Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m eager to return to the ongoing Yaiba: Samurai Legend, whose first episode offered a generous buffet of upbeat shonen staples and astonishing Kanada-style action. Shipped from his jungle home to Japan in a packing crate, Yaiba swiftly established himself as a gremlin to be reckoned with, offering a refreshingly guileless Goku-adjacent energy that was neatly complimented by his new housemate Sayaka. All the while, his journey was brightened and elevated by this production’s simultaneously nostalgic and cutting-edge art design, carrying the pleasures of both Kanada’s classic space action and Shonen Jump’s ‘80s energy into the twenty-first century.
Our core team of director Takahiro Hasui and animation director Yoshimichi Kameda clearly know exactly what they’re doing. Given his tenure as Mob Psycho 100’s character designer, Kameda’s distinct approach to this production demonstrates he is an artist capable of adapting his own techniques to the aesthetic and tone of his material, not just bringing original creator Gosho Aoyama’s designs to life, but realizing them through animation techniques that harken back to the era of their initial creation. Through this approach, Yaiba represents a reclamation of treasured animation techniques much like Wit’s prior Ranking of Kings, embracing the tools of the digital era while separating itself from their assumed aesthetic compliments. The more classic anime I watch, the more vivid techniques and embellishments I see that have tragically fallen by the wayside; through works like Yaiba, I am delighted to see these techniques returned to life, ready to dazzle and hopefully inspire a new generation of animators. Let’s get to it!
Episode 2
We drop in at the Onimaru estate in the early morning, where Takeshi is already practicing his strikes in the predawn light. A man who clearly takes his formal practice seriously, the opposite of Kaiba’s scrappy, “law of the jungle”-derivative style
Kinda funny how we’re basically doing a Tarzan narrative, but our jungle man is also a samurai
He’s dictating a message to his sister, who appears to be either attending or hosting kendo seminars in Paris
Something I noticed with Sayaka’s early-morning wakeup last episode – this production team is actually quite good at conveying a somber, contemplative vibe, dampening the sound design and embracing blue hues to create an overall sense of a world just upon waking. Given Yaiba’s our protagonist, the show normally embraces a far more energetic, aggressive style, so I appreciate that we get these tonal counterpoints as well
His life is spartan in all respects, though he does keep a roost of pigeons on the estate
He mentions the national championship, saying he’ll “win again” this year. An early tournament would be quite illuminating regarding Gosho Aoyama’s intentions for this story; it’s still unclear if he’s going to lean into crunchy, mechanically defined conflicts, or have Yaiba continue to achieve victory via sudden epiphanies like in the first episode. Many shonen dramas (Dragon Ball, One Piece, Hunter x Hunter, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure) eventually transition from the latter to the former, finding that you can only have your protagonist achieve a whimsical, spontaneous victory for so long before you need to establish a more stable mechanical framework for combat
Gosh, this OP’s so energetic! It also shows off this production’s mix of styles, ranging from the explosive energy beams of its Kanada moments to carefully realized emotional moments embracing all the scene-setting benefits of modern shading and post-production effects
Also seems like Takeshi will eventually be overtaken by some sort of demonic entity or something, judging by his resemblance to this theoretical OP villain
“Fujinken Reborn”
We cut back on Sayaka shooing Yaiba away at school, only for him to run straight into Onimaru
“Onimaru the oni.” Ooh, that one’s gonna stick
Onimaru defeats him so easily they don’t even bother showing it on-screen
Gosh, the incidental expressions of our leads are so charming, even with only minimal frames. I can see why Aoyama’s characters are so beloved
Yaiba escalates the situation by stealing Onimaru’s gear. Really nice quick cut as Onimaru bounds out of the building; his movements feel very true-to-life for an energetic teenager, and the racking focus here makes this one cut into something like a chase scene
And for our next flourish, they use a combination of shifting camera perspective and screen-in-screen partitions to maintain visual clarity as Onimaru is nearly caught under a collapsing wave of lockers. A scene that could easily be visually unclear or stilted is made into a dramatic highlight by maintaining the audience’s perspective, keeping us aligned with Onimaru’s shoulder as he dives gracefully beneath this trap
His leap from the school roof demonstrates another fusion of old and new, with slight perspective shifts making use of the school’s digital set, alongside expressive posing flourishes as he adjusts his momentum
Yaiba’s tricks still fall into “how would I trap a jungle creature” vein, leaving its style of action an open question
Nice trick of Onimaru’s animation gaining more wild smears as he gets more infuriated by Yaiba
