Tag Archives: stan sakai

April 14, 2026

NECA TMNT Usagi Yojimbo – Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello, Raphael

By Joe
After ceding their spot to a rabbit last week, the turtles return to Tuesday.

Last week, we took a look at the first figure in a line of action figures based on the artwork of the legendary Stan Sakai, creator of the comic Usagi Yojimbo. That first figure was the rabbit himself, Miyamoto Usagi, and he was drawn from the latest crossover between the two franchises which took place in 2023. Now, we turn to the turtles. NECA has given us a lot of turtles over the years, but only a few can trace themselves back to a specific artist. And, like these ones, they’re usually found in the comic subline of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and this time we’re getting Sakai’s take on the heroic reptiles. It feels like more often than not it’s Usagi who is coming into the world of TMNT and his look is reinterpreted based on whatever the look of that medium happens to be so getting action figures based on Sakai’s artistry feels like something that has been long overdue.

Not a ton of stuff in the box, but I also don’t know what more is needed?

Now, you may be wondering why I decided to give Usagi his own write-up while mashing all four turtles into a single one. And if your assumption is because this is essentially the same figure times four then you are absolutely correct. Like most TMNT lines, the turtles all share the same body and the only distinguishing characteristic between the four are their belts, portraits, and weapons. And while Usagi got three heads and multiple accessories, the turtles mostly share all the same stuff and even their alternate portrait isn’t unique. It does lead me to assume that NECA budgeted more for Usagi and the savings in reusing tools for the turtles was put into his figure. I’m not entirely sure how the licensing works here. Sakai is obviously compensated for Usagi while Paramount is getting their money for turtles, but is Sakai getting anything for his design work on the turtle figures? Does Paramount get any money for the Usagi figure since it still says “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” on the box? I don’t know the answers to any of that, but one would assume a line with essentially two licensing fees would be more expensive to produce, but the cost to the consumer is essentially the same as most NECA products so I suppose that’s a good thing. The boxes are also all the same save for the main color and the credits for these guys are the same as those for Usagi which will be linked at the end of this entry.

For alt portraits, Leo and Don share an expression as do Mikey and Raph.

Sakai’s take on the turtles has proven quite popular. NECA indicated a lot of positive feedback to the reveal which happened over a year ago and in my own circle of collectors it seems everyone really likes them. Sakai’s approach is a somewhat boxy proportioned turtle, but one that retains a lot of soft, round, edges. The plastron is quite rectangular with a fang-like quality to the base. The limbs are chunky, but muscled, and the feet are a tad oversized. The shell is in the shape of an oval with a simplified pattern in the middle of a large, elongated, hexagon in the center flanked by six, soft, pentagons. I say “soft” because the two on the side barely feature a point in the center making them more like a quadrilateral. The turtles each have their own coloration which seems to correspond with the 2012 series. Donatello may be a touch more saturated and Raph more pale (he’s no where close to the shade of green of NECA’s 2012 Raphael, but that one also doesn’t match the source). The only color is reserved for the bandanas and Leo and Donnie’s are almost a pastel shade of blue and purple, respectively. The belts are all unique with both Leo and Don getting some pouches on the front. All of the turtles have weapon storage and Michelangelo rolls with the unique holsters on the front of his belt as opposed to the back. Leonardo’s scabbards are also arranged in a parallel fashion as opposed to an X.

Leo looks a little intense for this to be a sparring match.

