Samurai Jack VS Strategy Guide

Continuing my trend of covering Cartoon Network series that Death Battle beat me too, it's time we dive straight in and cover the epic, classic western animated action series, Samurai Jack! This series is iconic and critically praised, often considered Genndy Tartakovsky’s masterpiece thanks to its unbelievable action scenes, deep and rich symbolic writing and so much style it's often hard to put into words. I went through all Samurai Jack Material for this blog, not only including the 5 seasons of the show, but the canonical Battle Through Time game, all the DC and IDW comics, and the various official Cartoon Network Crossovers like Super Secret Crisis War, so strap in as we examine just how legendary these warriors really are.

Town Tier:

This is the tier for the lesser fighters in Samurai Jack, including any Allies of Jack that are clearly weaker than him and not capable of fighting the threats he can, as well as any antagonists that Jack can more or less blitz & oneshot. Characters in this tier generally get feats in the hundreds to thousands of tons of TNT, coming from multiple feats such as a random servant Robot tanking a 159 Ton of TNT ship crash with absolutely no damage at all, a bunch of fodder Aku Wasp robots which were able to fire a low megaton level blast by combining the power of several dozens of themselves, and most notably the Triseraquins, a Race of underwater seamonkey people, who were collectively able to survive a shockwave attack from Aku, which went on to destroy their city behind them, which would give all of them mid Kiloton level durability via their own surface area that was affected by this attack. Speedwise there are numerous impressive showings including many feats of casual bullet timing and throwing rocks at Hypersonic Speed, such to cause them to catch on fire midair. However Da’ Samurai, a weak, overweight and generally unimpressive self taught Samurai Wannabe, was able to move from well offscreen into a doorway in the span of a lightning flash, a legitimately Massively Hypersonic speed feat that should scale to everyone and their mother. So Town Level and MHS will be the limit for counters here. Samurai Jack is a vast and interesting world, taking place primarily in a dystopian future where Aku, an ancient Shapeshifting Demon, went unchallenged by any heroes, conquered the world and has been in the process of subjugating the galaxy with his evil tyrannical empire. You can find anything in this verse from ancient warriors, to star wars style aliens and bounty hunters, to advanced science fiction robots, to mythical fantasy creatures and everything in between, so naturally, there's a lot to cover.

This tier includes The Astronauts from the 5th episode, genius scientists who Aku forced to design his various robot drones for him. These people were Intelligent enough to not only secretly build a Faster than Light space vessel to escape from Aku, but could casually figure out how to send Jack back to his proper time with the physics of their launch giving them Clearly Type 3 intelligence on the Kardashev scale. On a Similar note the ‘Short Mischievous Scientist’ is a Chemistry genius who can affect people's very molecules if they drink his potions. As a matter of fact, Matter manipulation is a fairly common Hax in this tier, also possessed by the Cranky Wizard who will instantly turn anyone who so much as looks at him the wrong way into a Chicken, and most notably the Leprechauns, Fey creatures who have the ability to teleport themselves and others great distances, make Celtic music play nonstop inside your mind, and have the ability to transform one into a different Gender. While on the subject of the Fey Folk, Fairies are fairly versatile creatures which are incredibly hard to catch, not only having flight and teleportation, but also the ability to enter into the Metafictional Plane such as when one of them appeared over the ending stinger image. Additionally they are capable of granting any wish, including ones pertaining to Spacetime manipulation, but can only do so once in their life. There are Ghost Demons Aku can summon which are both intangible and were able to possess a group of children to attack Jack. Heck, there is even a Ghost of The Talking Dog from PPG in here, who not only has flight and intangibility, but was able to Mind Control other talking Dogs to attack. Grace is the spirit of the Cave of Stone, she commands an army of Stone warriors that are somewhat relevant to Jack to fight for her, all while posing as an innocent victim of them. Any who retreat from her Cave themselves without saving her too will be turned to stone and join her ranks as punishment for their cowardice. Another Nature Spirit to deal with is Spring, who can control and manipulate thorny vines as well as create large illusions that lull people into a strong relaxation until they succumb to it, staying with her forever. There's also a few dangerous species wielding psychic powers, including The Evil Mermaids who can breathe on land and in water, temporarily grant this ability to others through their kiss, and control people and sea creatures with their voice, Wooley’s, large mammoth like creatures who can have powers including telepathy, communication in dreams, future site and clairvoyance, and most notably The Black Goats, a Race of mysterious creatures that wield powerful Telekinesis and Telepathy. They were able to harm Jack, trying to convince him their town was haunted, but they ultimately admitted he was too strong for them. Lastly the possibly strongest characters here are The Five Bounty Hunters. A group of the deadliest Bounty Hunters in their regions who were sent to Kill Jack, 2 of them have a psychic connection to each other, and all are highly skilled warriors specializing in specific weapons including highly toxic darts, Chain hooks, Bombs, throwing knives and maces.

So what are the general weaknesses and counter strategies of this tier? The thing to understand about the characters here is that they were all not able to fight Jack directly and thus relied on more Hax/Indirect tricks to give him trouble, these primarily included having bodies that could not be physically interacted with, and attacking using Matter or Mind affecting hax. Naturally it would be helpful to have resistance to these abilities or to circumvent them by potentially not having a body or mind to effect, but these aren’t a requirement either, Jack certainly didn’t have them. One very common thing used by all these characters to better their own odds is them abusing Stealth, hiding in illusions, using distance attacks from far away, and just not giving away their position to avoid fighting Jack directly to allow their potent abilities to do the job for them. So a character who has potent Super Senses to detect them to go take them out would be really helpful, particularly if they have abilities like Mind Reading or Clairvoyance to not only give them their positions, but also their intention and a rundown on the dangers they possess. Information is a warrior's deepest ally. On the flip side of this, the Anti-Stealth abilities found in this tier are fairly lacking, which means it's entirely possible for a character who excels in stealth to take them out before they can use their powers or skills. Your character WOULD still need to have the ability to hit at least the astral plane, to deal with the Ghost’s passive intangibility, but other than that, it's a fair strategy. With that in mind my first counter is

Old Queeks:

Queeks from Cartoon Network’s Mike, Lu & Og series would scale to the multiple feats of the the title characters giant Kiloton level explosions that eclipse the Island’s Volcano in size, as well as Mike being able to legitimately out run a bolt of lightning from the sky that was actually chasing her. This would put him pretty well on par with the various characters in this tier physically. Queeks is a cranky old Witch-Doctor who specializes in his precognitive abilities that alerts him to coming dangers and omens, allowing him to largely see any threat in this tier coming ahead of time and prepare countermeasures. Queeks is wise and intelligent and has a wide variety of magical powers to use including weather control that can summon giant thunderstorms, lightning strikes and even volcanic eruptions. This can allow him to attack characters from great distances away while they would be unaware of who is causing this and how. Even if they do locate Queeks, he also has the ability to teleport himself across the Island of Albonquitine which is enough distance to get himself back out of these characters' sensory range. Another problem to deal with when facing Queeks is he has the ability to curse beings to suffer from Extreme Bad Luck, which would make their attempts to attack him or avoid his attacks on them almost certain to fail. Also Queeks has access to one of the most broken abilities in this tier, Hypnosis, as shown he can effectively mind control people to believe whatever he wants them to if he gets the drop on them, which should be a one shot against any character in this tier, as they lack any notable feats of resistance to mind manipulation. As a final Note, while Queeks himself isn’t capable of directly harming Ghosts himself, he CAN summon a group of the Ghosts of his own ancestors to fight for him, these ghosts possess invisibility, intangibility and flight and should be able to defeat characters like Grace and The Talking Dog ghost with ease as they are not traditionally skilled combatants.

With that said, Queeks would not be fully invincible here, and Could be defeated if one of the Bounty Hunters got him into melee, or taken out by abilities like Spring’s Illusions, The Black Goats Crushing his Organs, or The Cranky Wizard turning him into a Chicken, among others. While these aren’t that likely to occur, a safer choice would be.

Gentleman Ghost:

You could use Jim Craddock, the Gentleman Ghost from the Batman: The Brave and The Bold Cartoon series. Craddock is in general strong and fast enough to endure hits from, keep up with and even defeat and knock out this series’ Batman in melee combat. And seeing how this version of Batman can dodge Lightning strikes, survive the shockwaves of city busting explosions and punch out guys who can tank City Block sized blasts, yeah he’d scale to that. Gentleman Jim was once a notorious thief from Victorian London who made a deal with the Demon Asteroth to gain immortality, but little did he know that it wasn’t quite what he was hoping for. After being sentenced to the Gallows for his crimes, Craddock rose from the dead as a Specter whose soul could never pass on from the Earth, and has been terrorizing the world ever since as the Gentleman Ghost. As a Ghost, Craddock has a lotta useful abilities including the ability to turn intangible which would prevent characters like the Bounty Hunters from harming him, and naturally allows him to hit and interact with other spirits like Deadman so he’d have no trouble taking on beings like the Dog Ghost or Spring. Especially because Gentleman Ghost is significantly more skilled than the characters in this tier due to regularly holding his own against skilled heroes like Batman and Green Arrow. Gentleman Ghost can fly and create dimensional portals to aid in getting out of jams if he needs to, and since he's not made of Matter so to speak, he should be able to circumvent being transmutated by The Leprechauns or Cranky Wizard. Also Gentleman Ghost is a practitioner of Black Magic and knows a variety of spells that he has used in combat, including Phytomancy and Fire Attacks, both of which would be very useful to have in a fight against Spring, and even more dangerous, Transmutation spells which could in theory defeat anyone in this tier he lands them on.

