land some hits on her. Possibly subverted, as she drank Aku's essence and shares her daughters' seemingly superhuman abilities...
• Bad Boss: She's more than willing to maim or torture her own children if they don't perform to her expectations. And her last test for them is to kill their trainers.
• The Bad Guy Wins: In a roundabout way. She drank Aku's essence and conceived seven children who she trained from birth to kill Jack. While six of her daughters are dead and she herself was killed by her surviving daughter Ashi, Aku eventually discovers that Ashi is his biological daughter and uses that to his advantage, forcing her to fight Jack, causing Jack to lose his will to fight and surrender to Aku. So, in a way, she did help Aku defeat Jack. However it's a posthumous Meaningless Villain Victory as Ashi gained Aku's powers including time travel.
• Bad Is Good and Good Is Bad: She seems firmly convinced that Aku is a benevolent deity and Jack is an evil monster. But of course, her definition of "benevolence" is very opposite of what it should really be.
• Bait the Dog: She almost shows Ashi a moment of compassion when she gives the girl a heartwarming speech and lecture about the beauty of the world...then she tosses her daughter to a Giant Mook to have her beaten senseless for losing focus.
• Battle Strip: She takes off her robe during her fight with Ashi.
• Big Bad Ensemble: With Aku and Inner Jack/Mad Jack in Season 5. Aku no longer gives a hoot about Jack, so it's up to her to be Jack's primary opponent in Season 5.
• Body Paint: She seemed to undergo the same treatment that she had used on her daughters, assuming that she's naked under her robe and the black covering her body wasn't a Spy Catsuit either.
• Clean, Pretty Childbirth: Despite the dark and evil nature of the temple, she pulls this off and then some, managing to stand and conduct the ritual after giving birth to septuplets with minimal aid. Most real-life mothers wouldn't have survived without heavy sedative medication and surgery. Drinking Aku's essence might have had something to do with that, explaining why she'd have that amount of resilience.
• Climax Boss: For Ashi — defeating her establishes her true separation from her past and her decision to embrace her individuality.
• Combat Pragmatist: She wants Jack dead first and foremost, so during her fight with Ashi she is quick to try and reach him the second she gets any openings to do so instead of taking down her daughter first then focusing on him.
• Compressed Hair: The birth scene and the flashback in episode C shows that she has long hair under her helm/mask.
• Dark Action Girl: As shown during her duel with Ashi. After all, she did help teach her daughters all their fighting skills many years before.
• Death by Irony: Her last-surviving daughter Ashi finally puts a stop on the abusive mother by lodging one of the arrows she used beforehand on herself.
• Determinator: Even during her battle with Ashi, she makes it a point to kill Jack first.
• Dirty Coward:
  • Trains her daughters to kill Jack, even though she knows how to fight. She also has them kill (what appeared to be) the entire Cult of Aku except for herself.
  • She hired an orc army to kill Jack while he's meditating and defenseless, and only comes out to fight after the entire army has been slaughtered by Ashi.
• Disney Villain Death: In "XCVIII", she falls off a mountain to her death after Ashi impales her with an arrow.
• Dissonant Serenity: She's robotic, emotionless and collected even when she subjects her daughters into brutal trainings, rituals or beatings.
• Distaff Counterpart: To Aku. She's just as cruel and twisted as her dark god. However, the most important difference is that the High Priestess is a humorless and emotionless monster while Aku is rather humorous and bombastic, but still a monster to be sure.
• Disproportionate Retribution: She has Ashi brutally beaten for being distracted during her training.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: The High Priestess is the leader of a fringe religious cult, who forces all her kids to stay inside a temple compound, and gradually brainwashes them into becoming fanatical young militants whose only care or concern is committing murder in their god's name. This woman is eerily reminiscent to Real Life leaders of modern terrorist groups, making her even more disturbing.
• The Dragon: Subverted. She seems to be the #2 antagonist after Aku in Season 5, but the truth is more complicated; while the Priestess believes she is a faithful henchwoman of Aku, we learn that Aku has no knowledge of her cult (or more accurately, has forgotten about them in his depressed state), and he's playing a much less active role in the conflict, at least for now. It seems everything she's doing is to earn this role to Aku. Her delusion makes a bit more sense when it turns out that Aku did personally visit the cult at least once and commend them and left a piece of his essence as a sign of his favour.
• The Dreaded: Perhaps the most feared being next to Aku. No one, especially not Ashi wanted to get on her bad side. Plus, the High Priestess seeks to bring fear and terror to those who defy the Dark Lord.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Despite her claims of Aku's benevolence, it's painfully obvious that, much like her god, she has no actual understanding of what real love, kindness, and justice are like.
• Evil Counterpart: Her parenting style contrasts greatly with that of two other people:
  • To the Emperor, Jack's father. Like him, she had her children raised to become the best warriors in their class. Unlike him though, her teachings were cruel and heartless, and she never showed her children the good in life.
  • Also to the Scotsman. Both of them happen to be parents to an unusually large number of daughters, whom they trained as an entire unit of soldiers. But again, the Priestess deprived her daughters of love and affection, unlike the Scotsman.
• Evil Matriarch: The mother of the Daughters of Aku, and their abusive and demanding trainer. Eventually becomes this to only Ashi, culminating in a battle to the death where Ashi wins.
• Evil Priestess: She leads a cult that worships Aku, apparently believing him to be a benevolent deity.
• Expressive Mask: Only during Ashi's nightmares and imagine spots does her mask move like a face. Other than that, the mask never changes its neutral expression in real life.
• The Faceless: Her face is shrouded in darkness while giving birth to her daughters. While the Daughters' are bare-faced before graduating, the High Priestess has never revealed her face. In fact, it seems that she's raised her daughters their whole lives without ever showing her real face, as Ashi's nightmares show her mom with her mask still on. That seems to imply she's so fanatical to Aku she will not even bear her own face but only his likeness. She never got to show her face due to getting killed. We get to see a silhouette of her face, looking a lot like Ashi and her sisters, but with significantly longer hair.
