Yuichi Usagi (Darren Barnet) is a teenage rabbit who aspires to be a samurai like his ancestor, Miyamoto Usagi (Yuki Matsuzaki), was 1,000 years ago. With his aunt's blessing and the gift of Miyamoto Usagi's sword, Yuichi sets off, along with his pet Takage lizard, Spot, to the metropolis of Neo Edo to fulfil his dream of becoming a samurai. In the city, Yuichi soon finds himself making the worst introduction to rhino bounty hunter Gen (Aleks Le), Fox puppeteer/pickpocket Kitsune (Shelby Rabara), and cat Temple assistant Chizu (Mallory Low). When the four of them end up together in the temple of the Ki-Stone that powers Neo Edo, the stone has a reaction to Yuichi that unleashes spirits known as Yokai upon Neo Edo. Blamed by Neo Edo's leader Lord Kagone (SungWon Cho) for the flood of Yokai wreaking havoc on the city, the group make a deal with Kagone to fight off the Yokai in exchange for avoiding imprisonment. Further complicating matters, Yuichi learns that Miyamoto Usagi's name is one of disgrace as he may have killed a shogun which Yuichi refuses to believe.
Samurai Rabbit: The Usagi Chronicles comes to us as a joint venture from Netflix Animation and Gaumont Animation and is inspired by the comic book series Usagi Yojimbo written by Stan Sakai that began in 1984 and still runs strong to this day with about 200 issues and is one of the longest running creator owned comic series still running along side others like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Spawn, or Cerberus the Aardvark. To keep things simple, Usagi Yojimbo follows the adventures of a wandering masterless samurai (or ronin) in Edo era Japan where all the cast are anthropomorphized animals. The series is noted for its strong characters and stories, many of which are inspired by historical legends or Japanese cinema such as the works of Akira Kurosawa or Toshiro Mifune (one character in the comic even bears the name Mifune). While well regarded in comics and his own fanbase, Usagi Yojimbo has always unfortunately been in the shadow of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (with both series premiering the same year in 1984, with TMNT coming out first) and Usagi is known by the general public primarily for his relationship with the TMNT franchise having first appeared in a crossover with the 1987 cartoon where he had a pie thrown in his face by Michelangelo....yeah. Due to the nature of the world Usagi Yojimbo creates with samurai animals often killing each other (nothing explicit with death uniquely identified through thought bubbles bearing skull and crossbones) Usagi Yojimbo wasn't as easy to adapt to children's animation as the comparatively more sci-fi based TMNT franchise that allowed for things like robot henchmen. There was an attempt at adapting the sci-fi spin-off Space Usagi, but the failure of Bucky O'Hare and the Toad Wars resulted in the project getting canned. Since then Usagi has only appeared in incarnations of the TMNT franchise with undoubtedly the best incarnation being the three parter in the 2012 series that was the closest he was ever allowed to be to his comic version. Now here we are with Samurai Rabbit: The Usagi Chronicles, does it deliver? Mostly, with some hiccups.
I'll be honest, the show has some REALLY good parts and some REALLY annoying parts. The show's animation is absolutely beautiful, especially in the way it's rendered and utilized. The show features two distinct animation styles: the first is the CGI used to render characters in the present and it looks really strong and easily stands alongside the Clone Wars series or Miraculous in terms of the quality animation. On the other hand, we have flashbacks to the past or fantasy sequences which are rendered as gritty motion comics that adhere to the style of the comic book and Yuli Matsuzaki reprises his role as Miyamoto Usagi from the 2012 TMNT series and is perfect in the role. The style of the show is sort of a mixture of Kung Fu Panda and Big Hero 6 with Neo Edo reminiscent of Sanfransokyo with its mixture of futuristic infrastructure and 16th century Japanese aesthetics but despite being familiar, it's still visually interesting.
Now moving on we have the characters. Yuicihi Usagi doesn't make the best impression in the first few episodes. He's cocky, arrogant, boastful and talks WAY too much. Frankly Yuichi feels less like Miyamoto Usagi and more like Spider-Man, only without the gravitas that's usually added to keep the character's snark in check. The show is at least aware of Yuichi's flaws as a character and they are used to give him an arc through the series where he learns restraint, but the writing feels unbalanced in his character with the grating boastfulness and poorly timed jokes overshadowing the character growth. Yuichi's companions have some good points and not so good points, but unlike Yuichi I did feel they were better balanced by comparison. Gen, despite an odd running gag of often needing to get checked out at the hospital is good as the team's muscle and his prosthetic horn that functions as a Swiss Army Knife with context relevant attachments was a fun aspect of the character, I also enjoyed the energized and mischievous Kitsune who's quite a fun character despite her status as a thief not really called into question by the others much. Chizu is probably my favorite character as she gets the best arc as the most serious one (by default) who has a past that leads to conflict within herself.
The story is well structured on paper with Yuichi going through growth in both skill and character, as well as learning about the tainted history of his family lineage. However despite a strong setup the show doesn't really dig into it and anytime the show flirts with tackling the potentially rich character or story developments it'll pull itself back and do a tone destroying joke or one liner and completely deflating the atmosphere it built. The comics had humor in them as well, but there's a difference between tension relief and completely deflating a scene. The humor in this show (for me at least) is more miss than hit, but that's mainly because it overindulges on humor at the expense of everything else. Humor in a story like this is like ketchup: "good in small doses, but if you poor on too much you ruin it". With that said, this is a show meant to be accessible to a family audience. Much like how the 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon dialed back the Frank Miller-esque writing and tone of the source comic, this show is also not the same as its source comic (taking aside the violence in Usagi Yojimbo is fairly tame). I think the show does have potential to grow, let's not forget Clone Wars' first two seasons were pretty rough and didn't get consistently good until Season 3) and while Yuichi Usagi is grating in the early episodes of the series he does grow and get better, and his companions despite also dialing up their humor too much do have some good moments.
Samurai Rabbit: The Usagi Chronicles isn't perfect with its inaugural season as it overindulges on humor and it makes its protagonist a bit more grating than it probably intended to, but it does have potential to grow and is well made. The animation and production design are beautiful, especially the flashback sequences stylized like motion comics that feature Miyamoto Usagi as fully realized as he was in the 2012 TMNT cartoon. The characters have some good points and not so good points but on the whole I did grow to care about them throughout the course of the season and I was compelled to finish it. If this show gets a second season, I think there's room for growth and improvement but keeping in mind the target audience of this show is children it's a solid enough introduction and maybe it will spur interest in the comic series.
