Jack and the Ultra-Robots
Episode numeral: XVIII
Original air date: 3/29/02 (produced in 2001)
After coming across several destroyed villages, Jack finds his toughest challenge yet in the form of eight powerful robots designed to destroy him. Overwhelmed by their might, Jack's only hope to defeat them is the aid of the robots' repentant creator.
Tropes:
- Batman Gambit: Why did the Ultra-Bots slaughter all those villages? To draw Jack out, knowing he'd coming looking for whoever was responsible.
- Conservation of Ninjutsu: Subverted. During their first fight, the Ultra-Bots do take turns wailing on Jack, but they switch so quickly that they don't give him any breaks. Played a little more straight in the second fight.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: The villages stood no chance against the Ultra-Bots. Jack nearly gets killed in his first battle against them as well.
- Dead-Hand Shot: After explaining who destroyed his village, the cat villager told Jack the Ultra-Bots left to the east while pointing...just before his hand fell to the ground and went limp.
- Divine Intervention: When the scientist's robot arm fails, Jack is left to fight the last robot unaided. Until Jack prays to the ancestral creators of his sword, and they imbue it with enough magical power to
bifurcate the robot with a single strike. Soulless technology, it turns out, is meaningless before the power of the divine. - Downer Beginning: The episode starts with Jack coming across the burning ruins of a village and getting the story from a survivor. His mission to find the ones responsible lead to the episode proper.
- Evil Sounds Deep: The Ultra-Bots have deep, electronic monotone voices.
- The Dog Bites Back: In order to spare his hometown, a scientist creates a group of robotic assassins for Aku that Jack should be unable to kill or fight off. When Aku destroys the scientist's hometown anyway, the scientist instead joins Jack and they try to destroy the assassins together.
- Haunted Technology: In a way. The Ultra-Bots are powered by Aku's evil essence which, when Jack destroys them, forms into a single mass and tries to escape. Jack stabs the mass, physically hurting Aku in the process.
- High-Five Left Hanging: At various points throughout the episode the scientist tries to get Jack to do a high five, but the time-traveling samurai doesn't know the gesture and doesn't respond. At the very end of the episode he finally does the high five.
- Killer Robot: The Ultra-Bots, natch.
- Made of Indestructium: The Ultra-Bots are the most durable opponents Jack has encountered yet, with even his sword unable to cut through their adamantium bodies without enhancement, be it scientific or divine.
- Magic Versus Technology: A group of extremely deadly robot assassins vs. a samurai with an enchanted sword.
- My Significance Sense Is Tingling: When Jack stabs the mass of evil essence from Aku that powered the Ultra-Bots, Aku felt it (in more ways than one), and realizes the Ultra-Bots failed.Aku: (Yells in pain) The sword! The samurai.
- No-Nonsense Nemesis: The Ultra-Bots. They're brutal, methodical, and absolutely relentless. They annihilate four entire villages, three of them just to draw Jack out to try and kill him, and they have no qualms about using all of their weapons on one man. Not only are they well-armed, Jack doesn't have the strength to cut through their armor. Without the help of the scientist's bionic arm and literal Divine Intervention, Jack would've lost.
- No-Sell: Jack's sword might be divinely enchanted, but it can't damage the Ultra-Bots. Thanks to the scientist giving him a robot arm that boosts his strength, Jack is able to fight back...until the power runs out. Of course, then Jack has the power of Divine Intervention on his side.
- Oh, Crap!: The robot's creator has this reaction when Jack kneels to pray to his ancestors even as the final Ultra-Bot is advancing on him.
- Robo Cam: Shown when the robots search for Jack, ranging from zoom and Infrared vision, to a green-tinted targeting display.
- See the Invisible: When the Ultra-Bot that can turn invisible vanishes, Jack cuts into one of the others, causing the Aku essence inside it to spew everywhere and expose the invisible Ultra-bot.
- Sherlock Scan: Even without survivors to tell him about the attackers, Jack was able to visualize what the Ultra-Bots did by looking at the devastation they caused.
- Shout-Out: The third destroyed village that Jack arrives in bares more than a passing resemblance to Mos Eisley. The last Ultra-Bot even quotes one of Vader's classic lines:"All too easy."
- Sole Survivor: Jack finds two survivors, a cat-person and a robot, which both share with him what happened and tell him the Ultra-Bots headed east before dying.
- This Cannot Be!: The final Ultra-Bot's reaction to Jack's Divine Intervention."Unbelievable."
- Weapon Specialization: Each of the Ultra-Bots possess their own unique weapon:
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Averted. The slaughter of the robot villagers is brutal, and Jack is horrified by every bit of it. Shots linger on severed mechanical limbs and bodies hacked to pieces, driving the samurai to his knees as he ponders, "Is there no end to this senseless destruction?"