• Fascist, but Inefficient: Her raising of her daughters is a horrifically cruel reflection of Jack's own... and that cruelty is exactly what makes it a less efficient means of creating the World's Best Warrior than Jack's did. It not only leaves them utterly incapable of functioning outside their given mission and ignorant of the outside world to the point of not knowing what a deer even is, raising a group meant to fight as a unit to have a Lack of Empathy and actively avoiding helping each other at all costs left a vulnerability Jack was able to exploit to directly kill one and defeat the group as a whole. Contrast with Jack, who was both the World's Best Warrior capable of fighting in near any environment and a fairly well adjusted human being because of the more benevolent parts of his raising.
• Faux Affably Evil: She's rather refined, classy and formal for such a violent, Abusive Mom.
  • She is this towards her own children as well. The best example has to be when Ashi is caught looking outside. She explains in a calm and motherly fashion how the beautiful things Ashi sees there must be protected from Jack... before grabbing the girl by the throat, throwing her across the room and having her beaten for losing her focus.
• Femme Fatalons: Her gloves sport claws sharp enough to cut stone. It is unclear whether it's actually a weapon or a mutation caused by Aku.
• Foil: She is this to Aku himself to some extent. While Aku is a demon who is Made of Evil, but still manages to retain some comedic traits despite generally being a total monster who has turned the Earth into a Crapsack World, the Priestess is a human with absolutely nothing even remotely human about her personality. When you make Aku look like a pretty cool guy in comparison, or at least somehow entertaining, it's really time to rethink your whole life.
• For the Evulz: Somewhat, in a long term sense. Her and the cult's discouraging the children in helping each other bit them in the butt, such as when one of the Daughters let her sister get hit by the spear. Had she not discouraged her daughters in helping one another out, it would've been more practical, by having the sisters support one another to stay alive, and avenging one another when killed. It doesn't help the fact she utilizes unnecessary cruelty toward her daughters.
• Foreshadowing:
  • She insists that death is a form of failure to the cult. During her last living moments, her daughter Ashi then puts an end to her life, thus causing that same cult's overall purpose to fail in being enacted as expected.
  • When she persuaded her daughter Ashi into trying to kill Jack once more, she says that it's for their "Lord Father," which obviously refers to Aku, the evil deity worshipped by the Cult of Aku. Apparently, the "Father" part isn't just cult-based; it also means that Ashi and her sisters are the literal Daughters of Aku, as the High Priestess had drank some of his essence before, which gives birth to their own set of children.
• Fragile Speedster: Like Ashi and the other Daughters of Aku, the High Priestess is capable of moving incredibly fast and has equal fighting ability to them. Like them, however, she also can't take much damage, as when Ashi impales the High Priestess with her own dagger, she's killed in a single hit.
• Freudian Excuse: Implied. Considering the High Priestess also had the black charring on her skin and combat skills rivaling Ashi's, it's possible she was raised just like how her daughters were. However, she had normal skin when we first see her, implying she voluntarily applied the substance on herself after her daughters.
• Genius Bruiser: She's tough, strong, skilled and smart enough to hire an army to distract Ashi while she was protecting Jack.
• Hate Sink: You can't hate her daughters, as they were brainwashed and abused all their lives. However, she's the one who turned them into Tragic Monsters and shows no remorse for any of it.
• Hidden Agenda Villain: Where her Undying Loyalty to Aku and hatred of Jack came from was never revealed, but it's implied she wanted power, if her consuming Aku's essence was of any indication.
• High Priestess: It's her title, as she is the leader of the Cult of Aku.
• Hoist by Her Own Petard: Dies at the hands of Ashi, her own daughter who she originally trained to kill Jack. Indirectly, her death was only the beginning, and Ashi became exactly what she intended her to be—a weapon for Aku.
• Horrible Judge of Character: It's been long established that Aku is the most despicable being in the world that no one on their right mind would follow him. The High Priestess however, is deluded enough to believe that Aku's is a benevolent being who brings order, and fails to see that her god doesn't care about anyone, not even her or her followers.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: Basically, in a show populated with evil demons and killer robots, this woman manages to be one of the cruelest humans who ever appeared in the series. Aku doesn't even remember visiting the Daughters and wanted worship from them, but didn't plan for the High Priestess to try and become one with his essence. She raised her daughters as weapons on her own initiative.
• Hypocrite:
  • She's quick to tell Ashi she abandoned her sisters after their fight despite the fact her own training encouraged them to leave perceived weak links behind if it meant killing the Samurai. Not to mention that she calls Ashi a traitor to the family for joining the man who killed her sisters, never mind that she had no problems whatsoever with her own daughters dying (even if by her own hands, which she tried to do to Ashi).
  • She declares that Jack must be killed "at all costs". She obviously never factored herself into that equation, raising her daughters to go after Jack rather than face him herself. It's also implied that she hired the orc army as a distraction so she could get to Jack sacrificing all of them for her own goals. And finally, there's the fact that she only went after Jack herself when he was unable to defend himself. Clearly, the one cost she's unwilling to pay is her own life.
• Impossible Hourglass Figure: When she ditches her dark robes, she reveals an extremely impressive figure not unlike her daughters. Not bad for a woman who gave birth to septuplets. Least we know who Ashi gets it from.
• Insanity Immunity: Consuming an entire cup of Aku's essence seemed to have no noticeable effect on her other than impregnating her with seven daughters, whereas the tiny bit of Aku that Jack accidentally ingested in "The Aku Infection" was enough to nearly corrupt him into an Aku clone. The only obvious differences between the two events are that the High Priestess was an insane, Aku-worshiping villainess to begin with (at least enough to drink Aku's essence, something that surprised even Aku himself), and that, somehow, Aku was down with the flu when he infected Jack. As for Jack, he is pure of heart.
• Ironic Echo: She always insists that death is "failure" in front of the Cult of Aku. However, in her last attempt to try to kill Jack, her own daughter Ashi killed her with an arrow lodged through her chest, so she technically failed for her cult's overall purpose.
• Irony:
  • A stern and serious cult leader who puts her daughters through hell to appease the demon she worships. Said demon actually chases out mud-men for tracking mud in his lair and takes self-therapy sessions in his safe space.
  • She tries to turn her daughters into a force for evil, and ends up instilling them with a sense of good so powerful that Ashi almost instantly switches sides after discovering the truth about Jack and Aku.
