Tag Archives: usagi yojimbo

January 16, 2024

NECA TMNT Toon The Adventures of Space Usagi

By Joe
Boldly going where some rabbits have gone before.

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 basically all of the A-listers from the show and many of the D-listers as well. One figure I thought I did not need was the Space Usagi variant that started showing up late in 2023. It was easy to pass on since I never encountered it, but mostly I felt like I didn’t need another Usagi, especially one that didn’t even show up in the show. When NECA wanted to include Usagi Yojimbo (and yes, I know, Usagi Yojimbo is technically the name of the comic and the character is Miyamoto Usagi, but we’re sticking with the TMNT name for the character to avoid confusion) in the main line, it meant getting a license agreement in place with creator Stan Sakai. And once they had that, it certainly made a lot of sense for the company to get more out of that agreement than just one figure, so while this one does bare the classic TMNT logo on the box it’s really more like a solo Usagi figure that just maintains his look from the cartoon.

The team is reunited!

As a kid, I liked Usagi Yojimbo as much as the next, but I never did get his action figure. I did get the variant Space Usagi figure and it was one I really liked. He looked pretty interesting with a partially cybernetic face (Terminator 2 was pretty damn popular and quite influential), shoulder pads, and a soft goods cape. The only weapon I recall him having (he came with more) was a bronze carrot gun which was pretty absurd, but as a kid it made plenty of sense to me. That figure went on space adventures with my Space Cadet Raph figure and I had a lot of fun with it so I was somewhat predisposed to like this new Space Usagi. Only this one looks nothing like that old design, so the pull wasn’t as strong as it could have been. No, what did me in was seeing the reactions of other collectors and reviewers to the figure. Even though I’m not a “professional” reviewer, I do avoid other reviews of anything I plan on reviewing myself so I don’t pre-judge anything inadvertently. With this figure, that isn’t the case as it was the reception that turned me on. Specifically, this review by YouTube channel Nostalgia Unboxed convinced me that this was a fun figure worth picking up so when I finally came upon it recently on a Target visit I decided to give it a shot.

Swords, guns, it all works for this version of Usagi.

Space Usagi is a single-pack, Ultimates, style of release like the previous Usagi. It features new artwork on the front by artist Ben Seto which has been done with a watercolor approach. It’s different from the usual f.h.e. inspired artwork, but it looks really nice and it’s going to hurt to toss it in the trash when I’m done with it. Usagi himself is a mix of old and new parts, but mostly new. He stands a tick over 4.5″ to the top of his head, not factoring in the ears, and he has a slightly redesigned portrait with narrowed eyes. The secondary portrait is the exact same as the teeth-baring one from the first Usagi with the flat-draped ears. The hands are also mostly the same (fists, open, gripping), but also include a set of trigger finger hands since this Usagi uses guns as well as blades. As far as I know, the rest of the figure is unique. He has a black and gold space suit that makes me think of Mega Man due to the oversized boots. The paint job is great on the gold parts and designed to simulate metal cel-shading. Rather than just do the bright colors on front and dark on the back, NECA went with a more stylized approach similar to the one it took with Chrome Dome. There’s hits of yellow, gold, black, and white to achieve the effect and it’s really striking. It’s also not perfect as there’s a smudge on the left boot of my figure and some of the edge work isn’t as sharp as it could be. The figure also appears to be sculpted in yellow so there’s a little yellow showing through around the pins on the arms, but nothing out of the ordinary for a mass produced figure.

Same alt head as the first Usagi, and just as much of a pain in the ass to swap too.

What does kind of stink about this figure is the engineering of the swappable parts. The prior Usagi was a real pain to swap the head on as often the neck would come out instead. This one is the same. If you plan to use the other head, maybe just go ahead and try to heat the default head first to see if that loosens it on the ball joint. If you can avoid getting the neck heated up as well, it might serve you well. Unique to this Usagi are the hands which are surprisingly tough to swap as well. The holes in the forearms are quite tight and you may need to heat them up to get the extra hands to fully insert. NECA also cast the hands in the same yellow plastic as the rest of the figure, but then painted them white which is a little frustrating. It means you need to be mindful when swapping weapons and such as scratching the paint will reveal yellow beneath it. It’s a very thick, chalky, paint so it doesn’t seem especially prone to chipping. I also can’t tell if the actual hinge is cast in yellow or not. If it is, the paint isn’t flaking so it isn’t an issue there. There’s some yellow on the posts, but that could easily be transfer from the forearms. It’s also possible only the new, trigger, hands are yellow (which would make sense if they were part of the tools for the body) as they’re the only ones that chipped on me and exposed the yellow. It’s possible the old hands are part of the same tools as the heads which were done in white.

I suppose two Usagis are better than one.
Usagi Yojimbo…still a little guy (rabbit).

The good news is that’s kind of the end of the bad with Space Usagi. Which version of the character you prefer is certainly a subjective choice, but there’s no question in my mind that this Usagi is the better action figure. The prior one had some design things to work around that this one doesn’t have. The articulation, as a result, is allowed to be much better. The head and neck are the same and they work fine, but the rest of the figure is vastly superior. The shoulders are ball-hinged and they’re not hindered much by the shoulder pads. He can raise his arms out to the side all the way and the shoulder pads flex if you want to rotate them forward or back. There is a biceps swivel, though the right one is stuck on my figure, and the elbows are double-jointed. Even with that though you’ll be hard-pressed to get better than a 90 degree bend at the elbow because of the bulky forearms and the joint itself is pretty small. If you can get the top hinge to bend all the way first then you may be able to do better than I. Wrists swivel and hinge and, unfortunately, all of the hinges are horizontal. It’s a shame they didn’t re-sculpt the gripping and trigger hands to vertical hinges since some of that tooling cost could have been made-up with the Usagi four-pack NECA solicited recently, but the wrist hinges have been a consistent issue in this line so I wasn’t expecting an improvement there.

