Samurai Jack General

I don't mind the romance in theory, but I don't think it was particularly well done. One thing to note is that episode 8 conveys them falling in love mostly through lewd sex jokes and innuendos, which to me makes it look far more like they're in lust rather than love. At the time of the episode's airing I genuinely wondered if the idea was that their romance just wasn't a good idea and that it was more an example of them giving into base desires due to the stress of fighting Aku.

edited 28th Jun '17 8:38:39 AM by DrDougsh

I thought the romance was rushed as well but if I'm going to be honest, I don't see how Ashi suddenly lost any character as it happened. She still retained quite a bit of it, it's just that the romance was kind of...eh? I don't hate it, I don't see why it's so hated by people, and I feel like it's one of those things that people are gonna warm up to in hindsight.

I didn't mind the romance but I didn't like how rushed the end felt and I found the Diabolus ex Machina to be unnecessarily cruel to Jack (and it brings up some pretty bad Fridge Horror). I think people didn't like the romance because they think the time focused on it could have been better spent on making the finale longer.

I agree the romance wasn't handled particularly well, but that's not the same thing as Ashi losing her character.

I know some people thought it was handled great, and I myself think it was handled fine.

The episode is largely her looking for Jack and finding out he did good things. Then at the end, they exchange compliments. Jack then doesn't interact with Ashi for a good portion of Episode 7, aside from telling her how he lost his sword and another exchange of compliments at the end. Then they hook up despite building up no chemistry.

If I can put this another way: How does Ashi change meaningfully in Episode 6 compared to how she was in Episode 5 when she conceded that Jack was right about the state of the world? She already rejected her mother's teachings. She already gave up on killing Jack. Her character development was completed in Episode 5. This isn't like Jack putting on his gi again to show that he's back to himself, this is just a cosmetic change that's meant to make her cuter. Before Episode 6 threw in that last minute explanation of "Oh, well, it's actually an Aku suit." right before she puts on the leaf dress, there was no reason to think that Ashi even needed a costume change.

Episode 6 is more about her finding out more about Jack than it is her becoming her own person. She gets rid of the suit, but that's a small, incidental thing that has little to nothing to do with the rest of the episode.

edited 28th Jun '17 10:42:52 AM by Hobgoblin

It's not just her finding out how good Jacj is, it's also her seeing the true beauty of the world for herself and coming to terms with everything she thought she knew was wrong.

It really comes off like you're simplifying what happened so that your point won't be wrong.

That's not what I'm trying to do at all.

Ashi had total agency in her Heel–Face Turn. Jack was the main catalyst for it, but again the definition of a catalyst is that it does not trigger change but merely speed up change that was already capable of taking place. The show itself makes it clear it was her own experiences that changed her.

It's questionable whether the romance was necessary at all (IMO it wasn't) but her actual character wasn't diminished by it except in the meta sense of being a Token Romance.

Aside from Ashi being a mixed bag of a character, I've heard people say Aku wasn't as memorable in Season 5 as he was in the other seasons. What's the deal?

Different voice actor. That's it.

I've literally never heard that complaint until now.

(3) He was suffering from malaise.

Conflicted on that.

I think it's more that the first 5-6 episodes were hella good and the latter episodes weren't. The pacing of this season aside, Aku had some damned funny moments no matter how you slice it.

Did Aku really do anything of note this season? Not really. I don't know if Aku should have done anything more - this was the "final season." There was a theme going on with both Jack and Aku being mentally exhausted by their feud, so Aku's lack of motivation/presence/initiative makes sense.

His voice? They had to replace his voice actor and the replacement did a good job, but it wasn't the same performance. That might have made some of the funny scenes with Aku stick a little less. I don't know how but maybe. I didn't like the re-dubbing of the scene when Jack gets sent to the future.

The final battle was somewhat lacking, and while it was cool seeing Jack's allies come back to help him fight, I wanted to see Jack and Aku fight like they did in the first episode, just one more epic final clash between them. Even if we know Jack can win, the battles are always intense and fun to watch.

I think Aku needed a scene like this, something that made him really, really scary - and the only one he got was when he turned into a giant ball and crushed those armies, which was still more of a funny moment than a serious one. Or just more Jack/Aku interaction in general. We only got 2 scenes of Aku and Jack interacting this season prior to the finale, out of, what, 10 episodes, that I recall.

They could have done more with Aku but what we got wasn't bad.

edited 28th Jun '17 7:06:08 PM by Soble

He's just as memorable. But I do kind of agree with Eyepatch Wolf's criticism on Aku, in which he states the problem is more that season 5 had Jack be greatly humanized and nuanced in his human drama, but Aku just kind of sticks around in his old self, with no particular change. They tease the idea of him being tired of chasing Jack but he just kind of snaps out of it.

You know how modern cartoon villains tend to have a minimal amount of appearances to avoid cheapening their effectiveness? Aku appeared almost regularly in the previous seasons but how was he less like Team Rocket and more like the Lich? Laughably Evil moments aside.

edited 28th Jun '17 7:21:22 PM by superboy313

Well Team Rocket was actually intimidating in the first few episodes IIRC.

The difference is that Aku wasn't written for several seasons and didn't have to keep repeating the same gag for over a hundred episodes, and he wasn't in every episode. Aku even lampshaded the usual routine of Jack trying to kill Aku and Aku managing to get away at the end.

Team Rocket, meanwhile, I'm almost certain has "blasted off" for every episode for every season up until somewhere around Diamond and Pearl or X&Y when they changed into darker uniforms and started being more competent.

Best Wishes actually, but you've more or less got it.

And for what other reasons has Aku managed to avoid becoming an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain?

His Kick the Dog moments are too severe to make him sympathetic and he's too much the evil overlord of the entire world to be considered ineffectual.

And since he rules the world, that means his losses against Jack are just setbacks? Sans his ultimate defeat.

edited 29th Jun '17 1:31:27 AM by superboy313

Pretty much.

Jack wins a bunch of small victories against Aku over the course of the series, but Aku has already won the victory that matters.

Thing is, Aku was implied to do some pretty terrible things in the original series so there's not any reason not to escalate him in particular.

Basically, all Aku has to do is either:

1) Kill Jack;

2) Prevent him from going back in time;

Those are his win conditions, and if he accomplishes 2, then he just has to wait for one (which is what he does in Season 5).

He tried to kill Jack multiple times, but nothing worked, so waiting him out while wrecking every time portal on earth was his best bet. There was no one else who even stood a chance against him (as he showed in the finale).

It's very different from Team Rocket, who seem to be in a constant state of failure (even when they really don't need to fail) and in the exact same fucking way every time (up until Best Wishes, which the japanese fandom, and even their voice actors disliked).

What do you think are the Top 5 most powerful characters in Samurai Jack?

Ra and Shiva are tied for fifth, Odin is fourth, the Evil Mass is third (since it took the former three working together to beat it), Cronus is second thanks to his Gems, and Zeus is number one, seeing as how he beat Cronus even when he had his Gems.

edited 30th Jun '17 1:58:27 PM by Ssj3Gojira