With that said, as dangerous a foe as Craddock would be here, it is still not impossible that they could defeat him, as he has not shown particular resistance to Mind Manipulation, leaving him potentially vulnerable to The Mermaid’s voice or Springs Illusions if he’s not careful. Also he would have no means of attacking a Fairy who decides to hide in Metaspace, so much like Queeks relies on taking them by surprise to win. So for the ultimate counter…

Darklove:

You Could use Darklove from Marvel Comics. Darklove is a Ghost Rider Villain, and while he doesn’t at all physically scale to Ghost Rider, he was able to overpower Luke Cage, a street tier hero who regularly tanks Kiloton Level Atomic bombs and, while not a crazy speedster for his tier, can still easily dodge lightning and perform highly MHS feats. Darklove is the Demon of Heartbreak originating from the Hell Capital of Pandemonium before being sealed inside the Darkhold by Mephisto and eventually freed on Earth. Darklove is first and foremost, a ghost-like entity who possesses eternal life and the ability to levitate and phase through objects, giving him access to all the same defenses that Gentleman Ghost had. Because of this he has a great deal of battle knowledge and experience and was able to tango with beings far above his physical paygrade through his own clever tactics and strategies which would more than aid him in dealing with all the threats of this tier. Darklove is a Telepath and has the passive ability to Read and Telepathically communicate with Minds, which allows him to quickly learn Everything about the people around him from their history to their powers to their insecurities and attack them at far distances. He would easily see any potential threat or attack this tier could throw at him coming, and would scale to the mental resistances of similarly powerful Marvel Telepaths which would be more than enough to see through things like Spring’s Illusions or shrug off the Mermaid’s attempts at Mind Control. For direct attacks, Darklove has access to the Hellfire ability, able to fire it off as Hellfire arrows for projectile attacks. Hellfire is a specific ability commonly used by Demons and Spirits of Vengeance in Marvel, supernatural flames that exist on the Physical, Astral and Mental planes simultaneously and are capable of incinerating beings in body, mind and soul. Hellfire can phase through any form of armor, nullifies and destroys any Magic it comes into contact with, and can induce Spiritual Corruption in those it hits. In layman's terms, this would instantly kill anyone it hits, even the ghosts, and potentially even destroy the magic of a Fairy’s Wish if they manage to get that off. The only effective defense against Hellfire in this tier is the Fairies ability to hide within the Metafictional Plane, but thankfully for Darklove, Hellfire isn’t even his primary offense. Darkloves Main Power is Possession, or the ability to override a person's presence within their body with his own, and commonly uses this to force romantic couples to kill each other over their relationship troubles. Darklove can remotely possess others from entire cities away and do so to multiple people at once and even deceased people or skeletons. Those possessed by Darklove become highly amped in strength, and when they die, Darklove absorbs their souls and uses it to increase his own psychic powers. After going on a short killing spree, his Psychic power already rose to the point he would have been able to Possess every single man, woman and child in the entirety of NYC at once. This makes Darklove an existential threat to the planet as the rate at which his power increases from his own carnage would eventually just let him possess everyone in the tier at once before they even know there's a threat or could even try to use their defenses. So yeah, he's virtually unstoppable.

Island Tier:

This is the primary Tier in this verse, home to the most powerful warriors of Earth and beyond. This is the tier of Samurai Jack himself as well as his comparable allies and various deadly side villains that put him through the ringer in his quest against Aku. Characters in this tier are able to move at the speed of light, scaling off of Jack who has numerous feats of dodging and deflecting Lasers from characters like Mandark’s Robots which we know for a fact are Lightspeed, and was famously able to jump out of the way of a Beam of literal sunlight at 70% the speed of light, and he did this pretty casually while weighed down by a giant metal gauntlet the size of his body, so He should at least be physically able to move at the speed of light proper normally. Reaction speed wise, it's a bit of a different story, Jack is able to react to and score hits on Aku himself, a being who can travel to distant planets in seconds at MFTL Speeds which would suggest even characters who can move as fast as SJ Warriors would appear to be moving in slow motion to them. In terms of Raw Power and Durability, Jack survived Crashing into the Earth from Orbit at 37,000 MPH, impacting with 19 Megatons of force and yet was perfectly undamaged, and more impressively the sheer Kinetic Energy of the aforementioned Sunlight Jump with the Gauntlet feat, would equate to a force of 669 Megatons, and yet Jack withstood this without it being treated remotely like it was damaging at all, suggesting he's actually several times stronger and more durable than this, into the low Gigatons. So characters who are Island Level and around the Speed of Light will be on the table for counters.

So to kick things off, let’s start with the main man himself, the mysterious Samurai Warrior known only by the given name Jack. Once an honorable Warrior Prince from Feudal Japan, Jack traversed the World and Trained for decades in every form of combat imaginable for the specific purpose of slaying Aku and purging the world of his evil and corruption. And he almost did so before Aku banished him to the distant future he controls, causing Jack to go on an epic Quest to return from where he came and finish the job, saving this future, back in his Past. Jack is one of the most Highly Skilled characters I have ever seen, in fact despite his impressive stats, they aren’t exactly uncommon in his world and he frequently has to battle his way through characters as much or more powerful then himself, but still seems untouchable sheerly on Skill. How skilled IS Samurai Jack? Well let me super thoroughly tell you! Jack has been trained since childhood in all manners of combat all over the world, learning expert Equestrianship from Arab Tribesmen, Staff Fighting from Zande African Tribesman, Hand to Hand combat from Romans, Archery from the actual Robin Hood, Sailing from Vikings, Axe Throwing from Russians, Spear throwing from Mongols, as well as all the teachings of the Bushido Samurai Code, and heck Later he even trained with Spartans just to be extra. Jack also trained with a band of Shaolin Monks where he mastered dozens of different styles of Kung Fu and other Monks are so skilled they can even achieve supernatural feats through sheer skill, like Levitating or telekinetically moving objects with Ki and yet Jack was able to hold his own against two master monks at once in unarmed combat. Jack Regularly defeats huge swarms of enemies and even entire armies by himself, such as when he was able to literally defeat an entire Army of Aku’s assassin Robots all at once using nothing but a Bamboo stick, or Bested Zeedun’s 5 best gladiators in a 5 on one fight, Won a 6 on one fight against Gladiators from the Dome of Doom, defeated 6 of the most powerful bounty hunters in the world in a coordinated attack all before a drop of water hit the ground, defeated the Ultra Robots in an 8 on One Fight, Held his own in a 4 on 1 battle against the fallen four, who previously managed to defeat an army of 400 of Aku’s Robot drones in the distant past, Fought off a massive horde of Zombies and Aku, Won a 6 v 1 fight against the daughters of Aku, successfully defending against strikes from 3-4 of them at once, or when he was able to defeat the Crystal Cave Mirror Monsters, which literally were 6 monstrous copies of himself at once. According to Aku, No fighting style can defeat his, and according to Demongo, he’s the greatest of all warriors, as he proved when he was able to go head to head against Demongo’s army of great warriors, taking on whole large squads of them at once and defending against more than 9 weapons coming at him all at once with his sword.

Jack can deflect point blank automatic machine gun fire back to sender, easily catch arrows in his hand and has been trained to use all of his senses to fight and can rely on the other 4 if any of them are taken. He was able to defeat the three blind archers by blindfolding himself and using hearing to dodge all of their arrows. His Warrior Senses let him see the Invisible magic connection between Diz and Dat with focus. Jack is Highly trained in the art of Stealth, knowing the Ninjitsu art of hiding in the shadows and easily snuck through Aku’s highly advanced security system using this. He also knows some super cool Reverse Ninjitsu Art that allows him to completely hide his body in light and utilize things like the glare of his sword. Jack was able to out stealth Shinobi and later the Sisters of Aku, moving completely silently and being effectively invisible while in light. Jack can punch someone in such a way as to instantly snap their neck, knows a specific pinch that will instantly render someone unconscious, and can perform The Horse Cut Technique, a specific sword strike that breaks any opponent's sword upon them blocking. He also has Directly defeated the monumentally stronger and more versatile Aku on 5 separate occasions, meaning would have killed him if not for some trick or outside help interfering, and eventually killed him for real. Heck, he even Managed to steal the Jewel of Neptune from Earth, Wind and Fire, something even Aku himself was unable to do after numerous attempts. So yeah, that's how Skilled Jack is.

