Someone such as the Scotsman had an entire family and Jack was willing to undo all of it to defeat Aku, not to mention the possibly billions of people born since he was sent to the future.
Would it not have been better to let the future timeline remain and recover from Akus reign?
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He doesn’t understand how time travel works.
No one ever explains it to him and he’s so focused he never really stops to think about it
Jack has strong convictions that Aku really is evil enough to be worth that sacrifice to defeat, not to mention that other lives will flourish in the alternate future without Aku, possibly many more without his tyranny. He doesn’t really allow himself to doubt this conviction >!until Ashi.!<
Presumably he believes they will be reborn as more fortunate versions of themselves.
Did you watch the show to its conclusion? It’s pretty obvious he didn’t know that would happen.
It easily could have just created a new, happier timeline free of his failure. The original plan, if necessary, would have been to kill future!Aku and then find a time portal remaining in the world. Aku was actively closing portals and opposing Jack- the moral thing to do wouldn’t be to abandon these victims, but to make the best of things and kill their tyrant before returning to his own history for a new timeline.
So would you trade a few friends for thousands of years of the world suffering under a cruel leader?
I think it’s a mix of things.
For one, he could not fully understand everything related to time travel.
The other is his conviction. Aku had to be destroyed. And that was the main priority.
And finally, while he may have considered the outcome of changing the timeline, does it really justify not killing Aku?
Aku has destroyed millions or even billions of lives. He enslaved worlds, encouraged and spread evil throughout everything he could reach. Just look at the general state of the world when Jack first arrived.
Killing Aku means he can prevent all that suffering from happening.
Although, I do agree that it would be much better (in terms of the narrative) if Jack stayed in the future and helped the world recover.
Because there’s still a chance those same people could exist, under better circumstances. And removing the yoke of an immortal tyrant who’s ruled for centuries can only lead to more overall happiness
The way of the samurai is the resolute acceptance of death.
I mean the world is pretty much a dystopia. Every group he meets are under some sort of attack or filled with criminals
Aku as a leader has brought untold suffering to the world at large
Yeah I was pretty underwhelmed by that decision
I’d argue even if jack knew, jack would believe this would be the greatest good and most moral choice.
““If you travel to the past, that past becomes your future, and your former present becomes the past, which can’t now be changed by your new future”
All of this. Jack has NO IDEA how time travel works, not even exposure to time travel fiction. Also, he couldn’t have known how long he would spend in the future. He was there for over 80 years, unaging, losing more and more, with only one real goal: go back in time and kill Aku. That was the ONLY thing that kept him going, past a certain point.
The rules of time travel in this universe are not to think about the rules of time travel. If you don’t think about it everything will be fine. Jack has good instincts and has automatically adopted the correct way of doing things.
>!Ashi (girl from the last season) is fine at first after the past gets altered in a way that would keep her from being born but vanishes from existence when she does think about it.!<
I’m assuming if he ever thinks of it at all, he figures that “better” versions of things will happen.
And considering the future as it is, he probably figures a future without Aku ruling it is better than one where Aku is ruling.
He’s a Buddhist, of sorts; Those who disappear will be reborn into much happier lives
Something that always bugged me about the ending was in one of the first samurai jack episodes he helps a civilization of dogs fight some aku scarabs. They launch him into space headed for a wormhole that’ll send him back to his time, but he turns back to save them from being slaughtered by more scarabs. If going back in time undoes all of akus evil, then he shouldn’t have turned back. They should’ve ended the show with Jack defeating aku in the future and then trying to change the world from there.
Skill issue, going back in time to kill aku is for the greater good.
Because he isn’t really killing them. Those people will either be born in a future where Aku never existed or they will just not exist.
Preventing Aku from killing and destroying the world is more important than people existing in their current iteration.
Keep in mind that by the time Aku hit him with the razzle dazzle, Jack spent his entire life training specifically to kill the dude.
So even as he’s thrown forward in time and has all these experiences, he’s a) thinking about all the people in his past and the way their lives turned for the worse under Aku’s reign and b) remains single-minded in the task he’s been focused on since he was a child.
I feel like everyone is missing the Buddhist part of Jack and the story. Life is not a permanent thing and all of those consciousnesses will experience a rebirth to continue the journey towards enlightenment. I’m not an expert, but I understand that suffering is a part of life, but it can be ended. All life on earth has been suffering untold amounts for generations because of Aku. More than any generation previous had experienced. Jack walked the noble eightfold path and followed the precepts to free the world of its suffering. He was the karmic balance that would catch up to Aku. It’s likely that many beings suffered enough from Aku that they finally reached enlightenment. Others were rebirthed when the timeline was corrected and Aku was destroyed. The only thing that was lost was the suffering caused by Aku. New suffering will come, as that’s just a part of life, but it won’t be the suffering that Aku inflicted. And if I understand the concept of impermanence, every being in that world would know that nothing is forever anyways. The world is always changing. The suffering had to come to an end. As long as Aku existed in any period of time, his form of suffering would continue and there was a chance that he would come back. He had to be killed at the beginning, and any price was worth paying for that to happen. I feel like there were a lot of Buddhist themes throughout the story and that explains why no one, jack included, ever thought that their existence would be erased and that the suffering from the past would need to stay so that their individual life would be allowed to continue. In Buddhism, there is no sense of self, nothing good was lost when Jack went back to destroy Aku. The world goes on and life continues its journey towards enlightenment as it always has.
I’m pretty sure the majority of his allies were fine with not existing if it meant erasing Aku from existence, thus never corrected or educated Jack on the implications/dangers of time travel.
Plus you don’t really want your only real hope of defeating the Demon lord to have doubts about his holy mission.
He’s erasing great people but in the grand calculus of the universe its worth it. Look closely at Aku’s killcount and think carefully about how many tragedies he propagated. Aku is legit evil for evils’ sake so getting rid of him saves a lot and at least leaves evil back in the hands of humans’ whims and failings.
Everyone is simply Jack “doesn’t know how time travel works” and that’s just silly. Jack might be old fashioned and struggle with modern oddities since he’s literally from a different time but he’s not dumb. He spends hours and hours meditating and philosophizing, he travels for days in silence, he’s shown using his brain to defeat baddies much bigger than him. He’s not dumb or lacking in forethought.
The actual answer is that he was raised from childhood to be the one who defeats Aku. He cannot fail. The very gods themselves have blessed him on this mission. Not to mention the fact that his own family is waiting for him to succeed.
He’s a zealot. To him, the nee future is actually evil. It’s a foul mutation of reality, and only he can put it right. There are no other options to him.
He’s also not a bad guy and relies on honor, so he can’t just ignore people in need even if they will be erased once he goes back in time. As far as he knows that’s not even a certainty, what if it’s more of a time split and the future he’s in will continue after he leaves? He can’t just abandon it blindly.