Usagi Yojimbo is one of the best series on the Polish market. Here are seven reasons why you should read the story of the long-eared Ronin.
Reading order
The undoubted advantage of the saga of the rabbit ronin is its flexibility in terms of where to start reading. For licensing reasons, Polish collective editions of Usagi Yojimbo were not published sequentially. Most readers in Poland started reading from volume 8, and only later did they learn about the earlier fate of the long-eared samurai. However, it does not bother you at all.
Most of Miyamoto Usagi’s adventures are autonomous stories enclosed in one or more notebooks that do not require a broader context. Although some plots or characters reappear in subsequent episodes, they are usually not crucial to understanding the plot.
Of course, the best starting point is the very beginning (literally: Usagi Yojimbo The Beginning. Book 1), but in fact, you can start with any volume in the main series. The Yokai album is good for that too. However, I would not recommend starting with the story of Senso or Usagi in Cosmos , which are a fantastic science variation and a kind of epilogue to the series.
Space Usagi. Fortunately, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles toy has little to do with a comic book
The evolution of the hero, the world and the author
Reading Usagi Yojimbo in the order in which the episodes were published, you can see how this comic has changed and how its author has refined his technique and practice. Which does not mean, of course, that the first stories are weak – what’s not! The state of Sakai is of a high standard from the very beginning. However, you can see that with time both the scripts and the drawings become more sophisticated and complicated.
New release and availability
Usagi Yojimbo has been published in Poland since 2002. In the meantime, many parts have run out, and some have become white ravens at ridiculous aftermarket prices. Fortunately, new collective editions are currently being released. Usagi Yojimbo’s Beginning series will consist of two volumes corresponding to books 1-7, and Usagi Yojimbo Saga will consist of nine sections covering books 8-33. An additional advantage of this edition are the original onomatopoeias, hand-created by the author, and colorful illustrations from the covers of notebook issues.
I hope you got interested in Usagi’s adventures. And if you are curious where this hero came from and where he also appeared, check out my article Usagi Yojimbo – the genesis and fate of the samurai rabbit comic .
Chibi heroes – excerpt from illustrations by Julie Fujii-Sakai and Stan Sakai