Jack is also a carefully taught warrior who has Studied with the scholars of Ancient Egypt, he knows numerous languages, can solve complex riddles nearly instantly and is knowledgeable in navigation through astronomy, lock picking and Survival training. Jack’s stamina is so impressive he was able to fight the Scotsman for more than 30 hours straight and then team up with him against an army of bounty hunters completely fine. And then we get into his abilities which yes, he has. Jack is able to Tunnel underground at speeds similar to his own running speed, he seems to be able to communicate with animals and can convince them to give him rides when convenient, and he mastered the ‘Jump Good’ technique, allowing him to Jump kilometers with casual leaps and land from similar heights unaffected. Jack can physically interact with the Astral Plane, able to grab one of the intangible souls that was being called back to Demongo, Use his emotional resistance training, to do things like Purge himself of his Hatred of Aku so thoroughly, the illusionary Mad Jack Aku spawned from his hatred disappeared, and as a side effect of being displaced in time, Jack cannot Age, stating Time has lost its effect on him, he quested to get back to the past for 50 years but remained young. He’s also got numerous handy resistances built in such as resisting Aku consuming all his Memories, which then beat Aku’s Ass inside Jack’s mind, he was able to shrug off the Toxin of the Imakandi knockout darts that can instantly knock out large game, he resisted having his Soul consumed by the Shadow Beast, as his supernatural willpower allowed his soul to fight back against and slay the creature, he persisted against The Corruption of Aku and used his goodness and purity to purge it from himself, and also was able to shrug off the Mental Manipulation of the Mermaid’s voices which can mind control people. But what would a Samurai Be without His Sword? Jack’s Magical Katana was forged by the very Gods themselves to allow mankind a means in which to rid itself of evil. Made not of metal but of a piece of the universe itself containing the holy goodness of humanity, it is indestructible towards and capable of slicing through Anything in the Samurai Jack Universe, and is the only Earthly weapon capable of harming Aku, able to negate his regeneration. Jack’s Sword can reflect lasers and Energy Beams, can hit and slice invisible and intangible objects, can magically discern the morality of the foe Jack faces, and can also Seal away beings in the earth itself, it sealed Aku off for 10 years when Jack’s father defeated him. Jack’s sword has enough cutting power to allow Jack to chop right through Robot Mecha’s made by Mandark which have Planetary level Durability, and in the event that Jack encounters a material even he cannot slice through with his Sword, like Adamantium where he needed an enhanced bionic arm to cut through them with his sword, He CAN summon forth the power of his ancestors to enchant his sword and achieve a similar effect on his own. The Sword is also unable to be used to harm others by those not of good intention. Aku was unable to use the sword to harm Jack at all as the Sword cannot be used by Evil, which is convenient for Jack as the sword is even capable of killing evil supernatural entities that aren’t solid matter. This includes evil liquids like the cursed well, or the fuel like essence of Aku, evil gases like the miasma from the Dragon, and the astral plane fires that Bound the captured souls to Demongo, and later the astral plane bindings of the intangible shadow beast as well said ghostly creature itself.

Okay so, that's enough about Jack because we have a lot more warriors to comb through here, but thankfully they will all be a lot easier now that Jack has been laid out. The Scotsman as I already mentioned possesses the Skill and Stamina to fight Jack to a standstill for 30 hours, and comes with a smorgasbord of weapons including a Machine Gun Leg, Bullet Proof Shield, Hand Grenades that make large building sized blasts, and a Great Sword protected by Magic Runes which make it unbreakable even to Jack’s own sword. The Scotsman was able to resist Mind Control that even Jack could not, and is enchanted by Celtic Magic that makes it so if he dies he will immediately come back as a warrior ghost with intangibility, flight, the ability to make solid constructs, and use a sonic bagpipe area of effect attack. Speaking of warrior ghosts, Gloer The Great is a Roman ghost with natural intangibility who can still make himself solid enough to contend with Jack. The Shinigami Bears are a group of bears which hunt the Dead and bring them to the afterlife, have powerful blasters and can apparently hit ghosts. The Most dangerous Ghost in the series however, is The Shadow Beast, an incorporeal shadow monster who haunts locations and consumes the souls of its victims, trapping their bodies in another dimension. It can manipulate space itself to trap foes, cast powerful illusions and visions, levitate, drain away someone’s energy to cause drowsiness and fatigue, and has a variety of powers to attack with such as Telekinesis, controlling Evil Black Vines, and creating spiritual plane weapons and projectiles to attack with.

With the Ghosts outta the way lets take a step back and talk about other Allies Jack has made over his journey who are able to fight side by side with him in combat. There's a group of futuristic Spartans who fight with incredible skill and might, and wield classical Greek Weapons that have been upgraded with technology such as Spears that can fire their tips as Javelin Missiles and Shields that can turn into Buzzsaws. Next there's the Shaolin Monks, who possess skill relevant to Jacks and can use their Chi for abilities including Telekinesis, Levitation, Masking their presence from even Aku’s foresight, and increasing their lifespan to live literal Eons. Monkey Man, and his tribe of Apes, are the original inventors of the ‘Jump Good’ technique and the ones that taught it to Jack. They are incredibly nimble, can jump kilometers, are skilled at fighting from the canopy, and were trained in Staff Fighting by Jack himself to pay them back for the lessons they gave him. Moving onto individual allies we have the international burglar known simply as The Thief. Thief is a stealthy, gadget based combatant whose arsenal includes Teleportation tech to get outta jams, a Grappling Hook/Zipline combo and collapsable Hang Glider backpack to increase his mobility, and a wide variety of projectiles he can fire including Knockout Darts, EMP Darts, Gas Grenades, Flashbang Grenades, Explosive Bolas and Tracking Devices. Although his best toy is definitely his trusty Briefcase, which can be used as a Bulletproof shield and transform itself into several kinds of useful gadgets like a Super fast electric scooter, a machine gun and a powerful laser cannon. Last and certainly not least, we have Jack’s greatest ally and eventual Wife, Ashi. Born from an Aku worshiping Cult leader impregnating herself with Aku’s Essence, Ashi is a Daughter of Aku, trained since birth alongside her sisters for the specific purpose to Murder Jack to protect the Demon Lord. But after seeing the truth of Aku’s tyranny and corruption, she joined Jack on his mission to defeat him, with the two eventually falling in love. Ashi is Incredibly Skilled, with her and her sisters coming closer than any others to killing Jack, giving her at least 1/7th the full skill of Jack himself. While she was not able to defeat Jack in a fight, Ashi did beat an entire army of Heavily armed orc monsters to death with her bare hands and even defeated and killed her own mother to protect Jack. She is trained in a wide variety of fields to a similar degree as Jack, has an extremely high Pain Tolerance and mastery over Stealth, and wields a Kusarigama which she can do some pretty crazy things with. But even crazier than that is after being briefly controlled by Aku and freed by Jack, a discovery came to light. As a Daughter of Aku, Ashi inherited Aku’s Powers to use for herself. While obviously we have not seen Ashi display every ability Aku has, she has used a lotta his more iconic ones including Shapeshifting her Limbs into weapons, manipulating fire, shooting lasers out of her eyes and MOST notably, the ability to create Portals in Time, which she promptly used to finally send Jack back to the Past where he defeated Aku once and for all. So with the allies outta the way, the only thing left to do is talk about the Enemies, of which there are a LOT and I have, for the sake of organization, broken it down into four categories. First up we have episodic villains who fought Jack but had nothing to do with Aku, they were independent from his evil. There are four antagonists in this category, the first of which are the Gladiators from the Dome of Doom, a group of Nine different prize fighters who  can fight and score hits on Jack that draw Blood. They are a diverse group that wield a variety of abilities and weapons including claws, flight, laser projectiles and missiles. Above them we would have The Guardian of the Time Door, who is less of a nemesis of Jack and more of an obstacle he would need to overcome. The Guardian is a super strong warrior who can pull out weapons from seemingly nowhere including a Katana, Sais and multiple Guns and Missile Launchers. The first time they fought, The Guardian definitively beat Jack, with Jack commenting he has never faced a foe of such strength and skill. After that we have The Sirens, a group of three aquatic nymphs who can Mind Control any Men who hear them sing and force them to do their bidding. They are similar to the Mermaids from the last tier, but turned up to 11 as they can control an entire army of men at once, use an even more powerful song that literally wipes out someone's entire memory from their mind, and can even control Jack himself. The Sirens can also fuse into a much more powerful three headed sea monster form that could easily take on the Scotsman in a direct fight. But easily the MOST deadly of these one off antagonists is Lazarus-92. One of the most dangerous entities in the entire galaxy, Lazarus-92 is a Hive-Minded massive colony of individual leech-like organisms that form together and share a single consciousness. Whether merged into their collective form or travelling independently, the leeches' colonial mind allows them to act in unison to ambush prey from multiple angles. Each leech has a potent and fast acting Venomous Bite that will spread through the body and kill someone in minutes, making contact with any of the leeches a massive risk. But Lazarus-92’s most notable trait is its Regeneration. It could regenerate any part of its body Jack cut off and can fire pieces of itself as projectiles. This is because its component organisms can reproduce extremely rapidly, allowing the colony to rapidly replace lost members or even duplicate into clone colonies to surround their opponent unless all of them are destroyed simultaneously. Its only weakness is powerful electrical discharge, as it would have successfully defeated Jack AND Ashi if not for the use of an electric device designed specifically to kill it.

