< Samurai Jack

Samurai Jack/Characters


Jack

Our hero, a samurai and the son of the samurai who initially released (and then defeated) Aku. He trained in every country in the world in preparation for the final battle... only to be hurled into the future before he could land the killing blow. Now he must Walk the Earth, seeking a way back to the past to finish that battle... not that this will stop him from setting things right in the future as well.

Aku

Long ago, a single small fragment of an Eldritch Abomination fell to Earth. Given form, it became Aku, a being of pure darkness and evil. When the samurai who would later be called Jack came to fight him, Aku hurled him into the future as a last-ditch effort to survive. In the future, Aku rules the world, and devotes a lot of effort to finishing Jack once and for all.

  • Bad Boss: You're probably safer as one of his victims than one of his minions.
  • Badass Beard / Beard of Evil
  • Big Bad
  • Card-Carrying Villain: Often refers to himself by several evil-sounding titles, just in case you couldn't tell he was evil by looking at him.
  • Complete Immortality: He hasn't aged at all since the day he was 'born' and heals from injuries almost instantly. The only weapon that causes him real harm and could potentially kill him is Jack's sword.
    • Immortality aside, the episode "Jack and the Gangsters" shows it is still possible to at least overpower him and keep him at bay. The episode revolves around a MacGuffin called the Jewel of Neptune, a powerful artifact that even Aku himself is unable to seize due to the powerful elemental spirits guarding it. His numerous attempts to steal it have resulted in him getting his ass handed to him, and during the timeframe of the episode, he'd long since given up trying. Cue Jack infiltrating a group of Aku-friendly mobsters and obtaining the jewel so he can be granted the opportunity to meet Aku face-to-face.
  • Eldritch Abomination: Spawned from the remains of a much larger one.
  • Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: A large reason that his attempt to throw Jack into the future backfired. He'd expected a world ruled by him would allow him to crush Jack effortlessly when he arrived. He never took into account that a hero arriving and successfully fighting back his forces would trigger Hope Springs Eternal and start giving the oppressed masses someone to rally behind. Also shows when he tries to make himself out as the good guy in the stories he tells to children in one episode, one of the prime reasons it doesn't work is he didn't really comprehend what being The Hero actually meant.
  • Evil Laugh: "HAA HAA HAAAA!!"
  • Evil Is Hammy: Just the way he talks is so bombastic and over the top.
  • Evil Overlord: Currently rules the whole planet and expanding his empire beyond.
  • Evil Sounds Deep: As his voice actor once said, "Evil comes from the belly."
  • Eye Beams: Multiple types for multiple purposes.
  • Fangs Are Evil
  • Knight of Cerebus: As mentioned below, he can be a funny guy most of the time but he's definitively this in The Beggining three-parter, "Jack and the Lava Monster", "Jack and the Ultra-robots", "Jack vs Demongo" "The Princess and the Bounty Hunters", "Tale of X9" and "The Birth of Evil"
  • Four-Fingered Hands: Considering he's great evil, there's probably a meaning to it.
  • Jerkass: Fairly obvious as he is a villain, though he tends to swing back and forth between a comedic villain and truly evil one. Notable acts of evil include in the pilot episode when some aliens that lived an aquatic world whose oceans were dried up come to him requesting to live on Earth and reveals that he dried up their planet, though he does let them stay on Earth provided they build statues every month. Another note is when he forces a scientist to build a set super robots to kill Jack under the promise of sparring his village if does, and then tests the robots out by having them burn his village to the ground and kill everything in it.
  • Laughably Evil: He's rather... Goofy for being the Ultimate Evil and all.
    • Varies depending on the episode, there are some that present him as legitimately evil and threatening figure. Or sometimes a bit of both.
  • Large Ham: So hammy that one of the first things he makes his slaves do is build statues of him.
  • Made of Evil: Yeah, that about sums it up.
  • Mako: His voice actor in one of his last and most memorable roles.
  • Meaningful Name: The word "aku" means "evil" in Japanese. It's also worth noting that he's the only major character in the series who is known by his real name.
  • Obviously Evil
  • Sealed Evil in a Can: Jack's father defeated him by sealing him away instead of killing him. The first episode shows him breaking free and taking his revenge.
  • Shapeshifting
    • Morphic Resonance: He always has the same black, red and green color-scheme in every form he takes.
    • Shapeshifter Default Form: Due to his origin it's hard to say if he's Type A or Type B.
    • Sizeshifter: A natural extension of his shape-shifting ability, and in his default form he's usually gigantic. He tends to shrink whenever Jack's sword hits him, though.
    • Voluntary Shapeshifting: He can transform into pretty much anything, and even introduces himself as a "shape-shifting master of darkness" during the opening narration.
  • Spikes of Villainy
  • Stupid Evil: He would actually have succeeded in defeating Jack many times over by now, if he could just resist throwing a Villain Ball at the most inopportune time, he abuses Mooks, double crosses bargains or just spends too much time gleefully torturing Jack when he could easily crush him in an instant, all just before the job is done. Jack's survival, and to extent, he and his sword's very existance, is owed to this happening time and time again.
  • Take Over the World: He already has, but apparently it's not enough.
  • Third Person Person: When he's being especially hammy.
  • Unskilled but Strong: He relies mostly on the fact few things can actually hurt him. One of those is Jack's sword.
  • Unusual Eyebrows: "GREAT FLAMING EYEBROWS!"

The Scotsman

A large, extremely loud Scottish man, with a sword inscribed with magic runes and a machine-gun false leg. He's about as burly a warrior as you'll find, and one of the few creatures able to match Jack for combat prowess. One of the few characters who appears more than once in the series.

