Milky Way

jack and the cherry tree

scanned paper art

Unspeakable Evil Overall time: 14hr A redraw of two of my old art pieces!

Dec 17th 2023

All who attended the wedding of the Crown Prince and the Great Aku agreed it was a strange and unsettling affair. Why the former Master of Masters had chosen to array himself as a bride was anyone's guess.

Does she wish Jack was in his place?

And, yeah, Jack doesn't care about who's dancing.

The Doylist explanation:

This episode aired in 2001, when cartoons assumed everyone was straight, and the show sure wasn't attempting to break any new ground there.

So I think the artistic intent was to foreshadow that Ikra was Aku. Because Aku is a guy and so he'd be happy to see a female dancer and he'd dislike seeing a male dancer. Because all guys like girls, obviously.

Now, this would be dumb as hell for a multitude of reasons. It'd be the only time in the entire show Aku shows an "interest" in a woman or repulsion at a man rather than being indifferent; and "OBVIOUSLY a guy would hate watching a guy dance!" is undermined by the fact that they didn't make Jack care about it.

Nevertheless, even though it's dumb, I think it's most likely what they were actually trying to do.

The Watsonian explanation:

to hell with canon and its weird assumptions, in my heart aku is gay af.

My headcanon is that Jack was fine with both performances because he was just like "oh this lady is a lovely and attractive dancer and this man is talented too, what a nice show." Being normal about it.

But meanwhile Ikra was like "the girl's a good dancer, who's next—? OHHH NO HE'S HOT and he's shirtless and it looks like his biceps are about to snap through those armbands nope nope nope nope I'm here on a mission i CANNOT get distracted do NOT look at the beefcake with the ruby belly button piercing stay focused on jack FOCUS ON JACK do NOT get distracted—oh fuck i can see straight through his pants. i can see everything. I'm making direct eye contact with his dong. STOP LOOKING AT IT. oh thank goodness he turned away—OH no now i can see his buttocks that's not better. im in SO much trouble. this is torture. if we don't get out of here ASAP I'm going to do something incredibly undignified. just focus on your drink, aku. i've never been so thirsty in my life."

Oh, yeah, I’d forgotten about the times when all this was created.

Still, I’m more drawn to the Watsonian explanation.

“Fireflies”

An 18+ Samurai Jack/Aku comic 💚🖤