Secondly we have villains who have been Blackmailed, Tricked or Hired by Aku to go out and Kill Jack for him. There are 5 to talk about in this category and easily the most tragic of which is X49, a highly deadly Robot Private Eye who was living peacefully with his puppy, which Aku kidnapped and told him he could only have back if he killed Jack, he wields two pistols that have an absurd amount of ammo each, and is a deadeye shot. Then there's Princess Mira, who went after Jack as a means to liberate her people from Aku’s tyranny. She is highly trained with swords and daggers and although was no match for Jack, she did manage to beat the 5 Bounty Hunters from the last tier by herself and endured some hits from Jack in their battle, being the only one who survived. Clearly above the both of them we have the Actual most skilled Bounty Hunters in the show, Ezekiel & Josephine Clench. These Wild West Outlaws were able to go toe to toe with Jack in a prolonged bout. Ezekiel wields Metal Gauntlets that can swap between multiple weapons, including wrist mounted daggers for Melee combat, shooting machine gun bullets, firing Bolas to ensnare foes and have the ability to electrify foes on contact. Meanwhile the southern belle vixen Josephine has a trick umbrella equipped with hidden blades that can be produced from the tip and sides, and also fire its handle out as a grappling hook. She also has two revolvers under her dress she can use for distance combat. But they didn’t give Jack nearly as much trouble as The Imakandi, an Alien species of humanoid lion creatures that happen to be the greatest hunters in the Known Universe. Aku offered to pay them handsomely for hunting the samurai, but they cared only for the opportunity to hunt the ultimate quarry. Imakandi have incredible Strength, Speed, Stamina, Agility, Swimming, Stealth, Balance and highly potent senses, enough to track Jack across a city through scent, hear differences in cadence, and Keen eyesight that lets them see footprint trails from the past. They wield a variety of weapons including electric spears, Lassos, knock out darts, and Arrows which can turn into snakes that can paralyze you for a short time with their venom. And they also possess ritual-like spells, including one that enables them to teleport and warp interplanetary distances at MFTL speeds, or another that can contact others through special fires they leave. Though the most dangerous foes in This section are definitely The Minions of Set. Being the literal Hit squad of the Egyptian God of Death & Chaos, these three monsters were sealed away centuries ago, but were set free by Aku in exchange for them destroying the Samurai. They possess keen super senses that let them track Jack through a temple using hearing and scent, can regenerate from seemingly any normal injury including instantly healing from Jack bisecting them, and wield magically enchanted weapons that let them block and stand up to attacks from Jack’s sword. Jack referred to them as the most powerful creatures he had ever faced, and they beat the absolute crap out of him instantly, with Jack only managing to defeat them by surviving long enough to summon Ra to destroy them.

Okay so third we are gonna go into beings who were Cursed by Aku, becoming monsters that Jack had to put down. This includes The Three Blind Archers, humans who were cursed to turn into blind bowmen with both insane echolocation abilities and a seemingly infinite amount of arrows. They have easily decimated entire armies in seconds using their unbelievable archery. Then there's The Lava Monster, who is an Eons old warrior who Aku sealed in the Earth unable to die. Through sheer willpower, learned how to control Lava and Earth, eventually making a body made from Lava & Rock, and used Geokinesis to turn his mountain into a trap filled dungeon only the greatest of warriors could survive. He can also forge weapons from his body and use other magic powers including telepathically communicating with any who enter his valley, shooting magical lightning blasts and lasers from his eyes.

And with all that said, we move on to our final villain group, Aku’s Forces. The foes Jack faced who actually are directly working for Aku and want him to win. And as you might imagine this includes a great deal of Robots, like seriously there are SO Many Robots in this series, infact even a lotta beings who super don’t seem like they are robots, turn out to BE Robots once Jack slices them, as if someone was trying to dance around a Rating system or something. Well with that said Aku’s basic robot drones tend to be large beetle-like bots the size of a car, which have bladed limbs and can pull out a variety of distance weapons including Lasers, Missiles, freaking Flamethrowers and a seemingly endless supply of Bullets. Although Jack often fights whole squads of these things no problem, it has been shown multiple times that if these things connected an attack they would kill Jack, and it's sheerly his skill that enables him to do this.

Aku also has a wide variety of specialized robots with unique abilities and traits, such as Ground Robots, tunneling, octopus-like bots with electric tentacles, which have an interesting power that makes it so all the Cracks in the ground stemming from the hole they emerged from, rapidly drain the energy from foes who stand on them. There is also Shinobi, an extremely deadly Robot-Assassin armed with a Sword, who can keep up with Jack in melee combat and was designed to be the ultimate master of Stealth. Shinobi is able to use the Dark to totally hide his presence, being effectively invisible while hidden in darkness, and can move so silently even Jack has a hard time detecting he’s approaching until he's right on top of him. But perhaps the Deadliest machines in Aku’s court are none other than The Ultra Robots. Powered by Aku’s Magic and equipped with enhanced senses such as Heat Seeking and Night Vision, The Ultra Robots are Skilled enough to fight Jack head on, and demolish entire cities with their attacks. Each of the Eight bots have different weapons to use. One shoots their clawed hands out as grappling hooks, One has Buzzsaw hands, One has Machine Gun arms, One can fire an endless barrage of shurikens, One shoots out long streamer like ropes that violently explode upon landing, One has a super sharp and deadly samurai sword, One has flamethrowers and can even generate a large fire attack off his whole body that can instantly disintegrate metal, and the last one can turn completely invisible. But the thing that makes the Ultra Robots so deadly is they are all Constructed of Adamantium, the strongest Metal of the Samurai Jack universe, and something Jack was not able to damage with his sword. Now don’t get me wrong, Jack’s sword CAN Cut through them, but Jack lacked the strength to swing it hard enough to do so, requiring power bolstering tech or a spiritual amp to pull this off. Considering Jack did NOT Need Such an amp to cut through Mandark’s Robots which have planetary level durability in SSCW, this means the Ultra Robots have to be more durable than that. And the scary thing is, The Ultra Robots can even destroy each other with their weapons, meaning their attack potency can get to similar levels of craziness. Apart from Robots, Aku also uses Undead hordes of terrifying Zombies to fight for him, which while strong and deadly, can be defeated by single swings of Jack’s sword. Aku’s most notable Zombie minion however is definitely The Hag Witch, who can Fly, Teleport, Possess objects including Jack’s Sword, and claims to be able to ‘Devour Souls’. Finally there are Three Generals Aku has leading his forces and taking care of problems for him, the first of which, and the final robot we're going to talk about, is Scaramouche. Being your classic mass murdering robot hitman with a Musical theme, Scaramouche has a magically enchanted voice that allows him to telekinetically control nearby objects by Scatting, including anything from a large amount of nearby Rocks, to more specifically his large and heavy Scimitar sword, which allows him to fight from two angles at once. Scaramouche’s other weapons include his Magic Flute, which allows him to make and control Giant living golems from surrounding objects which will both fight and regenerate from injuries so long as he’s playing, and his trusty Tuning Knife, a special blade that channels intense vibrations through whatever it makes contact with, causing said thing to violently explode 3 seconds after a clash. While we are on the subject of music, another of Aku’s generals is DJ Stylbator, an evil Alien DJ who practices a Breakdancing-like fighting style that let him go several rounds with Jack in Melee. Stylbator Plays music that Mind Controls those that hear it, he was able to control the population of an entire town at once through this beat. He is able to shoot laser beams out from his gold tooth which explode on contact with things, and can also summon his Speakers and Turntables to himself which transform into a Mecha suit he pilots, equipped with a wrist mounted turret gun for good measure. But the last of the generals, and MY personal favorite villain in the series is none other than Demongo The Soul Stealer.

Demongo is a Demon from the Pit of Hate, and Aku’s most loyal and Deadly minion who confidently believes he cannot be defeated and is harder to beat than Aku himself, having never lost before meeting Jack. He has various magical powers such as Levitating indefinitely, Teleporting at will, and using elemental attacks like large bursts of blue fire or calling down natural strikes of lightning from the sky. Demongo’s primary power is to take the Souls of any dead foes, and store them inside an astral pocket dimension inside himself, giving him a vast collection of the Greatest of Warriors and the Mightiest of Beasts. From there, Demongo can use these Souls to summon forth any of the warriors they belonged to, to fight on his behalf. He can summon any number of These Warriors he wants simultaneously, and he has countless thousands of them, allowing Demongo to summon forth a whole army at will, and if any of these warriors get defeated, their Souls automatically return to Demongo and he can summon them again completely restored with no cooldown time, effectively meaning his army is Infinite in quantity, letting him wear down his target with endless waves of foes until their inevitable defeat. Demongo is able to easily dodge multiple attacks from Jack, and also survived a beat down from many of his own warriors. This is in part thanks to his final and often overlooked ability, Regeneration, which is potent enough to allow him to return from being crushed into paste and travel as a mass of darkness.

