Usagi Yojimbo (pt. 1)

This review was commissioned by @krinsbez.


Usagi Yojimbo, or "Bodyguard Rabbit," is a longrunning comic by Japanese American artist Stan Sakai. I thought the titular character looked vaguely familiar, and it turned out that the special edition book comes with an author's note that explains why: I had seen that episode of the Ninja Turtles!

As a kid, I didn't realize that this was a crossover with something else. I just thought the rabbit samurai was a one-off TMNT character.

This inspired me to poke around some more online. Turns out he also appears in the 2003 TMNT series. And in the 2016 CGI series. I was starting to wonder why Bodyguard Bunny never got his own show if he was such popular crossover material, and it turns out that he did...but only three months ago. Yes, "Samurai Rabbit: the Usagi Chronicles" premiered on Netflix in April 2022, and was just renewed for a second season. I don't think that had come out yet when I received this commission though, so it's a heck of a coincidence! EDIT: I gave it a look, and it's shit. Don’t watch it.

Anyway, according to that author's note, this comic was inspired by both mainstream American comic books, and the Japanese samurai flicks that he often saw growing up in his heavily Japanese hometown in Hawaii. He doesn't mention having taken any inspiration from manga, which sort of surprises me, but I guess that might have just not been as available to a kid growing up in 1960's Hawaii. He started out with the intent of drawing a historical fantasy comic inspired by the career of real life 1600's samurai Miyamoto Musashi. While doodling some character designs though, he whimsically drew an anthropomorphic rabbit with its ears tied up in a traditional Japanese hair bun, and ended up liking it so much that "Miyamoto Usagi" became his protagonist.

I'm not sure if the other characters in the comic are all anthropomorphic animals as well, or if it's a mix of furries and normal humans. I suspect the former, but it's time to find out for myself. Let's start the first ever issue of Usagi Yojimbo!

1. Usagi Yojimbo​

The comic begins with Miyamoto Usagi trudging through the snow to a lone cottage, whose occupant - a creepy looking elderly cat lady - he politely requests shelter from. She lets him in and starts preparing food for him, but something about her demeanour seems off.

Right off the bat, I'm loving how this is drawn.

You don't often see that level of detail with that style of comic book anthro character. The subtleties of body language are also captured really, really well. Given how long this comic has been running for, I can only assume that the artist improves over the decades from here, and with this strong of a start that's an exciting prospect.

Incidentally, I looked up "battle of Adachigahara" to see if it was a real historical event, and in so doing I might have ruined this first story for myself. The adachigahara is a mythical creature, an ogress who lives alone in the woods and eats children. Heh, well. The old lady was giving me some weird vibes, but now the payoff's been spoiled. This was definitely written for non-Japanese speaking kids in an era before the internet, heh.

Anyway, either the battle of Adachigahara was a real thing whose name is just a meta-easteregg, or Usagi is just fucking with the ogre lady, because he claims to have fought in that battle himself. He thinks his side would have won too if one of their generals hadn't betrayed them to the enemy in flagrant disregard for bushido. Granted, there's no telling which side this local's late husband might have been on, so this might be a faux pax on Usagi's part, but I guess he's honest to a fault (or else he already knows she's full of shit and is playing along).

Also, check out this war scene:

It would probably pop much better in color, but even in black and white the detail!

Usagi was his pug dog daimyo's personal bodyguard. Due to their dishonourable betrayal by one General Toda, Daimyo Doggo is forced to bring his remaining troops in a desperate offensive trying to break the enemy's main line before they get encircled. Unfortunately, that's what the enemy was expecting, and they had too many archers massed and waiting for this advance for Usagi to do much about. Daimyo Doggo was wounded by arrows and fell from his horse. All Usagi could do for him was assisted suicide (a more dignified death than being killed in battle), and taking his head and fleeing with it so it could not be defiled by the enemy. I suppose if the enemy has proven themselves dishonourable enough to willingly court traitors and bribe turncoats, it stands to reason that they might do some fucked up public displays with the remains of opposing noblemen if allowed to recover them.

Anyway, due to his failure to protect his liege's life, Usagi has not considered himself worthy to sign up with a new one. He's been a wandering ronin ever since. It was just chance that happens to have brought him traveling back so close to the site of his disgrace this lonely winter evening.

Then he turns the conversation to the cat lady who is definitely not an oni. And how she's been surviving living alone in these mountains when everyone knows there's a marauding oni prowling them. He also implies that he's here on an oni hunt himself.

Look at these expressions though:

Yeah, he totally knows what's up.

On account of knowing what's up, Usagi only pretends to fall asleep after going to bed. Not long afterward, a hulking figure comes tromping toward the bedroom from...outside?

Huh. Does she need to go outside to transform or something? Wait, no, it just tore its way in through the window. Weird. Is she actually NOT the monster?

