Samurai Rabbit is a new Netflix animated series based on a comic that inspired Ghost of Tsushima

Netflix is making an animated series inspired by the Usagi Yojimbo comics, titled Samurai Rabbit: The Usagi Chronicles.

As reported by Deadline, Samurai Rabbit will tell a new story set in the same universe as Stan Sakai's long-running comic series. The show will follow the teen rabbit Yuichi, a descendant of the great samurai (and star of the comics) Miyamoto Usagi, as Yuichi attempts to live up to the family legacy. He's joined in his journeys by "a roguish bounty hunter, a cunning ninja, an acrobatic pickpocket and a faithful pet lizard".

The comic series Usagi Yojimbo takes place in feudal Japan – or a version of feudal Japan where everybody is anthropomorphic animals, anyway – but it looks like Samurai Rabbit will bring the timeline forward a few hundred years to a setting that blends the high-tech imagery with a classical Japanese aesthetic.

Sakai is set to serve as an executive producer on Samurai Rabbit, along with The Conjuring Universe producer James Wan and his company Atomic Monster Productions.

There's no word on when we should expect Samurai Rabbit to hit Netflix at the moment, but something else that was inspired by Usagi Yojimbo is nearly here: Sucker Punch Productions creative director Nate Fox counted Usagi Yojimbo as one of the main reasons he wanted to make Ghost of Tsushima. 

In a 12DOVE interview back in May, he said: "When we started talking about making an open-world samurai game, I remembered reading those comics - and of course watching classic samurai movies - and thinking this is really a good marriage with the freedom of being in an open world." You can read about that and several other influences in this interview with Sucker Punch about the films, games, and books that inspired Ghost of Tsushima. 

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