So with all that said, what are some viable strategies that can be used to take this tier on? This tier has a surprisingly volatile amount of threats, having amazing secondary stats across the board, a bunch of examples of characters with disproportionate stats, and a wide variety of Hax including ones that can affect Minds, Souls and Spacetime. There aren’t a lot of clear weaknesses that apply to the characters as a whole due to this as they are very good at covering their bases, but there are some exceptions. The First ability I wanna highlight is Technopathy, as I said, a huge portion of the characters in this tier are Robots, including almost all of Aku’s Forces, you know, the things that subjugate and enforce Aku’s will on this world? A good technopath taking over Aku’s machines would be devastating for this tier as even though most of the other warriors can deal with whole swaths of the basic drones, it’s been shown time and time again that enough of them will overwhelm. This would also give the technopath access to the more advanced of Aku’s forces, including most notably, the Ultra Robots, whose ridiculously disproportionate Durability and Attack Potency with their weapons mean they would inevitably kill almost anyone in this tier that took them on. That's a great strategy, but the Ultra Robots CAN’T Kill everyone in this tier, so we need to identify who could survive them to see what we still need to cover. Due to the lacking AOE of the Ultra Robots attacks, they likely could not truly kill any of the characters with high end regeneration, such as Demongo, Lazarus-92 and The Minions of Set, the last of whom would likely Kill the Ultra Robots as their weapons can match Jack’s Sword. The Ultra Robots COULD Kill Ashi in theory, but the most likely scenario is Ashi upon realizing her attacks cannot hurt them would use her ability to travel back in spacetime to kill the Technopath before they control the bots. None of the Robots in this tier can hit Intangibles so cannot deal with the Ghosts, and in particular The Shadow Beast would certainly defeat even the Ultra Robots using its various Hax abilities such as Spatially Warping them, Draining their Energy or BFRing them to another Dimension. The Scotsman could in theory beat them since his Claymore is on par with Jack’s Sword, but even if the Ultra Robots did kill him, he’d just become a ghost and they’d have no win con. And it should go without saying that Jack himself can beat the Ultra Robots. So these are the characters your technopath will still need to bring down themself somehow. I would recommend they have at least one or more potent higher planar has, as this would be able to take down the various Ghosts and also kill the regenerating warriors by not relying on physical damage to work. With that in mind,

Lapin:

Lapin from the Tart Magica series is a Magical girl ranked at 4 in power and speed, making it so she scales significantly above the likes of low tier Witches, which can make and maintain dimensions containing towns and cities, putting her into the same Low Gigaton levels. Speed wise Lapin would be notably slower, scaling notably above Madoka’s Holy Quintet arrows moving cross country distances at MHS speeds, not quite reaching light speed. Lapin is a Magical Girl, which in this series means that her soul is a Gem around her neck, while her Body is merely a vessel it controls, giving it endless stamina, a lack of need for biological functions, and the ability to heal from any injury that leaves the gem intact like Steven Universe. Magical Girls have Supernatural Senses that can see invisible monsters or into other dimensions, and the ability to interact with intangible beings like Wraiths, giving her the perfect means to find and harm even the Shadow Beast, even undoing his various spatial trickery. Magical Girls are also resistant to all Witch Powers and regularly kill them, which would let Lapin resist a great deal of powers that these characters could throw at her, such as high end mental manipulation, soul manipulation and energy draining. But the real reason I am choosing Lapin is for her unique powers, namely, She can’t die. Yeah if you are familiar with how Magical Girls in this series work, defeated Magical Girls who survive turn into a dark and esoteric Witch form and attack people. If Lapin dies, even via shattering her soul gem, she will turn into her witch form, and if her witch form is slain, due to the unique circumstances of her wish, she will turn back into her original Magical Girl form. This means instead of dying, she will just keep on switching from Magical Girl to Witch over and over again until she eventually wins. And Lapin’s Witch form is incredibly dangerous, with the ability to create and control weapons and technology from the surrounding area. She could effectively use all the Aku Robots as her own personal weapons and shields against their will to take the rest of the verse on, giving her all the benefits of the Ultra Robots, adding to her own power. Her Witch form also controls Magnetism and starts off battles by immediately taking every single weapon on the entire battlefield for herself, which would be devastating as quite a lot of these characters rely on Weapons from Thief, to the Clenches, to Jack himself, removing lots of other abilities and bolstering her arsenal further. While she likely could not use Jack’s sword due to its inability to be used by Evil, it still means he cannot use it against her. Also there's Lapin’s floating bunny eyes to consider, which Nullify the Magic of anyone they look at for the duration of their gaze, making anyone who relies on Magic like Ashi, The Scotsman or Demongo unreliable as a fighter against her. Against some of these foes, like the Minions of Set or Lazarus-92 I could see Lapin having Quite the war of attrition so to speak, but I think inevitably she would overcome them with her own various magical powers and abilities like using electric attacks on the latter or potentially nullifying the magic of the former. But if you really want faster results…..

Vox:

Vox, one of the overlords from Hazbin Hotel, would get you those results. Vox in the second ep of the series, created a massive city scale Blackout with his power, the electrical output of which is calced anywhere from low to mid Gigatons of TNT. He also should be somewhat relevant to Stolas in speed due to a creator statement that Stolas VS Alastor would be a good fight, and Stolas was able to outfly a Supernova at FTL speeds, putting him on par in stats. Vox is a Sinner Demon, a deceased human soul that was turned into a demon form based off their life upon entering Hell. Because they are deceased in Hell, they are impossible to kill through traditional means, and will eventually regenerate back from any physical damage. Only Holy Weapons made from Angelic Steel have been shown to permanently kill them in universe, likely meaning only something like Jack’s Sword could stop him directly. As a mortal Soul himself, Vox would also be capable of interacting with and absorbing other Souls, that literally being how Overlords like him even get their power to begin with, via taking in the souls of those beneath them, thus giving him the ability to affect the various ghosts of this tier directly. Vox’s primary power is to control technology which works up to a city wide range allowing him to easily technopathically command drones to spy on everything and even take over the airwaves. It would be relatively child's play for Vox to simply take control of Aku’s forces and have them attack the rest of the tier, allowing him to more or less kick back and watch as the Ultra Bots go to work on this tier’s forces for him, and gain information on relevant threats for him to plan around. Vox has a Hypnotic Eye that can mesmerize whole crowds of people at once and force them to obey his commands, this is a very similar level of mental manipulation to the likes of DJ Stylbator and The Sirens, meaning it would be a rather effective weapon to use on any foes that actually get near him. On the other side since both Stylbator and The Sirens own Mind Control is music based, Vox could simply interrupt their music through the common HH power of Broadway Force to stop them from reverse mind controlling him. Now despite Vox’s powers making it really hard for anyone to take him down, it should be noted that he is not invincible here, and could potentially be put down by Jack’s sword, or end up having his soul absorbed or be BFR’d through Spacetime if he's not careful. However he does have the means to be careful due to his ability to turn his body into and travel as a stream of electricity, making it near impossible to pin him down to get him with these powers. But if you still are worried about being at risk around all these skilled warriors…

Sadako Yamamura:

Well, could always just throw in Sadako to clean up this mess. Sadako isn’t much for physical power and stats, but her Nesha energy is able to create massive Hurricanes and Island Sized dimensions, actually giving her the ability to physically mess up these characters with her Telekinetic attacks. Speedwise Sadako would have a real hard time landing hits on these characters, but that's fine due to her largely not needing to thanks to the WIDE variety of hax Sadako can use remotely. First and foremost, Sadako has incredible Technopathy, able to control technology, possess technology, and destroy technology at an interdimensional range, allowing her to totally pull off the strategy of making Aku’s Robots just attack the rest of the verse. In addition to that anyone who does manage to survive this she could more or less just induce a Heart Attack on safely from her own Pocket Dimension where she could not be found or counter attacked, this should work on characters regardless of speed, including foes like Jack or Ashi from what we can tell. Sadako can also enter this world in the form of Avatars of herself that are totally expendable, with her even able to make an army of them at once. These would have a hard time scoring hits on characters this fast but given their able to emerge from any reflective surface for a surprise attack, ability to teleport or turn invisible, and oneshot powers like draining away lifeforce with a glance and absorbing even ghosts on the spiritual level with a touch, and it's clear they would inevitably win, even with these characters impressive stamina feats. While Sadako herself would be vulnerable to a lotta abilities in this tier like Jack’s sword or Demongo and The Shadow Beasts soul manipulation, the reality of the situation is she's not out in the open for them to attack, she's in another dimension and they don’t have the means to find her. Meanwhile she has the needed abilities to beat everyone overtime. Sadako’s greatest threat would likely be the Shadow Beast, a physically superior ghost who does have dimensional manipulation, but again, he doesn’t have the senses needed to reach her, and her avatars could drain him or even immerse him into media to seal the beast away. Sadako is just too well defended for this verse to overcome.

