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| “ | Bask in the glory of what our master has created. Admire its beauty, but know that the samurai is out there leaving a wake of devastation wherever he goes. That's why, my sweet Ashi, the Daughters of Aku must stay focused. Never relent, always attack. | ” |
—The High Priestess to Ashi, Episode XCII | ||
Ashi is the secondary antagonist of Season 5. She is also the leader of the Daughters of Aku, seven women who serve as assassins attempting to kill Jack during the events of Season 5.
Appearance
Ashi as a child
Ashi and all of the members of the Daughters of Aku shared the same appearance. All of them have big, slanted eyes and wear a black bodysuit. When undercover, they usually wear a white mask to conceal their own identities.
The only difference between Ashi and her sisters is their varying hairstyles. Ashi's hair is combed up to a single point.
Personality
Ashi seemed to possess a curiosity about the world, especially when she was younger, and developed into a cunning strategist. She was clever enough to go after the archers first in her final test, making the task much easier. Like the rest of her sisters, she possess little to no knowledge of the outside world in which she doesn't know what is a deer and assumes a male deer as Aku's minion due to its horn. Furthermore, she also cannot understand the concept of love and compassion since she sees the loving bond between a deer couple as madness due to the fact that she thought that the bigger male deer will kill the female deer. This was also seen when she and her sisters did not mourn the first of their sisters to die by Jack's hand, reciting their mother's words "Death is failure".
Still, she has an emotional breakdown after witnessing all of her sisters die before her and failing to kill Jack. This is likely due to her being raised to kill Jack under the extreme and violent tutelage of her mother, who raised them to think of failure as the pinnacle of disgrace and something that was an impossible occurrence. Her breakdown also likely stemmed from her shock at being defeated by Jack, someone she was raised to see herself and her sisters as inherently superior to.
Biography
Ashi and her six sisters were birthed from the High Priestess, leader of an all-female cult of Aku, and raised as assassins by them to do what no other fighter could do: Kill Samurai Jack. The High Priestess named them the Daughters of Aku and raised them with the most brutal of training throughout all of their childhood and youth, attempting to sculpt them into the ultimate warriors. During her training as a child, Ashi found a hole in the wall to gaze upon the outside world. The High Preistess told her that the world was a creation of their master, Aku, and that it was under threat so long as Jack lived to oppose Aku's rule. She was then thrown back into training and received punishment. When their training was complete years later, they donned the masks and head coverings, and set out to fulfill their mission. {Episode XCII}
Later on, Ashi and her sisters set up traps for Jack in a forest, and successfully destroyed his motorbike and started an intense battle with the samurai, forcing him to hide and later escape to an abandoned temple. Ashi and her sisters looked for their hiding enemy, tracking him to the temple's underground crypt. Here they had another intense battle with the samurai, but he succeeds in killing one of Ashi's sisters and blew up the temple with the others still inside. {Episode XCIII}
Ashi fought Jack again in the next episode. Unlike their first battle, Ashi found herself and her sisters overwhelmed as one by one Jack killed the other Daughters until only Ashi was left. Seeing her sisters perish and having been bested, Ashi had a momentary breakdown as she ranted and swore she would kill Jack, even as she dropped her to her possible death. It's currently unknown if she survived the fall. (Episode XCIV)
Powers and Abilities
- Skilled Archer: Ashi has shown to have excellent skills in archery. She is capable of taking down multiple opponents with the bow while climbing.
- Skilled Melee Fighter: Ashi and her sisters have become more skilled at close-quarter combat than their trainers.
- Intelligence: Through her training, Ashi developed a talent for strategy. During the final test, she incapacitated the Cult archers at the top of the cliff face, swinging the fight in her and her sisters' favor.
- Peak Human Conditioning: Like Jack, who spent the majority of his life preparing to face Aku, Ashi has spent the majority of her life preparing to fight Jack and has honed her body to the absolute limit of human potential.
- Peak Human Resilience: Ashi has been beaten endlessly throughout her training, hardening her as a warrior.
- Peak Human Senses: Ashi and her sisters were trained to be able to react to dangers, such as archer fire, by instinct.
- Peak Human Speed: Ashi is shown to be swift. She is capable dodging arrows while climbing a cliff and grabbing one of the fired arrows out of thin air. She and her sisters are capable of dodging machine gun fire.
- Peak Human Strength: She and her sisters have deceptive raw strength for their lean frame. They are able to destroy Jack's armor merely through punches. They are also able to easily smash through concrete.
- Willpower: Ashi seems to possess a strong will to correct her mistakes and help her persevere through hardships. This made her into a powerful and cold assassin. As described by her mother towards her and her sisters, "Aku's fire stirs through all of you."
Trivia
- Ashi can be seen as an antithesis to Jack as she was raised to kill him, similar to how he was trained from childhood to defeat Aku.
- As a child, Ashi showed a genuine interest in the world outside of the temple she and her sisters were kept in for their entire lives.
- Ashi's weapon is a kusarigama. Unlike the traditional kusarigama, her kusarigama is designed with a spike circle at the loose end rather than a iron ball.
- Ashi is the only one of the "Daughters of Aku" who has been named so far.
- While three of her sisters' names have been revealed in the credits of Episode XCIV (Aki, Ami and Avi), which name belongs to which sister hasn't been revealed so far.
- Ashi has a similar hairstyle to Princess Ilana from Sym-Bionic Titan, another show created by Genndy Tartakovsky. The notable exception is that she has one bang instead of three.
- Tartakovsky revealed on Twitter that the resemblance was intentional.