>>83807207Guessing the latter.
If you think about it, there's no logical reason Aku shouldn't have killed Jack yet. The implication of that is that he might be keeping Jack alive ON PURPOSE.
Aku seems to have the ability to grant immortality to people for the purpose of prolonging their punishment. The Lava Viking was magically sealed in a stone by Aku and thrust into a mountain, then by force of will managed to manipulate that magic and his prison over thousands of years to make his lava body. When the magic was destroyed by Jack's sword, the viking aged rapidly and died.
After betraying Jack through Ikra, Aku taunts Jack "Your time on this miserable Aku-infested land continues"
In episode 30, Aku DOES get the sword from Jack, and intends to destroy it, and even though the better option would have been to destroy it first and kill Jack later, Aku wants poetic justice. He feels if he must kill Jack, it should be a death that will satisfy his need for vengeance. By the end of the episode he learns that the sword can't hurt Jack, so that plan's out the window. If it can't be sweet irony, why even bother killing him at all?
So I'm thinking in the new series, Aku has the sword again and doesn't think Jack will ever be able to get it back. He has cursed the samurai to make him immortal, dooming him to forever wander the miserable Aku-infested land. The samurai will spend eternity in the future he hates, living in the world that exists the way it does because of his failure, knowing that even if he does make it into the past, he wouldn't be able to kill Aku without the sword, and unable to ever see his family again because he cannot die. It is much crueler, and more Aku's style.
Of course, in the end, this is going to come back and bite Aku in the ass when Jack inevitably gets his sword back and taunts Aku about how he can't die.
