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| “ | Our destiny is your death! | ” |
—Daughters of Aku, Episode XCIV | ||
The Daughters of Aku were a group of seven human women who were born and raised by their mother, the High Priestess, for the sole purpose of killing Samurai Jack. They are from a cult dedicated to Aku and appear during the events of Season 5. As of Episode XCIV only Ashi and another unnamed sister are (possibly) still alive.
Appearance
Being septuplets, they all share very similar physical traits consisting of black hair, narrow eyes, and black cat suits. The only distinguishing trait among them is their varying hairstyles. When out on their mission, they wear white masks with black horns made to resemble Aku's.
Background
The seven daughters were birthed by The High Priestess of an all-female cult of Aku. After birth, the priestess had them raised as assassins to succeed where many others have failed in the mission of killing Jack. They were put through the most brutal of training, designed to sculpt them into the ultimate ninja warriors, such as facing a hulking, muscle bound opponent when they were mere children. Even more, they have been utterly taught to think that Aku is the true savior of the planet and Jack seeks to destroy all that Aku has "created". When their training was complete, they donned their masks and head coverings and set out to fulfill their mission.
They eventually found Jack and proceed to lay a trap after he deals with a large Beetle Drone. They manage to destroy or steal most of his equipment and armor but the Samurai is able to escape their grasp briefly using explosives and flee towards an abandoned temple. After a long search the sisters manage to locate him and engage in a running battle with him throughout the temple. Eventually one of the Sisters manages to corner and wound Jack, but at the cost of her life, a fact that leaves Jack horrified as he realizes he has been fighting a living human being instead of another machine as he had initially thought them to be. After snapping out of it, Jack then manages to escape them again by recovering the tuning fork blade he took from the assassin Scaramouch from the now dead sister who stole it and used it to seal the temple hallway behind him as he jumped into the river below.
While Jack recovered from his wounds, the Daughters broke out of the ruined temple and continued the hunt for Jack, leaving the corpse of their dead sister behind. Following the river to the forest, the sisters spent a moment observing a female deer in the woods, mistaking her mate for one of Aku's minions due to its antlers. After one of the Daughters scared the deer off and it began to snow, Jack revealed his presence to them. He offered them an ultimatum: Leave, or face their destiny. When the Daughters refused and rejected his words of wisdom, Jack emerged from his hiding place in the snow and impaled one of them with a wooden spear. Jack then proceeded to dispatch the rest of the daughters until only Ashi remained, hanging from a fallen tree over a valley. Ignoring her threats about Aku, Jack simply unwrapped her sickle-chain from his arm, sending her to her presumed death. Unfortunately, the tree finally collapsed from the fight and Jack followed her into the valley below.
Abilities
All seven sisters were trained rigorously for all of their lives to become ultimate assassins, solely to kill Jack. As a result, they are not only highly skilled in the art of assassination but also void of emotion, shown in how they pursued Jack effectively and unflinchingly even after one of their own died, being raised to believe that "death is failure in the eyes of Aku". However, despite their training and numbers, they were only able to stand against Jack with surprise on their side; without deception, the Samurai easily overpowered them. Furthermore, they possess little to no knowledge of the outside world, having never seen other animals such as deer and assumed a stag was Aku's minion because of its antlers.
Ninjutsu: They are trained in the art of ninjutsu, each of the seven skilled with a different weapon.
Peak Human Speed: They can run extremely fast, enough to dodge arrow and machine-gun fire.
Trap Masters: They are capable of creating effective booby traps.
Members
- Ashi (leader) (Status unknown)
- Axi (Status unknown)
- Avi (Status unknown)
- Ami (deceased)
- Aki (deceased)
- Achi (deceased)
- Ati (deceased)
Deaths
- Ami that had encountered Jack in the Temple. She destroyed his battleaxe and after a brief struggle, Jack swiped her weapon and slit her throat with it, but not before she stabbed him with her dagger.
- Aki wielding a kusagi-gama. She was killed in a surprise attack by Jack with a spear.
- Achi weilding dual sai, she was killed unintentionally when Jack impaled her with a spear that was originally thrown at Ashi.
- Ati wielding a kanabo. She was killed while charging at Jack, who impaled her with one of her sisters' daggers.
- Axi wielding a naginata. She was defeated when Jack dodged her attack, grabbed her by the shoulders and threw her off the log they were fighting on. Whether or not this actually killed her is ambiguous.
- Avi wielding dual butterfly swords. She charged at Jack and was dispatched with a single punch, causing her head to twist all the way around, snapping her neck and killing her near-instantaneously.
- Ashi was dispatched when Jack allowed her to strike him with her kusagi-gama. Using the weapon against her, Jack and Ashi dangled from the log and Jack managed to kick her mask off. The fight ended with Jack returning to the log and untying the chain, causing Ashi to plummet. Her fate is ambiguous.
Weaponry
Each member carries one of seven different ninja weapons: katana, twin sai, twin butterfly swords, kanabo, naginata and kusarigama.
Gallery
Trivia
- They can be seen as an antithesis to Jack as they were raised to kill him, similar to how he was trained from childhood to defeat Aku.
- They also serve as a parallel to the Ultra-Robots where they have hearts compared to the Ultra-Robots.
- Fans have commented the similarity between Ashi and Ilana from Genndy's other show Sym-Bionic Titan, especially considering both of these characters are voiced by Tara Strong, though he denied it saying the hairstyle was only borrowed.
- Despite the name, the Daughters of Aku are likely not Aku's biological daughters, but rather a title to signify their purpose and devotion to their mother's cult.
- This is the first time Jack takes a human life since it is confirmed by Genndy, all the bounty hunters Jack fought in the past were heavily injured by his strike but they were not dead.
- The weapon used by them is inconsistent since there is a scene shows two of them carry the same weapon the kanabo while the others scene shows two of them carry the kusagi-gama.
- They are extremely naïve about what goes on in the outside world, as they become curious when they see a doe for the first time. They even mistaken a stag as a minion of Aku due to the fact that the beast possesses a pair of antlers, and believes that the stag will devour the weaker doe. When the pair of deer begin their courting ritual, the girls are overcome with horror and one of them voices in disgust that it is "madness".
- Their training parallels Jack's in that while he traveled the world in preparation for defeating Aku, they instead were kept secluded from the world as a whole, leaving them surprisingly unprepared and uneducated about anything beyond their mission. This opposed to Jack, who studied not only martial arts and tracking and survival techniques, but also history, philosophy, horsemanship, astronomy, and more. This shows that while they may be gifted as warriors, they were vastly incomplete as anything more than living weapons.
- Their trainers are also complete antithesis of Jack's teachers. While Jack's trainers were a variety of cultures all over the world, their own are only limited to the cultists of the Cult of Aku that kept them secluded from the outside world, thus narrowing their views. During his training, Jack had developed a familial bond with his trainers, e.g. the African chief had taken Jack as his own son and one of the members of his tribe. Jack had also socialized with his fellow apprentices and students during his long years of training, while the Daughters of Aku are not allowed to even aid their own siblings and are taught that failures of any levels are not tolerated, and are subjected to physical abuse during their training. Jack's teachers not only trained him physically, but also spiritually and mentally, whereas that the Daughters of Aku know nothing but their purpose as living weapons.