  • Had she not created the Daughters of Aku, Jack likely would have eventually killed himself anyway, which was further increased when he committed each of the murders of six of those same seven daughters (since they're all legitimate living beings), with only Ashi surviving. As it is, Ashi herself ended up being inspired by Jack to become a better person, and ends up being the last push to inspire him to finally finish the battle with Aku.
  • In XCVIII, she fires several arrows at Jack while the latter is in deep meditation and completely defenseless. At the end of their fight, Ashi takes one of the arrows and throws it right through her mother's spine, sending her down a very tall mountaintop to her death, reminiscent of the moment when some of her own daughters have been remorsefully defeated by Jack while they're on a tree.
• Jerkass: Despite her refined and formal attitude when she isn't angry, the High Priestess is a toxic, cruel, emotionless, Abusive Mom above all else.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: Read about her incident with young Ashi in Bait the Dog and Faux Affably Evil above. That moment was the closest (if palest) imitation of kindness she could ever be capable of demonstrating.
• Karmic Death: Oh, she most definitely had it coming. And by the lifelong victim of her abuse no less.
• Kick the Dog: Squashes a ladybug that Ashi and one of her sisters had taken an interest in, dismissing it as a distraction to their training. This is her being nice.
• Knight of Cerebus: Her first scene marked the point where Season 5's Darker and Edgier atmosphere made itself known. She is easily one of the darkest characters in the show.
• Knight Templar: Aku may be a Card-Carrying Villain, but the High Priestess doesn't see the things she does for her master as evil. Rather, she stands by the notion that Aku brought order to the world, and concepts like freedom and compassion only breed disorder and weakness.
• Lack of Empathy: Perhaps the most evident one among the entire cult, further proven when she has no time in actually taking care of her own daughters outside of training, not only properly, but also lovingly.
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • She became the only known surviving member of her cult, seeing as how her daughters killed (presumably) everyone else. Soon afterwards, Jack killed all but one of her daughters.
  • Her sole surviving daughter Ashi not only saw the light about who Jack really was, but actually wound up saving the samurai from committing suicide. And to top it all off...she ends up being killed by that same surviving daughter whom she had abused for so many years. In addition to that, Ashi has also indirectly avenged her sisters with their mother's Karmic Death.
• Last-Second Chance: She offers this to her daughter before their final battle, giving her one last chance to kill Jack and even offering to let her use her own dagger to do it. When Ashi refuses, she decides to kill her too.
• Lightning Bruiser: During her last fight, she proved to be an incredibly strong and fast fighter.
• Locked Out of the Loop: She seems to be the only person under Aku's rule who doesn't know that anyone who worships him can see him. This is acknowledged in the very next episode when a race of mudmen go to pay tribute to him, only for Aku to kick them out for messing up his floor. However, she'd run into the same problem Scaramouche did, because as it stands, Aku hardly allows anyone to see him anymore. She also apparently doesn't know that you can give Aku a phone call. And if you don't have his number, don't worry, you can even dial zero and have the operator connect you to Aku. If anything, she's more or less too lazy or perhaps too crazy to do any of those, preferring to summon Aku like she did the last time.
• Loony Fan: It turns out she's little more than this, viewing herself as Aku's true disciple and devoting her entire life to creating an army to do his bidding, all because of a brief meeting and parting gift that he can barely even remember.
• Made of Iron: She doesn't seem to be in any pain right after giving birth to seven babies one after the other. And no anesthetic, even!
• Mama Bear: A very twisted instance which further highlights her insanity. Despite essentially sending her own daughters to their deaths, when battling Ashi and recalling how the samurai killed them, she briefly loses her refined demeanor and becomes viciously grief-stricken.
• Manipulative Bitch: She spends the majority of the time with her daughters, manipulating them into believing that Aku is a good guy while Jack is a bad guy.
• Meaningful Echo: Her ideology is that death is always a form of failure as she trains her daughters for the entire cult's sole purpose of assassinating Jack for Aku. Indeed, the various attempts she implemented in doing so backfired, which includes doing such purpose of theirs by her own self (since her only surviving daughter Ashi finally puts an end to her mother's life).
• More Deadly Than the Male: The most prominent example from the entire Cult of Aku whose main goal is to kill Jack under Aku's influence.
• More Despicable Minion: Although Aku is the Big Bad, he's also a Laughably Evil goofball and a slave to his Made of Evil nature (he cannot be good even if he tries), in comparison to the High Priestess, who raised her seven daughters from birth for the sole purpose of killing Jack and put them through Training from Hell starting from a young age, and does it of her own free will.
• Multishot: Exaggerated. In her assassination attempt of Jack, she shoots a volley of seventeen arrows in one shot.
• Mystical Pregnancy: She got pregnant with seven children from consuming Aku's essence.
• Near-Villain Victory: During her fight with Ashi, she comes close to killing Jack several times while the latter is meditating in the spirit realm to retrieve his sword and is thus completely defenseless, each time Ashi stops her just in the nick of time.
• Never My Fault: When she and Ashi fight each other, she claims that Ashi betrayed her family, and left her sisters to die while joining Jack...not even bothering to acknowledge her own part in leading them to their ultimate demises. Ashi calls her out on this.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain:
  • Her horrible raising of her daughters, specifically making them view helping one another if they slip up as a taboo and keeping them cooped up in her temple instead of seeing the outside world at all, ultimately left them with glaring flaws that Jack exploited to beat them. Had she just let her daughters be willing to aid one another, at least one definitely wouldn't have died when her sister dodged the spear that killed her instead of blocking it.
  • Also, her constant insistence that Aku is good and that Jack is evil ended up instilling her daughters with a very powerful drive to do good, albeit one that was heavily warped and distorted by her abuse. This comes back to bite her in the ass when Ashi learns the truth of Aku being evil and Jack being good, and she switches sides quite easily.
  • In episode XCVII, Ashi pulls Jack out of despair, and Jack decides it's time to retrieve his lost sword. One of the daughters the High Priestess bore and raised to kill Jack ends up being the one to save him from The Omen (and from himself). For extra irony, Jack had more or less given up real hope of defeating Aku after fifty years of no apparent progress. Meeting Ashi was the catalyst to snap him out of it.
  • When Aku awakens Ashi's demonic side, she manages to break free and send herself and Jack back to the past to stop Aku before he could ever come to power.
