The Ronin, Usagi Yojimbo
What is Usagi Yojimbo?
The story is based on the episodic long-running American comic books series of the central character, Miyamoto Usagi, that was created by Japanese-born American cartoonist and comic book creator Stan Sakai in 1984. The main character's influence and inspiration were influenced on the life of legendary swordsman, Miyamoto Musashi. Originally Sakai intended for the protagonist to be human but decided to anthropomorphize the character instead after designing a rabbit with its ears bound like a samurai topknot.
Telling the tales of the adventures of the main character in the late sixteenth century early seventeenth-century Japan of the beauty and feudal violence throughout the series.
The word, Usagi, is Japanese rabbit. The word, Yojimbo, is Japanese for, bodyguard, hence the title of the series. Miyamoto often hires himself as a bodyguard or protector of the people he encounters along his travels. A rabbit bodyguard or Usagi the bodyguard.
Throughout the series, there are various ranges of genres in Usagi’s adventures that go along with the world itself that has dealings of the complex relationships within it and the deep historical research of the lush periods of details that sprawl together an intimate narration, and deep characterizations that Usagi encounters of every single character that elevates the series to not just be about talking animals in animal comics but the most comics in general.
Who is Miyamoto Usagi?
The character of Usagi is a Samurai warrior without a lord to protect. Either he serves his lord in death or seeks out a new lord of service. Instead, he chooses the path of the warriors' pilgrimage traveling across the known land seeking knowledge, wisdom, and balance. A ronin, masterless samurai. Part of the warrior class that puts him at an advantage above the peasant class. Often he is either respected or disrespected wherever he travels on the status the other class occupies. Though some say being a ronin is frowned upon as dishonorable in one cultural context.
Usagi is often seen as a fearless skilled warrior, but not invincible. In the lands he travels, he’ll find himself getting into trouble and sometimes needing the help of others than that of his swordsmanship. Though he is intelligent, compassionate, always rooting for the underdog, and stands up for the little guy. That he follows bushido, honor and duty, with a strong moral compass, and not that of an assassin for hire, he’s a protector, not a killer. Some could see him as a trickster, diplomat, and emissary with many situations that would require himself to offer his services for free out of necessity, to not be the usual taciturn somber stoic hero.
The personality of Usagi Yojimbo could be quite charming yet very funny and goofy to others from time to time. Throughout the series, the stories flesh out different angles of his character small snippets. An example would be where he’s great with kids in any village where he stays as a motif of kids seen in some panels of the comic that often show kids falling asleep as he tells stories of repetition through many years.
You have small little moments that are outside the many big adventures of martial arts fighting, monster-slaying, and other things that Usagi finds himself involved in.
Many shades to Usagi that make him one of the most interesting characters in all comic books combined.
What makes the series special?
It would be complex to pin down the series to one thing. It tells in the storytelling, the artistry, the writing, plot, dialogue, and characters that make the series impeccable woven together. A unique world.
Consistency, Stan Sakai has been creating Usagi Yojimbo by himself for over thirty years of the Usagi universe and makes it richer as the story progesses. Like flashbacks that plays with time and chronology that interests a timeless effect where many comic book readers could pick up any copy and start reading it from anywhere that tells about something in the background that happened before, extrapolated, or things being reinvented almost all the time in any part of the stories.
Not only is it thorough in its storytelling, but also in logic and myth told in the series the is very complex in the fantasy driven genre that is often times challenging to adapt. Where some stories deal with a potter or seaweed farmer as other stories deal with demons, myths, and legendary weapons. Breath life into the epic and the mundane the balances out the world building the series excels at.
The perfect blend of history and mythology, the balance of action and comedy, political intrique, and the supernatural that every character has a part to play in the series.
The tell tales of the swordsrabbit in a feudel land that was plagued by feudal violence in the late sixteenth early seventeenth century Japan.
