Usagi goes up against bandits, ghosts, and assassins, all while wandering feudal Japan, looking for peace. The stories themselves draw from Japanese history, folklore, and cinema. His style reminds me of Moebius in some ways and of Miyazaki in others, minimalist yet simultaneously intricate. It's amazing how much emotion he's able to convey with so little. Stan Sakai uses clean lines and great composition to put his stories together.
The straight-forward, minimalist style grabbed my attention right away. The first story was a little rocky, a team-up with the Ninja Turtles to save a rat. Did I mention all the characters are animals? The violence is tame and there's no blood. I have no idea why I enjoyed this as much as I did. I was vaguely aware there was a Usagi Yojimbo comic but I didn't imagine the rabbit could carry his own book. I first encountered Usagi on an episode of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon where he was yanked from his own time period and teamed up with the aforementioned turtles. He's also a rabbit in a world of anthropomorphic animals. Miyamoto Usagi is a ronin, a masterless samurai, wandering feudal Japan in search of peace.
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His favorite movie is Satomi Hakkenden (1959).
#Usagi yojimbo series#
He also made a futuristic spin-off series Space Usagi. First published in 1984, the comic continues to this day, with Sakai as the lone author and nearly-sole artist (Tom Luth serves as the main colorist on the series, and Sergio Aragonés has made two small contributions to the series: the story "Broken Ritual" is based on an idea by Aragonés, and he served as a guest inker for the black and white version of the story "Return to Adachi Plain" that is featured in the Volume 11 trade paper-back edition of Usagi Yojimbo). He began his career by lettering comic books (notably Groo the Wanderer by Sergio Aragonés and Mark Evanier) and became famous with the production of Usagi Yojimbo, the epic saga of Miyamoto Usagi, a samurai rabbit living in late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth-century Japan. He and his wife, Sharon, presently reside and work in Pasadena. He later attended the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. Stan Sakai (Japanese: 坂井 スタンSakai Sutan born May 25, 1953) is an artist who became known as an Eisner Award-winning comic book originator.īorn in Kyoto, Sakai grew up in Hawaii and studied fine arts at the University of Hawaii.
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