...it's like TV Tropes, but LINKED DATA!
Western Samurai
- 165 statements
- 30 feature instances
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The Samurai are like the Japanese counterpart of Knights; proud, heavily trained warriors that dedicated themselves to a master (unless they're Rōnin), wield fancy steel swords, and generally keep the peace. The Western Samurai are samurai of non-Japanese heritage, black or white and even those of other Asian countries like Chinese and Korean, if they wield a katana or wear the armor (and are not Japanese), then they are worthy of the prestige and title of the Samurai. Good examples of the Western Samurai follow the Bushido Code of Honour, focusing more on the philosophy that the Samurai follow while on occasion picking up the martial art skills and weapons. Bad examples usually focus more on the aesthetics of Japanese culture because they think it is cool, ignoring the code of ethics out of a form of vanity, greed or just plain ignorance, since for them Everything's Better with Samurai. Compare and contrast McNinja, another Japanese warrior class (and rivals of the samurai) that also are made by non-Japanese people. Super-Trope to Samurai Cowboy (a cowboy that is mixed with samurai traits, being in weapons as well ideology) and Street Samurai (a samurai in a Cyberpunk/futuristic setting). Sub-Trope of Black Vikings. See also Everything's Better with Samurai, where the samurai thing is only for the Rule of Cool than just being a real samurai. For further info, The Other Wiki offers a section in the Samurai article and even a list of historical Western Samurai. Examples |
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| Western Samurai / int_1869a077 | type |
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Invoked in Samurai Jack with the eponymous protagonist. A Japanese-born boy that escaped from Aku's destruction of his homeland thanks to the help of his mother, who trained under the Bushido Code around the world and came back as an adult to fight Aku, but renamed himself with the foreign name of "Jack." There's also Da Samurai, a black dude who dresses the part just to look cool, but behaves obnoxiously. Jack, finding his act disgraceful, engages him in battle and takes him down a peg or two, while at the same time teaching him about true samurai values. |
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Claude from Samurai Shodown Sen is a European blond guy that is a samurai, in this case from France. An amnesiac guy that adopted Japan's culture and became a samurai trained by monks and eventually he became one, defending his temple from various menaces. And from the same game, there's "J", an obvious expy of Afro Samurai. | |
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47 Ronin, a 2013 film very loosely based on the story of The 47 Ronin has Kai, a half-Japanese, half-British man raised to be a samurai that eventually becomes the leader of the 47 Ronin searching to revenge their master. | |
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Fire Emblem: The Myrmidon, a Fragile Speedster warrior class that specializes in critical hits, wields mostly saber-style weapons and often comes from some country in "the East". Exactly how eastern varies between games - some myrmidons appear vaguely Turkish, while others are outright samurai - but Rōnin aesthetics are common. Fates, which has a Fantasy Counterpart Culture of Japan in a central role, simply renames the Myrmidon class to Samurai. | |
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| Western Samurai / int_23298bd5 | type |
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The Cyber Dragons Trilogy by C.T. Phipps has Snake as the protagonist's Evil Mentor. He's a Mexican cartel assassin turned New Yakuza boss. Snake has fully embraced being a samurai and trains his students as modern ninja. Notably, at least one of his students thinks he's completely insane. | |
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In the Honor Harrington series Grayson is a Cult Colony whose founders came from North America who attempted to abandon technology and learned sword fighting from Seven Samurai. | |
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Nagoriyuki from Guilty Gear -Strive- is a Nightless born in Nigeria and studied the way of the samurai in Japan, which led him to change his name. He also might have trained under the resident McNinja Chipp Zanuff's master. | |
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G.I. Joe: Budo is the G.I. Joe Team's samurai warrior (although why a modern special forces team needs a samurai warrior is a question not addressed). His real name is Kyle A. Jesso, his rank is that of sergeant E-5, and he was born in Sacramento, California. According to his file card, his father was an orthodontist in Oakland, his grandfather a farmer in Fresno, his great-grandfather a track-worker on the Rocky Mountain Line, and his great-great grandfather was a fencing master in one of Japan's last great samurai warrior families. Budo was given the family swords on his eighteenth birthday, as well as a haiku written by his ancestor. | |
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O-Ren Ishii from Kill Bill is a half-Japanese, half-Chinese-American woman that is also one of Bill's assassins and eventually became the leader of the Yakuza in Japan despises her origin (recall it as unworthy to be a leader or even a Japanese is her Berserk Button... and you should be killed for that). She usually dress as a geisha and uses Iaijutsu as her main technique. | |
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| Western Samurai / int_3de35022 | type |