• Nightmare Face: "KILL THE SAMURAI!"
• No Name Given: Her real name is never mentioned.
• Not So Above It All:
  • Despite more than earning her Knight of Cerebus status, the fact she put so much time and effort into making a plan to kill Jack to get Aku's attention, despite the fact she can literally go to his lair and pay tribute to him (a fact that is shown in the very next episode) is kinda comical. The fact that there is no explanation to why she wouldn't know about this despite worshiping him as some sort of unseen god, makes this even more noticeable.
  • If we get past the sinister mystique and deadliness, the Priestess essentially obsesses over a figure who visited her once (and struggled to even remember that), upon which she declared herself his Chosen One and consumed the one physical remain of his visit. After spending most of Season Five as the most threatening and terrifying member of the Rogues Gallery, Aku's passive memory of her at the end of the series plays her off as essentially nothing more than a psychotic fangirl.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Feeds her daughters the lie that Aku is a benevolent deity and Jack is the man destroying their land.
• Offing the Offspring: While she doesn't plan on killing her daughters, she once tried to drop Ashi with the end of her staff instead of helping her daughter out. She later tries to kill Ashi after seeing how she's turned good.
• Outliving One's Offspring: Until Episode XCVIII, she appears to outlive all but one of her daughters, with Ashi being the only Daughter of Aku to survive.
• Psycho Supporter: Of Aku. The High Priestess sincerely believes that Aku is watching over her cult and will grace them if they kill Samurai Jack. She goes so far as to birth and raise seven children into maturity just to acquire trained assassins. In reality, Aku literally opens his fortress to all his underlings, has (mostly) given up on killing Jack, and forgot she even existed. He didn't even expect her to take his essence into herself.
• Sadist: She takes glee in abusing her daughters and shows zero remorse for it.
• Screaming Birth: In her very first appearance, we see and hear her screaming in agony as she gives birth to seven daughters, surrounded by reverent cultists. Immediately after, she gets up and puts her mask and robe back on, seemingly fine, and delivers a sermon of praise to Aku.
  High Priestess: Seven daughters to do your bidding, Master. They will succeed, where so many others have failed...and we will find favour in your glory.
• Seven Deadly Sins: Due to her cold-blooded nature, she has incorporated all of them to her rather innately.
  • Pride: She looks down on others even for no reason, including her own daughters, thinking that she's more worthy for Aku than them.
  • Wrath: She's easily temperamental, especially if such goal of killing Jack doesn't go that well as she had expected.
  • Sloth: If she does want Jack to be assasinated, she could've at least done it by herself in the first place. But alas, she had to rely it more on a couple of other beings besides herself.
  • Lust: She's super passionate about Aku, to the point where she even lets herself be impregnated for him with his essence, thus forming the Daughters of Aku, who are septuplets.
  • Gluttony: The more time she spends worshipping Aku, the more heavily insane she becomes. That said, she likely drank Aku's essence thinking she'd get a good chunk of his powers.
  • Greed: She craves for Aku's admiration for her so much that she would do anything to win his favor, such as training their daughters just to kill Jack.
  • Envy: Though not as evident as the other sins, it's possible that she could get jealous if someone overpowers her own skills, which probably stems from her devotion to Aku.
• Shadow Archetype: She's a shadow of both the Scotsman and Jack's father, representing what both could have been if they took a parenting route that transformed them into mentally unstable adults while depriving them of the love they needed. Like the Scotsman and Jack's father, the High Priestess trained her daughters to become the best warriors in their class, but she saw her children as tools for her master and even tried to kill her only surviving daughter when called out on her abuse. In short, she represents what a parent should not be towards their offspring.
• Single-Issue Wonk: She does not care about anything other than worshipping and serving Aku.
• Small Name, Big Ego: She treats herself as though she's one of Aku's closest and most powerful allies...but Aku barely even remembers her.
• The Social Darwinist: She encourages her children to abandon any one of them who falls behind, seeing this as a sign of weakness that should be punished by death.
• The Sociopath: She's a ruthless devil-worshiper who shows no real love or kindness for her own children, seeing them only as tools for her master.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: When she's not yelling at her daughters, she has a unusually calm voice.
• Statuesque Stunner: She's either Jack's height (5'10) or a bit taller (6'0), and while her face is never seen, downplaying the "Stunner" part, she definitely does have an extremely well-built body.
• The Straight and Arrow Path: Her skill with a bow borders that of the Blind Archers, able to fire dozens of arrows in a few brief seconds.
• Strong Family Resemblance: Implied. Even though her face has not been shown, silhouettes of her imply that she has the same physical looks of her daughters — and given that none of her daughters bare any resemblance to their father, Aku, only increases the implication.
• Stupid Evil: What she basically is despite her imposing appearance. Want proof? Her "training" of her daughters is subpar at best, and their lack of true battle tactics outside of "KILL THE SAMURAI!" doomed them the moment Jack begins his counterattack. This woman is more of a batshit-insane, rabid Aku fangirl with a flimsy and arthritic grip on reality, rather than a real military commander.
• Token Evil Teammate: None of her daughters are really that evil (including Ashi) when compared to her own self, who only uses them as weapons to kill Jack instead of raising them as a loving parent, mainly because she's highly passionate about being devoted to Aku.
• The Unfettered: She will do whatever it takes to gain Aku's favor. From raising her seven daughters to be killing machines, to killing Jack herself, to even attempting to kill her own daughter, nothing is off limits to her.
• The Unreveal: Her face is never seen outside of silhouette, probably to emphasize her inhuman behavior by keeping her silhouetted, but one can easily guess she's identical to Ashi.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: By drinking Aku's essence, she unknowingly became the first step of Aku's undoing.
• Vile Villain, Laughable Lackey: A rare inversion. The Priestess is a cold, no-nonsense Abusive Mother who worships Aku, a goofy Laughably Evil (but still dangerous) incarnation of malevolence.
• Virtue Is Weakness: To go with her Social Darwinist attitude, she teaches her children not to help one another when one of them falls behind, as she sees it as a sign of weakness punishable by death. This backfires epically, as her daughters' lack of loyalty to each other allows Jack to kill all but one of them without retaliation.
