sea bunny

You could just chalk it up to "well, it's an American cartoon, obviously they just changed the pronunciation to something they thought sounds more natural in English"

except, the Japanese dub pronounces Aku's name the same way—and in a single sentence you can contrast that against "aku" pronounced the right way.

遥か遠い昔さる国で､ 我アクは変幻自在の悪の権化、恐怖の大魔王として蘇った

haruka tooi mukashi saru kuni de, ware a-ᵏᵘ wa hengen jizai no ᵃ-ku no gonge, kyoufu no dai maou to shite yomigaetta

Long ago in a faraway land, I, Aku, the shape-shifting embodiment of evil, was resurrected as a terrifying demon king.

So what gives?

Now, "Aku" not spelled 悪 is actually used as a Japanese name. And I was only able to find audio recordings pronouncing the name of one person with the name Aku, Aku Yuu 阿久悠, but it was indeed pronounced a-ᵏᵘ.

(I don't wanna link videos for a Japanese lyricist with only a few hundred views on my nerdy fandom post that has nothing to do with the lyricist himself, so if you really wanna hear how his name is pronounced search 阿久悠 on youtube and click a few shorts and squint your ears to pick his name out from the rest of the speech.)

Spelling variations I've found on more than one site that looks halfway reputable include 阿久 (that one's legit, that's the lyricist's family name), 安久, 渥, 亜久, 吾久 and spellings I've only seen on one site so they're more dubious are 圧, 顎, 安駆, 愛玖, 愛紅—so like, there's a handful of actively used spellings. Doesn't seem to be a super popular name but there are indeed people somewhere out there in Japan who have been named Aku, as a first or last name, with some of the spellings seen above.

So obviously Mr. Shogun-Of-Sorrow Master-Of-Darkness named himself "Evil"; but like, evil-pronounced-like-a-name. Like how Cruella's last name is pronounced de-VIL instead of DE-vil but we know what it is.

Was this the show's artistic intent? I don't know. Am I having fun overanalyzing it anyway? Yes.

Since I'm assuming that in-universe most of the characters are speaking Japanese and we're just magically hearing an English translation, presumably by changing the pronunciation Aku can make it clear when he's talking about himself (like if he says "Aku will reign over this world!" there's a subtle distinction between "I will reign over this world" vs "evil (in general) will reign over this world").

And also, by pronouncing his name Like A Name he's emphasizing that He's A Person, and not just, like, the abstract concept of evil given anthropomorphic form. Like yes sure fine ok he is literally the embodiment of evil, but he's not some kind of walking symbolic metaphor for evilness, he's also a whole-ass guy. Who happens to be made out of evil. Considering that he names himself Aku moments after being born and thanking the emperor for "freeing" him, I imagine that emphasizing the thing that's new and different about him—his personhood—is a high priority.

(It also gives an in-universe explanation for why the emperor pronounces it both ways: he's straddling the line between referring to "this dude named Aku" and "the concept of evil itself." I kinda feel like the emperor isn't fully convinced that Aku's a person, given that he was first acquainted with Aku as a puddle of hungry goo and he has no qualms about telling him he wanted to kill him when Aku's a mere—I counted—one minute and thirty seconds old.

Was this the artistic intent behind that voice acting decision? Probably not. But I like it.)

"Hey why did you go through all this insanely nerdy effort to figure out why Aku's name is pronounced the way it is?" Because I have an even deeper insanely nerdy goal: I want a headcanon for how he spells his name.

In Japanese sources on Samurai Jack, Aku's name is spelled アク. That's "Aku" in katakana, the character set used for things like transcribing foreign loan words and onomatopoeia—so it's suggesting that within the framework of the Japanese dub Aku's name is being treated like a foreign word/name.

However: this sometimes just kind of happens in anime/manga to make characters seem Slightly Not-From-Here And Therefore More Interesting. It sometimes happens if a series has characters with fully & obviously Japanese names but the story's not set in Japan (like, it's an alien planet or something). And in the dub, "Samurai Jack" is spelled サムライジャック (also katakana) even though "samurai" is literally just the word samurai being used with the same definition it has in Japan.

So I'm making the executive decision to discard the katakana spelling アク as simply a stylistic decision for the dub and not an actual literal indication of, like, how Aku would sign his name on an official document.

From here we're drifting from "rigorously-researched reasonable conclusions" and into "rigorously-researched subjective personal taste" so this is like, what I vibe with, you don't have to embrace my kanji choices.