The paint is in the same style as NECA’s other comic interpretations. The colors are nice and matte and there’s an abundance of black linework painted onto the figures. It’s everywhere and really adds to the comic vibe of the source. It’s very clean and crisp with very little paint slop to be found. There’s a fleck of orange on Mikey’s plastron that I assumed transfered from the bandana tails in the packaging. I can’t really find any imperfections on Raphael and Donatello while Leonardo may be missing a tiny bit of black in his teeth. And speaking of, each turtle comes with a unique portrait by default. I really like how the open mouthed expressions on both Leo and Raph accentuate that rounded-off look Sakai gave them via the curl of their lips. There’s also this excess of black lines in Raph’s brow that really captures his personality. Donatello has a very stoic, almost grumpy, expression by comparison and Mikey has a cheerful one. He has inverted “U” shapes to represent his closed eyes and his smile is flat white with no teeth lines sculpted or painted on. It’s adorable. I think it’s the personality captured by these portraits combined with the clean presentation that really sold the public on these designs. They’re inherently charming and I find it impossible not to love them.

“Hey dude, you don’t need to be so serious all the time. Have a pizza!”

As for the rest of the stuff, well that’s a little less exciting. Each turtle comes with a set of gripping hands and a set of fists. Donatello also gets a set of more relaxed gripping hands, Raphael a set of finger pointing/sai grip hands, while Leo and Mikey each get a set of open hands. For alternate portraits, each turtle has basically a frown with one side of their mouth baring teeth – the classic TMNT expression. Donatello and Leo share the same portrait with the right side of the mouth open while Raph and Mikey have their grimace to the left. Each turtle also has a throwing star if that’s something you value. What most actually do want and expect are the unique weapons for each turtle. Raph’s sai have some nice size and the brown handles match his padding. Leonardo’s swords have a black and gray diamond pattern on the hilt and slot into the scabbards seamlessly. Donatello’s bo is in one piece as opposed to the break-away model we often see, but it looks fine and the paint on the gray wrappings with black outlining is clean. Mikey is perhaps the laggard here as his nunchaku are all plastic. The handles are black with a blue line that I think is a nice touch, but the connecting plastic for each handle is just plastic. There’s no bendy wire and they’re quite rigid so there’s no posing here. They fit into his belt just fine, so that’s a plus. The gripping hands across the board are also reasonably soft so getting weapons into hands is not much of an issue. If you want Raph to hold his sai in a more unorthodox manner then you may want to soften the hands up a bit, but otherwise you should be good to go out of the box with these guys.

That’s as far as the hips are going to go out to the side.

These being NECA figures, one likely has low expectations for the articulation and if so then expectations met. Though, in a way, NECA underperforms here and it’s related to one issue. The sidewalls, the tissue between the plastron and shell, is one, big, piece with these designs. It’s like the whole shell and plastron is one big overlay. Ordinarily, NECA doesn’t do that and you can see the hip joint when looking at a turtle figure from the side. The movie turtles do this as they had to match the movie, but those designs were less restricting and probably because actual people had to wear those things. With these figures, the plastic extends well past the hip and onto the thigh. It essentially takes away most of the hip range, one of the few spots where NECA’s turtle figures are ordinarily okay as they can get their legs out to the side for splits. These ones are limited to maybe 45 degrees there, and there’s no usable waist twist to take advantage of. Kicking forward is severely restrained by the placement of the plastron and the shell prevents the leg from going back. There’s also the slightly odd aesthetic of NECA utilizing pinned joints at the knees, but opting for pin-less at the elbow. It’s an all together odd double-joint as the top is like the old style NECA double jointed elbows where the top would peg into the thigh with a hinge below it and the bottom would do the same. Except here we get the peg and hinge on top, but just a hinge on the bottom thus necessitating the need for a pin through the calf. I think they did this with the movie Shredder/Foot, but I don’t know if I’ve seen it outside of that. As for the rest, the arms are fairly basic and the head range is probably what one would expect. Leonardo does get the preferred vertically hinged gripping hands, but for some reason no one else does.

If you think these guys all look pretty cool together then by all means go out and grab ’em, but don’t expect to be doing much posing.

