Recap / Samurai Jack - S5 E3: "XCIV"

XCIV

Original air date: 3/25/17 (produced in 2016)

Having escaped the bloodthirst of the Daughters of Aku, Jack recuperates from his wounds in hiding with a mysterious white wolf, while still reeling from having killed a human.

As autumn gradually ebbs away, he suffers through a slow and agonizing recovery, tortured by his inner thoughts for crossing the line between bots and blood, even though it was an accident. Jack is forced to make the harrowing and forever life-altering choice between refraining from more bloodshed, or engaging in it freely from now on.

The Daughters continue tracking him down, but a memory of his father helps Jack prepare himself for possibly having to kill the rest of them, and he's now ready to show them just who they're messing with, leading to a battle in a wintry forest.

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Tropes

• All There in the Script: Three of the Daughters' names are revealed in the credits of this episode. They are Aki, Ami and Avi. However, which name belongs to which Daughter isn't revealed.
• Ambiguous Situation: Three of the Daughters are definitely killed via impalement from their own weapons. The last three, including Ashi, are thrown down from a giant tree and since Jack ends up following them down, all three have a chance to survive, though the second Daughter may have had her neck broken from the punch Jack threw before she fell.
  • The Daughters drag their fallen sister out of the cave, they go "death is failure" and leave her body on the ground. Most look at her or seem to, their masks pointed in her direction. One averts her face. Are they showing that they don't care about her? Or is that their idea of showing care for her?
• Big "SHUT UP!": One of the Daughters of Aku shouts this when Jack makes a speech about how their decisions actions are a reflection of who they really are.
• Blocking Stops All Damage: One of the Daughters takes a swing at Jack with a spiked club, which he blocks with his bare forearm without visible effort or pain.
• Blood-Splattered Innocents: Young Jack watches his father dispatch some assassins, getting a spray of blood across his eyes.
• Break Them by Talking: Downplayed. Jack doesn't intend to do this when warning the Daughters to turn back, but they rant and rave at him, while he speaks perfectly calmly.
• Bring It: To some extent, Jack manages to pull himself together enough to face off against the Daughters head on, giving the same speech his father gave the bandits.
  Jack: Leave here now and live, or stay and face your destiny.
  Ashi: Our destiny is your death!
  Jack: Very well.
• Combat Pragmatism: Jack ambushes the Daughters even more ruthlessly than them, impaling two of them before they even know the fight started.
• The Comically Serious: Jack letting Ashi fall is played this way. As she rants that she will kill him one day, Jack stares ahead while calmly undoing the chain and letting go.
• Curbstomp Battle:
  • Jack's father vs a gang of bandits. The bandits never had a chance.
  • Spinning their positions around from last episode, Jack outmatches the Daughters at practically every step of the fight.
• Deadly Dodging: One of the Daughters sidesteps a flung spear...which impales the other Daughter that was behind her.
• Death Seeker: Jack's hallucination self accuses him of wanting the Daughters to kill him, but Jack denies it.
• Defiant to the End: Deconstructed. Ashi spends what seems to be her last moments cursing Jack and proclaiming he will die, before he lets her fall. However, these threats come off as extremely childish and pathetic.
• Deranged Animation: The Jack hallucination returns, but unlike the previous episode, is animated much more loosely, constantly changing proportions, height, and facial structure, much like Aku's version of Jack in "Aku's Fairy Tales".
• Disc-One Final Boss: Jack kills three of the Daughters of Aku and is heavily implied to kill at least two more via Disney Villain Death. Ashi is probably alive, since Jack followed her down moments later.
• Disney Death: The Wolf from the last episode shows up alive after the audience was lead to believe it died.
• Disney Villain Death: The remaining three Daughters of Aku confront Jack on the edge of a giant tree branch. Two are violently thrown off by Jack, while the last one (Ashi) falls down below after Jack lets go of the chain. However, the branch gives way and Jack himself falls to the bottom as well. Because invokedJack will obviously survive for the next episode, it's implied that Ashi survived as well.
• Don't Make Me Destroy You: Jack's ultimatum to the Daughters. Even when they make it clear they won't stop until he dies, he tries repeating it, only to be cut short. Then he starts killing them one by one.
• Dramatic Irony: Jack assumes that the Daughters of Aku chose their path that led them to wanting to kill him, but as the audience knows, they really didn't have a choice. Also, we see the Daughters are quite indifferent to the death of one of their own—meaning Jack (the target) was the only one who cared at all.
