Aku (2001)
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Cartoon Animal |
Outfit: The ever-elastic essence of evil / facial hair ON FIRE / what appear to be either antlers or reverse-gravity dreadlocks / mutton chops / no dental plan
Tagline: "My evil is law!"
Plot summary: Shortly after the creation of the universe, an enormous, evil entity was alliterated & all but obliterated by the Three Deities: the Norse god Odin, the Egyptian god Ra, & the Hindu god Rama. Having won the galactic battle, the Deities left our world, leaving their essence behind in the Triforce. Later they would ask you & your talking hat to help them look for real estate. Wait, wrong subsection.
During the battle with the Three Deities, a small fragment of evil was cut from the entity, & floated through time & space until finally landing on Earth during the Cretaceous period, causing the extinction of the dinosaurs, who didn't see it coming during their rather successful run on TGIF. The evil fragment lived on in the form of a black plague for centuries, until an Emperor from the medieval Orient, attempting to destroy it with a poison arrow, instead caused it to mutate into the humanoid form of Aku. The Emperor was chosen by the Three Deities to wield a magic sword... forged from the essence of good, and... oh, come on. This isn't fair. Even his hands look exactly like the Floor masters from the Wind Waker.
So the samurai used the sword to trap Aku into the earth. Then, after a brief stint as a convenience store clerk in Springfield, Aku eventually returned, only to be confronted again by the magic sword, this time wielded by his former opponent's son, Samurai Jack, whom Aku flung into a rip in the space-time continuum. Thus, Jack was sent to a future in which King Aku ruled, despite getting beaten by Hulk Hogan like 3 times. The samurai would spend the next three seasons seeking a Collosal Connection in time in hopes to return to the past. (more)
User comments: With his fiery facial hair & horn-shaped apparatus of evil bendy flesh atop his head, the design of Aku obviously takes cues from the popular image of Satan. Even his canine teeth are shaped like goat's horns. That being said, if you really wanted to scare me out of committing sin, you'd do better with a shape-shifting ghost thing made out of pitch black floaty something with a flaming goatee & an army of robots than you would with a disgruntled red or puke green centaur with a fucking pitchfork. They should've hired Genndy Tartakovsky to paint that part of the Sistene Chapel. The Pope wouldn't need to prepare a homily. He could just point to that part of the ceiling & say "BE GOOD."
Space, as you've probably heard, is a very cold place. During his travels as a fragment of evil, Aku was enveloped by this cold nothingness until it made him sneeze so much that it was the only sound he remembered when Jack's father asked what his name was. Also before landing on Earth, Aku may have very well been exposed to the same cosmic radiation as Mr. Fantastic, granting him the power to change into anything, much like his younger sister, A Goo, & her pal Gumby.
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