Yaiba Appears (Yaiba: Samurai Legend episode)
| N/A | List of Episodes | Sword of Fujin, Reborn › |
| Episode 1 | ||
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| Title: | Yaiba Appears | |
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| Japanese Title: | YAIBA見参ノ巻 (Yaiba Kenzan no Maki) | |
| Original airdate: | March 13, 2025 (Toho Cinemas) [N 1] April 5, 2025 | |
| Broadcast rating: | 3.1% | |
| Manga source: | Volume 1: Files 1-5 (001-005) | |
| English Title: | Meeting Yaiba | |
| English airdate: | March 8, 2025 (Emerald City Comic Con 2025)[1] April 5, 2025 (Digital) | |
| Cast: | Yaiba Kurogane Sayaka Mine Kenjuro Kurogane Kagetora Shonosuke Raizo Mine Shizuka Mine Fuji Mine Takeshi Onimaru Keiko Momoi Keiko's friend | |
| Director: | Takahiro Hasui | |
| Screenplay: | Toko Machida | |
| Storyboard: | Takahiro Hasui | |
| Episode director: | Takahiro Hasui | |
| Animation director: | Yoshimichi Kameda | |
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| Opening song: | BLADE | |
| Closing song: | pineapple tart | |
Yaiba Appears (YAIBA見参ノ巻 Yaiba Kenzan no Maki), known in English as Meeting Yaiba, is the 1st episode of Yaiba: Samurai Legend anime. After its premiere in the United States on March 8, 2025, at the 2025 Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle and in Toho Cinemas across Japan on March 13, 2025, it was officially broadcast in Japan on April 5, 2025, while being simulcasted by Netflix in other English-speaking countries. Adapted from the first five chapters of Gosho Aoyama's original manga, it was written by Toko Machida, storyboarded and produced by Takahiro Hasui, and animated by Yoshimichi Kameda. The story follows the protagonist Yaiba Kurogane's move back to Japan into the house of the Mine family, along with his pets Kagetora and Shonosuke. After following Sayaka Mine, he attends middle school for the first time, and later enters the Kendo dojo, where he meets national champion Takeshi Onimaru. This fateful meeting would later spark the beginning of a lifelong rivalry.
Contents
[hide]Cast
Characters introduced
Other characters
Location
Setting
- Tokyo
- Narita Airport
- Terminal 1
- Yaoya
- Narita Airport
Other
- Tokyo
- Rainbow Bridge (only shown)
- Tokyo Tower (only shown)
- Tokyo Station (only shown)
- Tokyo Skytree (only shown)
- Kaminarimon (only shown)
Story
Prologue
Long ago, two gods, each wielding powerful swords, were in constant battle, causing confusion and destruction across the land. The fighting eventually stopped with time; however, centuries later, the power of the swords is reawakened by the meeting of two young men...
Origins
Flash forward to the present, Yaiba Kurogane, a young boy and self-proclaimed samurai, practices his “Wild Beast Dance” in his original residence, the jungle, with his father, Kenjuro. He doubts that this will do anything, but Kenjuro reassures him. The dance is meant to provoke the so-called “Ruler of the Jungle,” or more blantantly, a gorilla. Upon confronting the gorilla, it throws Yaiba in the air, but with the help of his pet vulture, Shonosuke, and his pet tiger Kagetora, he successfully defeats it. This causes an entire troop of gorillas to attack in retaliation, forcing Yaiba, Kenjuro, and Kagetora to retreat. They hide in a box of bananas, which, unfortunately, are closed and being shipped to Japan. Shonosuke, left with no choice, follows them.
Yaiba Meets the Mine Family
At Narita Airport Terminal 1, Sayaka Mine, a middle schooler, greets her father Raizo, who had just won the Asia Kendo Championship. Although Sayaka gives her most sincere compliment to her father’s victory, Raizo denies the compliment, saying that he can only become a true victor when he finally defeats his rival, Kenjuro. Suddenly, Yaiba, attacking all the guards in the airport, encounters Sayaka, and is intrigued by the sight of a girl considering he had never seen one before. Kenjuro and Raizo meet, but to Raizo's dismay, they do not have time to fight as Kenjuro must escape from the guards. They catch a taxi to the Mine residence, and, unsolicited by its owners, Kenjuro moves Yaiba in. Yaiba is overjoyed, amazed by how big and interesting it is. He is stopped by Raizo's mother, Fuji Mine, who is displeased by Yaiba's presence, while Yaiba mistakes her for a baboon.
At the Mine residence
At the residence dojo, Kenjuro uses a shinai, the type of sword used in kendo, to knock the heads of the kendo practitioners until he finds one that reacts quickly enough, proving their strength. This person is Muto, the strongest in the dojo, and Kenjuro makes a deal: if Yaiba wins, he can stay. Yaiba is convinced that Muto is a gorilla, which offends him, and the fight begins. At first, Yaiba makes his moves obvious, which gives Muto an advantage, but after some unsuccessful attempts, Yaiba decides to turn his back and instead aims to feel Muto’s presence, allowing him to successfully defeat Muto.