The end result with the NECA Stan Sakai turtles is pretty much in-line with what I had to say about Miyamoto Usagi – if you love the look of these designs then that’s the only reason to get them. They’re not going to pose well and the value is less with the turtles than it was with Usagi because of all the shared parts. The design of these turtles was never going to lend itself well to articulation, but I do wish NECA had gone lighter on the sidewalls to free up the hips. Someone willing could probably trim that area and open these guys up a bit, but I’m not that someone. I do think they look great. On a technical level, they’re not as impressive as the Usagi figure, but the stylization is wonderful. NECA’s strength is in translating art to plastic and they certainly nailed it here. The execution of the paint is damn near flawless, and while this isn’t the most demanding paint job I’ve ever seen, it’s still impressive to see how clean it is on this scale. Based purely on aesthetics, these turtles are instant favorites for me. I think if I could only save one set of turtles in a fire it would likely be the NECA movie figures or maybe the Bandai ones, but these guys would be hard to ignore too. Though if I’m being practical I should probably put the original Mirage turtles ahead as they’d be the hardest to replace. At any rate, these guys look great and I am quite pleased just looking at them. They bring me joy, and in the end, isn’t that what this hobby is all about?

If you liked this one we have plenty of related topics to interest you here:

NECA TMNT Usagi Yojimbo – Miyamoto Usagi

Stan Sakai stumbled into a pretty good thing when he met the co-creators of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, and struck up a creative friendship. It would seem all liked and appreciated each others work with Eastman and Laird’s ninja turtles and Sakai’s samurai rabbit. The fateful little pairing would eventually…

Keep reading
by Joe

NECA Mirage Studios Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 4-Pack

When it comes to the popularity of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles a lot of the credit goes to Playmates Toys. Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird created the characters born out of a joke. Credit them for having the vision to think this joke had appeal beyond their small circle as they self-published Teenage Mutant Ninja…

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by Joe

NECA TMNT Toon The Adventures of Space Usagi

When it comes to NECA’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles line of action figures based on the old cartoon, I’ve pretty much been all-in. The only figures I’ve passed on have been the style guide variants for the turtles. That will probably change in 2024 as the collection has grown quite large and has hit on…

Keep reading
by Joe

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April 7, 2026

NECA TMNT Usagi Yojimbo – Miyamoto Usagi

By Joe
The samurai rabbit is back at it.

Stan Sakai stumbled into a pretty good thing when he met the co-creators of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, and struck up a creative friendship. It would seem all liked and appreciated each others work with Eastman and Laird’s ninja turtles and Sakai’s samurai rabbit. The fateful little pairing would eventually lead to Sakai’s rabbit and the turtles crossing over in each other’s works and even a publishing deal with Mirage Studios for a time. Likely more lucrative for Sakai was Usagi being included in both the Playmates toy line for TMNT and the 1987 series. Usagi Yojimbo, as the fanbase knew him, would go on to appear in other shows and toy lines and there’s a pretty good chance that most who know of the character know of him first and foremost via his interactions with the turtles.

If you have been around the fandom long enough then you probably know we have a bit of a Frankenstein’s monster thing going on with Usagi Yojimbo. The name of the books from where the rabbit comes is titled Usagi Yojimbo, while the character’s name is actually Miyamoto Usagi. I don’t know why he was credited as Usagi Yojimbo within the turtle franchise, but it has stuck with a lot of fans even as later incarnations of the franchise (like the 2012 series) corrected it. For its own TMNT toy line, NECA was smart to secure the licensing rights for Sakai’s samurai rabbit for inclusion in the company’s toon toy line. This apparently even boxed out other companies like Super7 who had a mock-up for their own version of the character that had to be trashed. NECA utilized the license to do the expected and release an action figure of the character based on his appearance in the old cartoon, but they’ve also done other variations like a space version, an armored one, and even a four-pack of different looks. For all of them, NECA stuck with their base design of the toon version with one of the four-pack versions sporting more of a Sakai likeness in the face. It’s only now that we’re getting a true Stan Sakai version of his classic character molded in plastic.

This is hardly NECA’s first dance with Usagi.

