Is it wrong that Aku is portrayed as a reasonable goof ball in

That's sort of the joke. The juxtaposition between the consequences of the characters action and the character itself.

Jack is played as a straight man lone hero fighting a generic "pure evil" entity, and the joke is that since said evil entity has "won" he really doesn't care or do much about the hero and just mostly dicks around.

>>91632274

But shouldn't the audience hate Aku? Thing is, I kinda like the guy.

>>91632354
I mean, you could make the same argument for the Joker.

>>91632395

In the good batman stories though, I'm rooting for Batman and there's a big smile on my face when the Joker gets his cumuppance.

Joker might be funny, or interesting, but he's always a dick who needs to be stopped.

With Aku, I'm like "ah come on Jack. can't you at least imprison him or something? I don't want Aku to die".

>>91632177
He's legitimately pure evil. He's never ever in the the course of the show done anything nice for anyone. He's likable because the writers don't choose to portray that evil as one-note or repetitive. He has failures, he has insecurities, the evil things he does range from the desolation of whole planets to teasing Jack by dangling a time portal just out of his reach like a schoolyard bully, to backstabbing some group he promised to spare or help, to cheating in a contest and then saying he didn't. He's an entertaining and surprisingly humanized character, but he's still evil.

>>91632444
I don't know what to tell you here, then. Aku has probably killed billions. He's like a Lovecraft diety in how little a fuck he gives about others.

>>91632444
>I don't want Aku to die

You have some degenerate morals than. I love Aku as a character, but as a human being with morals I want Jack to destroy him forever and save past, present, and future.

>>91632177
kinda reminds me of Tobi from Naruto
good thing Genndy isn't a hack and won't make him switch sides at the end

I like how Aku can still be a villain when he wants to

>>91632444
He's kind of got to be destroyed for the series to have closure, and for Jack to put an end to all the damage Aku has caused.

>>91632177
Did you not watch the first fucking episode, where he keeps his incredibly dangerous enemy alive specifically to torture him?

Or the time he killed demongo out of minor annoyance?

Or the time he sentenced a puff ball to slave labor for saying the truth?

Or the time he sentenced space moths to slave labor for trespassing and apologizing?

Or the time he destroyed a kingdom and imprisoned its king in a rock just so he could experience despair forever?

>>91632658
Or the time he kidnapped and killed a dog?

>>91632605
I hate it when writers respond to a villain's popularity by turning them good, when the way they were evil was what was so enjoyable about them in the first place. It's like "Oh, now they're just a member of the team, I guess. Kind of miss the old version that was that character I liked to begin with"

>>91632177
What is this Propaganda?

>>91632177
What about that time he personally destroyed Japan twice?

>>91632177
>However, he rarely does anything bad personally.
Except for all the times he personally fucked with Jack?

>>91632658
In the very second episode he went to an alien planet, drained all their water, and had the aliens live under Earth's oceans under the condition they would erect a monumental statue of him to arise from the ocean once a month.

The whole point of his character is that right now that shit still gives him pleasure but it doesn't mean shit unless Jack is dead.

>>91632699
I don't know how far in advance Kishi was planning but I hated when Tobi was revaled to be Obito and hated it even more when he turned good
I really liked when he was goofy but still a powerful villain

>>91632177
>he rarely does anything bad personally
I disagree. I think that he very often does really awful things in a lot of scenes he's in, and in a very direct and personal way. Just off the top of my head he
>ties Jack's dad to a tree and forces him to watch as his beloved kingdom is destroyed, as a "thankyou gift" no less
>throws a guy (who is described as 'only a boy,' so a kid, really) into a place called "the pit of hate" for sassing him with things he knows are true
>multiple times betrays people who have faithfully served him, like the underwater people who help him catch Jack and the scientist that builds those Aku bots. Just destroys their homes for no real fucking reason other than he can
>goes out of his way to kidnap a damn puppy to use as blackmail
>smashes a sentient robot bro, again, for a little bit of rightful sass
>acts out of his own best interests to avoid just killing Jack in favor of trying to bring Jack the maximum amount of suffering possible, again, more than once
>zaps the Scotsman to death
>Only after he pushed his buttons did he retaliate.
Murdering someone is not a reasonable response to name calling. I get that you can say he does it because he's a tyrant that wants to set an example. I get that he (well, sometimes) does it to people who are aligned as his enemies and you can say it works as "defense." But really the MAIN reason he ever does anything is because it's evil for the sake of being evil. That's supposed to be a really big thing with him. Anything else is just comic relief for the sake of lightening up the tone of the show, or it's to make a point that Aku is so unfathomably powerful that he can just get bored enough to ignore the pathetic inferior beings beneath him for a bit in between making them squirm. He is in no way a nice guy. He is likable rather for being an entertaining character. He undeniably has a lot of charm to him, that's intentional, but that has very little to do with him in any way being good.

