YMMV / Ronin Warriors

• Base-Breaking Character: The canon females—especially Mia, Lady Kayura, and Suzunagi—are either admired or loathed in the American fandom. Mia is seen as either a Plucky Girl who does what she can despite her lack of fighting skills or a Damsel Scrappy who gets in the way of everything.
• Common Knowledge: The most commonly cited reason on the Internet for why the English voices of some of the characters were different in episode 2 was that some of the voice actors were out sick on the day of recording. The actual reason behind the voice changes in episode 2 was that said episode was dubbed before episode 1 to serve as a test pilot for the dub. When the English dub was successfully picked up, the voices of Kento, Cale, Dais, and Mia had changed, and episode 2 wasn't redubbed with the permanent voice cast.
• Complete Monster: Lord Talpa (Arago) was a brutal conqueror who killed countless innocents in his lifetime. After death, Talpa's spirit survived by bonding to his armor. In the present, Talpa resurfaces in his evil Dynasty by stealing the inhabitants of a whole city to drain their energy and lives. Talpa shows no care for his four champions, the Dark Warlords; when Warlord leader Anubis wavers in his convictions, Talpa tortures and mind rapes him into servitude before absorbing the Warlords to regain his corporeal form. Talpa betrays his men for his own power and keeps the last member of his greatest enemy's clan as one of his greatest soldiers. He shows no hesitation in trying to sacrifice her with the rest of his minions when she outlives her usefulness, and he eventually has her mentally tortured and possessed to keep her useful. When he resurfaces, Talpa attempts to unleash his power without any regard for collateral damage. Defined by his greed, hunger for power, and cruelty, Talpa is proud of how many lives he had stolen in the past.
• Fan Nickname: The Ancient often gets called "Raiden" because of his resemblance to Mortal Kombat: The Movie's depiction of Raiden, even though the original Japanese version of the series predates the entire Mortal Kombat franchise by 4 years, and the movie by 7 years. (Though the dub was airing around the same time as film's original theatrical release.)
• Fridge Brilliance:
  • Why can Kayura handle just about anyone save Ryo using the Inferno Armor? Because she's the last of the line of Ancients, one of whom was able to defeat the very source of the armors in the first place.
  • Also, why is the final battle with Talpa such a Tear Jerker? Because it's a mirror image of the first battle between the Ronins and Talpa. The first time around, Ryo was on the outside of Talpa's body while his friend's souls were trapped within, binding Talpa with their powers and begging Ryo to destroy them all. Poor Ryo didn't want to go through with it. In the final battle with Talpa, the positions are reversed: Ryo is fused with Talpa, binding the villain with his power and begging his friends to destroy him. They have no alternative but to go through with it because they have no other options left. It's a good thing for Ryo the Jewel of Life was nearby, otherwise the series would have had a Bittersweet Ending...
  • It's noted that Ryo is The Hero, but not The Leader. The good guys don't have a leader because they're Ronin, or masterless Samurai.
• Friendly Fandoms: Back in the late 90s to early 00s, in part thanks to both shows airing back to back on Toonami and the similarities between the two shows, there was a lot of crossover between the western fandoms for both. Crossover fics with the casts of both shows interacting were common and so were Crossover Ships, usually involving scouts other than Serena being matched up with the ronin of a similar element. ^note So basically, Ray/Ryo, Sage/Lita, Amy/Shin and Mina/Kento with Rowen usually being the odd one out since Serena already has Darien, but he'd sometimes end up with Mia.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The series was a major part of the early anime boom in North America, and has nostalgic fans there to this day. Interestingly, its success is sometimes blamed as being at the expense of Saint Seiya's. Despite capitalizing on the latter's success in Japan, this series was localized in English much sooner because it didn't require nearly as much censorship to air on children's television. By the time Seiya was finally localized for North American audiences, it was at the time seen as a ripoff of this.
• Ho Yay: DAMN. ...er, this was bound to be a factor given the Cast Full of Pretty Boys.
  • The heroes are all in their early-teens, but the show doesn't have any romantic component to speak of. When you further consider how close-knit their friendship is—and how most of them are from broken families—you can't help but wonder.
  • The Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei manga calls Samurai Troopers "a rite of passage" for yaoi fangirls.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Given that series is often compared to Saint Seiya, the fact that Ryo's voice actor Takeshi Kusao wound up being the modern day voice actor for Capricorn Shura ^note  Kōji Totani declined to reprise his role prior to his death in 2006 would definitely count as this. (Though Kusao had voiced Wolf Nachi from episodes 60-114 of the 80's Anime, taking over for Hideyuki Tanaka.)
