Usagi Yojimbo / YMMV

Adaptation Displacement: Most people know the characters through their appearances in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Aluminum Christmas Trees: The Kusanagi no Tsurugi, also known as "Grasscutter", is actually portrayed realistically as a straight, double-edged sword - the myth predates the concept of the invention of the Katana.
Can't Un-Hear It: Despite not having an adaptation of his own, at least with him as the starring character, Usagi himself has had voice actors portray him when he appears in most animated adaptations of the Ninja Turtles. From the 2003 series, he was voiced by Jason Griffith, who was the actor to have portrayed him for the longest period of time, 8 episodes. For his 3 appearances in the 2012 series, he was voiced by Yuki Matsuzaki, whom Stan Sakai approved of. Both of these voices appear to be the most popular. Yuki has gone on to play the character in Samurai Rabbit: The Usagi Chronicles and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge, likely due to this trope.
Complete Monster:
- Lord Hikiji, the ultimate Big Bad of the series, schemes to be Shogun. Having murdered Usagi's father, and his master Lord Mifune, Hikiji launches brutal attacks on his enemies to kill and conquer all they possess. Preferring to operate from the shadows, Hikiji often resorts to dark schemes to foment chaos and murder in order to give himself an edge. He frequently disposes of his operatives while treating them as disposable pawns. Hikiji shows how truly monstrous he is in the coda to the saga Senso when a group of aliens crash on the world. Initially thought to have been killed, Hikiji later reveals that he has joined the aliens as an ally and is leading an attack on his own province to slaughter his own people in order to demonstrate his power to the entire planet. No longer content with just Japan, Hikiji believes he is destined to rule the entire planet, no matter who he has to slaughter.
- Issues #9-12—"Slavers" & "Daisho" arcs: General Fujii was the head of a gang that took over a village. They reduced the workers to slaves, and ordered them to farm and cultivate for long hours. They would continue to do this until the tax collector came, at which point they would just kill all the villagers and go to another town. When Usagi infiltrates them, he's discovered and tortured, with Fujii taking his swords. When the peasants revolt, they slaughter their way through them, and Fujii abandons most of his men to die or face the police. He and his loyal Dragon take over another gang and launch raids on a village, where he almost murders the elderly headsman for refusing them. When the heroes attack the gang to take him down, he abandons his Dragon to run.
- Issues #66-68—"Sumi-e" arc: Katsushige no Kyogoku was a vain and petty artist who, bitter over his inability to achieve anything but mediocrity, sold his soul to the kami for the power to best his rivals. Granted demonic strength but cursed into the form of a paint set, Katsushige's soul possesses whomever is unfortunate enough to take the set, wearing them until their deaths. Katsushige can only produce ink for his set through an especially vile process: the murder of children to use their blood to produce paint, leading to droves of children vanishing throughout the region, all so Katsushige can slake his narcissistic desire to be recognized.
- Issues #83-89—"The Treasure of the Mother of Mountains" arc: Noriko, known as the Blood Princess, has had homicidal tendencies since childhood, where she would always beat her cousin Tomoe in spars to inflict as much pain as she could. In the present day, Noriko runs a mine, using slaves that have been press-ganged into service and worked to the point of death. Should any slave falter, Noriko promptly beheads the nearest one to serve as a morale-booster for the others. When she captures Tomoe, Noriko delights in treating her as a slave and when Tomoe refuses to perform the labor, Noriko furiously cuts down a random slave woman. When Tomoe immediately obeys to stop more death, Noriko sneers at her for caring about those of low birth. To conceal the mines, Noriko plans to blow it up, with every slave inside after all its resources are gone. She also reveals that she and Tomoe are actually ''sisters'' and when their father refused to acknowledge Noriko as his daughter, she murdered him, just as she had the man who raised her for for being weak. She reveals this while savagely beating Tomoe, taunting her that it's Tomoe's fault that he died.