• Dwindling Party: Once Jack has a chance to prepare for them, he finishes off two off the daughters in quick succession with ambush attacks, and another follows not long after. The last three, including Ashi, get a Disney Villain Death.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: The Daughters of Aku have no outlook in the world besides "kill Samurai Jack, gain Aku's favor", being so brainwashed that when they see an antlered stag approach a doe, they assume the stag is a minion of Aku because of its spiky antlers and will certainly kill the smaller doe. When instead the stag nuzzles her affectionately, they become extremely confused.
• Exposed to the Elements: Even in the middle of winter, Jack is still wearing nothing but his shredded pants-turned-loincloth.
• Foreshadowing: The last Daughter of Aku loses her mask and is revealed to be Ashi, the only one given a name and personality. Though it seems she suffers a Disney Villain Death at the very end, Jack himself ends up falling down with her.
• Gaining the Will to Kill: Jack manages, a vision of his childhood helping a great deal, although he still seems pretty bummed about it.
• Good Is Not Soft: Just like his father in the flashback, Jack offers his attackers the opportunity to avoid fighting. And like his father when that offer is rejected, he strikes without hesitation and doesn't hold back.
• Harmful to Minors: The flashback shows Jack's father defending the family against bandits, who have killed the guards. Young Jack sees the body of a dead guard and watches as the old man cuts down one of the bandits.
• Heroic BSoD: Jack spends the first part of the episode disgusted with himself over taking a life.
• He's Back!: While recovering from his wounds, Jack has flashbacks to his day as a child, specifically on a day where the Emperor killed some bandits who attacked their carriage, and later a speech from his father about how actions prove who we really are. This helps him get over his Heroic BSoD as he realizes he doesn't need to feel guilty over killing in self-defense and also makes great strides in once again becoming the Jack we all know and love.
• The Hunter Becomes the Hunted: The Daughters of Aku spend the episode hunting down Jack. Unfortunately for them, Jack had time to heal and regain his resolve, and by the time they found him, he's already prepared to fight them in a battlefield of his choosing. Bonus points for ambushing them just as they ambushed him before.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Jack kills all but three of the Daughters via impalement, be it from spears or one with a sword stolen from one of the Daughters.
• Last-Second Chance: Jack gives the Daughters the option to just walk away. They refuse, and he takes them on.
• Little "No": Jack whispers one to his former self before blacking out from his hallucinatory fever.
• Lured into a Trap: Jack lays in wait and allows the Daughters to track him down to a winter forest, then springs a trap of his own.
• Meaningful Echo: Jack gives the same speech his father gave to some bandits.
• Meaningful Name: If All There in the Manual is any indication, all the Daughters of Aku have names that begin with A.
• More Teeth than the Osmond Family: The hallucination of Jack's old self has more fangs in his mouth than the last episode.
• Mysterious Backer: Two animals somehow help Jack in this episode, a frog with a warning that snaps him awake, and a wolf who helps him heal. Where exactly they came from is unknown as yet.
• Neck Snap: Jack punches one of the Daughters in the face so hard her neck breaks.
• Nightmare Face: The hallucination of Jack's old self sports several disturbing examples in succession.
• Not Quite Dead: Remember the wolf from last episode? Turns out he isn't dead after all. He just needed a den to recover in like our hero.
• Oh, Crap!: Jack manages to defeat all the Daughters, but then realizes the branch he's on is breaking before he himself falls off the tree. Don't worry, he survives.
• Overdrawn at the Blood Bank: Jack and the wolf, both of which probably should have bled out ten times over.
• Papa Wolf: In a flashback, the Emperor gives some bandits who dared to attack his family's carriage a chance to leave. They refuse. The Emperor makes quick work of them.
• Pet the Dog: Jack is freezing in the cave. When he wakes up, the wolf is snuggled around him for warmth.
• Poor Communication Kills: Jack assumes the Daughters are working for Aku by choice and in her rant Ashi never explains why they're trying to kill him.
• Sacrificed Basic Skill for Awesome Training: The Daughters of Aku are probably the most deadly foe Jack has ever faced aside from the Minions of Set or Aku himself, but all of that training came at the expense of basically any knowledge of the outside world.
• Shown Their Work: Jack's father cited the sixth virtue of bushidō regarding honor: "The decisions you make and the actions that follow are a reflection of who you are. You cannot hide from yourself."