• What Measure Is a Mook?: She tries to guilt Ashi for this flaw after the death of her six sisters by the hands of Samurai Jack. Luckily, Ashi is savvy enough to call her mother out for sending her and her sisters to their deaths by a man who is at self-defense, and the fact they are already Dead to Begin With since birth.
• Would Hurt a Child: Makes an entire practice out of this when training her children, to the point where she's willing to have Ashi brutally beaten simply for looking outside. Each of her appearances since the first episode has one-upped the last in how brutal her abuse can go.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Views Aku like a genuine ominous deity and treats his physical presence as a rare bestow of honour. In reality, while Aku does expect his subjects to show him tribute, he's a Laughably Evil overlord who regularly consults and banters with minions and hired hands on a passive basis.

The Daughters of Aku

"Our destiny is your death!"

^{Click here to see them unmasked (Ashi in center).}

Voiced by: Tara Strong and Kari Wahlgren

Seven sisters who were raised by their insane mother and her cult. They were trained and indoctrinated into becoming elite soldiers to serve Aku's will, by attempting to assassinate Samurai Jack.

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• Alas, Poor Villain: Jack manages to kill one of them...and instead of being a heroic, triumphant moment as his previous victories, it's treated somberly, reflecting the fact that Jack just killed an abused young woman. Similarly, after killing 5 more of them, Jack hallucinates dozens of crows screaming "Murderer!" at him, and decides to protect the last of them, Ashi. In retrospect, had Aku found them, he would've put them under his Demonic Possession, which means Jack saved them from a Fate Worse than Death.
• All for Nothing: They were raised from birth with the sole purpose of killing Jack, and they fail miserably.
• All There in the Script: The credits name three sisters aside from Ashi: Avi, Aki, and Ami. Notice a pattern? Doubly so if you know that in Japanese, "shi", "vi", "ki", and "mi" are all phonetically written with one character each.
• Always Identical Twins: Septuplets in this case. They all have different hairstyles, but aside from that they're damn near impossible to tell apart.
• Amazon Brigade: They are part of an all-female clan of assassins.
• Anti-Villain: Their main goal is to kill The Hero, but they all grew up genuinely believing Aku was good and Jack was bad by their abusive, Ax-Crazy mother.
• Artificial Family Member: They really are the Daughters of Aku. They were conceived when their mother drank some of Aku's dark essence.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: They were trained to "never relent" and "always attack". This becomes a problem since they do not protect each other, or change strategy once Jack goes on offense.
• Badass Normal: Much like Jack, they've been painstakingly trained to become masters of the martial arts. Subverted when we see them move around inhumanly fast, because they were never normal to begin with.
• Bastard Bastard: In reality, they're more like Anti Villains, but are revealed to be the actual biological daughters of Aku, with their mother literally drinking a bit of his essence to get pregnant.
• Beat Them at Their Own Game: Essentially the intent for them. Jack was so powerful, skilled, and nigh unstoppable because he was raised from childhood to be the World's Best Warrior. So their cult did the same with their own group of assassins. However, it had several drawbacks.
• Big Sister Instinct: As young girls, they were protective of each other. When Ashi gets punched into the ground by a massive warrior during a training exercise, one of her sisters jumps to defend her, and another sister later makes a move to help her when she falls off a cliff. Unfortunately, their mother beat this trait out of them with her harsh training and philosophy that the weak should suffer and die. By the time they're adults, they don't bat an eyelid when one of them is killed by Jack, their only comment being "death is failure".
• Body Horror: Their Spy Catsuits are actually a dark magical, symbiotic substance burned onto their skin. The High Priestess did this so they could be made to resemble their "Master" even more. And it was at a very young age for them. When Ashi tries washing whatever it is off, it's bonded to her skin so thoroughly that she has to spend an entire night scrubbing it off with rocks.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Part of the training they receive is psychological molding done by cruel overseers; they start to see Aku as a benevolent entity and Jack as the destructive force.
• Bullying a Dragon: This happens after they witness Jack kill their sister (with the bob haircut). Before, they were completely unaware of how powerful Jack was, which is why they were trained from birth to kill him. Justified, as they were instructed to attempt to kill Jack at all costs.
• Carry a Big Stick: One of the daughters wields a kanabo as her weapon of choice. It was also then taken by Jack.
• Character Death: The one with the bob cut is killed when Jack cuts her throat during his first encounter with them. During Jack's second battle with them, four more definitely die: three by impalement, and one by Neck Snap (followed by a Disney Villain Death). One appears to have suffered a Disney Villain Death, but given that both Jack and Ashi were shown to have survived the exact same fall, her fate is ambiguous. Ashi is the only confirmed survivor. And by the end of the series, she's been erased from existence along with the rest of them by extension.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: Despite ostensibly being human beings, their senses and reflexes are extraordinarily honed, and their strength and speeds are ludicrous if given the first strike opportunity. Even Jack can only barely keep up with them when they're engaging him all at once, and apparently, they're able to pierce and shred his armor. Justified because they're not completely human, which would explain their super-speed and super-strength.
• Chase Fight: After stripping Jack of his armor and weapons, he's forced to retreat into some nearby ruins. The rest of the episode is a deadly game of hide and seek as Jack desperately tries to hide from his pursuers.
• Clingy Costume: The Daughters of Aku's skin-tight suits are made from an ambiguously magical dark substance that has the ability to store and retrieve their individual weapons. It was the result of their training involving every Daughters of Aku member to submerge themselves into the fiery painful Pit of Hate.
• Combat Parkour: They all match Jack in acrobatic skills.
• Combat Pragmatist: They have been trained to kill Jack, not fight him and no option is off the table.
• Conservation of Ninjutsu: Inverted. When working together, they are capable of overwhelming Jack, but when Jack fights any of them one-on-one, he can easily hold his own, even managing to kill one of them by slashing her throat with her own sword. This gets downplayed in the next episode where Jack holds his own far better, though by then he's whittled them down to a more manageable four instead of seven. And even then the only time they can put pressure on Jack is when they use their Combination Attack. Ashi is more of an annoying brat on her own.