- Space Usagi: Lord Akira, Usagi's respected sensei, is revealed to be manipulating an entire conflict to obtain power and riches for himself. Having founded the Neko Stealth-Walkers, Akira discreetly aided the Kajitori Empire in invading the Shirahoshi Clan's system and claiming multiple lives, including his brother, Hideaki. Later impersonating Usagi's friend, Rhogen, and kidnapping his nephew, Kiyoshi, Akira has the youthful lord tortured in hopes of recovering the clan treasury, with which he intends to finance a path of interstellar conquest, purposefully angering Usagi when telling the latter his deceased Love Interest's clan would be his first target. Vicious and greedy, Akira was happy to kill those who cared for him, even in his final moments, if it meant getting his "honor in victory".
Cult Classic: The comic is very well-regarded in the industry and has a small passionate fanbase, in some ways akin to the Mirage Ninja Turtles comics, sharing much the same indie comics scene in their origins. But while TMNT grew beyond the Mirage comics to become a bonafide worldwide media juggernaut with its cartoons, movies, merchandise etc, Usagi has seen comparatively much less mainstream success, with only a few scattered adaptations of its own and has largely depended on TMNT crossovers for more exposure to the general public. Though of course, the comic's been going at its own comfortable pace for decades.
Ensemble Dark Horse: Jei-san. Much like the Shredder and The Joker, he started off as just a one-shot villain, but was popular enough to be brought back and promoted to the hero's Arch-Nemesis, a position that used to belong to Lord Hikiji.
Evil Is Cool: Jei has a twisted sense of justice, a cool power, and is one of the few villains to nearly defeat Usagi. There's a reason he's the most popular villain in this series.
Friendly Fandoms: With the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fandom obviously. With Usagi crossing over with the original Mirage comics, appearing in 3/4 of the animated series, and Stan Sakai being friends with the creators, how could they not?
Genius Bonus: The woman who's a secret Christian wears a kimono with a subtle cross design, which was how real secret converts ID'd each other.
Fan-Preferred Couple: While the story has mostly implied a possible romance between Usagi and Tomoe, plenty of readers would rather see a romance between Usagi and Chizu. Reasons include the two being out of place (Usagi a rōnin and Chizu a nukenin), their fighting styles complimenting each other, their on-screen chemistry, and it doesn't hurt that they share a kiss nearly every time they part ways, usually on good terms.
Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Stan Sakai has noted that the series is particularly popular in France, Spain and Poland, as well as America.
Hilarious in Hindsight:
- In one issue Usagi is forced to wash dishes at an inn he can't pay for his meal at due to being pick pocketed. When some ruffians break into the inn after he's finished they even call him the Dishwasher. Usagi was the first Dishwasher Samurai.
- Parts of the first story arc in Space Usagi (1992-1994) are similar to The Phantom Menace (1999; references to the original Star Wars trilogy are pretty much mandatory): both feature a princess trading places with her bodyguard for safety (in Phantom Menace the (future) hero falls for the bodyguard/handmaiden who'd really the princess while in Space Usagi the "princess" is actually the bodyguard) and the hero dueling the Big Bad's Dragon which ends with the bad guy getting sliced in half and falling from a high place. The third story arc has our hero discovering that a man he thought of as closely as a relative has become corrupt.
- Noriko's epilogue actually just Tomoe's nightmare... or was it? sounds a lot like whatever happened to Loki between Thor and The Avengers (2012) (which, according to the answers Joss Whedon and Tom Hiddleston gave to Rhea AKA Mystique here and here respectively, is a horrible journey through some very rough parts of space... and that's as far as the writer got): Both practically run into hells of their own making by going through a portal (cave entrance and a rift in space, respectively), fight to survive, and end up with desire to live and destroy their siblings for the pain they've caused them Loki returns while Noriko was killed very soon after running into a cave full of dynamite... probably.
- The fact that there's a character named "Jotaro” who is of a Heroic Lineage.
- Jei and Keiko's relationship eerily mirrors Sesshomaru and Rin's.
- Jei is meant to be an Expy of Jason Voorhees due to his Implacable Man status and his tendency to keep coming Back from the Dead, and it's more noticeable when he's referred to as "Jei-san." Five years after his debut appearance, Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday gives him and Jason another thing in common: the ability to hop bodies.
I Am Not Shazam: "Yojimbo" (bodyguard) is not part of his name but sometimes his occupation while on the warrior's path. The 80s cartoon took "Usagi Yojimbo" for his name, the 2003 one correctly had "Miyamoto Usagi".
Moral Event Horizon: Hikiji's done much to cross it, but during the Senso miniseries, he allies himself with the Martian invaders despite all the death they're inflicting upon his own people.
