" 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

In box-office terms, The Hidden Fortress was Kurosawa ’ s most successful film, until the 1961 release of Yojimbo.

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.

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.

Leone himself believed that Red Harvest had influenced Yojimbo: " Kurosawa's Yojimbo was inspired by an American novel of the serie-noire so I was really taking the story back home again.

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

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

Kurosawa scholar David Desser and film critic Manny Farber, among others, state categorically that Red Harvest was the inspiration for the Kurosawa film Yojimbo.

" Kurosawa's Yojimbo was inspired by an American novel of the serie-noire so I was really taking the story back home again.

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 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.

The first issue also included an original Usagi Yojimbo short story.

In 2004, Dark Horse Comics published a Twentieth Anniversary hardcover volume also entitled The Art of Usagi Yojimbo.

Stan Sakai has also been able to experiment with formats for Usagi Yojimbo, as when he published the color story " Green Persimmon " first as twelve separate 2-page chapters serialized in Diamond Comic Distributor's monthly catalog " Previews.

Usagi has also appeared several times in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ( the comic, both of the animated series, and the toy line ), and the Turtles have appeared in Usagi Yojimbo as well.

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

Dark Horse also publishes creator owned comics such as Frank Miller's Sin City and 300, Mike Mignola's Hellboy, Stan Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo, Gerard Way's Umbrella Academy, and Michael Chabon's The Escapist.

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

Incident at Blood Pass, made in the same year, also stars Mifune in a role similar to that of Yojimbo.

The battle is also recounted near the beginning of the Usagi Yojimbo story arc Grasscutter.

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

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

* 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 subsequent film, Last Man Standing ( 1996 ), starring Bruce Willis is a credited remake of Yojimbo.

He is best known for his 16-film collaboration with filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, from 1948 to 1965, in works such as Rashomon, Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood, and Yojimbo.

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.

Sakai became famous with the creation of Usagi Yojimbo, the epic saga of Miyamoto Usagi, a samurai rabbit living in late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth-century Japan.

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 ).

Many of the actors in Yojimbo worked with Kurosawa before and after, especially Toshirō Mifune, Takashi Shimura and Tatsuya Nakadai.

* 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.

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 ).