Summary
- YAIBA: Samurai Legend anime adaptation in 2025 by WIT Studio revives nostalgic charm.
- 1993 YAIBA anime exudes old-school humor, while reboot in 2025 focuses on character depth and impactful action.
- Story and pacing improvements in 2025 version give more depth to characters, enhancing the rivalry between Yaiba and Onimaru.
In 2024, it was announced that Case Closed author Gōshō Aoyama's YAIBA manga would be adapted into an anime for the first time since the original anime adaptation, which ran over 30 years ago in 1993. The 2025 adaptation, titled YAIBA: Samurai Legend, has had a brilliant resurgence courtesy of WIT Studio, the production studio best known for their work on the first three seasons of 2025 Crunchyroll Global Impact Award winner, Attack on Titan.
It goes without saying that the 2025 version has had a significant visual upgrade from the nostalgic style of anime in the 1990s, but how do the two adaptations of YAIBA compare to each other?
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YAIBA continues to deliver high-quality anime action every week, but the show seems to be going under the radar.
What is YAIBA About?
Samurai? In the Heisei Reiwa Era?
YAIBA follows the titular character, Yaiba Kurogane, a young boy raised away from the hustle and bustle of modern life by his father deep in the woods on an island somewhere off the south coast of the Japanese archipelago. The only thing he knows is the way of the sword, and he aspires to become a samurai, not realizing that samurai are now relics of a bygone era. At some point, Yaiba's father tells him that he has nothing left to teach him, and sends him off to Japan to stay with Raizo Mine, a kendo master who sees Yaiba's father as the only thing standing in between him and genuine mastery of the blade.
Yaiba must continue his training under the tutelage of the Mines, including Raizo's teenage daughter, Sayaka, whose life is upturned by the presence of the boorish sword-crazy kid now living in her house. Sayaka's school boasts a continental-level kendo team, of which Takeshi Onimaru is the most skilled by far. Excited by the premise of facing a powerful opponent, Yaiba challenges Onimaru and is swiftly outclassed, kick-starting a rivalry that neither of them realize will become central to the return of powerful supernatural entities who have been at odds for hundreds of years.
Brave Sword Legend Yaiba (1993) and YAIBA: Samurai Legend (2025) are both based on the YAIBA manga by Gōshō Aoyama. It was serialized in Shogakukan's shōnen manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Sunday from September 1988 to December 1993, and it was collected into 24 volumes. The manga has been licensed for release in English by VIZ Media. The YAIBA manga won the 38th Shogakukan Manga Award in the shōnen category in 1993, and by May 2024, the manga had over 17 million copies in circulation.
The original YAIBA anime was produced by Studio Pastel, and ran for 52 episodes, while it isn't clear how many episodes the WIT Studio-produced 2025 reboot has been slated for. The reboot is directed by Takahiro Hasui (storyboards, Bungō Stray Dogs), with Tōko Machida (script, Akame ga KILL!) writing the series script, Yoshimichi Kameda (alien & yōkai designs, DANDADAN) serving as chief director and character designer, and Yutaka Yamada and Yoshiaki Dewa composing the music.
Let's Talk About Atmosphere
Reviving a Relic of a Bygone Era
The main difference anyone who watches both iterations of the YAIBA anime will notice is the fact that the 1993 version is most definitely a product of its time, with the kind of goofy humour that definitely invokes nostalgia in any anime fans who were watching anime in the 1990s, early 2000s, or even before that. There is an unmistakable feel of a bygone era in the original anime, which is to be expected, and the pacing is probably the biggest element that reflects this "old skool" atmosphere.
For those who grew up watching anime, the 1993 YAIBA invokes a familiarity that really hits home, especially if one of the titles you interacted with in your youth was the original Dragon Ball. Yaiba Kurogane as a character is most definitely an expy of Son Goku in his childhood, and that clear connection might not necessarily have been what Aoyama was going for when he created him, but as an anime coming out in a post-Dragon Ball landscape during the golden era of the medium; a time almost characterized by anime with this kind of atmosphere and pacing, YAIBA is emblematic of that time.
This understanding of the original YAIBA makes watching WIT Studio's reboot even sweeter, as it somehow manages to capture some of that atmosphere while having clear and intentioned improvements to not just the art and animation, but also direction and the series' inherent sense of humour. The 1993 YAIBA anime was humourous in the kind of slapstick way one would expect from Shōnen of that time, sometimes even feeling like it took notes from the various works of manga legend Rumiko Takahashi (Inuyasha, Maison Ikkoku, Urusei Yatsura, Ranma 1/2), which is likely because it reflects the sensibilities of Heisei Era comedy. The goofy vibe of the 1993 YAIBA permeates every aspect of the early series, while the 2025 version manages to weave together some humorous highs together with a flair for the dramatic that makes the goofiness of the series feel less pervasive, but still very evident.
Story Beats and Pacing
Less Gags, More Character Writing Make For a Brilliant Reboot
Given the fact that the original YAIBA came out over 30 years ago, it goes without saying that the story tries to achieve something different from the 2025 iteration. As mentioned previously, the original anime is far goofier than its reboot, which is aligned to different values and sensibilities when it comes to entertainment. The original is definitely a product of its time, which is why the reboot, despite some of its major stylistic and directional changes, still feels like a faithful reboot and/or adaptation, as it, too, is a product of its time.
These days, action anime is all about impactful scenes with dazzling sakuga, variation in camera angles, fight choreography, and emphasis on character writing. In the 1993 version of YAIBA, Onimaru is presented solely as a kendo-crazed athlete, while the 2025 version contextualizes his achievements in kendo, giving more depth to his character as it is also more deliberately contrasted with that of YAIBA after their first encounter. Onimaru is spurred on by his desire to make his sister, who is studying kendo overseas.
While Yaiba has a lively home life, especially after moving into the Mine house, Onimaru is very noticably by himself. The 2025 version of the anime also presents a softer side to Onimaru, which gives him a greater role than simply being the vessel of the antagonist, like when we see his gentleness when feeding pigeons, which parallels Yaiba's own relationship with his pet tiger and vulture, Kagetora and Shonosuke. Speaking of Shonosuke, the bird is literally shipped to Tokyo alongside Kagetora and Yaiba in the 1993 version, while in the 2025 version, the relationship between Yaiba and his pets is illustrated by the vulture flying hundreds of kilometers just to find Yaiba.
There's a greater sense of parallel between Yaiba and Onimaru that makes their rivalry a lot more colourful than in the 1993 anime, and that makes for a more solid story overall. The supernatural feats also seem to come much earlier for both characters in the reboot, with their schoolyard mischief in the second episode being far more over-the-top than it was in the 1993 version, although their fight in the city was fairly similar to the original, albeit with far more engaging choreography. There is an evident desire to enhance the action and story as a whole while retaining that sense of whimsy that the original anime had, and that might be a big contributing factor to the success of the YAIBA reboot.
YAIBA: Samurai Legend is available to watch on Netflix.
- Release Date
- April 5, 2025
- Network
- Nippon TV, YTV
- Directors
- Hiroyuki Tanaka, Tomoko Hiramuki, Masao Kawase, Hitomi Ezoe, Rei Nakahara, Maho Ishikawa
- Writers
- Eiji Umehara
Cast
-
Minami TakayamaYaiba Kurogane (voice) -
Manaka IwamiSayaka Mine (voice)
-
Isshin ChibaKagetora (voice)
-
Kousuke EchigoyaShonosuke (voice)
WHERE TO WATCH
- Creator(s)
- Gosho Aoyama