• Shut Up, Kirk!: Jack tries to give a speech to the remaining girls that they could just live on then go through with their decision to fight him. Ashi just tells him to shut up, and he does not, finishing his sentence before showing himself.
  • Shut Up, Hannibal!: However, when Jack takes out the other Daughters, leaving just Ashi, she defiantly yells out nothing but vows that he will die. Jack, barely even listening, just unwraps her chain from around his arm and lets her fall from the branch.
• Snow Means Death: The Daughters of Aku (minus Ashi) meet their end in a snowy forest, courtesy of Jack.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • Way back in the episode "Jack Remembers", a young Jack saw the ronin and child from Lone Wolf and Cub bloodlessly fight off ninjas. The ronin's child never lost his stoic expression and the fight was thrilling and exciting to young Jack. In the flashback where his father fights off bandits, it's a battle against actual people, who do bleed and die and make him see his father in a new light, and young Jack is shocked and upset.
  • The Daughters of Aku were trained from birth to kill Jack... but unlike him have no experiences outside that training. Jack has all of that plus 50 years and training everywhere rather than just a singular location like them. When Jack has time to plan and fight on his terms, he has a decisive advantage.
  • In the last episode, Jack was able to fight a single Daughter evenly, but was overwhelmed when they worked together. This time, Jack specifically avoids confronting them out in the open and instead tries to divide them and pick them off. Most notable in that when the remaining three started fighting together, they started pushing Jack back again until he got on the branch.
  • The Daughters of Aku spent their entire lives in a cult that would regularly abuse them and instill Social Darwinism into them. This episode shows how living in an abusive environment can result in a lack of empathy toward one another and not understanding love.
  • Apparently, a slanted tree can't withstand the weight of an epic duel.
  • While Jack is disappointed he can't follow Thou Shalt Not Kill, he was raised as a samurai in feudal Japan. The burden is to be respected, but it is not soul-destroying.
• Talking to Themself: The blue-tinted Jack hallucination from the previous episode takes on a demented form as he contemplates how Jack, who had never killed before, now must either kill even more people or let himself be killed.
• Trail of Blood: While in the ending of the previous episode, we saw Jack's stomach wound bleeding out into the river as he floats down it, but the Daughters recover sometime after that scene happens, so they don't see the stream of blood. Instead, they happen upon a couple of blood puddles alongside the current to follow.
• Unexplained Recovery: The wolf somehow survived to walk away from its encounter with the tigers from the last episode, mirroring Jack's survival of his encounter with the daughters.
• Unwanted Assistance: The wolf that takes care of Jack was not happy when Jack splashed water on it to help it clean up and barked at him for it. It doesn't do anything besides that to Jack though and continues taking care of him.
• Villainous Breakdown: At the end of the episode, Ashi is hanging from a chain over a large drop, but all she does is rant at Jack instead of attempting to climb up.
• We Will Meet Again: Ashi vows to hunt Jack down and kill him before he lets her fall.
• What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: Since the Daughters were trained all their lives to solely kill Jack, they have literally no knowledge of other things and were confused when two deer got together.
• What Measure Is a Mook?: Related to the below item, the Daughters just leave their fallen sister on the ground and keep hunting Jack.
  "Death is failure."
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Jack's hallucination tries to play on this; cackling that Jack killed "a mountain of robot corpses, but this was real flesh and blood" but Jack's memories of his father remind of him that killing humans is not something Samurai are forbidden to do; though terrible.
• What You Are in the Dark: Defied. This is what the Honor tenant of Bushidō is about and the lesson Jack’s father imparts on him after slaying the bandits. There is never a moment where a person is truly alone in the dark because in the end, he or she cannot hide from him or herself, and will end up facing the consequences of said actions.
• When He Smiles: Jack smiles for the first time in this season, when the wolf brings him food and later wraps around him and acts like his personal bed, blanket, and pillow for a night.
• Worst Aid:
  • Jack should have just bled out from removing that knife and not treating the wound until later.
  • Him later sewing up the wound with a bone shard and tree bark without disinfecting it is also bad, considering that it had already been ample time since he removed the knife (and thus allowing bacteria to enter) AND he's using the bone shard of a deceased animal.

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