Continental Tier:

Okay now we have hit real serious business, this is the tier of The All powerful Demon Lord Aku himself, the master of darkness, conqueror of worlds and wielder of Unspeakable Evil, as well as any other entities that can dare to challenge him in a direct fight without relying on his weaknesses. Aku wields a tremendous amount of power, able to casually Sink and Destroy entire cities as just a side effect of his attacks or block out the entire horizon with merely his body. He literally WAS The Meteor that Killed the Dinosaurs, tanking this Mid Teraton level explosion with just his birth, and later tanked an Even More impressive Teraton explosion when he was at the Epicenter of the Robot World space station as it self destructed, this blast was easily large country sized from space. Aku has claimed to be able to make it rain enough treasure to flood an alien world with his magic, and even once made himself appear on the face of the moon, and this Continental level power is actually at least somewhat consistent, as a rival of Aku’s, The Nature Spirit, was able to create the Neptune Jewel with her power, and that thing has the ability to control all the Oceans on Earth, and Aku endured hits from Her. Now Speed Wise, as I mentioned earlier, Aku can fly between distant planets at MFTL Speeds. Specifically, Aku was able to fly from Earth to the Imakandi’s home planet in a distant solar system in seconds, even lowballed this would require speeds of at least 44 Million times Lightspeed. Additionally, Aku was able to get into a brawl with End of Series Vilgax from the Ben 10 series, landing and dodging hits from him in a fairly even scrap. Vilgax has been able to physically fly halfway across the Milky Way Galaxy in under an hour, a feat Billions of times the speed of light that Aku can apparently match. So we are left with the incredibly frustrating stat combo of Multi-Continental and Billions C, which is a huge problem in and of itself as most characters that one could use for counters just will not be able to match that speed, and will likely require I rely on reaction time or passive defenses to deal with this. Aku is an ancient, scheming and manipulative mastermind who rules with an Iron Fist and has very high skill, at one point going hand to hand with Jack without any powers or super stats for a brief period, and at another even easily impaled and killed Jack with numerous of his strikes when he had his powers. But Aku’s most powerful feature is his whole body in general. Aku is made of an evil and corrupt darkness that is practically immune to conventional damage, able to no-sell attacks from an entire army of Jack’s friends and allies, absorb and fire back projectile weapons, dissolve objects that come into contact with him like Acid, and Regenerate instantly from lost limbs and grievous injuries, even being reduced to actual dust doesn’t stop him from coming right back without any effect. Aku’s body is only weak to weapons imbued with the pure goodness of humanity, like Jack’s sword, and Salt for some reason, as these will bypass his durability and nullify his regeneration. Aku can breathe underwater and in space, has Super Senses that let him smell others Blood and later even discern that Ashi was his biological daughter, and can also potentially infect someone with a tiny piece of himself, which will eventually corrupt them and turn them into a similar creature to himself. But Aku’s most famous ability is his Shapeshifting, able to morph himself  into any shape imaginable, ranging from drastically altering his size from microscopic to larger than islands, or turning into a wide variety of large Demonic Creatures like Bats, Scorpions, Octopuses, and even attractive women. He can also turn to liquid and flood whole environments with his body, travel as logia forms like gas or shadows, or even turn into a cloud and make it rain down giant spikes to take out a whole army at once. Aku’s shapeshifting lets him Duplicate himself, even into a whole army at once, though it does seem to spread his power thinner which lead to his defeat at the hands of Jack’s father. He also made himself his own therapist at one point. On a somewhat related note he can generate his own army of minions no problem using his body or his shadow powers, including Shadow Warriors and Ghost Demons. This is starting to get into Aku’s powers, of which he has Quite A Lot to talk about, as one might expect for such a longstanding threat in Cartoon Network as himself. Aku has natural flight, Pyrokinesis, Geokinesis and Electrokinesis, and the ability to project a wave of damaging energy from his body. Also, Wow does he Love shooting beams from his eyes, and these can have a wide variety of effects, ranging from fire blasts, huge lasers that cause explosions and devastation on contact, beams that Banish you to the Pit of Hate on contact, and a beam that traps foes in an unbreakable crystal where they sit unaging for eternity, very similar to Rhombulus from Star VS. Aku can Resurrect the Dead to fight for him, including specific warriors like the Fallen Four, to a massive undead zombie army, He can also grant animacy to objects for a similar effect, like the time he created a giant Stone Homunculus. Aku also has a lotta psychic abilities, such as Telekinesis that works from great and remote distances away and can even make people like Scaramouche’s head explode with just a thought. He has a clairvoyant ability, able to spy on people across the world and get premonitions in dreams, and once was even able to physically enter into the mental plane of Jack’s Mind and consume all of his memories to try and destroy his brain, giving him mental plane travel and attacks. Another villain, Moe, using just some of Aku’s power, was able to Mind Control Jack to do a bunch of humiliating things, with Jack only able to resist when he tried to make him kill himself, meaning Aku just has highly potent Mind Control and later was even able to control the Scotsman through some kinda evil necklace of himself. Why he never directly tried to mind control Jack considering this is beyond me, but hey. Aku can also possess people and objects, Induce Sleep such as when he caused Jack to fall unconscious into the sea, and has extremely impressive Illusion abilities, able to generate illusions of raining treasure and visions of Samurai Jack to the Imakandi. He is able to transform someone's inner hatred into an Illusionary evil clone of themselves with all the exact same abilities, such as the illusionary Mad Jack. These beings are capable of dealing real physical damage to their foe despite being mental in nature. Aku also has some pretty extreme Matter manipulation powers, able to Transmutate people and animals into beasts and monsters, or magically restore Scaramouche’s body from just his head in an instant. In Both Crisis Wars AND Battle through Time, Aku was able to generate an entire pocket reality outside of time and dimensions, these dimensions clearly have many other planets and distant stars, they both also collapsed when Aku left these worlds, meaning he made and maintained a massive likely galaxy sized pocket dimension with his creation abilities. Now it's quite dubious whether or not this should apply to his general AP, Aku never tries to attack Jack with his general reality warping, and there's no other actual power feats that could put Aku on this level so it’s inconsistent at best. These feats would also be more impressive than HIM from Powerpuff Girls if applied at face, and I don't think it makes sense for Jack, someone who doesn't have Chemical X powers, to beat someone stronger than someone who fights people With Chemical X powers, considering Samurai Jack and PPG are alternate future timelines of the same world. But something Aku definitely can do is Spacetime Manipulation, and a whole bunch of it at that. Aku can Teleport himself, others and even whole buildings like his main fortress, basically anywhere he wants on Earth, and use spatial manipulation to make a Kitchen Freezer massively larger on the inside than the out or to travel to various other areas via portals. He was able to both Spy on and travel into completely different dimensions like the ones of Ben 10, Dexter’s Lab and Ed, Edd n Eddy among others, and even dimensional Traveled to the Heavens to Steal the Rope of Eons, a Super high tier Time manipulation item, where he learned all his time based powers by studying it, and then destroyed it. These Time Powers he taught himself include his ability to tear open Portals in Time which allowed him to fling Jack into the Distant Future to begin with as well as travel to alternate timelines like that of Powerpuff Girls. Additionally Aku was able to return from Jack BFRing him through a time portal payback style, and was also able to attack Jack and Ashi as they were traveling through time back to the past, literally the entire Battle Through Time game taking place in a dimension Aku made outside of linear time.

Now there are actually several other characters in Aku’s tier statwise to talk about, the first of which is the aforementioned Nature Spirit, who is a centuries old guardian of nature with control over the elements who has directly beaten Aku in countless fights, though is still unable to kill him. The Nature Spirit created Earth, Wind and Fire, Three Elemental beings, made of the respective element they are named after. Each one was able to individually defeat Aku in a fight, and they all have the ability to shapeshift their bodies, regenerate themselves, and control and manipulate their respective elements for a variety of attacks.

In this tier you would also have The Greek Pantheon without their Belief. These gods were once far above Aku’s level but their power depended upon the belief their human followers had in them. By devastating the Greek Isles, Aku was able to defeat and imprison them in their weakened state, including the big names like Zeus, but, later they rebelled against him and shoved him into a bottle for a time so they clearly still scale.

Lastly we have the two giant mecha robots, Mondo Bot and Robo Samurai, the latter of whom was able to directly harm and damage Aku in the final episode of season 5, though again could not kill him. Despite Robo Samurai being the stronger robot between the two, Mondo Bot is a lot more versatile, also being a large building sized sword wielding robot, but also Armed with numerous distance weapons including guns that shoot car sized bullets, numerous stinger missiles, a giant laser cannon from its eyes, and an even more powerful laser canon from its chest that makes Town sized explosions on impact. Mondo bot can super jump into freaking space and back down again, produce miniature robot spiders from its body as a defense against people trying to break into it, as well as snake like wires that can penetrate into other giant robots at close range, and it itself could continue fighting with its head and limbs destroyed.

So what are some good strategies to use in this tier? Well it's no secret that by far your biggest threat in this tier is Aku himself, having a wide variety of potent offensive abilities, and being basically impossible to traditionally kill thanks to his regeneration abilities. And due to the characters having Insane speed for their tier, even more so than the monsters from Monster Lab in fact, it's gonna be basically impossible to find a character that can compete with their power without being outclassed in speed. My go two here is Turtle strategy, have a character who despite being outclassed in speed, has the ability to survive the assaults that they can be harmed with both physically and esoterically, making their victory an inevitability. It’s also important to note that Aku does have weaknesses, namely the Goodness of Humanity and other Purification powers destroying him like the evil being that he is, but even more traditional powers like Sealing him have stopped him for a time, Aku’s own hax resistance isn’t actually all that crazy. A real benefit is getting a character who has Passive Hax emanating from their form to make it so these characters cannot even approach them without getting messed up, nullifying the speed edge entirely.