• Crippling Overspecialization: They have been taught nothing else in life other than worshiping Aku and killing Jack. Namely, their offence, Ninja skills, and coordinating their attacks. They weren't very good at covering one another, and hence their offence couldn't overwhelm Jack when their numbers started dwindling, culminating in Jack dominating them when it came down to cases of one-on-one.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • In episode 2, their first fight with Jack ends with Jack getting the shit kicked out of him, getting stabbed in the side, and barely escaping with his life. His only consolation prize is managing to slash the throat of one of the Daughters before escaping, although he is traumatized by his first human kill.
  • Jack returns the favor in their rematch in episode 3. Two of the six end up dead before they even know what hit them, the third gets shanked with her own sword, and the others all get punted off of a tree, one of whom has her neck snapped before falling. Their only consolation prize is that Jack ends up going over the same tree.
• Daddy's Little Villain: They are Aku's literal daughters and were raised with the purpose of killing their father's arch-enemy.
• Dark Action Girl: They are shown to be among some of Jack's deadliest foes to date, even managing to wound the samurai in their first encounter.
• Dark and Troubled Past: They (with Ashi) were raised since childhood to kill Samurai Jack. And "raised" included intense Training from Hell from their mother and cult members who wouldn't hesitate to beat them even though they were children.
• Dark Is Evil: They wear all black and are to kill The Hero.
• Deadly Graduation: For their final test, they have to climb a giant stone pillar while fighting and killing the other members of the cult along the way.
• Deader than Dead: Killed by Jack and then subject to a Ret-Gone.
• Death Equals Redemption: Well...except Ashi, who instead got an inverse of that trope. For the very least, at least her sisters were saved from being under Aku's influence when each of them got slayed by Jack, albeit regretfully (because of his moral code of not having to nonchalantly kill any living being).
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Of the Laser Guided Tyke Bomb and The Social Darwinist trope. Much like Jack was trained from childhood for the sole purpose of slaying Aku, the Daughters have been trained from birth with the sole purpose of killing Jack. However, the third episode shows the flaws in such training. Jack trained by touring the world, allowing him to learn different cultures and lifestyles as well as learn different fighting styles. By contrast, the Daughters were kept isolated and cut off from the rest of the world, thus they know nothing of the outside world or anything that isn't related to killing Jack. Also, being raised to be Social Darwinists and being discouraged from aiding one another ultimately becomes their undoing as Jack is able to easily whittle their numbers down.
• Determinator: Failure is not an option for them. They will kill Jack or perish trying. And six of them indeed die trying.
• Disappeared Dad: We have no idea who their father is when we meet them. In Episode C, we find out that the term "Daughters of Aku" is literal.
• Disney Villain Death: Three of the Daughters, including Ashi, are thrown off a tree by Jack. Ashi subverts this since she survives the fall, whereas one of the others dies from the fall and the other dies right before it by having her neck snapped.
• Dual Wielding: Several of them wield two weapons at once such as swords and sais.
• Due to the Dead: Subverted. When one of them dies, they take her corpse out from the temple and lay it on the ground... Only for one of them to say, "death is failure", and they leave her body behind.
• Dwindling Party: Jack has been picking them off one by one. By the episode XCV, Ashi is the only one left alive.
• Elite Mooks: Jack realizes a bit too late that they're far more badass and capable than Aku's usual assassins or robots or even any bounty hunter he's ever met. They're trained, like he is.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: The Daughters do have some semblance of compassion for each other, but this is discouraged by the rest of the cult. It would appear that they do seem to love their mother too, albeit they don't realize how toxic it is. This turned out to be the cult's success as the Daughters did not mourn their fallen sister after dragging her body out.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Due to their harsh upbringing and training that encouraged Social Darwinism, the Daughters have no concept of compassion or love. When they see a male deer approach his mate, they assume he's a minion of Aku that will devour the female deer, only to be utterly confused when the two start nuzzling with affection.
• Evil Counterpart:
  • Samurai Jack was raised from an early age to defeat Aku, and spent his young life travelling the world and receiving exotic training so that he could one day accomplish that goal. The Daughters, meanwhile, are Aku-worshiping ninjas who have spent most of their lives being trained (in only one location) specifically to kill Jack.
  • They're also a very close parallel to the Scotsman's daughters. Like them, they're a large group of many female siblings who were trained by their parents as combatants in Aku's perpetual conflict on Earth. Though of course, they're on opposite sides of the war.
• Evil Knockoff: Essentially an attempt to recreate what made Jack the World's Best Warrior: being raised from birth to perform the task of killing a specific person. It soon becomes apparent that they are very much a flawed recreation of it: unlike Jack, they're completely maladjusted to anything that's not hunting and killing Jack and have a near complete Lack of Empathy for one another both of which lead to their downfalls.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: At first, we're led to believe it was a Red Herring, but they literally are daughters of Aku, via their mother, The High Priestess, consuming the essence of Aku following his brief visit to the Cult's headquarters.
• Expressive Mask: Sort of; while the masks are normally about as expressive as your typical Noh mask (read: not at all), when Jack elbows one of the Daughters the eyeholes of her mask noticeably shut in an expression of pain.
• Fragile Speedster: They fall between this and Lightning Bruiser. While each one can take down an army by herself, compared to Jack, they can't take many hits being so thin. Whereas Jack can take multiple cuts and a knife in the stomach, each one of them goes down in one or two hits from Jack. It's a trait they share with their mother.
• Flat Character: All of them except for Ashi. Justified in that all of them die before we learn much else about them. Plus, they're raised to be this way.
• Freudian Excuse: To say that their mother, the High Priestess, was a bad parent would be an understatement. The way that they were raised turned them into unstable killing machines.
• Hammerspace: Their costumes are made from magical darkness from the Pit of Hate that they can use to store their weapons.
• Hairstyle Inertia: Kept the same hairstyles they had as children.
• Hoist by Her Own Petard: Jack kills the one with the bob cut with her own sword, and another he impales with her own sword.
• Human-Demon Hybrid: They were conceived by their mother drinking some of Aku's essence. Thankfully Aku never found about the rest of his daughters or Jack would have to deal with seven bloodthirsty hanyō with their human halves all but gone.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: They use magic to hide and retrieve their weapons from their costumes.
• Identical Twin ID Tag: They can be distinguished by hairstyle when unmasked, but are otherwise impossible to tell apart.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Three of the Daughters of Aku are killed by being stabbed through the stomach or chest, two with improvised spears and the third with her own sword.
