Over the past couple of years, I have gotten very into the comic books of Stan Sakai and the award-winning rabbit ronin, Usagi Yojimbo. The Samurai rabbit was always my favorite guest star on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (sorry, Genghis and Metalhead, you are great characters as well). I introduced the kids to Usagi in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon and naturally, they loved him. From I went out and picked up a Usagi action figure from NECA and some comic books. Here’s our photo journey with Usagi so far!

Tricks are not just for kids.

The first photo we created was a spin-off of “Trix Are For Kids”. The kids loved spraying bowls of milk with canned air to make it look like Usagi was jumping out of the bowl of cereal.

One of the kids mentioned that she loved the Usagi comic book and how the Samurai rabbit jumped out of the comic book. So, we created that image as well!

Then we took a trip to space with Usagi. We found some rocks in the backyard and created a space background for this one.

And then we wound up in the woods of the San Juan Islands to work on our sword skills in the rain. Nothing slows down Usagi.

NECA’s Year of the Rabbit 4-Pack

When the deluxe box to celebrate the Year of the Rabbit with Stan Sakai’s award-winning rabbit came out we had to pick it up. This set includes four versions of the warrior with all new decorations and a wide variety of accessories inspired by the classic comic book series, all wrapped up in a collectible box with gold foil embellishments. Since we had all new Usagi’s to capture photos, we went to work!

To start things off, we created a fun Easter photo with all the Usagi’s in one of the kid’s baskets.

We then ventured into space with Usagi again and used an old MAC computer and an R2D2 for the background.

We ventured to the backyard to create an image of the Usagi decked out in his classic samurai garb.

Usagi also came with a variant with a warm winter coat so we created some snow with content balls and falling snow in Photoshop.

The kid’s favorite Usagi out of the NECA four-pack was the Chibi Usagi version. They loved this version of the character so much that they also got some stuffies.

The next photo project with Usagi will be to create a stop-motion movie with all of the characters above, we are well underway on creating different scenes using the packaging and some upcycled art. We will post the finished project here in 2025!

In the meantime, if you want to see where it all started for Usagi in the 1980s TMNT cartoon the full episode is below.