Analysing The Birth of Evil: A Masterful Allegory of Ancestral Sin & Salvation by Grace
Growing up, plenty of Cartoon Network classics have made my childhood. But none have left a significant impression than Samurai Jack (created by Genndy Tartakovsky). So much so that when the season finale was announced to pick up where season 4 left off in 2004 (due to the show being cancelled then), I dropped everything to follow the rest of Jack’s journey when the episodes of season 5 finally aired in 2017.
A classic with a simple timeless premise reiterated in the opening credits of each episode, Tartakovsky outdid himself in weaving a masterful storytelling packed with epic cinematography, action sequences and minimal dialogue that powerfully conveys exposition and emotion.
In season 3 (2003), we are given an episode arc titled The Birth of Evil (Episodes 11–12), where the origin story of Aku is expounded upon. Tartakovsky won the 2004 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program for The Birth of Evil (and for good reason I’d say!).
Aku vs. Odin, Ra and Rama (Based on The Birth of Evil). Fanart by GrievousAlien.
As an adult, it dawned on me that the mythos of The Birth of Evil communicates otherworldly truths — our comprehension of good and evil presuppose religious legends and philosophical ideas. Moreover, the story of Aku’s origins served to challenge visceral misunderstandings I had of ancestral sin and salvation by grace, that I thought to be ludicrous, oppressive and capricious — the machinations of a Supreme Puppeteer.
For this reason, The Birth of Evil delivered to yours truly, a newfound appreciation for and understanding of the Church’s realistic dogmas on the nature of Evil, the human condition and the means of salvation through Divine mercy.
Here, this treatise analyses the apparent Biblical themes within The Birth of Evil, and makes the case that its mythos serves as a compelling allegory for the Kerygma and harmonizes the dichotomy between faith and works.
Without further ado, let’s begin.
(Watching The Birth of Evil Parts 1–2, also available on Adult Swim, is highly recommended for the cinematic experience and before reading this essay)
Opening episode title card.
The Celestial War and the Expulsion of Evil from the Heavens.
At the Genesis of the universe (depicted as the Big Bang in the episode’s opening), Light and Darkness were separated. However, the Darkness took on a feral, amorphous demonic form and threatened to plunge the cosmos in eternal darkness.
Incarnate Darkness. Still from The Birth of Evil (Part 1).
Thus, three chief deities of their respective ancient religions, Odin (Norse mythology), Ra the Sun god (Egyptian mythology) and the multi-armed Rama (Hindu mythology), set out in hot pursuit.
Divinity vs. Devilry. Still from The Birth of Evil (Part 1).
The primordial fiend viciously attacks the deities with its shapeshifting abilities. With their powers combined and concentrated, the three deities counter his attacks, overwhelm his regenerative powers and burn him to oblivion. However, the demon cheated destruction by salvaging himself as a fragment in the heat of the battle and crash-landed on Earth after many eons.
The expulsion of Evil. Still from The Birth of Evil (Part 1).
The explosion wiped out the dinosaurs, leaving a humongous crater filled with a magical tar-like substance — the Pit of Hate. Black tree spikes sprout from the Pit, creating an ever-expanding deadly forest that consumed everything within vicinity, flora and fauna alike. The exponential spread of the Dark Forest ravages multiple human settlements and villages.
Death ensues either by being impaled on tree spikes spontaneously shooting from the ground or falling into the deep cracks and drowning in demonic tar.
Planetary corruption and the spread of death. Still from The Birth of Evil (Part 1).
Allegorically, the three deities (in the Jack-verse) come across as a very loose archetype of The Holy Trinity (CCC 232–260). Their emergence from the central Star of the cosmos to confront the Darkness epitomize their triune personifications of the Light, the eternal Logos.
Odin the All-Father loosely mirrors God the Father, Ra as the Son (cf. Rev 22:16, pun intended), and Rama as the Holy Spirit serving as preserver of order and righteousness (or equivalently dharma) in the cosmos (cf. Eph 1:13, 2 Cor 1:21–22).
The celestial war and the crash-landing of the primordial demonic fragment to Earth echo the Fall of the Devil following his mutiny against the Holy Trinity (cf. Rev 12:7–9), and his introduction of sin into the world, respectively. Nothing impure can exist in the high Heavens, for the Light, by its very Essence, illuminates and dispels Darkness.