• Impossible Hourglass Figure: The Daughters all have pretty damn skinny waists and arms yet their thighs and chest areas are still quite developed. Considering the nature of the show's cel-shaded art style, this is a given.
• Incompletely Trained: What they actually are despite killing most of the Cult of Aku and giving Jack some trouble at first. Their mother was too insane to teach them proper combat tactics and acumen and being sheltered for most of their lives didn't help as they were unable to adapt to new environments.
• Irrational Hatred: They were raised to hate and kill Jack without any reason other than to please their "benevolent god" Aku. Ashi eventually realizes how wrong they were after getting to know the real Jack, and acknowledges that the one they should be hating is their mother who made them that way.
• Kick the Dog: Their eulogy toward their first fallen sister is simply repeating their mantra "death is failure".
• Knight of Cerebus: While Aku's robots are clearly just as pathetic as ever, these gals mean business, able to wound and frighten even Jack.
• Knight Templar: Because they were raised to think of Aku as good and Jack as evil, they have a powerful but warped drive to do good for the world. So they hunt down the greatest hero on Earth, fully believing that their cause is righteous and they are removing a force of great malevolence from the picture. This ends up backfiring horribly on the High Priestess since this same strong desire to do good means that Ashi quickly pulls a Heel–Face Turn after she experiences Jack’s true nature.
• Lack of Empathy: A rather tragic example. While they do care for one another to an extent, their Social Darwinist upbringing causes them to not care if the others die. When they leave the temple, they drag the body of their fallen sister out, then leave her body in the forest with a cold "death is failure".
  • This is so bad that they don't even cover for each other. One of them dodges a spear launched at her, not considering the fact that one of her sisters is right behind her and can't see the weapon coming. Instead of trying to deflect or catch the weapon for her sister, the sister ends up catching it in the heart.
• Laser Guided Tyke Bomb: They've been trained their entire life solely to kill Jack. They will not back out. They will not stop. They will either kill him or die trying. This leads to their downfall due to their ignorance of the outside world and their Lack of Empathy for each other.
• Lightning Bruiser: These girls are fast enough that Jack can barely keep up with them and the force of their blows are strong enough to break his armor and send him flying.
• Massive Numbered Siblings: There are seven of them and they were all born at the same time.
• Meaningful Name: Those that are identified by name have short, two-syllable names that begin with the letter "A," just like Aku.
• Mugging the Monster: This is how all seven of them act towards the Samurai when they first encounter him. While they were trained all their lives to kill the Samurai, they are completely unaware of the fact that he has more than 50 years of experience. This later turns into Bullying a Dragon after they witness Jack kill their sister with the bob haircut with no hesitation and them still trying to kill Jack.
• Ninjas: They essentially fulfill this role. All of them look (ambiguously) East Asian, wear nearly all black, prefer to use Japanese-style weaponry, use stealth and ambush tactics, and being formidable fighters even in direct combat make them essentially this.
• Nominal Importance: All but one of the Daughters (Ashi) are never referred to by name on-screen. Guess which one of them is the sole survivor after Jack has finished fighting them?
• No Name Given: The main Daughter is named Ashi. The credits of the third episode also list Aki, Ami, and Avi, but it's anyone's guess which ones they are.
• No-Nonsense Nemesis: Like the Minions of Set, the Daughters of Aku are lethally competent warriors. They are systematic, thorough, well-trained, and utterly relentless. They do not fool around when they finally encounter Jack. At no point do they stop to banter, gloat, or snark, they use the terrain to their advantage and constantly overwhelm him with blitz-style attacks that force Jack on the defensive for most of the episode, they immediately disarm him of any weapons he's using, they don't panic when they lose sight of Jack and hide in the shadows to lure him into a false sense of security until one of them attacks Jack and alerts the others to his location, and they utilize every tactic at their disposal. They have been trained from birth to kill Jack and they won't stop until he's dead or they are.
• No Social Skills: Being born into a dysfunctional family / religious cult inside a temple isolated from the outside world, all while being deprived of any love and affection, has warped and twisted their social behavior very badly.
• Not Hyperbole: The Daughters of Aku? That's NOT a figurative term. They're literally his daughters. Thankfully, only Ashi is alive to learn this horrifying fact.
• Peaceful in Death: The first Daughter who is killed by Jack dies with a rather tranquil expression on her face.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: They're all around 5'3 like Ashi, but still some of the deadliest characters in the world of Samurai Jack.
• Pragmatic Villainy: When the Daughters lose track of Jack after chasing him into the ruins, they decide to simply hide in the shadows and lure Jack out of hiding and into a false sense of security rather than fruitlessly search the ruins.
• Psychopathic Womanchild: Played for Drama. Due to their upbringing, they lack a lot of knowledge on the outside world. When they come across a deer, they act like curious children. They then proceed to mistake the deer's mate for one of Aku's minions, due to his antlers. Played more for laughs with Ashi and her childish anger toward Jack.
• Quality over Quantity: There's only seven of them compared to the armies of mooks, bounty hunters, and assassins Aku has thrown at Jack over the years. However, each of them were trained their entire lives with the sole purpose of killing Jack, making them a much greater threat than the rest of Aku's forces. Despite this, they are most effective when working together. This is demonstrated when Jack faces one who decides to fight by herself and, even after being disarmed, still wins by using the Daughter's weapon against her.
• Rule of Seven: The Daughters are part of a cult with a seemingly large membership, but it seems there are seven actual assassins, trained to work in a near-perfect synchronization.
• Run or Die: In episode 3, Jack offers them the choice to leave with their lives or stay and be killed. Obviously, they won't back down.
  Jack: I will give you a new choice: Leave here now and live, or stay and face your destiny.
  Ashi: Our "destiny" is your death!
• Sacrificed Basic Skill for Awesome Training: They are great trackers and deadly fighters... if and only if the target is Samurai Jack. Wildlife leaves them bemused and reckless.
• Sensor Character: While they have exceptional tracking skills, in Episode 2 they're also shown to somehow be able to pinpoint the exact tomb that Jack is hiding in, despite arriving at the location long after he has concealed himself. This might have something to do with the fact that they're Aku's literal daughters, and Aku himself has stated on at least one occasion that he can sense Jack's presence.