>>91632886
Damn, post got screwed up. There should be a divide between those last two green texts.

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>>91632177
>And he at first seemed to have no intention of attacking the Scotsman since he was not a threat.
"Heh, better to make it a complete annihilation"
This is what he said looking at Scotsmans fleeing daughters.

>>91632177
The thing about Aku is that he is so causal about the atrocities he commit. Him being is evil is so normal to him, it's like a regular guy living his everyday life. That's what makes Aku so bad.

>>91632965
>"Heh, better to make it a complete annihilation"
>This is what he said looking at Scotsmans fleeing daughters.

Who were actual combatants in the battle. And that was a missed opportunity. You could argue destroying the armies was self-defense. Killing retreating enemies is more of a dick move, and we at least sorta know some of the daughters. So seeing like half of them die might have some impact.

For the Scotsman himself, he seems to have been fully prepared to just let him go.

i've seen people say they hope they do to aku what they did to the chaos serpent from the small horse show. and somehow people wanted brill from gravity falls to become a Fun Jerk Good Guy.

why do so many people like this? it always kill the fun from these characters

>>91632605
>>91632699
>>91632829

>Orochimaru

>>91633262
eh, I never thought of him as a goofball
Kabuto maybe but that was just a cover for the exam

>>91633557

Well, it's more the fact that he wasn't a goofball and committed unforgivable atrocities and may even be continuing them, given how young he still looks, but apparently he's a "good guy" now.

>>91632177
Evil can be easily likable. I like that Aku's that way.

>>91632177
>he rarely does anything bad personally.
Except, y'know, conquer the whole world and throw everything into the fire.

>>91634477
what's the problem here?

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OP, I agree that in this season Aku hasn't been particularly frightening. He's powerful but not very domineering or aggressive, due to his depression. If I had never seen the original show I'd agree he's just kind of a comic relief.

But I have seen the original. I've seen this dude burn women and children alive offscreen just because it's his function. I've seen him pack terrified little kids into a brainwashing hall and try to read them stories. Just because he appears funny in the new season doesn't erase the history of the character.

What I'm really hoping for is more of that "staring at the camera" stuff, like "One can hope" or "MALAISE." Something about that really, really creeps me out and reminds me we're dealing with an ancient elder evil here--something that may seem comical or endearing by accident, but in truth doesn't give a fuck about human life and is utterly indifferent to suffering.

>That moment when he turns around in Birth of Evil and stares at Jack's dad

I don't know why it's those moments that sell him as a villain to me. It's not the evil laughter, or the dictatorship, or the lasers. It's those eyes. They just... unnerve me. Like he's a statue come to life and its only purpose is to HATE.

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>>91632536
thissssssss

>>91632699

One of the reasons DBZ is so successful is because it did a great job with this. Vegeta has been a good guy far longer than he was a bad guy.

This is a dude that blew up planets btw

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>>91632177
10 Aku credits have been deposited to your account, shill.

>>91632721
Not a bad thing.

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>>91632721
2 nukes weren't enough so clearly he was doing God's work.

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>>91632667
Lulu, sweet thing...

>>91635732
Heard this in Baldwin's voice. What the hell is wrong with me.

>>91633110
The most likely reason he didn't attack the "lost old man" right away was because he was focused in killing the Scotman's daughters (he probably found the idea of an old man lost in a battlefield endearing at first), the only reason the didn't go after the Daughters once done with him was because he was bummed out again due to being reminded of his conundrum. I'm pretty sure he would've just destroyed the girls and gone back to throw the old man into a coal mine or something of the kind if his initial though happened to be the truth.

Does aku even do any administrating or do his followers just run amok? It seems like he's just a lazy fuck who only thinks up ways to kill jack

>>91633110
>Self-defense.

Aku was in no danger whatsoever and they were literally incapable of harming him in any way. Even with the magic sword.

>>91632177
Do you really need to be beat over the head with it? We all know he is evil.

Have you never seen a cartoon or a movie in your life, ever? That's the point. You can make a character likeable no matter what role they play, you just have to work harder on some more than others, especially villains.

They nailed Aku. He's funny as hell but he absolutely needs to die.