In his hubris, the Devil sought to dethrone God. Once a bearer of light himself, he maliciously darkened his own beauty bestowed upon him by his Creator (cf. Ezekiel 28:15, Isaiah 14:14–15). As a result, he and his angels were banished, forever cursed (by their own fault of embracing the Dark) to corrupt everything they touch as fallen angels (i.e., demons).
Correspondingly, the primordial demon darkens the Earth even as an unconscious fragment of its former self. The black tree spikes reference the ground cursed by sin, yielding thorns and thistles thwarting the endeavours of human civilisations to survive and thrive (cf. Gen 3:17–18).
Such is the nature of sin. Sin is self-seeking and corrupts, leading to senseless stupidity, violence, entropy and death. For Evil is a negation of the Light — A deviant perversion of Life and Goodness.
The evils we observe in the world have a supernatural origin since time immemorial. We are afflicted with Ancestral Sin because of the Devil’s instigation to spread Darkness with extreme prejudice (cf. Wisdom 1:12–14, Wisdom 2:24).
Man’s helplessness against Evil.
The Emperor (the father of our eponymous Samurai protagonist) takes it upon himself to journey into the Dark Forest and vanquish the Evil that threatens to decimate his entire land.
Riding into the Belly of the Beast. Still from The Birth of Evil (Part 1).
Courageous, faithful, and upright, the Emperor exemplifies the religious impulse of Man — to seek Truth, Goodness and Beauty. He arrives at the Pit of Hate (the only survivor of his imperial entourage traversing the Dark Forest), recites an incantation and shoots an arrow dipped in the elixir prepared by his court shamans and priests, into the Pit.
Purging the Pit of Hate. Still from The Birth of Evil (Part 1).
While the poison arrow halted the spread of the tree spikes, it had the unfortunate, unintended effect of reviving the primordial demon as a gigantic eldritch abomination, granting him sentience, intellect and consciousness.
The Dark Rebirth of Aku. Fanart by Sadobeam.
Naming himself Aku (from the Japanese Kanji 悪, which directly means “Evil” or “Bad person”), he crucifies the Emperor to a large black tree, and forces him to watch his land being ravaged, in his sadistic endeavour to punish and humiliate the Emperor for opposing him.
As mortal weaponry prove futile against the demonic Shogun of Sorrow, the Emperor could only let out a blood-curling cry of despair as his land was set ablaze and his people massacred in cold blood.
“Now gaze your eyes upon the full WRATH of the Mighty Aku!” Still from The Birth of Evil (Part 1).
When our distant ancestors yielded to the Devil’s deception, death afflicted the world as a consequence, similar to how a grandfather, seduced by the allure of easy money, who wastes all his money on gambling, inflicts an atmosphere of poverty to his household implicating his children, just like the Black Forest encroaching on the Emperor’s Land.
The environment of scarcity and entropy breeds fear, confusion, discord, and resentment, leading men to do whatever it takes to survive and thrive — forging their own immortality projects lording over others, hoarding more food than they need, engage in unchecked physical gratification. I could go on, but the crux of the matter is that Man seeks goodness, albeit in a very, very warped manner.
The entry of sin into the human world causes a deprivation of grace (after all, evil is a negation of the light), leaving us none the wiser in right living. Moreover, as the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, the descendants born into a household afflicted by poverty are negatively influenced by lacklustre parental example and inherit proclivities towards maladaptive mechanisms of living.
This is not to say the children are at fault by association or legally, personally guilty of what their parents and grandparents had done; thus warranting penal retribution from a vindictive God in need of satisfaction, or that God deliberately projects onto humanity to be always depraved in sin so as to flex His superiority.
The Holy Trinity, the eternal Logos, who is Goodness by Essence, is in need of nothing and is second to none. Goodness has nothing to prove; it simply just IS. If anything, sin is a terminal, otherworldly infection that wounds others and ourselves. Death is an aftershock of sin due to cause-and-effect, nothing more and nothing less.
From the Emperor’s fortitude, it can be surmised that the spirit of Man (through a limited extent) can intuit the world being far from what it ought, the need for God and gather the will to cultivate virtue. However, his poison arrow inadvertently rebirthing Aku reflects the absence of graces leading to limitations and initial ignorance in eliminating Evil, thwarting our good intentions and endeavours.
Aku’s immunity to conventional weaponry parallels Man’s inability to overcome sin and the fallen angels by his own natural strength. Due to Evil’s supernatural, diabolical origins, Man needs help from Above, for it takes supernatural divine powers to counter-attack the otherworldly Evil that roots itself in the world.