Asta:

Asta from Black Clover has gotten notable stronger than he was when he obliterated the Doom’s Gate Meteorite which was calculated at over 500 Petatons of TNT, and should also scale to the speed of EOS Yuno who was able to block hundreds of light beams at over 500 times the speed of light. Given the various power amp abilities Asta has, it's likely he can make himself much stronger and faster than this, but basically he’d be around Aku’s level of power and potentially slightly stronger, but would not be fast enough to match Aku reliably. What Asta can do is seriously Mess Aku up. Asta is a warrior from a world full of magical wizards who has no magic himself, and so built a huge arsenal of Anti-Magic abilities. As Aku uses magic for effectively all of his powers, you can quickly see how this could become a problem. Asta coats his body in a field of Anti-Magic which effectively makes him impervious to being affected by any magic that is not clearly superior to himself in power, and Given he can match Aku in power, his would not qualify. Specific magical powers that Asta has shown to nullify with this includes, High End Energy Draining, Mind Control/Madness Manipulation/Possession from powerful demons, Soul and Spiritual Manipulation from Demons, Elemental attacks including Absolute Zero Ice, Spatial Distortions, and Time Manipulation including stopping or rewinding it. This basically covers almost the entire arsenal of powers Aku has and its quite unlikely other powers like Transmutation or Crystallization would be capable of effecting Asta for similar reasons, they are all Magic. Asta can extend his anti magic aura out as a field that can prevent magic from being cast, including preventing foes from teleporting away or casting illusions with it. Even if Aku could use illusions Asta has enhanced Senses that let him detect a person's presence and even can give him info on their intentions or tell if they are lying, it even lets him sense nonliving objects like rocks and predict his foes moves. This means he could always tell where and whom Aku is despite his shapeshifting powers. Asta’s primary ability is to summon forth and telekinetically control several Anti-Magic swords with various effects. He can use these swords to fly, shoot Anti-Magic sword beams, and even absorb a foes Magical attacks and allow him to use it against them. His Demon Destroyer Sword would be particularly annoying, as it can manipulate the Causality of a Spell to cause it to have the opposite effect of what the enemy spellcaster intended, further adding to Aku using his own magic against him. That's all well and good, but even Aku’s own magic would not be able to destroy him, and Aku could potentially Beat Asta to death if need be, it would take a long time but, he could do it. So how would Asta stop him? Asta’s Swords are weapons specifically made to be the ultimate weapon to Kill and Destroy Magical Demons by a magicless Demon who hated his own kind, and Aku is a Magical Demon. The Swords have the ability to Nullify forms of Magical Regeneration, much like Aku’s, they can hit Logia beings to bypass Aku’s potential defense of turning into a gas or shadow, and the swords are immuned with Purification abilites that can cleanse severe corruption, a trait very similar to Jack’s pure sword being made to destroy evil. All evidence points to these Swords being perfectly suited to bypass Aku’s defenses and be just as effective on him as Jack’s own Sword. This would basically be like fighting Jack, only he's much stronger and faster, can attack from many angles at once and shut off almost all his powers, I don’t think I need to explain why that would be bad for him. Even with the Speedgap, Asta can take a LOT of hits and he can cast his Purification attack on a wide area like the rest of his swords abilities, which Aku cannot use teleportation or portals to escape, so it just seems a lot more likely that he puts Aku down with this power before he takes too much damage. But if avoiding the direct confrontation is more your speed,

Dendy:

Yeah in what is almost certainly my most hilarious pick in this blog, Dendy the cute nerdy Kappa girl from OK KO, would defeat Aku the Shapeshifting Master of Darkness. Dendy by the EOS is a Level 4 Hero and thus would scale to the Feats of other Level 4 Heroes including, most notably, EOS Rad, who once made a giant continental sized crack across Planet X just by giving his grandpa a firm handshake, legit giving her a slight power advantage against the demon lord. Speed wise while Dendy wouldn’t be as fast as Aku, Rad was able to react to piloting a spaceship to the X Nebula in minutes at most at 6 billion times the speed of light like it wasn't a thing, so she can at least react to Aku no prob. And just like Aku has a lot of magic powers, Dendy has a lotta scientific based powers to use! Dendy can essentially mimic Jack’s Jump Good Technique with her Electric Super Jump Move and has Insanely high intelligence. With her gear, like her trusty Hackpack, Dendy can hack into, control or disable any machinery, including both the Robo Samurai and Mondo Bot who would both be able to buy her some major time beating up Aku like they did in the season 5 finale. Dendy can generate holographic decoys and illusions, make force fields durable enough for stronger level 5 characters to be stopped by, and instantly scan all a foes capabilities and detailed information on the surroundings. Meaning she can give herself plenty of time to work and quickly learn exactly what needs to be done. The Hard Light Dendy can form into a force field would prevent her from being hit with some of Aku’s more deadly hax like mental control, transmutation, possession, and sealing, all of which require him to actually score a hit on her body. Additionally, it can be turned into a functional fighting suit that can copy the fighting style and powers of any hero she's seen fight before, which would be difficult for him to have to deal with. Also, because every single OK KO Character above Level 3 is just naturally Immune to Time Paradoxes, there's not much he can do with his spacetime hax other than try and BFR her. But yeah most of these just get chalked up to tricks against Aku, How is Dendy actually supposed to beat him in the long run? Well it's high time we talk about her Hacking. Dendy’s hacking works on a Meta Level, she was once able to stop The glitch virus, which was able to metafictionally affect anything on contact turning them into glitching 3D Models and make them clip through walls, by metafictionally rebooting the ENTIRE verse on a fundamental level. Her hacking allows her to change a character's make up however she wants, be it altering their physical body, or straight up rearranging the code of a tree into an elephant to transmutate it accordingly. Through this, if Dendy gets sufficient time, even if sealed off in spacetime, she can basically just hit Aku and any other character in this tier with The Ultimate Nullifier and erase them from reality, or even undo all their evil or take away their abilities or aspects to win. Dendy is a Scientist and she can make her own Cheat Codes this way.

The Legendary Amenti:

The Amenti from the World of Darkness series would be an everlasting Thorn in Aku’s side. During a great chaos in our world in 1999, the god Osiris stirred in his dormancy, resurrecting his subjects as ancient souls known as Tem-Akh to find the souls of dying mortals and merge with them. This filled those they merged with with virtues they lacked, the place they were deficient, making it a glorious immortal part of them, to essentially make them into Immortal Mummy Superheroes and restore peace and balance to the world. Amenti have power enough to cause weather events and earthquakes that can affect the entire world, caled in the high Teratons at a low end to possibly Zettatons at the high end, most likely meaning they are on par with Aku who has attack power in the upper Petatons to lower Exatons respectively, right in that sweet spot. Speedwise, Amenti are not known to be fast at all, only Average Human Speed, but their reaction time is INSANE, able to assist Osiris in battles with Set, them both being conceptual deities who can traverse Infinite in Finite time, so they can react to and fight Aku no matter HOW fast he is. And even if Aku did hit them, he's going to have one hell of a time trying to kill these things. Amenti can Regenerate themselves from just their Soul, or their Shadow, their spiritual energy, their name, their aura, their personality etc. How fast a Mummy can come back depends on how thoroughly they are destroyed, they are able to come back from their physical body being completely atomized after only a short time, but given enough time, Mummies can come back from anything short of completely conceptually wiping them from all time, space and memory. This means it's literally impossible for Aku to kill them in the traditional sense, and must rely on his more esoteric powers, like a reverse Asta situation. The Amenti would be able to track Aku in any form from the Aura of Death he’d emanate from the lives he's taken, they would be able to touch him even in a Logia state normally, and they have immense superhuman will power that could let them just power through Aku’s mental domination or even him attempting to summon a dark illusionary doppelganger to fight them, it would just disappear the same way Jack stopped his. The Mummies of this verse are just endlessly patient and treat their battles as more or less an inevitability that they will win, being impossible to discourage. Mummies have a crap ton of abilities stemming from Ancient Egyptian Magic, and the most useful of which here would likely be a maxed out Amulet Amenti. These beings have useful spells like ‘Hardening Sign of Geb’ and ‘Geb’s Blessing’ which give general resistance to an enemies magic and the effects of elements and status effects, removing a lot of Aku’s sealing and BFR Options from functioning. They can fly using their ‘Amulet of Cloud Walking’ and see through any of Aku’s illusions and tricks through their spell ‘Piercing Eye of Thoth’. On the other hand, they can actually use spells like ‘Greater Veil of Amaunet’ and ‘Death’s Shroud’ to completely mask their body and soul from being detected by anything living, which would include Aku, setting him up for a surprise attack. In terms of defeating him they have a couple methods they can do. It is possible that ‘Entrap the Ba’ could spiritually trap Aku for eternity like he was threatened with by the Greek Pantheon. But one thing that I definitely think would work is ‘Nyarashahim's Banishing Sign’ which would banish Aku to the Pit of Hate he spawned from and seal him off, and given the Mummies unkillability, this fate is sealed too essentially.