In 2023 the turtles once again crossed over with Usagi in a story written and illustrated by Sakai. NECA has used that series as the basis for its new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – Usagi Yojimbo line consisting of Usagi and the four turtles. We’ll talk about the turtles next week, but for this one I felt like we should let the rabbit take the spotlight first. As I mentioned already, this is a version of Usagi that is unquestionably based on the artwork of Stan Sakai. He’s taller, more imposing, and all decked out in armor unlike the more simplified toon version many are used to. This is a line sculpted by Tomasz Rozejowski and Kushwara Studios with paint by the duo Mike Puzzo and Geoff Trapp. Each figure is sold separately, but not in the typical five-panel NECA Ultimates box. Instead it’s more of a standard window box like we’re accustomed to seeing with the retro cloth figures. Each release is numbered with Miyamoto Usagi being number 1 and the box is color-coded as well. There’s some scenery illustrated by Ben Seto, but most of the box art is reserved for photographs of the figures and they’re by Stephen Mazurek. I’m a little surprised there’s no art from Sakai like a mural for the side of the box, but such a thing would also be wasted on me since I’m going to throw these out. It’s probably a good thing that I planned to do that from the start as my Usagi box got pretty banged up in transit. I got these all direct from NECA via Target’s website when they went up for order on March 20th as part of the Haulathon event we all so love dearly.

His posing is going to be limited, but he can get his hand onto the hilt of his blade while it’s still partially sheathed.

Usagi stands at about 5.25″ to the top of his head not factoring in the ears. Out of the box he sports a rather grim expression and his hears are bound together as they so often are like a ponytail which is sculpted to appear to be blowing in the wind. He has that trademark arc over his left eye Sakai so often illustrates and there’s some fur sculpted to the edges of his cheeks, but that’s it as far as textured fur goes. Usagi is decked out in a lovely blue suit of armor which includes a lighter blue undershirt that is covered with a checker pattern on the sleeves. The armor is textured and fully-painted and looks absolutely gorgeous. I am a sucker for blue so I’m predisposed to like this design, but I am really blown away with the accuracy of the paint applications. There’s rivets of red and panels of black and gold and if you’ve ever painted something black and gold then you know how ugly that can get with an unsteady hand. The paintwork continues onto the rear of the figure, no skimping out here, and there are subtle embellishments of black linework to give the figure that comic look. The pants are all black and he’s sporting brown sandals. The paint job isn’t perfect, there’s a little bleed in spots on the shoulder pauldrons and the left foot has a faint yellow mark on the otherwise white foot, but for a mass-released item at $38 I have no complaints. This figure looks spectacular.

Ears are swappable, and easily so.

Usagi comes loaded with accessories – more than the turtles. For portraits, we get the previously mentioned grim expression as well as a smirk and a gritting teeth expression. Each head has a set of ears which can be moved from portrait to portrait. We have the windswept ears plus down ears and a more neutral look. Swapping ears is painless while swapping heads is a bit troublesome. I had to use heat to get the stock head off. The hands are much easier to swap and for those we get a set of fists, gripping, and open hands. Other accessories include a pouch, and having not read the story I have no idea what’s in it. Usagi can hold it, but there’s no place to store the pouch on his belt which is a bit unfortunate. He also has his sword which features a lime green wrap and yellow trim. Paint rub can happen if you’re not careful when inserting it into his hand, but the hands are a bit softer than usual for NECA so it’s not too hard to get it in place. Usagi also has a scabbard permanently affixed to his belt and the sword slides into that just fine. There’s also an included Tokage decked out in armor similar to Usagi’s. If you don’t know what a Tokage is, they’re little dinosaur-like creatures from the book. It’s a slug figure so no articulation, but the paint app is nice and he’s a fun, cute, addition.

I feel like the ears down look is best suited for things like hoods, which this figure does not have.