Well, the goblin (a rhinoceros-like creature rather than a catlike one, surprisingly enough) stomps up to the bed and rips into the figure on it with its claws, but Usagi had been expecting that. He did the Sam And Frodo trick and made a decoy using pillows and a bundle of firewood and then hid behind the door.

Fight happens. This is definitely the weakest part of the comic, visually. Partly because fighting a big, bulky creature in a dark, enclosed space is just kind of a challenge to tackle in this medium. Partly because the artist seems to be averse to showing blood or gore, which makes it really hard to tell when Usagi's katana is hitting or missing. There's only one panel relatively early in the duel where we see blood, and even there its hard to tell where and how badly the goblin got hit.

There are a few panels after this one where it seems like the goblin was supposed to take another hit, but it's not nearly as apparent. It gets a little easier to follow the action once the fight moves out of the cottage and into the light-colored snow, but the blood-aversion is still a problem. To the point where I thought that Usagi had just tripped the monster and knocked it over at the end, when really he's supposed to have stabbed it to death.

Also, the twist turns out to not be quite the one I was expecting.

I guess the name of the battle was a hint, but not as direct a one as I thought. The old woman is connected to the ogre, but they aren't the same.

Upon finding that its too late, her husband is dead, the old cat lady tells Usagi the truth. Her husband did indeed fight at the battle of Adachigahara, but he wasn't killed there. Indeed, he was the very same General Toda who was bribed into betraying Usagi's lord. It turns out that that was a very poor decision; the victorious daimyo, a real bastard by the name of Lord Hikiji, didn't want vassals who he knew to be bribeable. He also needed scapegoats to draw attention away from his own dishonourable behaviour. So, Toda was stripped of his property, brutally beaten and tortured, and then cast out with a broken body, a ruined reputation, and his wife.

The two of them managed to make a new peasant-class life for themselves, and Toda's body mostly recovered in time, but his mind never did. As they grew older, he spent more and more time wandering alone in the mountains or revisiting the site of the battle he sold his soul in, as if trying to decide if he should sepukku or not. Then, he started looking less and less human (or well...less and less rhino. You know what I mean). Then the attacks on travellers started. She continued to stand by her husband, even though he only ever briefly came back to the house anymore, and even though she knew that some combination of his shame and despair, too much time out in the mountains with only the spirits for company, and karmic magic had turned him into a monster.

So, Usagi has made a major stride toward avenging his master, even if the real villain is still out there. Cat granny apologizes, and prepares to be killed for her complicity and deceit.

Usagi seems to think they've both suffered enough already. Plus, given the woman's obligations to her husband, I'm not sure if she's really done anything wrong according to Usagi's moral code. Since he's not a hypocrite about his beliefs (unlike most samurai in both history and fiction), there's nothing for him to do here.

Still, he'll be spending the rest of the night alone in the cold. The alternative would be more than a little awkward at this point.


This was the first ever Usagi Yojimbo story, and its also one of the shortest ones. Really, this is just a proof of concept, so I probably shouldn't be expecting too much from it. As a proof of concept, I'd say this was pretty decent. Mostly on the merits of its visuals (the duel notwithstanding), but also in the way that it really captures the "feel" of the samurai mythology that inspired it.

The flaws are obvious enough that I don't think they need much explanation from me. The fight was hard to follow, the mystery's solution and the emotional core of the story were both just clumsily infodumped at the end, and Usagi didn't get to show much personality beyond his archetype.

On the other hand, the narrative did have some pretty nice details to counterbalance these issues. The nuances of all these characters operating within an assumed moral system, and how they succeed and fail to live up to it (and, additionally, are supported or failed by it) came across really strongly. While the infodump at the end hurt this self-contained story, it also provided some good setup for future adventures. This Lord Hikiji character whose cruelty turns men into monsters just as a side effect of his real ambitions and whose demagoguery has let him abuse the system without suffering for it whatsoever has gotten the reader invested in his downfall without ever appearing onscreen, and given Usagi's history the two are bound to fight again someday.


So, that was our intro to the character and world of Miyamoto Usagi. The next episode is much longer, so hopefully it'll give our bodyguard bunny room to show more facets of his personality.

2. Lone Rabbit and Child
​

This arc starts out with a pitched battle in a rice field. A well dressed bear (I think he's a bear? Could be a tanuki, or maybe a chipmunk or something. I'll just call him a bear for now) child is cowering in the middle of the chaos. Meanwhile, across the field, some peasants are farming away, singing about how miserable being a peasant in feudal Japan is.

Finally, bear child and a surviving cat swordswoman (it looks like none of the other members of their party survived the battle) arrive at a seemingly empty shack they can shelter in. They enter it, and find Usagi meditating. Swordcat's immediate impulse is to charge and try to cut him in half, but fortunately he's considerably better at this than she is.

Turns out that young lord Noriyuki has been hounded by assassins for this entire journey, so when they entered the shack and found an armed samurai already there his surviving bodyguard, Tomoe, jumped to conclusions. Paranoid, sure, but it sounds like recent events would drive anyone to paranoia, so it's hard to fault her.