Universal Tier:

And Last, but certainly not the Least, we have to address the literal Gods of this world, hailing from various Ancient Pantheons of Mythology. The Gods are on numerous occasions established to be Universe level characters, with Ra, Odin and Rama being stated to have created the Universe as well as the core concepts of it such as Time, The Formless Evil they battled having Tanked this Big Bang, and the Greek Titan, Kronos Forging this universe and being stated to have full control over time and the entire cosmos with his gauntlets, and yet his son Zeus was still able to best him in an intense battle. The Gods are all clearly capable of traversing the Universe at highly MFTL Speeds, at Least on par with Aku’s speed, and most likely Much faster. The Gods themselves are Ancient immortal entities known for their Creation powers, which not only let them create the universe originally but they can just use to make pocket realities, complete with any number of beings they generate to inhabit them, whenever they want. They even restored Jack to his classic look with just their eye beams, changing his outfit to his default clothes and shaving his beard evidently? The Gods have showcased numerous abilities including Flight, Levitation, Vacuum Adaptation, generating complex illusions, and traveling to and from different planes of existence at will. They can possess people, bring you into meetings on the mental plane and one time even kinda sorta Resurrected Jack from the Dead? Was a little unclear. Anyway, Ra in particular has a dangerous hax to Erase beings from Existence with his eye beams, which he used to destroy the Minions of Set. But to get into their most famous powers, they were able to use spiritual manipulation to pull the Righteousness out of Jack's father to make the Sword for him, and later did this to Jack himself creating the only weapon capable of destroying Aku. The gods also use weapons that have the same effects of Jack’s Sword, capable of disintegrating the Formless evil and preventing it from regenerating. And since the Gods created the Universe they are also accredited with creating The Rope of Eons we mentioned from the last tier, and should be capable of using any power that thing showcased, which is a lot. Even just the Threads of the Rope could grant their users Temporal based powers like seeing visions of the past and future, linking your moves in perfectly timed sync with the moves of another, and full on time travel. They could be used to Temporally rewind an entire city to be as it was during a specific time, Lock beings from Aging indefinitely, alter the state of something to any state it existed in previously in time, like unlocking locks by moving them back to a time they were opened, and can even Stop Time entirely. Given that Kronos was able to control the entire universe and time with his gems, the even stronger gods should no doubt be able to do all these same abilities.

And last but not least we need to discuss the Formless Evil, the dark plague from before the cosmos that all evil and wickedness spawns, whom Aku was just an insignificant sliver of and took the gods' combined efforts to take down. The Formless Evil is a Noncorporeal darkness that can destroy Nebula’s just by flying through it, and I suppose you could interpret to have any of the abilities Aku showcased to an even greater degree, so powers such as Mind Manipulation, Transmutation and High end Regen are back on the table.

So what are some strategies that could be utilized here? Well thankfully due to the much more conventional stat combo we have going on at this tier, countering it overall is going to be much easier. Acasuality is going to be very important to have here given the large amount of spacetime abilities these characters have, and existing outside of time is a great way to prevent all of them immediately. Apart from that, due to the fact that the gods aren’t actually seen very often they don’t actually have many established resistances to abilities. We can certainly infer that they can resist Aku’s various Hax due to their triumph against The Formless Entity, but that still leaves a lotta ground uncovered when you are fighting at this level. Considering that, my first counter is…

Anita:

Teen Anita, the Queen of the Darkstalkers from the Darkstalkers series. Anita even as a 5 year old was able to overcome the combined power of Demitri and Pyron at once, and hold her own against the lord of the Nether Jedah Dohma, all three of whom could create, absorb and destroy whole galaxies like nothing and travel fast enough to traverse outside of dimensional space. By the end of the series Anita’s power surpassed any that had been seen before including that of Belial Aensland who could affect the whole universe of Makai like nothing. This would easily let her compete in stats against these foes. Anita is a powerful Esper who can utilize her mind for all sorts of abilities including Telekinesis, Teleportation, Extra Sensory Perception, Force Fields and manipulating Energy, able to take energy away from beings and give it to others, her energy draining likely being at least comparable to Demitri’s who was able to drain all the energy of Pyron, a sentient galaxy, in seconds, more than enough to effect the Gods of this verse. Anita can seal foes away with her mind, even those who have high end dimensional travel such as Demitri or Dee, giving her a way to permanently stop these foes regardless of their resistances. Now of course it is possible for the Gods or Formless Entity to attack her before she uses this, so what abilities do they have that can pose a threat to her? Surprisingly not much, Teen Anita is so strong that Jedah fears he doesn’t have any win condition against her, implying none of the powers in this tier would even affect her. That would include sealing her off in other dimensions like the gods could do, literal galactic level mental and illusion hax far superior to that of Aku’s, transmutating her on an astral level, again far superior to Aku’s, and a whole bunch of potent Spacetime manipulation like that of the gods, among other things like energy draining and soul hax. Now Anita wouldn’t be invincible here, and could potentially be beaten to death Erased from Existence if not careful, but thankfully her Clairvoyant ability makes that easier, and since she mastered a Holy spell that allows her to actually wipe entities from existence at the spiritual plane, not even The Formless Evil would be safe against her. But if you want someone even better suited here…

Parthenon Cure Heart:

Mana Aida from Dokidoki Precure with her Parthenon power has really got this. With the Parthenon power, Mana has power stated to rival even the Big Bang, and quite easily overwhelmed Proto Jikochuu, a being responsible for the power of Dark King, who could destroy the universe and break down space and time with his passive presence, putting Mana on par if not slightly above these characters in overall stats. As Cure Heart, Mana is a highly experienced fighter, and like all Cures is granted incredibly high levels of Combat Skills automatically upon transformation, and she would have no more trouble taking on the ancient warrior gods of this verse than she did Proto Jikochuu, who himself predated the Big Bang. And because a Cure’s power continually rises with their Friendship, she would effectively only become stronger the longer this goes until the Gods just plain cannot win. In terms of abilities, Mana is a lot less versatile than these gods overall, but as all Cures resistance scale to one another, the characters in this tier are going to have one HELL of a time trying to affect her with anything. They cannot use SpaceTime Hax as cures like Moonlight have been able to just break spacetime before, and others have been able to resist being Sealed by Noise or being frozen in time. The Suite Cure team were able to resist Noise’ petrification that could turn a whole country to stone, so The Formless Entity cannot transmutate her. Similarly Mobieus, a villain who could mind control multiple worlds at once got reverse mind broken trying to effect the Fresh Cures, and villains like Eliso who can erase planets from existence could not erase the cures, who could resist multiple reality warpers abilities. With that in mind, Mana has basically all the most threatening abilities in this tier covered and then some, and would be primed to beat the gods in a war of attrition. But what of The Formless Evil’s regeneration ability, allowing it to come back from anything short of the righteousness of life? Well Cure Heart has got that covered too, with her attack My Sweet Heart, she can straight up Purify evil entities with her sweet love and friendship, which sealed away and defeated Proto Jikochuu, a shockingly similar entity to The Formless Evil as a primordial darkness with the same stats and regeneration ability.

But as cool as Mana is, I do think there is one character I know who could handle this even easier than she could.

Sir George:

Sir George, the original Forever Knight from the Ben 10 Series would essentially be the Perfect warrior to defeat the Samurai Jack series. Once known as Georgius, he was an Ancient Roman Centurion who was cursed with Immortality to be an unaging legendary warrior. This gives him resistance to various age based Hax that entities like The Formless Evil can throw at him and gives him a huge deal of skill, wisdom, knowledge and combat experience, specifically in fighting godlike entities. Yeah you heard me, during the Medieval times, Sir George was an honorable Knight and last man standing against the interdimensional god, Dagon. Whom he managed to defeat thanks to his legendary Sword, Ascalon. Ascalon is no ordinary Sword, but an alien device created by the most intelligent being in the universe and future creator of the Omnitrix, Azmuth, to be the most powerful weapon ever made. Ascalon is designed to tab into and draw power from the fundamental forces of the universe, giving it immense power and the ability to manipulate reality, in this context, it would literally allow George to use these characters' own power against them as they Are the fundamental forces of the universe essentially. Upon grasping its hilt Ascalon incases its wielder in an armor that raises their stats to the point they can fight and defeat Dagon, and eldritch deity that can destroy multiple Universes at once and move at highly MFTL speeds far superior to that of Vilgax, easily letting George keep up with these foes in stats. This also allows George to shrug off Dagon’s mind manipulation, which could control everyone on Earth instantly, and various time and matter manipulation attacks given that these are some of the fundamental forces it taps into and can manipulate, meaning The Formless Evil’s similar abilities aren’t gonna be able to touch him. Offensively, Ascalon is a fantastic weapon, able to grant its user flight, a variety of distance attacks, and can be called to George’s hand on command like Mjolnir. It has the ability to cut holes in space, allowing George to simply swing it and automatically make Size relevant slices through the bodies of these gods from any distance away to damage and destroy them. This also gives George the ability to cut spatial portals to teleport or travel into other dimensions, making him unable to be BFR’d by the gods' removal options. But the best benefit here is Ascalon is a powerful Reality Warping device, able to cleave right through reality itself, and would evidently be capable of Erasing fundamental aspects like all traces of Evil from the universe if its user wills it too according to Vilgax and Ben. This means that it could just completely erase beings like The Formless Evil or other Gods just as easily if need be. Even without that there are two very dangerous powers it has that would allow George to best these foes in a more direct fight if need be. First of which is Ascalon’s sealing abilities which allowed it to seal off Dagon in his own dimension for 900 years, only broken through by using Ascalon to undo this, which would give George the ability to simply seal these beings away in spite of their dimensional travel. On the other side, Ascalon is also able to drain the Power and Abilities out of foes, such as when Ben used the Sword to Drain Vilgax of Dagon’s powers. That means with one touch, George can literally Depower any of these gods, and use all their abilities for himself to defeat the rest. When it comes to characters who can conquer the Samurai Jack world, I can think of no one better than a Great Time Traveling Warrior wielding a Magic Sword to step forth and oppose them. And that's how to be OP in Samurai Jack.