Mifune also starred in the “Samurai Trilogy” of films in the 1950s directed by Hiroshi Inagaki, as Musashi Miyamoto, a legendary (real) samurai who was a philosopher and a ronin made famous for fighting with two swords, one in each hand. Sakai had envisioned a comic book that was based on the movies he loved, like the 1961 “Yojimbo,” starring Mifune as a ronin, or a masterless samurai, who is a bodyguard for hire ( yojimbo means “bodyguard”).
Usagi yojimbo characters series#
Those inspirations evolved into “Usagi Yojimbo,” a comic book series launched in 1984 by Sakai, a Kyoto-born, Hawaii-raised Japanese American artist. “Samurai Rabbit” is the latest entry in a media empire that was started as a tribute to the classic samurai tales of old Japan that were memorialized in the films of director Akira Kurosawa and actor Toshiro Mifune. Sakai is the mastermind behind the series. “It’s sort of very traditional, and when you get to Neo Edo, the adventures take place with more futuristic architecture, but it’s built around the old traditional Japanese homes with the, you know, the sloping roofs and everything.” “You can see I have machines in there, you know, like, there is a pachinko or one of those game centers, and all the houses have this Japanese motif,” he noted. The series is true to the culture and history of Japan, including the historical elements, even though it takes place in the future because it’s anchored in actual Japanese history.Īnd it’s completely on purpose, explains Stan Sakai, the creator and an executive producer of the series. Watching the series, even though it’s a sci-fi fantasy set in the 26th century, is a lesson in Japanese culture, traditions and language. Even set props in the background, like the shoji paper screens, are referred by their Japanese names. Yuichi yells ikuzo! – the word for “let’s go!” before leaping into a fight. Spot is called Tokage, the word for “lizard” without explanation. So, yokai are introduced right away, but anyone watching picks up the meaning of the word by, well, watching. But “Samurai Rabbit” also manages to be engaging by paying accurate tribute to historical Japanese culture - down to the use of Japanese words without pandering to audiences by explaining every word and phrase.
Yuichi and his friends are fun characters, and the series draws in viewers with its humor and action. The main yokai that escapes, Kagehito, mistakes Yuichi for his ancestor, who imprisoned the yokai in the first place. The series intercuts scenes of Miyamoto fighting yokai, and Yuichi imagines himself doing the same.īut when he meets his new companions and ends up at the temple that houses the Ki-Stone, he inadvertently releases the yokai, who’ve been imprisoned inside it for centuries. The story follows Yuichi, who is the descendant of Miyamoto Usagi, a samurai warrior from the 1600s, who desperately wants to become a famous samurai himself.
Stan Sakai has been illustrating and writing about the character “Usagi Yojimbo” for nearly 40 years. The computer graphic animation is top-notch, and many of the characters and much of the scenes look almost photographic … except, of course, the characters are talking animals in samurai gear. The series, which made its debut on Netflix on April 28, is a breathless, exciting, funny and action-packed samurai story, set not in the feudal Japan of the past, but of the future, where Neo-Edo is built like a traditional Japanese town but with neon and floating space vehicles, and the teenagers who star in the series stop to strike a pose and take selfies. His posse of ghostbusters includes Kitsune, a fox (voiced by Shelley Rabara) Chizu, a cat who was raised by the evil Neko Ninja crew (Mallory Low) Gen the rhinoceros (Aleks Le) and Tetsujin the bear (Keone Young), who is the Buddhist priest guarding the magical Ki-Stone crystal.
The teenagers fighting the yokai are all martial arts-fighting animals: The titular samurai is, as the name says, a rabbit, Yuichi Miyamoto, who’s accompanied by Spot, his tokage, or pet dinosaur-lizard (Yuichi and Spot - who doesn’t really speak, just squeals - are both voiced by Japanese American actor Darren Barnet). In “Samurai Rabbit,” Yuichi fights off malevolent ghost-spirits with the help of his martial arts-fighting friends: Spot, Kitsune, Chizu and Gen the rhinoceros.
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