She then (for some reason? Usagi didn't ask her for more information or otherwise prompt her. People just really like sharing their backstories in this world I guess) explains that the recently orphaned
Noriyuki is now the leader of Clan Geishu, and that they're traveling to Edo so he can introduce himself to the Shogun and be officially recognized as the new Geishu daimyo. However, with him as the only one left in the line of succession, if Noriyuki dies before getting the Shogun's recognition and thus ability to name an heir of his own, their clan will be abolished and its holdings divvied up to the neighbours. One of those neighbours being of the familiar name Hikiji. No one can prove that he's the one sending these assassins, but Tomoe and Noriyuki are both pretty sure it's him.

Naturally, Usagi is eager for any opportunity to fuck with Hikiji. So, when the enemy group that just took out most of the party tracks Noriyuki and Tomoe to the shack, Usagi is the one who greets them at the door.

He names himself without hesitation when asked who he is, and then asks them to do the same. They refuse, naturally; naming themselves would risk implicating their employer, and they don't have the patience for fake names and stories just now. They just demand that he turn over the young Geishu lord, and when he insists that he has no idea who they're talking about they attack.

You don't get to be the protagonist of a samurai story unless you're a borderline one-man-army badass, of course. The attackers' fate was sealed as soon as they entered the comic as unnamed baddies.

Yeah. Kinda does suck to be a henchman. Almost makes you give rice farming a serious thought or two.

Usagi's fighting ability does have its limits, though, and there are quite a few baddies. Fortunately, while Tomoe isn't anywhere near Usagi's skill level, she's still good enough to make up the difference.

With the battle won, the two Geishu thank Usagi for saving them and promise to burden him no further. He replies that he'd actually like to accompany them to Edo, if they'd have him. He accepts their promise of monetary compensation for his services, but he'd probably do it anyway; spiting Hikiji is its own reward.

They reach a town by night. Usagi wants to press on, but Tomoe is sure the river up ahead of them will be uncrossable with the rain that's come in. Better wait for tomorrow and take the risk of more assassins catching up to them.

While they're rained in for the night and the young lord gets himself to sleep, Usagi and Tomoe introduce themselves in a little more detail. Tomoe, unfortunately, doesn't have much to say that we didn't already know or easily infer. Vassal family to the Geishus, served them as samurai for generations, father was a swordsage, etc. Usagi has a lot more to fill us in on, even though we already know part of his backstory.

I do wish we'd gotten Usagi's old liege's name though. Don't want to have to keep calling him Daimyo Doggo forever. But anyway, these two also want to spar, which in this cluster of genres is just a euphemism for sex. Good for them I guess.

The next morning, they set out. They're pretty close to the capital now, so Hikiji is likely to have a lot of agents clustered in their path. They'll have to stay off the highways and cut across the wilderness as much as possible. It'll slow them down, but that's worth it to avoid more ambushes.

Also, the non-anthropomorphic wildlife in this world is a little different. There are like, these frog-dinosaur things just wandering around catching bugs.

Not all of the animals are so exotic. We've seen mundane birds and horses, and a stray dog has been tagging along after them since the shack (Noriyuki seems to have befriended it, which is pretty kawaii). Just, there's also these prehistoric-looking amphibian type creatures as well. Interesting choice.

They soon reach the river that Tomoe didn't want to cross last night. It's gone down since the rainstorm ended, but unfortunately it's still a heck of a lot more swollen than they expected. They could just wait a few more hours for the flood to pass, but unfortunately another gang of bounty hunters seem to have been patrolling this shore. There's a river ferry nearby, so Usagi tells Tomoe to grab Noriyuki and make a break for it while he keeps the pursuers busy. Tomoe is reluctant to let Usagi fight against the entire gang alone, but she also can't risk keeping Noriyuki so close to them. So, reluctantly, she heads for the boat while Usagi holds them off.

Unfortunately, that pig looks awfully samurai-y for a common boatman.

The actual ferryman is probably hunkered down in the cottage insisting over and over again that he doesn't want trouble.

Tomoe puts the kid down and draws her sword, but Hamurai turns out to be a cut above most when it comes to, well, cutting. After a short, intense battle, he manages to knock Tomoe into the swollen river, and she's quickly dragged away downstream.

The saving grace is that while Hamurai is a competent swordsman, his friends up the bank seem to be of the more common cheap mook persuasion, so Usagi is able to deal with them quickly. Seeing Tomoe take the plunge, he charges down to the pier like only a rabbit running downhill can and manages to get there just as Hamurai is about to make the kill.

What an eerily bloodless decapitation.


That's about the first two thirds of "Lone Rabbit and Child," and a suitably dramatic stopping point. The third and final story that I have commissioned is somewhat shorter, so I think I'll try and finish this episode and that one in my next post.