NECA usually impresses with the aesthetics when it comes to action figures and not so much with articulation. Usagi here is, unfortunately, no exception to that rule. He’s pretty limited and the intricate armor isn’t going to make things easier, but believe it or not, he’s better than the turtles we’ll be talking about next week. For articulation points we have the ears, head, shoulders, elbows, wrists, waist, hips, knees, and ankles. The elbows and knees are both single joints. You won’t get a 90 degree angle at either and the knees don’t seem to want to swivel on mine. This is a bit irksome as the left leg isn’t centered, but it thankfully is only visible from the back. Since I can’t line the hinge up with the opening in the thigh it means the range on my left leg is even worse than the right. The ankles and range at the head are at least a plus, and in a surprise move NECA actually included vertical hinges on the gripping hands! This is something they didn’t include in the original toon Usagi and I honestly almost forgot to check here as I had given up on NECA going back to this method after they declined to do this for the 2012 Leonardo. I should add that the shoulder pauldrons are mounted with pliable plastic so they do a decent job of getting out of the way when articulating the shoulders, though I’d be hesitant to leave them posed in such a fashion for fear of them permanently assuming an unflattering position.

That Stan Sakai fellow does good work.

Miyamoto Usagi looks absolutely resplendent in his samurai armor and the portraits and overall vibe really do a tremendous job of capturing Stan Sakai’s artwork. He has enough stuff while the articulation is going to severely limit the ability to pose him like a proper samurai. NECA’s articulation shortcomings have started to ware on me over the past year or so, but here I’m more forgiving because I am absolutely in love with how this guy looks. He doesn’t need to assume an elaborate pose to have presence on a shelf. I considered passing on this release at first thinking I could just be happy with the turtles, but once I got a good look at it I knew that wasn’t going to happen. I currently have no idea where I’m going to display this mini collection in my home, but I consider it a good problem to have. This is the best figure of Usagi we’ve ever received and it’s unlikely we’ll get a better one anytime soon.

If you’re a fan of the samurai rabbit and TMNT then you may appreciate these figure reviews:

NECA Cartoon TMNT The Tale of Usagi Yojimbo

The early issues of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles released by Mirage Studios include a few guest stars here and there. One of them comes from the pages of Usagi Yojimbo, the samurai rabbit by the name of Miyamoto Usagi. The pairing of samurai rabbit and ninja turtles was a big enough success that it migrated…

Keep reading
by Joe

NECA TMNT Toon The Adventures of Space Usagi

When it comes to NECA’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles line of action figures based on the old cartoon, I’ve pretty much been all-in. The only figures I’ve passed on have been the style guide variants for the turtles. That will probably change in 2024 as the collection has grown quite large and has hit on…

Keep reading
by Joe

NECA TMNT Toon Granny Bebop and Baby Rocksteady

When 2025 is all said and done I think we’ll look back on it in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles collector sphere as the year the NECA toon toyline started showing its age. For some, that probably already happened. Jersey Red, Chakahachi, Lotus Blossom – who the heck are these characters? They are pretty deep…

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by Joe

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July 26, 2022

NECA Cartoon TMNT The Tale of Usagi Yojimbo

By Joe
The samurai rabbit joins NECA’s toon line!

The early issues of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles released by Mirage Studios include a few guest stars here and there. One of them comes from the pages of Usagi Yojimbo, the samurai rabbit by the name of Miyamoto Usagi. The pairing of samurai rabbit and ninja turtles was a big enough success that it migrated to television during the original run of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. For some reason, the character Miyamoto Usagi was named Usagi Yojimbo in the show. I don’t know if it was deliberate or a mistranslation, but because of that a whole generation of kids grew up referring to the samurai rabbit character created by Stan Sakai as Usagi Yojimbo. To his credit, Sakai doesn’t seem bothered by this as he has let Usagi be utilized for pretty much every iteration of the turtles that followed. I’m sure he was compensated for that, but he seems totally willing to let this association continue and that’s why I’m here talking about NECA Toys’ latest deluxe release in its line of action figures based on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Usagi Yojimbo.