Onimaru heads to Sayaka’s home, where he’s challenged by her grandmother. Once again, I’m impressed by how well this production uses its angular designs and animation flourishes to create strong, eye-drawing shapes in the composition, like how Onimaru’s stare leads the eye down his sword to Sayaka’s grandmother. Hiroyuki Imaishi doesn’t really make my kind of stories, but he has a terrific eye for this as well
Oh my god, did Yaiba’s buzzard Shonosuke just eat all of Onimaru’s pigeons? That’s definitely worthy of a lifelong grudge
Alright, he just bullied the pigeons, he didn’t actually eat them. Still, jail for one thousand years for the buzzard
And of course, Yaiba thinks he’s the victim in all this. One classic secret sauce of shonens is having a protagonist who kind of sucks, as demonstrated by the alternating brattiness, belligerence, and moral indifference of characters like Yuusuke Urameshi, Goku, Joseph Joestar, Monkey D. Luffy, Naruto Uzumaki, and many others
The pair swiftly attract police attention as they clash outside a nearby shrine
“Fight with your sword, you cheat!” Onimaru obviously favors propriety and accepted forms in all things, whether it’s his kendo or personal life. In contrast, Yaiba favors expressiveness and creativity, embracing the scrappiness of a street (or jungle) fighter
Wonderful smeary distortions of this rickshaw as the pair battle behind it. Love how they’re really embracing the environment here; not just creating a sense of depth, but actually choreographing a battle that constantly intrudes on background scenes, making the fight feel both more funny and more lively
Atop the bus, the camera swerves as the production relishes in the opportunities provided by Kanada-style distortion. It is profoundly difficult to rotate a camera around a traditionally animated character, given the redraws needed to maintain a coherent perspective – however, if those characters are distorted into pure splashes of color as they move, you can synchronize the camera movement with the bodily distortion to make for a much easier drawing process that actually evokes an even greater sense of kinetic energy
And of course, all of this is facilitated by the CG backdrop, which is wisely kept in half-focus to maintain a sense of aesthetic cohesion. An effective combination of old and new techniques
Once again, Yaiba does not consider himself limited by the rules of kendo, and starts throwing big ol’ pieces of lumber at his opponent. This of course prompts some delightful squashing and stretching as Onimaru slashes and dodges the obstacles
Yaiba actually hides among the debris, and fires back by biting Onimaru on the head. Feral creature-ness aside, I wonder if this sequence was an influence on the Gon vs Hisoka fight in Heaven’s Arena; Gon’s backstory and fighting style actually feel quite reminiscent of Yaiba’s
Yaiba “wins” his fight, but is promptly defeated by an overhanging traffic sign
“If you did not beat him fair and square, then you did not win, my child.”
“If he can achieve stability way up on the roof, then he can attack from any position.” So we are getting a touch of general combat wisdom at this point
Sayaka’s got a nice new ensemble this episode. Hoping this is one of those shows where characters have aesthetics rather than costumes, though presumably Yaiba will just stick in his kendo robes regardless
“He’s trying to sharpen his perception.” Yaiba does seem to have a natural instinct for productive training
Meanwhile, Onimaru has been driven fully insane by Yaiba’s provocations, and now stands alone in a hall of candles, swinging at ghosts
He wakes from his nightmare and gets straight to training. Nice detail of the hastily repaired pigeon coop
Smashing a pillar in his front yard, he discovers a tunnel leading underground. Time for demonic possession?
The tunnel leads to a shrine with a sword and a grand statue of Fujin, the wind god. So presumably we’ll be establishing a Fujin/Raijin contrast for our leads. Shinto and Buddhist lore are regularly mined for shonen drama, capitalizing on the familiarity that even young Japanese children would have with the most major fables. Dragon Ball is obviously a take on Journey to the West, while One Piece’s recent Wano arc basically ran through the story of Momotaro
The sword is, unsurprisingly, the Fujinken
Thus he claims the sword, as well as its demonic wielder’s form
And Done
Whew, we are not wasting any time here, are we!? Just two episodes down, and Yaiba has already acquired himself a rival equipped with the legendary sword of the wind god, alongside a massive and frankly deserved Yaiba-related chip on his shoulder. Onimaru’s formal introduction was an action-packed delight, and his battle with Yaiba across Tokyo demonstrated both the inherent appeal of its nostalgic animation flourishes, as well as how those old-fashioned tools can be repurposed and reinvigorated alongside the medium’s modern innovations. The show remains visually compelling, and though Yaiba himself is frankly a bit much, I’m thoroughly enjoying hanging out with Onimaru and Sayaka. Two episodes down and we’ve already unlocked a demon blade – I don’t know how Aoyama’s planning to escalate from here, but I’m eager to find out.
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