“Fool! Nothing of this world can harm me. For I am Aku, the Shogun of Sorrow (cf John 8:44), the Deliverer of Darkness (cf. Luke 22:53), your new master (cf. Eph 2:2). And you will bow to me (cf. 1 Peter 5:8).” Still from The Birth of Evil (Part 1).
This is vital to remember, because Man’s nature was made good by virtue of being bestowed the Imago Dei, which was wounded but not obliterated. To believe in the utter depravity of Man (and associated ideas of double predestination), taken to its logical conclusion, breeds fatalism and resentment — if everything we do seems to be wrong, created only to be hell-bound and incapable of seeking Divinity (with only some of us being fated to be saved from the moment of conception over others), isn’t it better to have never been?
This God could have simply declared forgiveness to our distant ancestors or started over instead of allowing the dung-piles to perpetuate. Salvation comes across as no different than a gun pointed to your head and it being called security — a “fire insurance policy” to get on God’s good side, Him seeing the snow enveloping you and thus, sparing you from pain.
That was what I believed (which made atheistic materialism all the more appealing), but after coming across the patristic, Apostolic position, learned it’s not the case. As a rule, suffering and misery happen because of sin. When God looks at humanity, he doesn’t see the two insubordinate individuals who feasted on Forbidden Fruits.
He looks with compassion, not with contempt, just as Odin, Ra and Rama took pity on the Emperor’s plight and did not fault him for the poison arrow that unwittingly gave rise to Aku.
And Help (i.e., Divine Empowerment and Freedom), did God, in due time, bring humanity (and likewise the three deities to the Emperor).
Odin sends Sleipnir to rescue the Emperor. Still from The Birth of Evil (Part 2).
Divine Intervention — Forging the Blade of Demon Destruction.
The God Encounter. Fanart by Disturbulator.
“You have been chosen. A force of Ultimate Evil has resurrected itself on thy world.” — Odin
“This Evil must be destroyed.” — Ra
“Only through the strength of the human spirit and the virtue of human righteousness can this Evil be vanquished.” — Rama
Aku’s rampage did not go unnoticed by the three deities. Odin sends his eight-legged horse Sleipnir to free the Emperor and summon him to the mountaintop, where he encounters three monks, and experiences a vision of Odin, Ra and Rama. With their divine powers, they forge a magical katana of righteousness capable of destroying the Deliverer of Darkness.
Forging the sword of righteousness. Still from The Birth of Evil (Part 2).
As a kid, watching the sword-forging scene on the TV screen was nothing short of mesmerizing. The cinematography, the minimal dialogue, the accompanying musical score and drumbeats kept me at the edge of my seat (to say the least — words are mere straw here in articulating the experience).
Several interpretations came to heart revisiting the sword-forging sequence.
Mountaintops form a noticeable leitmotif in the Biblio-verse — they are known to be sacred spaces where Men encounter God, receive instruction, wisdom, and commissioning to become prophets, apostles, and warriors of righteousness. The Emperor being divinely chosen to battle Aku notably mirrors Moses receiving the call from God to free the Hebrews (and given Tartakovsky’s Jewish background, it wouldn’t be surprising if he’s drawn inspiration from the Torah or Tanakh while penning The Birth of Evil).
The three deities extracting the essence of Righteousness from the Emperor’s heart to forge the katana makes him an archetype of Christ — when His Sacred Heart was pierced and blood and water gushed forth from the Cross, emblematic of the Sacraments. In a sense, the Magical katana is a Sacrament, a conduit of the power of righteousness, the Sword of the Spirit (Eph 6:17).
The Emperor, armed with the Katana and the deities’ blessing, personifies the advent of the Church from Pentecost. Sleipnir fetching the Emperor to the mountain to be empowered by the three deities mirrors the Disciples of Christ being called out “εκκλησία (ekklisía)” of the world to mission and communion.
The very act of the three deities extracting the righteous energy within the Emperor to forge the sword and clothing him in white shining armour sends the message that there’s still goodness and beauty in the world, and it’s worth fighting for. This is what Salvation IS — salvaging and revitalizing the Imago Dei, as echoed by St Irenaeus of Lyon.
Clothed in Righteousness and Infused with Grace (cf. Eph 6:10–18, Isa. 55:11). Still from The Birth of Evil (Part 2).