- Rodriguez was already portrayed as an arrogant jerk, but demanding to see a seppuku ritual like it's entertainment AND demanding a completely innocent victim for it is one of the worst things any of the villains in the series have done.
- Jei was always an Ax-Crazy killer, but he finally crossed a personal line by taking Keiko's body for himself in Senso.
More Popular Spin-Off: Originally the comic debuted as a one-issue story in Albedo: Erma Felna EDF when it was previously an anthology of many furry comics during the 80s. While Usagi Yojimbo became a comparative worldwide hit (though of course still nothing close to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles levels), Albedo Erma Felna EDF became a footnote in the story of comic books, though an even more niche Cult Classic to the Furry Fandom.^note
Narm: Despite the fact that it is clearly a parody of War of the Worlds with kind of goofy aliens, Senso manages to be among the darkest stories in the series, with all the child characters now grown up, Usagi being rather bitter and cruel at times towards Tomoe for marrying another man (in an arranged political marriage, something even he acknowledges she had no say in), and most of the cast dying by the end, including Usagi himself. However, the reveal that the heroes ultimate weapon to fight back against the alien menace is explicitly a Gundam shaped like Usagi might be hard to take seriously, especially contrasted against the conclusion the story ultimately has.
The Scrappy: Many fans of the comic dislike Kitsune for the fact that she is an unrepentant criminal who is a Karma Houdini in the majority of her schemes. Often, her targets deserve what's coming to them, but she is no Robin Hood; she steals just for herself and the girl she picked up who she is training to be a thief like her. And her schemes tend to cause trouble for Usagi, who rarely gets anything out of them (partially because he's not the kind of person to knowingly accept stolen money). It helps that it has become a running gag that whenever another major character is introduced to her, they get their wallet stolen by her by the end of the issue.
- The "The Thief and the Kunoichi" storyline opitimizes many fans' problem with her. While randomly sneaking into a rather rich (and corrupt) man's house to steal, she happens to bump into Chizu who is there to steal a specific document, a secret trade contract that would boost Lord Hikiji's funds. When both are caught by the guards, Kitsune leaves Chizu (who she admittingly doesn't know) to fight the guards alone and takes the document. She also runs into Usagi who happened to be nearby. Chizu and to a slightly lesser degree Usagi want the document to use against Hikiji, but Kitsune simply wants to make money off it. After causing more trouble for Usagi by secretly setting up a deal to sell the corrupt man back the document and having to be saved by Usagi and Chizu when the man decides to kill her instead, she repays them by having her protege steal the document off Chizu again while she's distracted, and then steals Usagi's purse herself, while supposedly being his friend.
Tainted by the Preview: Downplayed as far as the upcoming TV show is concerned due to who is producing it. While some fans are wary of the adaptation potentially having its violence reduced due to the pedigree of the studio making it, other fans also have noted that Frederator Studios (known for comedies and kids shows) recently produced the extremely violent and also well-received animated adaptation of Castlevania, so it is better to wait and see until proper previews arrive before making judgements.
What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: Sort of, but Defied, a little. It's an adventure series filled with funny animals, but then the funny animals start slicing each other up with swords - it probably features more on-panel beheadings than any other comic! However, it's important to Sakai that violence is never trivialized. Usagi (and other morally upright types like Sanshobo and Katsuichi) never kills wantonly, rarely strikes first, allows flight and accepts surrender. Only villains regard violence as a quick and convenient solution. It's kid-friendly to the extent that Sakai presents avoiding combat where possible as a morally superior choice.
Katsuichi/Usagi: "The best souls are those which are kept in their scabbards."'
- While never explicit and the inclusion is rare, the comic also doesn't shy away from acknowledging sex, or for that matter sexism in feudal Japan. Zato-Ino is heavily implied to have sex with two women in a hot spring, Gen's mother is all but directly stated to have prostituted herself to provide food for him as a child, there's an entire story about a Courtesan having had a child due to an affair with a noble, thugs will often make creepy advances to the series' female characters, and one assassin hired to kill Usagi is partly motivated by the murder of his lover who is explicitly stated to be a "Nighthawk" (a prostitute).

YMMV / Usagi Yojimbo

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