“You’re getting a little too close to my gimmick, samurai.”

In the torso we have a ball-joint at the diaphragm. It provides for a little forward and back as well as rotation and tilt. Nothing crazy, but it helps for posing. As far as I can tell, there’s no waist twist and the hips are the usual ball and socket joint. Usagi can perform splits and he kicks forward reasonably far without much room to go back. The thigh will pivot on the ball joint, but there’s also a thigh joint below that, though it may be stuck on your figure as it is on mine. The knees are double-jointed and will bend past 90 degrees, though this is the spot where I’m seeing the most paint-flaking which is kind of a bummer. The ankles hinge forward and back a bit, though the bubbly design limits the range. There is an ankle rocker as well, and while the range isn’t fantastic, it works well enough to keep his feet flat on the surface. The large nature of the feet means he’s easy to stand and one-legged stances are also pretty easy.

This figure is a lot of fun to mess with and it’s made even better if you have a flight stand hanging around.
Usagi comes well-armed.

This Usagi just plain moves much better than the last one, which I found a little disappointing even though I understood why that was the case given his baggy clothing. There’s no doubt though that this one is more fun to handle and manipulate and it’s one of the best posing figures in the line. This is a good desk figure to have to mess around with and it is helped by the accessories. Usagi has the two heads I mentioned previously as well as a bunch of hands. To go with said hands are two guns and two melee weapons. For guns, we have a small, blue, pistol. It appears to be the same gun from the cover artwork, though there it’s gray instead of blue. There’s also a larger gun which the box refers to as a rifle, though it’s pretty short for a rifle. It’s all gray with some black linework and a yellow tip. It’s more gun-like than the pistol, which almost looks more like a flashlight or heat gun or something.

I do think of Usagi as a melee first type of battler.
Though this version of the character is definitely capable of blasting his way out of trouble.

For melee weapons, we get a laser sword and butterfly knife. The sword resembles a short katana and it has a green hilt with black cross-hatching and I quite like how it came out. It has an energy effect that’s done in a very soft, pliable, blue translucent, plastic. It slides over the blade, though the center is removed so it just goes around it similar to the chain on a chainsaw. I like how soft the material is as it should prevent paint rubbing. The sword also looks good with or without the effect. The butterfly knife is just a large knife with a yellow handguard. It looks like something one would use to hack through bone while butchering a carcass, though I’m guessing Usagi is a vegetarian and wouldn’t find a use for it like that. It looks fine, though is less fun than the laser sword. Also included is S.P.O.T., a robotic version of the little dinosaur that came with the other Usagi figure and we also get a helmet to complete the space suit. Like the vintage Playmates figure, the helmet is cast in transparent plastic and comes in two pieces so it can fit around his ears which poke through the top. It won’t work with the flat ears, but if it did it would have a hole in the top and we all know that wouldn’t work in space! Not that the other way works either, but it follows cartoon logic anyway. The box also lists his jetpack as an accessory, but since it’s a non-removable part of the sculpt I don’t consider it a true accessory. The thrusters on it don’t feature holes for blast effects either which feels like a missed opportunity.

If you like little buddy figures, you’ll like this little robo dino.

That’s Space Usagi though. I guess if you like what you see then you’ll probably enjoy this figure. I think it’s the first figure for the line that’s inspired by the cartoon series, without being from the cartoon series. There are more such sets to come as NECA tries to keep this toon line going even as it runs out of characters and looks from the show. As mentioned earlier, NECA even did a four-pack of Usagi Yojimbo in four different looks which are basically just variants of the previous figure and one of this one. There’s a new samurai Usagi in that set, but he’s also ticketed for this line as a single reason, just with a different deco. That four pack is technically a comic Usagi release and not tied to the TMNT show, though the look of 3 of the 4 figures are the same toon-inspired likeness. Either way, I didn’t need it so I didn’t order a set. I didn’t think I even needed two versions of the character, but I was essentially talked into this one. Will the same repeat when the samurai version arrives? Maybe, maybe not. I do know I’m happy with this figure and I really like that it only cost $32 at Target. Most NECA Ultimates seem to be coming in at $38 these days, if not more, so getting a mostly brand new figure for close to 30 bucks definitely felt nice. And while it has its issues, most of them aren’t a big deal to me personally so I think it’s definitely worth the price. Your mileage may vary, but this is one figure that shouldn’t be passed over so easily.

Introducing…The Carrot Crew!

Want to read more NECA TMNT reviews? We got plenty:

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 Turtle Van

It’s our last Turtle Tuesday before Christmas, though probably not of the year, and it’s a pretty big one: The Turtle Van! NECA solicited its version of the Turtle Van based on the same from the animated series Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles back in April of 2022. It was originally scheduled to be released before…

Keep reading
by Joe

NECA Cartoon TMNT From the Files of Pizza Squad (Deluxe Rex-1)

When you’re doing a syndicated cartoon expected to air basically every day, you need to pull story ideas from anywhere you can. I think that’s why parodies are so popular in the cartoons of the 80s to the point where it didn’t matter if the show was parodying something kids would actually know. Take REX-1,…

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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…?”

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