Usagi Yojimbo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Last week during the Lean Into Artcast co-host Rob Stenzinger mentioned a Usagi Yojimbo action figure from the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles toyline dressed in a space suit. I had heard about the Space Usagi spinoff series and while I know the figure I’ve always believed it to be connected to that set of miniseries…once I heard about it anyway. The regular feudal Japan version, Miyamoto Usagi (or Usagi Miyamoto if you prefer the English method) had appeared on that and the second series (I don’t know about the current one) as well as in the original comics, which explains his presence here. The Space Usagi toy was just to pepper the line as toylines tend to do late in their life.
I went looking for info on it to show him and found something I wasn’t expecting, a 3+ minute pilot for a Space Usagi cartoon, based on the science fiction take of Stan Sakai’s wandering ronin. It was produced by Fred Wolf Films, the same group behind the first TMNT cartoon. Tonight we take a look at it and try to figure out why it didn’t make it to a full series.