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Sage, popularly shipped with Rowan, Ryo, Cale, Anubis, and Mia.
• Macekre: Ronin Warriors averts this. Excluding the name changes to characters and attacks (as well as some editing around of scenes in the first two episodes), the dub stays as faithful to the original show as possible. Characters die, the level of violence stays practically untouched, and a brief flash of a naked Lady Kayura was even left intact. (Not even Cartoon Network caught that last one.) The dub's adherence to a faithful adaptation made Ronin Warriors one of the least-Macekred shows of its time.
• Magnificent Bastard: Anubis Dohji, youngest and leader of the Dynasty's four warlords, was once a brilliant young warrior seduced by the promises of Lord Talpa. Becoming the Warlord of Cruelty, Anubis immediately centers in on the Ronin leader Ryo Sanada with numerous plans and schemes to lure him into an honorable duel. Easily proving himself a match for the entire Ronin force himself at times, Anubis also remained ahead of the other Warlords who coveted his position. Upon realizing the depths of Talpa's evil, Anubis takes back his destiny and becomes the successor to the heroic Ancient One, helping to plot the downfall of the Dynasty and guiding the Ronins to defeat Talpa. Upon encountering Kayura, last of the Ancient One's clan and possessed by Talpa's evil, Anubis dons the Armor of Cruelty once more to face her, expelling Talpa's right hand Badamon from her at cost of a fatal wound and securing her redemption and ultimate salvation of the world at the cost of his own life.
• Narm: One of the more (in)famous lines from the dub is Ryo's "Your mother wears army boots!" That said, it's a favorite line amongst fans, thanks to the cheesy dub script managing to sneak in a dirty joke.
  • The English language version of this lives and breathes Narm thanks to Totally Radical dialogue, and a number of lines that get repeated alot thanks to Toonami's preview commercials. In particular in a first episode line:
  Ryo: Listen! Listen to me everyone... before it's too late.
  • Talpa's method of summoning more Nether Spirits in the climax of episode 9 sounds less like a creepy, mystical incantation and more like he's rehearsing for an opera performance.
  Talpa: Ariiiiise! Riiiiiiise! Riiiiiiiiiise!
• Older Than They Think: Some people still look down on the series as nothing more than the Spear Counterpart to Sailor Moon—even though Samurai Troopers debuted four years before the Sailor Moon manga started. Cartoon Network didn't help matters when it nabbed Ronin Warriors for Toonami and promoted it as such; the network aired episodes of Ronin Warriors and Sailor Moon back-to-back, and it even created promos that almost looked like a crossover between the two. This is inverted in the Latin American fandom, but with Saint Seiya, which was broadcast at the same network and at the same slot.
• Padding: The Message OVA has a ratio of about 6 monologues/Clip Show montages to every actual plot point. Not all of the monologues are bad per se, but there's no excuse for Suzunagi's 10+ MINUTE monologue on the seasons.
• Seasonal Rot:
  • Many North American fans dislike the final story arc, Message, because of its heavy reliance on stock footage from the series and the second OVA to accompany the character monologues.
  • Both Japanese and American fans have said that Message is incoherent and too difficult to follow (especially with Suzunagi's motivations and the conclusion of her plot). Word of God said the OVA was not meant for entertainment purposes, but as a way for the characters to express themselves and the world of the armors.
• Shipping: As much as to be expected, although there's an aversion of the Ryo/Kayura pairing (mostly in favor of Rowen/Kayura).
• Tear Jerker:
  • White Blaze's sacrifice. But he got better.
  • Anubis' sacrifice got Yuli—and plenty of FanGirls—crying.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: At the end of the series, Lady Kayura has been freed from her Brainwashed and Crazy status, and the Warlords have come to their senses and made a Heel–Face Turn. Do they do anything in the final battle? Nope.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Suzunagi in Message. She's clearly supposed to be a kind of Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds, but the fact remains that she's going after the heroes of the series, who only put the armor on in order to survive and defend the human world from Talpa. The fact that they were minors at the time (as is common for shonen series), combined with their monologues indicating that they were traumatized by their circumstances, appears to escape her despite her Psychic Powers, and she goes about subjecting them to a vicious And I Must Scream scenario.
• WTH, Costuming Department?: The new armors in Message are rather garish and ugly.

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