>>91637529
By the time Jack gets to the future, Aku is at the very height of his power and is just starting to run out of shit to do and get bored. He still seems to go around somewhat randomly enslaving innocent groups to do meaningless hard labor like mining riches for him, and destroys whole planets to steal their resources, and it's implied he's come up with sadistic bureaucratic systems like assigning criminals to peaceful neighborhoods to go fuck up. He's just already so powerful that he can just do whatever the fuck he wants instead of committing to any particular projects, so he gets a lot of downtime when he doesn't feel like being on. He probably has a lot of underlings he assigns tasks to but then forgets about, like those scientists that made that new beetle droid to kill Jack that he just couldn't even care about. But everyone working under him probably doesn't stray far from what they've been assigned in case he does remember and catches them and punishes them with unspeakable torture.

Can Aku even die or will he just be sealed away like Ganon? I'm pretty sure the very first episode Aku was like "oh well that sword isn't enough to keep me down forever."

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>>91632536
I miss Aku and Jack interactions

>>91637529
It seems like he has a few dozen big administrators that are scared shitless of him, who scramble to organise things based on his arbitrary edicts.
Aku sets a goal, and they fry if they don't reach it by whatever means they can cobble together. Or maybe they reach it and he fries them anyway. He mostly rules through godlike power rather than poltical systems.

I think it's canon that Aku doesn't care about efficiency, just domination and the destruction of rival powers. It probably explains why it's taken him a thousand years to expand beyond Earth.

>>91640092
BEYOND YOUR REACH.

oooh

oop

oooh!

HAHAHHAHA

>>91632177
He's like a Joker or Skeletor: both evil and goofy.

>>91632177

Evil is banal. Just because we see him not actively being evil at all times, doesn't mean he's not actively evil when he actually does anything.

>>91632354
>But shouldn't the audience hate Aku?
Why?

>>91632699
Discord and Starlight are pretty good examples of this phenomena.

>>91632536
>He's never ever in the the course of the show done anything nice for anyone
he's literally saved jacks life before.

>>91643931
As a means to make his life even worse.
Aku has never partook in a benevolent action.

>>91644069
>As a means to make his life even worse.
aku just want's jack dead. there is no better outcome than dead jack for aku.

>>91644102
But then how would Aku get to see Jack's face when he shatters his hope?

>>91643931
Aku saved Jack because he needed to locate the time portal stone. Jack had survived a LOT worse than quicksand, so if he left Jack to die and Jack survived, then he could still possibly go back in time. Aku was playing the long game, not being good.

>>91634714
Looking back the creepiest part for me is that its a primordial force that just got a consciousness and realized "Huh so this is who I am." And then he just goes off to burn Japan because he feels like it after a few minutes.

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OP you're repeating the black-and-white nonsense that lots of Samurai Jack fans repeat.

Just because Aku does bad things doesn't mean he has to do bad things ALL THE TIME. It's not your fault though, you've been conditioned by bad writing and government propaganda that people who do bad things are inherently evil, instead of, you know, people.

Aku's motivation is selfishness. He's very powerful and wants everything to be in his image. You know, like a strict teacher who stifles creativity and dissenting opinions because he wants the students to be EXACTLY like him. Except Aku doesn't slap people on the knuckles with a ruler, he kills them.

That's it. People who read "ultimate evil" into it are drinking the Kool-Aid and need to rethink the way they look at fiction, and even the world.

>>91632177
I'm willing to bet that at the end of it Aku will be happy to go. He's reveled in victory for what, like 1050 years? He's clearly just bored of it all now, and can't find joy in anything. Imagine achieving all your life goals by 25 and retiring by 26, squared for life financially. You'd be suicidally bored by like 50, especially if you're like Aku and have no loved ones to speak of

>>91644578
>Imagine achieving all your life goals by 25 and retiring by 26, squared for life financially
literally me.

challenge accepted, I'm gonna keep loving my life at least until I'm sixty.

>>91632354
Eastern faith has always been about the balance between opposites. Light and dark. Creation and destruction. Male and female.

Only western Jesus faiths depict one side of the coin as totally in the right and the other side totally in the wrong.

>>91641850
[Painfully obvious analogy about how leftists can't understand why people don't viscerally hate the president goes here]

>>91644556
>you've been conditioned...that people who do bad things are inherently evil, instead of, you know, people.

Kind of funny that this doesn't apply here since Aku is very specifically not a person. He's been shown and said more than once to be "pure evil, taken form." Even his name just means evil. If any character should be static and boring and a one note baddie, it should probably be him. But it's still great they made sure he didn't turn out that way for the sake of making a better character.

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>>91636822
Dammit so did I. Baldwin's Aku's really starting to grow on me

>>91634714
If the Scotsman had stayed dead that would have been a very ominous moment.
I thought Gennedy had actually gone and done something intimidating by eliminating a beloved character with such an indifferent action.