Jack's Father

The samurai lord who accidently awakened Aku when he tried to destroy the corruption he was otherwise unconsciously causing. The gods Odin, Ra and Vishnu forged the sword that would later become Jack's from his righteousness. He manages to seal Aku, until he returns once again to unleash evil. Apart from the first episode and the two-parter covering him awaking and sealing Aku, he mostly appears in flashbacks.

X9

A retired, obsolete, prototype assassin android with emotions. He was blackmailed into targeting Jack, by Aku. Aku's leverage, he had kidnapped the one thing dear in the robot's life: His precious dog LuLu....sweet thing.

The High Priestess

The leader of the Cult of Aku. She is also the mother of the so-called "Daughters of Aku", seven girls whom she has raised to become loyal warriors for Aku.

  • Absurdly Sharp Claws: When she fights Ashi, her fingers are tipped with claws sharp enough to slice through rock.
  • Abusive Parents: Up to Eleven.
    • 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 hot coals, creating, in effect, glorified Body Paint out of ash and pitch. It clearly didn't look pleasant.
  • Action Mom: Giving birth to septuplets didn't affect her physical skills at all. She's strong enough to give Ashi, the strongest of her daughters, some trouble.
  • 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 most 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.
  • 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 drank 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 she wants to kill Jack so that she and her entire 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 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.
  • Authority Equals Asskicking: Ashi defeats an entire army with ease, but when her mother confronts her, she proves 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 primordial darkness, who abusively trains her seven daughters to be assassins of said evolved form of a primordial darkness any indication? When even Aku is surprised by her willingness to drink his essence, it says something about her abnormality.
  • 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 everyone else in the cult.
  • 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 most 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.
  • Bad Is Good and Good Is Bad: She raises her daughters to believe that Aku is a benevolent deity and Jack is an evil monster.
  • Bait the Dog: She almost shows Ashi a moment of compassion when she gives the girl a heartwarming speech about the beauty of the world... then she tosses her daughter to a Giant Mook to have her beaten senseless for losing focus.
  • Big Bad Ensemble: With Aku in Season 5. With all the resources of the cult at her disposal combined with an Irrational Hatred, she is by far one of the most dangerous enemies Jack ever faced during his long journey.
  • Body Paint: She seemed to undergo the same treatment that she had used on her daughters, assuming that 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 might have had something to do with that, giving her 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 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.
  • Darth Vader Clone: A would-be dragon to the Big Bad who is tall, wears a mask and intimidating dark robes, speaks in an intimidating voice, has a stoic demeanor, and is incredibly badass. She's every bit as terrifying as Vader himself.
  • Determinator: Even during her battle with Ashi, she makes it a point to kill Jack first.
  • Disney Villain Death: In "XCVIII", she falls off a mountain to her death after Ashi impales her with an arrow.
  • Does This Remind You of Anything?: The Priestess is the leader of a fringe religious cult/sect, who forces all her kids to stay inside a temple compound, and gradually brainwashes them into becoming fanatical young terrorists 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: A subversion—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 at least once did personally visit and commend them and left a piece of his essence as a sign of his favor.
  • 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 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, believing him to be a benevolent deity.
  • Expressive Mask: Averted—unlike the Daughter's masks which communicate their frustrations or even wince at hits, the High Priestess's mask never changes its neutral expression. It's only in nightmares and imagine spots does the mask move like a face.
  • 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. 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's and the other 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: Again, towards her own children. The best example has to be when Ashi is caught looking outside. She calmly and motherly explains 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.
  • Hate Sink: You can't hate her children, as they were brainwashed from birth, and abused all their lives. However, she's the one who did the brainwashing and abusing, 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 drinking Aku's essence was of any indication.
  • The Heavy: Aku no longer gives a hoot about Jack, so it's up to her to be Jack's primary opponent in season 5.
  • 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.
  • Humans Are the Real Monsters: 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, in spite of 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.
  • Irony: An extremely serious cult leader who puts her daughters through hell to appease the demon she worships. The same demon who 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 the Ultimate Evil in the universe, 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, Jack likely would have eventually killed himself anyway. As it is, Ashi ended up inspired to become a better person by Jack, 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.
  • Insanity Immunity: Drinking 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 difference between the two is the High Priestess was already an insane (at least enough to drink Aku's essence, something that surprised even Aku himself), Aku-worshiping villain to begin with.
  • Karmic Death: Oh, she most definitely had it coming. And by the lifelong victim of her abuse no less.
  • 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.
  • Laser-Guided Karma: She became the only surviving adult member of her cult, seeing as how her daughters killed everyone else. Soon afterwards, Jack killed all but one of her daughters.
    • Her sole surviving daughter 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.
  • 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.
    • 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.
  • Multishot: Taken Up to Eleven. In her assassination attempt of Jack, she shoots a volley of seventeen arrows in one shot.
  • Mystical Pregnancy: She got pregnant from drinking a bit of 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.
  • 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.
  • 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: She outlives almost all of her daughters, with Ashi as the only confirmed exception (it's quite possible that the daughter with the naginata survived her fall). Brutally subverted in Episode XCVIII.
  • 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.
  • Small Name, Big Ego: She treats herself as though she's one of Aku's closest and 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 devil-worshiper who shows no real love or kindness for her own children, seeing them only as tools for her master.
  • 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: 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.
  • 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.
  • Unwitting Instigator of Doom: By drinking Aku's essence, she unknowingly became the first step of Aku's undoing.
  • 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 most 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 comically brutal her abuse can go.

Ashi

Ashi is one of the Seven Daughters of Aku, she was trained along with her sisters to kill the Samurai.

Scaramouche

Scaramouche is a very classy robot and Aku's #1 assassin.

  • Musical Assassin: He uses a magic flute to levitate objects and make golems to fight his opponents.
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