Usagi seems to pondering if we may have some turtle variants in our future.

Whatever you refer to him as, know that I’m just going to call him Usagi for the duration of this post. Usagi, as stated, is the latest deluxe release in NECA’s toyline which means he comes in that VHS style packaging with artwork by Dan Elson and Aaron Hazouri that is just so hard to throw away. It looks terrific and it’s loaded with product shots of the figure in action which is easily displayed by opening the front, fifth panel which is seated by a piece of Velcro. Usagi was put up for order on NECA’s website back in March as an open preorder and he’s just now making his way into the hands of eager collectors even faster than Storm, which I noted was the shortest wait between preorder and release I’ve had since 2019. This should be followed by a general release at Target stores across the US and other online outlets in international territories, but that could be a few months off given how long it took some past preorders to do the same. Target has a collector event planned for September so that’s a safe bet for when this figure (and others) may appear.

Yep, that’s Usagi all right.

Usagi stands about 4 5/8″ to the top of his head and 5.5″ to the top of his tallest ears. He’s depicted in his show accurate black and blue attire with a gray sash around the waist and purple wraps around the base of the ears. He even has those circular, brownish, emblems on his vest that always looked like chocolate chip cookies to me as a kid. He comes out of the box with a very serious expression on his face (he’s a rather serious character in the show) and he has some open hands. He also has a set of gripping hands and fists and overall he looks great. Usagi is easily one of the best in this line based on likeness which is a testament to his simple design and the quality of the sculpt from Paul Harding and the paint of Geoff Trapp and Mike Puzzo. There’s virtually no paint slop on my figure and the black linework this line is known for looks crisp and I really like the subtle fur texture sculpted into the exposed fur on the character.

He may not be particularly dynamic, but he does make up for that in stability.

Usagi looks terrific, though some sacrifices were meant to get there. His articulation is a bit impacted as a result. The head is on a double-ball-peg and is articulated at the base of the neck as well. He can look all over the place and there’s no complaints there. The ears can swivel too. The shoulders are ball hinged and he can get to about horizontal when lifting them out to the sides. The elbows are just single-hinged and feature a swivel, but the cut of the joint is at an angle and you’ll need to be mindful about paint rub. The hands swivel and are hinged horizontally, also known as the “wrong way,” and at the waist there’s a ball joint that basically just allows for a twist. At the hips he can pretty much do a full split, but he really doesn’t kick forward very far nor does his leg go back much at all. That seems due to the baggy pants which also only let the single knee bend go about 45 degrees. The ankles are seated deep in the cuff of the pants so they too don’t have much range. The rocker is okay, but the forward and back is negligible.

More figures should come with tiny dinosaurs.

For a samurai rabbit, it is a bummer to see the articulation so limited. Usagi basically can’t even do a two-handed sword grip, but his feet are big and sturdy enough that he can stand on one foot so it isn’t all bad. It’s obvious why he’s like this though so I have a hard time critiquing NECA too hard for the articulation when the aesthetic of the figure is so good. It’s just the trade-off collectors of this line have come to expect. The only improvement that would have made sense is double-jointed knees or a butterfly joint at the shoulder, but I don’t know if I own any NECA figures with such a joint so it’s not like I was expecting it.

He looks like a little kid being forced to dress-up against his will.