• Shadow Archetype: Like the Scotsman's daughters, the Daughters of Aku are a large group of many female siblings who were trained by their parents as combatants in Aku's perpetual conflict on Earth. Though of course, they're on opposite sides of the war. Also, their mother deprived them of the care they desperately needed to the point they became mentally unstable killing machines. Ashi realizes just how horrible her mother was after spending time with Samurai Jack. In essence, they show how the Scotsman's daughters could have become if their parents never loved them.
• Sibling Team: They septuplets and they work together to murder Jack.
• Single-Issue Wonk: They have no other purpose in life other than hunting down Jack and killing him.
• Slashed Throat: Jack kills the one with the bob cut by cutting her throat with her own sword.
• The Social Darwinist: Deconstructed. Their abusive upbringing has left them with this mentality, but while it's fine on paper, it's the exact opposite as they were raised in a controlled environment, and being taught that compassion is weakness is counterproductive, especially when they're on the defensive and are psychologically conditioned not to protect each other. Also, when they see a stag approach his mate, they assume he's another minion of Aku that will devour the female deer, only to be utterly confused when the two start nuzzling with affection. Their training involved brutal punishments for failure, and they never had any choice from the get-go, all while being deprived of any love and affection. After spending time with Jack, Ashi slowly realized how WRONG this mindset was when she finally confronts her mother.
• Spy Catsuit: Their uniform. Subverted. It's actually their skin covered in ash and charred from molten hot rocks made to "resemble" the skin of Aku.
• Surpassed the Teacher: The last phase of their training is to challenge and kill the remaining members of the cult, who trained them to fight starting from childhood.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: The Daughters of Aku are essentially gender-flipped, human versions of the Minions of Set (or the Ultra-Robots); being a group of highly trained, lethally competent warriors who are ordered to kill Jack (and almost succeed at it). But the differences are that the Daughters are female, human^note Or rather, half-human., lack any superpowers^note Luckily due to their demonic halves remaining dormant., and most importantly are not super-resilient like the Minions or Robots were.
• Synchronization: They're sisters, so they can read each others' movements perfectly. They use this to lethal effect as it allows them to work in near-perfect sync with each other, their coordinated teamwork overwhelming Jack on several occasions.
• Theme Naming: While all their names are unknown, it can be assumed that all their names start with "A" and end with "I" since Ashi, Avi, Ami, and Aki follow this trend. If one realizes that -shi, -mi, -ki and -vi are Japanese consonants that may precede an I, one could assume the rest follow that pattern of an A, followed by a Japanese consonant that precedes I, then an I (such as Achi, Ani, Ahi, Ari, and so on).
• Too Dumb to Live: Even after they witness their sister (with the bob haircut) get killed by Jack, they still try to murder the Samurai. Justified, as they were born, raised, and instructed to kill Jack and disregard any of the possible consequences of attempting to do so.
• Tragic Villain: As big of a threat they are to Jack, the first episode makes it abundantly clear that they're just as much victims as anyone else. They were born to an Aku-worshiping cult leader who raised them from birth to be how they are, complete with brutal punishments and beatings. They never had any choice from the moment they were born.
• Training from Hell: From an early age, the Daughters were subjected to brutal, one-sided pit-fights against adult members of the Aku cult, and were punished for showing any sign of cowardice or weakness. By the time they're fully grown, however, the Daughters are able to easily defeat all of the elder cultists.
• Tyke-Bomb: Each daughter has gone through training to kill Samurai Jack since childbirth.
• Uncertain Doom: Five of them are unambiguously dead as of the end of the third episode, and the fourth confirms Ashi's survival. One suffered a fall similar to Jack and Ashi's, so she could theoretically be alive, up until Jack Retgoned her.
• Un-Robotic Reveal: Not for the audience, but for Jack, who assumes they are simply more of Aku's robots until he slashes one of their throats and sees her bleed to death. Cue My God, What Have I Done?.
• Unskilled, but Strong: They are shown to be at physical peak condition in addition to being agile and are capable coordinating their attacks against Jack, allowing them to overwhelm and even wound the latter throughout the majority of the first fight. However, due to the brutal ways their mother raised them, they also have a lot of lacking traits, such as the inability to use the environments to their advantage, or try to cover one another in case the target managed to gain the upper hand, all in all these flaws are what allowed Jack to set up a counter-attack and ultimately lead to their downfall.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: They displayed protectiveness toward each other as young girls, proving that despite being born from Aku's essence, their evil is not innate. They may have grown up to be kinder if they had not been raised to be killing machines from birth.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: When they first start to fight Jack, they outmatch him completely and keep him on the run and hiding, even terrified until he can escape and recover. They're also his first unambiguously human opponents, and taking the life of another was something Jack never (explicitly) had to experience before.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: They believe they're this. They have been raised from childhood to believe that Aku is a benevolent deity and Jack is a destructive force who must be killed to keep the world safe.
• Well-Trained, but Inexperienced: The Daughters of Aku were trained from birth to kill Jack... but Jack trained by touring the world, allowing him to learn different cultures and lifestyles as well as learn different fighting styles. By contrast, the Daughters were kept isolated and cut off from the rest of the world; thus, they know nothing of the outside world or anything that isn't related to killing Jack. This ultimately becomes their undoing as Jack is able to easily whittle their numbers down by using the environment against them.
• What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: When they encounter two deer rubbing noses in the forest, they have absolutely no idea what the two are doing.
  Daughter of Aku #1: What madness is this?
  Daughter of Aku #2: What are they doing?
  Daughter of Aku #3: I...don't know.
  Daughter of Aku #4: Well, I don't like it! (steps on a twig and breaks it, driving the deer away)
• Wolf Pack Boss: What makes them very challenging to Jack. By themselves, they are enemies that Jack could manageably defeat even without his sword and without resorting to killing them. But fighting together puts them at nearly at the same level as the Minions of Set or the Ultra-Robots, requiring Jack to pick them apart to fight.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: They were trained their whole lives to kill Jack. But they were viciously abused by their mother and the cult into becoming stone-cold assassins with zero happy moments in their childhood.

Ashi

See Ashi's page here.

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