The next morning, Yaiba had woken up early to practice, which wakes up a much-annoyed Sayaka. At breakfast, Yaiba is eager to eat, but Sayaka interrogates him about why he has a pet tiger, and Yaiba explains their first encounter.
Once upon a time, in the jungle, Yaiba was trying to spear some fish in the river when Kagetora attacked him from behind. Or at least, it tried to attack him, because Yaiba had innocently moved the shaft of the spear backward, causing it to poke Kagetora. Kagetora ends up in the water, flailing, but this flailing motion had thrown a pile of fish onto a nearby rock, thereby helping Yaiba.
Meanwhile, back at the residence, Kenjuro has disappeared, and he left a note asking the Mine family to look after Yaiba.
Yaiba vs. Onimaru
Yaiba follows Sayaka, who is going to school, and Sayaka misleads him to think that school is a place with many powerful opponents. This ruse was meant to scare Yaiba, but it instead causes him to promise that he will protect Sayaka at school, and he continues to follow Sayaka. When it is time for kendo practice, Yaiba, keeping his word, follows her. Sayaka goes to change into kendo attire, and following her to the locker room, Yaiba catcalls her, which sets her off. This confuses him, because his father told him girls like it. Yaiba exits the locker room and goes back out into the main kendo training area. He touches a shinai, but is stopped by Takeshi Onimaru, a national champion, and is told to put it down. Yaiba, unlike in his battle with Muto, could not feel Takeshi’s presence, and is therefore excited to meet this even stronger opponent. Yaiba challenges Takeshi to a duel and initially uses the Wild Beast Dance to distract him. However, this tactic does not work, and the shinai is knocked out of Yaiba’s hand. They then introduce themselves to each other, and this marks the beginning of the long-standing rivalry between these two combatants.
Manga to anime changes
- The manga has Yaiba coincidentally battling with the gorilla, while the anime shows him provoking the gorilla.
- While Yaiba is able to defeat the gorilla with a single strike in the manga, the battle is lengthened in the anime, and Yaiba's victory required the assistance of Shonosuke and Kagetora.
- In the manga, Kagetora was not officially Yaiba's pet since the start of the storyline. In the anime, he is shown to be pre-acquainted to Kagetora.
- A backstory was added to explain how Yaiba and Kagetora met, with Kagetora unexpectedly helping Yaiba to catch fish in the jungle's river.
- As for Shonosuke, Yaiba's pet vulture, he doesn't appear until chapter 7 of the manga, which is after the events covered in this episode.
- The wooden box Yaiba, Kenjuro, and Kagetora use to hide from the gorillas is filled with pineapples in the manga, but with bananas in the anime.
- The manga details in on how Yaiba, Kenjuro, and Kagetora fell out of the shipment box and fought with the airport security squad, while the anime just shows them jumping out of the brawl.
- The suggestive scene where Yaiba lifts Sayaka's skirt upon meeting her is toned down in the anime. The anime version has Yaiba sitting on the floor and lifting Sayaka's skirt to his chest-level while describing her skirt as a weird-looking Hakama.
- Yaiba's battle with Sudo, Sayaka's middle school teacher, is completely omitted in the anime and instead skips to Yaiba and Sayaka at the school's kendo dojo.
- Yaiba's time at the school dojo is simplified/altered as follows:
- Kumazawa, a top kendoka of the school, is absent from this scene in the anime, along with Kenjuro, Fuji, and Sudo (who is also absent from the previous scene).
- Yaiba is not planning to join the dojo, but in the manga, he is offered to sign up for the training.
- Instead of taking on Kumazawa, Yaiba takes on Onimaru, but they do not engage in as much combat as the manga version has with Yaiba and Kumazawa.
- The "Wild Beast Dance" that was successfully used on Kumazawa in the manga fails with Onimaru in the anime.
- This dance, meant to provoke the opponent, was taught on-the-spot by Kenjuro in the manga. However, the anime shows Yaiba having known this dance since his time in the jungle, using this method to provoke and defeat the gorilla.
Trivia
- In Sayaka's room, there is a poster of Akira Shirazawa's film "Eight Samurai", which refers to Akira Kurosawa's film Seven Samurai.
- The airplane that brings Kenjuro, Yaiba and Kagetora to Japan is from All Nippon Airways.
Gallery
See also
Footnotes
Notes
- ^ The first three episodes premiered at ten Toho Cinemas across Japan. More information is found on the official Yaiba: Samurai Legend website: https://www.yaiba-pr.com/news/20250205.html
References
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This is a featured article on the Detective Conan Wiki. This article was featured on April 11, 2025 |
| Collapse Episodes of Yaiba: Samurai Legend Season 1 | ||
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