Okay so the first thing to know about Japanese name spellings is that they're sort of vibes-based. There are common spellings for common names, but there are also the "his name is 'rainbow' spelled Reign-Beaux" parents who just pick out a couple kanji they like with the right pronunciation and stick them together. One name pronunciation might have several common spellings, one name spelling might have several common pronunciations, there are some kanji that have a common pronunciation used only in names and the kanji is never pronounced that way when it's not used as a name. Sometimes the kanji used in a name will have a specific meaning, and the pronunciation of that name will have a completely different meaning, because the concepts in the two meanings are tangentially related to each other.

Bottom line is, as long as there's some sort of logic to it—in how the kanji sounds, or a pun on the meaning, or something—you can do just about whatever with the spelling.

Okay so let's look at the word aku. Look at it:

悪

The kanji is made of two other kanji stacked on top of each other:

亜 心

亜 means "second-rate, inferior" and 心 means "mind, heart, spirit." (In the original Chinese character, the 亜 helped indicate how the word is pronounced and the 心 helped indicate the word's subject matter, so don't read too deep into the definition of 亜.) but anyway

it turns out, both 亜 and 心 are used in Japanese names!

When used in names, the character 亜 is usually pronounced "a". Promising!

The character 心 is not pronounced "ku".

However! The combination 亜心 has been used as a name a couple of times—pronounced "Tsugumi" and "Ako." So like, it's a rare but known name spelling. (and "Ako" is so close.)

And, just, straight up inventing pronunciations to go with the kanji you chose is legal with names. Especially if it's punny. I think "stretching one kanji out into its two base kanji to turn it into a name" ought to count as punny, I've seen Japanese puns constructed by squishing separate kanji into one kanji.

And at any rate, I think the guy whose name is literally evil-but-pronounced-wrong is probably enough of a dick to write his name as evil-but-spelled-wrong—literally just, take the character 悪 and stretch it out so it's twice as tall—and go "okay you all just have to remember how to spell my name. Deal with it."

So there's my headcanon. In the hypothetical not-magically-translated version of Samurai Jack that exists in my head, Aku spells his name—lemme see if I can trick tumblr into letting me stack the characters on top of each other without making them separate paragraphs:

亜 心

Close enough!

The overlap between "people who might conceivably someday run into Aku" and "people who don't learn how to spell their dictator's name at like age 5" is probably very very small.

But Jack's probably one of them. He was sent away from his home before Aku would have even had an opportunity to decide how to spell his own name and there weren't exactly a lot of reading materials laying around when he got back 17 years later.

So at some point Jack catches sight of Aku's name written down somewhere and squints at it and goes wait hold on all this time have I been hearing his name wrong. Is it actually A-ko. Isn't Ako a girl's name.

Or else for some reason Aku has to, like, send him a letter or something with no context (extremely important death threats maybe?) and there's no other indication of who it's from except the signature so Jack's staring at it like who the fuck is Tsugumi and why does she hate me.

"Okay now that you've come up with this big elaborate incredibly detailed headcanon for why Aku pronounces his name the way he does and how he spells it, what are you planning to use it for?" Nothing, actually. I just wanted to have a headcanon.

he was back to finding food scraps and stuff until he meets you and you give him food and a place to stay.

and he knows he should resume his search so he does, but he ends up thinking about you too much and always comes back to you for some reason.

you always worry about him, how skinny he looks when he comes knocking on your door and undressing him to give him clean clothes after a warm shower to cleanse the grime.

he uses your soaps and shampoo, smelling like you makes him feel so Strange.

it feels almost domestic when he comes out of the bathroom and finds you fixed him a meal so quickly, bonus points if you're kind of pushy and affectionate, making him sit down and kissing the top of his head when he digs in.

something about the way you treat him and the way he likes your company makes him want to give up looking for the fsm's tomb and just live with you forever.

he lets you take him to your bed day after day, soon enough he chases after you.

he yearns for your touch, your closeness, your scent, your imprint on his heart makes him ache and he doesn't know what to do. every kiss is like a punch to his gut and for some reason he wants more. to feel your skin on his makes him so dizzy he might as well pass out.

he likes being inside you, feeling you pulsate and wriggle against him when he stays still just to savour your warmth, your touch. he never really wants to leave. he gets these sick little thoughts that pass through his mind:

what if i forget the taste of your lips ? i'll never cease to taste them again.

what if i depart and you're not here when i come back in victory ? i'll tear apart all of the sixteen realms just to have you in my arms one more time.

what if you don't want to see me again ? i'll make sure i stay here so long you would never forget my presence.

oh, and the way you sigh his name, it makes him just a little weak. just a little weak for you. the way you say "morro" with the lilt in your voice and your hands scratching his back when he thrusts a little harder, it makes him wish he devoted his life to finding you.

and keeping you.

and cherishing you.