As far as accessories go, Usagi comes packing quite a bit. I already mentioned the hands, but Usagi also has a pair of swords at his disposal. One is a katana while the other is listed as a wakizashi. Basically, you have one long sword and one short one and there’s a set of scabbards for each to go into that’s molded together. The scabbard can be affixed to the figure via a black, elastic, sash that’s very similar to what we’ve seen in the movie line with Shredder and the Foot. Just slip it over the figure and stick it on his waist. It will mostly disappear in the waist joint, but it can hold the scabbards just fine. Mine did start to fall out after a day or so though either due to the elastic stretching or part of it getting hung-up on the ball joint at the waist. Usagi also has two additional weapons: a kunai and a katar, which is that fist-dagger that came with all of the Playmates turtles and fit into the rear holster on Raphael’s belt. They’re well-painted and nice to have. We also get a little dinosaur, the Tokage, which is from the Usagi Yojimbo comic. It’s a fun little thing to have, plus who doesn’t want a tiny dinosaur?

NECA didn’t provide much room to work with, but with a little hot water and some persistence, you can fix this if it happens to you. And if you’re looking for an IPA recommendation, Sip of Sunshine is my go-to.

We also have a second portrait that features some teeth and ears draped along the skull. The ears are swappable between the heads, but I have thus far encountered a lot of difficulty swapping the heads. The head is connected to the neck via a double-ball-peg and the bottom peg in the neck is the one that keeps popping out as opposed to the ball in the head. It’s so small that I can’t pull it out with with my fingers, so I had to resort to tweezers (I wasn’t sure my needle nose pliers would even get in there). With some advice and ecncouragement from Twitter user Uncle Jesse (@Mesademon149), I was able to dig the peg out with hot water and said tweezers. Even after lubricating the portion that inserts into the head, I still have been unable to get the peg to function properly so I’ve had to dig this thing out a few times so I need to pick a face and stick with it.

This cloak is pretty bad ass.
“My name is Usagi: Jedi Master.”

Lastly, we have some extra clothing. There’s a soft goods cloak that’s a dark gray with a wired hood. It’s easy to slip on and it looks terrific and there’s a black ribbon included to be utilized like a sash. I just wish there were belt loops on the cloak to better utilize the sash, or just another elastic band. I’m guessing it was a knotted robe in the show as I don’t remember, but I would take the trade-off. Usagi also has hit hat, a type of kasa or Jingasa, that most likely see and just think of as a samurai hat. It looks like it’s made of wood and is very well painted with a light brown on top and a dark brown inside. There’s a lot of nice linework on it as well. There’s a strap made of a thing plastic sculpted onto it to hold it on Usagi’s head and it works well with the flat ears. The strap is supposed to connect to the hat at four spots, but mine is only attached at two. Thankfully, it’s one on each side so it works, but it looks a little silly. I might try to glue those little strands in place, but then again, I’m not really planning on displaying him with the hat anyway. I thought I same promotional shots of the figure with the hat on his back, but I could be mistaken. If not though, it’s not something I would try as I don’t think those straps would hold up. They look quite fragile, so user beware.

“Rabbit, those turtles are your enemies! It’s they who trapped you here in this dimension!”
“Foul being! Your treachery shall not go unpunished!”

Overall, Usagi is a dynamite release form NECA that just has a couple of hiccups. The articulation doesn’t bother me much, it’s really just the inability to swap the heads easily that’s irritating me. The cloak is really good though and I’m torn on how to display my figure because of how much I like that thing. I wasn’t expecting to use it, but now I’m reconsidering. The weapons are great, and the other other critique I really have is the absence of vertical hinges on the gripping hands. He’s a samurai, NECA, give him the right hands! NECA is sometimes very good about that, and sometimes not, it makes it hard to know what to expect.

There’s certainly room for a samurai rabbit amongst ninja turtles, but what about an Easter Bunny? Hmm…

This figure was $35 when it went up for preorder in March and hopefully it stays that way at retail. NECA Ultimates have been trending toward $38 of late so it may come in a little more pricey. This guy features tons of unique tooling so the value is there and I honestly don’t know how NECA does it considering what some other companies are charging for repaints these days. Usagi Yojimbo is a memorable character from the show, so anyone who has been collecting this line is likely going to grab him and he’ll be money well spent.

“Hey dude, you ever have pizza?” “Pizza…?”

4 Comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Television, toys