Kenyuu Densetsu Yaiba

This is one of the best anime I watched during childhood. Now that a new adaptation is in order this year 2025, how does this anime hold?

In my rewatch, this is still a delightful watch.


§ Overview

Kurogane Yaiba has always trained to become the best samurai in the world. One day, his father tells him to go to Japan. He quickly encounters Onimaru Takeshi, whom he defeats. Takeshi holds a grudge, so when he finds the Sword of the Devil Wind, he becomes evil and threatens to rule Japan and then the world. What would Yaiba do?


... § Notes


1. This is Aoyama Gōshō's underrated and largely forgotten anime and manga. It is still to be seen if newer anime watchers would love this because Yaiba is a product of its time.


2. It's power system is fairly basic. A legendary sphere powers your sword, and the only way to level up is, apart from physical training which hasn't been explained sufficiently, one must acquire either new spheres or a more powerful sword.


3. Its audience is children around 10 or people who are children at heart, especially like me who have seen this when I was young. Most anime fans who have seen the staple shounen like Hunter x Hunter or Full Metal Alchemist might not like it as this is not something that will make you think about life, but Yaiba really does it best for what it aims to do.

Since the target audience is grade schoolers, it uses immature and childish humour. It doesn't pretend to be something more serious the way the Elusive Samurai does. If you watch it as an adult, this may be your guilty pleasure because the slapstick humour is great. It still holds up.


4. It is mostly juvenile humour all throughout, but there is an arc where it gets serious for the show. Kids get to practise exercising their reasoning on a moral dilemma. It's not too deep but way serious for its intended audience.


5. We also meet different personages of Japanese history such as Miyamoto Musashi, Sasaki Kojirou, etc. They are a parody of these characters. Despite the power system being basis, it has some depth because it is grounded in Japanese lore and history.

I suspect one of the goals of Aoyama-sensei in creating this anime/manga is for young kids to be entertained while at the same time learn a small bit of history by contrasting the real-life persons they are learning in history class to the parodies in his anime.

There are some life lessons you can somehow gain from this childish anime, though the lesson in the final episode may seem too tacky for my taste.


6. I was surprised on my rewatch that it has a lot of word plays. Maybe not to the level of NISIOISIN in Monogatari, but they're there.


7. Whilst I enjoyed all 52 episodes, it's only halfway through the manga. Wit Studio's new adaptation aims to cover all chapters of the manga, but they'll execute things differently and perhaps make things a little less childish.

If this were to happen, then there's still room for any fan or would-be fan of Yaiba to watch this classic adaptation. I'm not sure if this even deserves the sakuga polish of the new adaptation.


8. The OP and ED are a banger.


§ Conclusion

This anime is a forgotten classic and I hope the interest in it will be revived once we get the new adaptation. But as it stands, the classic version of Yaiba is an entertaining watch. I highly recommend it.

first of all i cant compare it to the manga since iv never read it,
so i can only base my recommendation on the anime alone
for sure id recommend this show, the story is good, the art style isn't super great but it goes well, action comedy adventure, and the humor is gold this show always manages to make me laugh almost each episode.
the characters especially the villains are very unique and how they are delt with, the Ending song pretty good i don't skip
I'm sure you will like this show, as soon you still watching older production anime.

What the hell happened to this adaptation?
I don't know how many people have never read this manga and watched this anime for the first time. It was a bad journey. I'm not talking about kids under 7 who watched this anime. I say people older than 7. God, I know this is an anime from '93, '94, but look at Dragon ball GT, I won't say more. The story was cut halfway, and believe me, they cut the best parts. The only positive thing I found is the ost, the songs are quite nice and smooth, I mean the song in the last episode. I ... don't know why they had to drop the story and make up a fake ending but I have to review based on real feelings. And perhaps with such art, it is hard to ask for more of a failure version of the Yaiba fake samurai.