“This blade was forged from the righteous energy within thee.” — Odin
“It possesses the power to destroy this Evil Force.” — Ra
“But be warned, this Evil is not of the human world. It has magic beyond your understanding. Trust not what you see, but what you feel. ”— Rama
The three deities’ parting words of wisdom to the Emperor, in particular Rama’s concluding exhortation, warns the Emperor of Aku’s deceptive nature, regenerative powers and shapeshifting abilities (cf. 2 Cor 11:14), stressing the necessity of operating by faith apart from sight (cf. 2 Cor 5:7).
Evil is clever, and deception is its most powerful weapon. On our best days, it’s easy to assume uprooting vice and cultivating virtue are that simple. As a result, we underestimate our own sins and the gravity of Spiritual Warfare (cf. 1 Peter 5:8, Eph 6:12), leaving us deceived that we’re “decent enough” with our own strength.
The demons, being supernatural masters of subterfuge, are more than capable of outwitting the best of us in intellect, even more so those who do not look for qualities beyond the physical, let alone live the golden mean between moral legalism and license (instead engaging in the actor-observer bias).
Our freedom from enslavement to Evil was not without cost, as seen at Calvary (and in the Jack-verse when the three deities invested their Divine energies forging the katana of Righteousness to give the Emperor the upper-hand). For this freedom to become actualized, we must take responsibility for ourselves.
Growing up, salvation by grace through faith apart from works was a doctrine that I couldn’t grasp, thinking it breeds laxity and inaction. An idea I primarily knew as an abstract formulation. But observing the Emperor’s example educated me with better definitions of faith and works, bestowing a more ordered understanding what being saved by grace is in the concrete.
The Emperor equips himself with the Magical Katana as an expression of Faith:
“I want to fix this [to vanquish Aku], but I can’t do it alone. I do not have enough power. Therefore, I am entrusting myself to the wisdom of the deities [Odin, Ra and Rama] and this Sword they have forged for me, so that the power of righteousness can work through me to do this thing I must do.”
The expression of works would be the Emperor setting off to face Aku armed with the Magic Katana, employing swordsmanship skills to combat Evil and sustain his upper-hand against the Shogun of Sorrow.
Faith and works are two cords intertwined into one rope, or two sides of the same coin — Man’s reception to God’s salvific grace, to becoming responsible in personal virtue. What we do (or lack thereof) impacts our inner sanctity and integrity.
The Kerygma — Reclaiming the Empire from Aku.
The Emperor returns to reclaim his land and his subjects from Aku’s rampage. As he flies into his ravaged empire, he witnesses his troops massacred, Aku’s remorseless maniacal laughter and a woman screaming for her life, filling him with righteous anger.
Avenger of the innocent (cf. Joel 3:21). Still from The Birth of Evil (Part 2).
I must confess that revisiting this scene (above screenshot) made my eyes water. The Emperor’s glaring eyes, together with the sombre music, communicate everything, to the extent that we can feel with him his righteous anger against Aku.
And thus, I start to have newfound endorsement for God’s mercy and justice — the two are not mutually exclusive concepts, but complementary expressions of Love; thus are naturally inseparable like heat and light.
Love and indifference (or passive sentimentalism) are antonyms. To love truly does come with hatred, of all things derogatory, disordered, delusional. It’s this holy hatred that fuels the Kerygma — the will to free those drowning in delusions, to exercise compassion and care for others beyond ourselves, and to right wrongs.
The Emperor’s love for his people, his wife and son, is precisely intertwined with his hatred of Aku, fuelling his drive to reclaim his land from the Shogun of Sorrow’s tyranny.
And that’s why we can’t help but cheer for him, becoming engrossed when he engages in battle with the Deliverer of Darkness. His surviving people can breathe easy, seeing their beloved, trustworthy Emperor alive and empowered, reinvigorated with hope.
“Armed with the sword and the hope of my people, I plunged into battle against Aku. His evil was no match for the power of righteousness…” — The Emperor, Samurai Jack: The Beginning (Season 1, Episode 1). Still from The Birth of Evil (Part 2).
The Emperor slashes Aku with the Magical Katana, leaving deep gashes and burning wounds that sends the demon reeling in immense pain. Witnessing the katana’s unique powers making it the only weapon capable of harming Aku taught me an important distinction between Pelagianism and Faith-based righteousness.
Pelagianism is the heresy that espouses Man can attain salvation by his own efforts without the assistance of Divine grace. As established earlier, earthly weapons cannot wound Aku. That said, Pelagianism is the equivalent of bringing regular swords, spears and arrows to a fight with Aku (you’d be dead in the blinking of an eye; projectiles get absorbed and swords melt upon contact with Aku’s body).
