He claims a thematic debt, for both Fistful and Yojimbo, to Carlo Goldoni's Servant of Two Masters — the basic premise of the protagonist playing two camps off against each other.

In a plot twist familiar to many Westerns such as For a Few Dollars More and the Japanese Yojimbo, Danka uses his anonymity to infiltrate the outlaws ' gang and insinuate himself into Burnash's confidence, becoming his trusted right hand man.

In such films as Seven Samurai and Yojimbo, he played characters who were often comically lacking in manners, but replete with practical wisdom and experience, understated nobility, and, in the case of Yojimbo, unmatched fighting prowess.

The third is Dark Horse Comics, at which Usagi Yojimbo is still being published ( as volume three, over 140 issues ), and who also released a fourth Color Special.

Stan Sakai is a highly regarded letterer of comic books who also creates his own series, Usagi Yojimbo.

" Pauline Kael, he notes, was willing to acknowledge this critical ennui and thus appreciate how a film such as Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo ( 1961 ) " could exploit Western conventions while debunking its morality.

It is the second most extensive, long-running, entirely original creator-controlled, self-contained North American comicbook in history, only exceeded by Cerebus, and has the most issues among comics that are still regularly published, followed by Usagi Yojimbo and Savage Dragon.

At the closing of Episode XXIII of the animated series Samurai Jack, a triumphant Jack walks off alone in a scene ( and accompanied by music ) influenced by the closing scene and music of Yojimbo.

* The film shares some common scenes ( for example, the beating scene ) with Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars, which was in turn inspired by Kurosawa's Yojimbo.

It is acknowledged that the story of Fistful of Dollars closely resembles Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo.

His film A Fistful of Dollars ( Per un Pugno di Dollari, 1964 ) was based upon Akira Kurosawa's Edo-era samurai adventure Yojimbo ( 1961 ).

That material had formed the basis for Kurasawa's Yojimbo, which in turn was the basis for Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars ( Per un pugno di dollari ), countless others have used its premise since.

For instance The Magnificent Seven was a remake of Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, and A Fistful of Dollars was a remake of Kurosawa's Yojimbo, which itself was inspired by Red Harvest, an American detective novel by Dashiell Hammett.

This is particularly true for films that are remade from films produced in another language, such as: Point of No Return ( from the French Nikita ), Vanilla Sky ( from the Spanish Abre los ojos ), The Magnificent Seven ( from the Japanese Seven Samurai ), A Fistful of Dollars ( from the Japanese Yojimbo ), The Departed ( from Hong Kong's Infernal Affairs ), and Let Me In ( from the Swedish film Let the Right One In or Låt den rätte komma in ).

The Magnificent Seven was based on Seven Samurai by Akira Kurosawa whose Yojimbo ( The Bodyguard ) was the inspiration ( and later, litigation ) behind a Leone's A Fistful of Dollars.

In 1964, Yojimbo was remade as A Fistful of Dollars, a spaghetti western directed by Sergio Leone and starring Clint Eastwood in his first appearance as the Man with No Name.

* A Comparison of Yojimbo, A Fistful of Dollars and Last Man Standing

British critic Sir Christopher Frayling identifies three principal sources for A Fistful of Dollars: " Partly derived from Kurosawa's samurai film Yojimbo, partly from Dashiell Hammett's novel Red Harvest ( 1929 ), but most of all from Carlo Goldoni's eighteenth-century play Servant of Two Masters.

Leone asserted that this rooted the origination of Fistful / Yojimbo in European, and specifically Italian, culture.

* A Comparison of Yojimbo, A Fistful of Dollars and Last Man Standing

The title is a parody of Red Harvest, a novel by Dashiell Hammett, whose plot has been used for several movies including Yojimbo, A Fistful of Dollars and Last Man Standing.

A Fistful of Dollars was directly adapted from Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo.

* Stan Sakai has mentioned his plans to include a character based Wong Fei-hung in a future issue of his comic book Usagi Yojimbo.

Clint Eastwood was among the first of many American actors to adopt this persona, which he used to great effect in his Western roles, especially the Spaghetti Westerns made with Sergio Leone, where he played a similar " Man with No Name " character like Mifune did in Yojimbo.

The character Miyamoto Usagi, himself based on famed swordsman Miyamoto Musashi, is the lead character in the comic book Usagi Yojimbo, a term literally translating to " Rabbit Bodyguard ".

Usagi was first conceived as a supporting character in The Adventures of Nilson Groundthumper and Hermy, a brief series that predates Usagi Yojimbo.

Because Usagi Yojimbo is a creator-owned comic and Stan Sakai has complete and sole ownership of the character, Miyamoto Usagi has been able to appear in occasional short stories published by companies other than the one currently publishing his series.

The 1970 film Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo also features Mifune as a similar character.

It won ’ t be the last ," the film was effectively an unofficial and unlicensed remake of Akira Kurosawa's 1961 film Yojimbo ( written by Kurosawa and Ryuzo Kikushima ), lifting themes and character types from that samurai film.

The character was modeled after Toshiro Mifune's character in Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo.

* Tomoe Gozen was the inspiration for the Usagi Yojimbo character Tomoe Ame.

* Ikeda ( comics ), a character in Usagi Yojimbo

* Sasuké ( Usagi Yojimbo ), a character in the Usagi Yojimbo universe

Usagi Yojimbo is heavily influenced by Japanese cinema and has included references to the work of Akira Kurosawa ( the title of the series is derived from Kurosawa's 1960 film Yojimbo ) and to icons of popular Japanese cinema such as Lone Wolf and Cub, Zatoichi, and Godzilla.

The series is also influenced somewhat by Groo the Wanderer by Sergio Aragonés ( Sakai is the letterer for that series ), but the overall tone of Usagi Yojimbo is more serious and reflective.

The Usagi Yojimbo series has been published by three different companies.

There was also a computer game called Samurai Warrior: The Battles of Usagi Yojimbo released for the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC platforms in 1988, by the now defunct computer game label Firebird.

Gen, the rhino bounty hunter, was inspired by the characters made famous by Toshirō Mifune in the samurai films Yojimbo and Sanjuro.

While Usagi Yojimbo draws most heavily upon samurai and chanbara films, it has also been influenced by Japanese films from other genres.

* Yojimbo ( film ), a 1961 film by Akira Kurosawa, starring Toshiro Mifune

* Usagi Yojimbo, an ongoing comic book series created by Stan Sakai in 1987.

First published in 1984, the comic continues to this day, with Sakai as the lone author and nearly sole artist ( Tom Luth serves as the main colorist on the series, and Sergio Aragonés has made two small contributions to the series: the story " Broken Ritual " is based on an idea by Aragonés, and he served as a guest inker for the black-and-white version of the story " Return to Adachi Plain " that is featured in the Volume 11 trade paperback edition of Usagi Yojimbo ).

Last Man Standing ( 1996 ), a Prohibition-era gangster thriller directed by Walter Hill and starring Bruce Willis, is an officially authorized remake of Yojimbo.

' The influence of Yojimbo in particular ( and Kurosawa films in general ) on the animated series has been noted by Matthew Millheiser at DVDtalk.

In addition, some of the early epic westerns, such as The Magnificent Seven and Leone's spaghetti westerns, were influenced by Akira Kurosawa's samurai films, such as Seven Samurai, Yojimbo and Sanjuro.

" The film is an unofficial remake of the Akira Kurosawa film Yojimbo ( 1961 ), resulting in a successful lawsuit by Toho.