mayax81:

Contestation: I’m not a learned-person in terms of writing analyses and familiarity with terminology.  Additionally, I am *very* late to the Samurai Jack party and admittedly have no idea as to the direction the various (bigger) comic-artists who’ve adopted Aku intend to take him in non-canon.  But, consider: if a character’s core is written immutable (if a hero will always fight for good or a villain will always revert back to their evil ways), then they by default become less versatile than their mutable foil (as was the aim of the show), remaining at the same moral level while only capable of flexibility in superficial aspects.  The rational part of the audience will then be lost to the phenomenon of detachment from that character (assuming attachment is the aim in these fan-based works).  If we make Aku into anything more (sympathetic) than how he was portrayed in the show, while at the same time not allowing room for his character to develop beyond core flaws/traits, then it can be said that there is more entertainment-value than deeper satisfaction to these works (unless tragedy of character-growth is, itself, the direction the artist/writer wishes to take the fan-work).  This is the typical outcome as the audience, although free to develop fondness for the villain’s shallower quirks while still maintaining disunion against their deeper character, core, actions, and beliefs, is not so much encouraged to become attached to the villain in-canon (unless that villain undergoes a redemption arc).  I believe this to be the reason as to why Gatiss and Moffat decided to write Sherlock as a sociopath rather than a full-on psychopath, and why Dexter, for all of its praiseworthy twists and connections, failed to write a textbook psychopath.  Those who sacrifice a positive route for the sake of realism often end up being less-than-realistic.  They don’t realize that those characters which lack a dimension that the rest of us have simply aren’t as interesting to us as other, more full/versatile characters.  

On the contrary, one need not sacrifice deeper character growth for the sake of staying true to the way the writers left him; one need only introduce the concept of mutability and adopt pieces that the show has already given us in-canon (whether they were intended to be used in such a way or not): e.g., the humanoid form, the ‘hocus pocus’ which, unquestionably, *changed* (or allowed for changeability) the character from a mindless, formless destructive force (almost a ‘natural evil’) to a being with will, emotion, and intention (perhaps in more significant ways than were canonically explored), the traditional yin-yang dynamic of darkness and light, and the ability to bond with human DNA.  We also cannot overlook the fact that Jack has started a completely new timeline (likely ours), in which Aku’s evil does not affect the world in the way that it was permitted after Jack was sent into the future.  In retrospect, everything has begun anew, including Aku’s timeline.  If the ultimate consensus tilts toward ‘immutably evil’ (which is supported in-canon), rather than ‘mutably evil,’ then every fan-work adopting that consensus concertedly takes on an entertainment-level value (at least to the audience consuming the work), rather than a mythos-level value, as the former cannot logically coexist with deeper explorations of character.  

In light of this, it is still not necessary to sacrifice realism, to not be true to the character we were left with, or to depart from canon in order to rewrite a villain’s future.  Leaving Aku in the same state as the writers left him might be fun and dandy and perfectly within our freedom as creators of fan-work; hell, even a work that doesn’t develop character past what the writers of any show had already given them can be satisfying (Korasami is canonical but it wasn’t more deeply-explored until fans took it upon themselves to do so; likewise, Aku’s evil might be more deeply-explored while simultaneously maintaining the ‘immutably evil’ element), but it wouldn’t be as interesting as giving him even a *partial* redemption arc, even considering the atrocities he’s capable of committing (which is now only a potentiality rather than concrete history).  One ultimately cannot make a character *more sympathetic* if their baseline is ‘immutably evil;’ they can only give endless examples of sympathetic instances *as the exception to the rule.*  Should we choose to maintain his psychopathy throughout our works, it might be more profitable to focus on richer soil–his acts of evil–providing a proportionate ratio of rule-to-exceptions.  If this remains undecided, and even the fan-artists/writers don’t know where he’ll end up, we might be able to draw out the attachment-entertainment dynamic to a point (though, consider cautiously how rapidly fans have recently turned on the demon butler Sebastian Michaelis in Yana Toboso’s Kuroshitsuji.)  In the end, I don’t get the feeling that fans who choose to turn a villain into an antihero, or even a true hero, in post-canon fan-works to necessarily be writing them out of character, as long as they go about it correctly (saving my own neck with this last line in case I do decide to go off and make my own).  

Discuss. 

I think as long as you know what a character’s motivations are, you can work them toward a plausible redemption arc. It sort of just depends on the character and what that character thinks is most important. For some villains, it’s much more difficult to craft a believable redemption arc, especially characters who are pure chaotic evil and just like to cause chaos for no other reason than to fuck shit up and ‘watch the world burn’. 

Aku, in my opinion, is not chaotic evil. Not purely. He can be pretty chaotic and sadistic but that’s not all there is to him. To me, he’s more neutral evil. He does things specifically to suit himself. He values his own freedom and survival at the expense of all else. He doesn’t like pure chaos. He likes organization. He likes being able to use laws and fear to keep people under control and in line. Yet he is not “lawful” evil because he doesn’t follow any codes and has no honor. 

Neutral evil, as it turns out, is flexible. Characters with this alignment can lean chaotic or lawful depending on what suits them best. They’re adaptable, just like Aku, and what they care about most is themselves, their own comfort and their own happiness. The way I interpret him, Aku cares most about himself and the things that make him happy. His glorious Reign of Evil makes him happy. His supremacy over mortals makes him happy. His ability to be free while everyone else does what he says and leaves him alone makes him happy. 

In canon, it’s pretty clear that losing these things is his greatest fear and he spends the entire show fighting to not lose these things. He wants to protect them and protect himself. Unfortunately for Aku, he can be pretty stupid about how he goes about protecting what’s important to him. (Especially in season 5, we see him being so very, very dumb in the finale. I blame bad/rushed writing for a lot of that.) 

However, it’s easy to see how a character like Aku might fight to protect something he cares about in a scenario where it benefits OTHER people as well, not just himself. As an example, it’s pretty easy for me to imagine Aku destroying a doomsday asteroid on a collision course with Earth and saving the entire planet… not because he wants to save everyone living on it, but because he wants to protect what’s HIS. So he’s capable of doing something good for other people… when it benefits him.

It’s also important to look at what the character WANTS but does not have. Aku has a lot of things in canon. He’s the Ruler of the World and has unmeasured magical power. But what he doesn’t have are love, loyalty and adoration. Believe it or not, the silly episode where Aku tells children stories is actually the episode where you see what Aku really wants most. He wants people to respect and adore him the way they respect and adore Samurai Jack and you can see how upset he gets when he fails to achieve those things.

Here we see how being a monster from outer space might get in the way of achieving some of his goals. He doesn’t seem to GET why people don’t love and adore him. Or if he does understand it, he doesn’t want to change his ways. He sort of figures that, if he’s survived this long doing things the way he’s always done them for eons, why change now? But there’s still that very human part of him that longs to be loved and adored. I guess that’s what happens when a space monster gains human sentience and emotions. It’s a bit of a conflict. 

But I think that conflict could lead to a path of redemption if you get creative with it. Aku in canon was never given much opportunity to show what he was capable of becoming. It was Ashi who showed us what Aku was capable of being, since she was half Aku and could learn to be good despite growing up under the impression that she could only be evil. That right there shows us that whatever Aku is made of, it is NOT pure evil.