Conversely, faith-based righteousness is arming yourself with the Magical Katana to fight Aku. In other words, co-working with God to cultivate virtue. Now, good works do not impact our salvation; we are saved by grace through faith in Christ’s salvific work.
Nonetheless, our good works impact our ultimate sanctification. They are accomplished through our co-operation with Divine graces, enabling our purification and the completion of our formation into the fullness of Christ’s image in us (like a positive feedback loop).
Infuriated by his newfound vulnerability, Aku uses his shapeshifting to throw the Emperor off guard — first as a wyvern, next a giant spider and then an armada of armoured Aku warriors.
Aku vs. The Emperor (Round 1: As a wyvern, Round 2: As a giant spider). Still from The Birth of Evil (Part 2).
Despite being vastly outnumbered, the divinely-empowered Emperor manages to cut down the Aku warriors and after a long gruelling battle, imprisons him within the earth with the Katana, in the form of a black tree.
“… and with the sword’s magic, Aku’s demon forces were implanted into the earth, forever petrifying him into the wasteland that he created.” — The Emperor, Samurai Jack: The Beginning (Season 1, Episode 1). Still from The Birth of Evil (Part 2).
The ensuing downpour puts out the fires, and the Emperor manages to find his wife alive, having given birth to their son, evocative of the miracle of new life emerging from the ashes (cf. 2 Cor 5:17, Isa 43:18–19).
Remembering the defeated Aku’s declaration of returning from his imprisonment, and acknowledging that this newfound peace to his land can be easily snuffed in a heartbeat in the absence of a vigilant spirit, the Emperor sets out formulating a plan to educate his son (the future Samurai Jack) in righteousness and equip him to face Aku should he return someday in the future (cf. Prov 22:6, 2 Tim 3:16–17) — analogous to the passing of faith like torches to those close to us in need of it (applying the Kerygma personally).
“We must learn from this day. We must be prepared should this Evil ever return. We must have a plan.” Still from The Birth of Evil (Part 2).
Truly, masterful artistry and storytelling do significant wonders in baptizing the imagination, and Tartakovsky’s The Birth of Evil is no exception here.
Concluding Thoughts.
The Birth of Evil has to an extent also served as a personal answer to the problem of Evil in the world. It was inquired within the Samurai Jack fandom why Odin, Ra and Rama had not simply just stepped into Earth and vanquish Aku as he crash-landed; thus halting the spread of the Dark Forest. This would have spared the Emperor’s land (and our Samurai from wandering the dystopian future) from the get-go.
Indeed, the three deities did do something, perhaps something far more profound than waving the magic wand — by forging the Magical Katana and choosing the Emperor (and subsequently Samurai Jack) as their agent of righteousness against Aku. So long as the Samurai lives and wields the katana, he remains a living reproach and a cause of dread to Aku, numbering his days of dominion.
Maybe, just maybe, by permitting (but not endorsing) the Shogun of Sorrow’s tyrannical rise to power, the Bushido code of the Samurai may be made more tangibly manifest.
Whenever he braves tribulation to liberate the enslaved, he inspires righteousness, loyalty, honour, respect, honesty, courage and consistency. The people rescued muster the strength to challenge Aku and his minions, one day at a time.
A monument to Samurai Jack. Still from Season 5, Episode 6.
The One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church is The Holy Trinity’s response to the network of deceptions enslaving the heart of humanity as instigated by the Devil, just as the forging of the Magical Katana is the three deities’ (Odin, Ra, and Rama) response to Aku’s tyranny on Earth.
Besides, perhaps your salvation was meant to equip you to tackle the problem of Evil. Like the Emperor being chosen by the three deities, God wishes to have you as a co-worker in “undoing the future that is Aku”.
As aforementioned, freedom isn’t cheap. For freedom to be real and lasting, we must take personal responsibility — we do our part through inner mortification, education in timeless wisdom from above, partaking in the Sacred Mysteries, and works of charity.
With great responsibility comes great empowerment.
On a final note, The Birth of Evil infers that concepts of righteousness and evilness are built on legends. Legends are a way of guiding us toward right living and learning wisdom to make sense of the world and ourselves.
Sacred texts, literature and poems depict the tales of otherworldly titans and entities engaged in warfare, individuals whose lives soar to the heavens or fall to the earth. This is how legends are born.
And the thing about legends, especially in the Biblio-verse is… sometimes, they are true, and grounded in historicity.
(Originally posted on Medium)