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Final Fantasy XIV features both the heroic and villainous archetypes in the Player Character and Zenos yae Galvus. While the Warrior of Light is chosen by a traveling samurai from the game's Fantasy Counterpart Culture version of Japan and trained to become an honorable warrior, Zenos is the brutal ruler of the China-equivalent who wields a katana out of sheer admiration for their killing power and explicitly has no interest in following any code other than his bloodlust. | |
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| Western Samurai / int_3f01b5a4 | type |
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Power Rangers Samurai had only one ethnically Japanese character on the team (Mia, played by a Chinese-American), but they're all supposed to be descendants of actual samurai and were trained as such. The original Japanese production, Samurai Sentai Shinkenger, also played with this trope by having an episode where an American Funny Foreigner wanted to learn to be a samurai. | |
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| Western Samurai / int_4be1bdd0 | type |
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"Samurai" is a class in Golden Sun and its sequels, accessed by equipping a certain combination of Djinn to an Earth or Fire Adept. Most of the player characters are from the setting's Europe-equivalent continent, so using that class would make them this trope. Lampshaded and played for laughs in the "Golden Sun Gag Battle" manga, where using the Samurai class gives normally-blonde Isaac a black topknot hairstyle and third-person formal Antiquated Linguistics, to the confusion of his friends. The only playable Japanese-equivalent character is Himi in Dark Dawn, and she is inexplicably locked out of the Samurai class despite being an Earth Adept. |
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Overlord (2012): Brain Unglaus is an Arrogant Swordplay Guy whose Speed Blitz fighting style lead him to adopt an expensive imported katana as his weapon. He takes up a Ronin-esque lifestyle after losing to Gazef Stronoff in a tournament to determine the kingdom's Warrior-Captain. | |
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Mifune from Soul Eater is a blonde-haired, blue-eyed samurai of non-Japanese descent. Lampshaded when a group of Samurai mooks of Arachnophobia call him a fake samurai, to which he sneers back that Japanese nationality isn't the only requisite for being a samurai. | |
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Samurai and R�nin are available classes in Dungeons & Dragons. Since it doesn't come with any race or ethnic requirement, it's possible for any player to fully evoke this trope. | |
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| Western Samurai / int_701f0ece | type |
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Berserk: A curious inversion with Azan, a European-style knight in plate armor who acts like a samurai without any direct reference to bushido: he delivers challenges to his enemies, is famous for having once defended a bridge single-handedly, has a Rage Helm that looks like a snarling warrior, etc. | |
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| Western Samurai / int_90e2f673 | type |
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Warriors of the Draconis Combine in BattleTech follow samurai tradition and attempt to live by the codes of bushido. However, only a small fraction of the Combine's population is actually Japanese, so it has many samurai who are African, Arabian, Indian (in this case referring to India), or European in ethnicity. | |
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The titular Ghost Dog from Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai is an African American hitman slumming it in the streets of Harlem who follows the Bushido code, granting his servitude to mobster Louie for saving his life as the code dictates. | |
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Young Samurai: The protagonist, Jack Fletcher, is the son of an English sailor who's stranded in Japan after his father is murdered by the ninja Dokugan Ryu. He's adopted by the samurai Masamoto Takeshi and becomes a student at his doj�, where he studies Niten Ichi-ryū. | |
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In Island in the Sea of Time (Series), Marian Alston is an African-American woman who has received samurai training. | |
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Shadowrun: Due to Japan Takes Over the World being in full effect (especially in earlier editions), samurai aesthetics are a big hit with non-Japanese Street Samurai (who are actually called that in-universe, just to make it more blatant), katana are a favoured melee weapon by physical adepts, and following bushido is a popular way for both adepts to gain their powers and highly cybered people to keep their grip on humanity. Defied by the Renraku Red Samurai Elite Mooks, however, as the corps' intense Japanese jingoism means they never permit foreigners (or women, or non-human metatypes) in their ranks. | |
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Daredevil foe American Samurai was an unnamed World War II American soldier who was imbued with the spirit of a samurai which gives him mystical superhuman skills. | |
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Captain Nathan Algren in The Last Samurai, an American army veteran who is hired by the Japanese Emperor to train conscripts during a rebellion by the Samurai, but is captured by the Samurai and goes native. He studies the Japanese language and sword-fighting techniques, is given his own katana and suit of armor, and joins the Samurai in their Last Stand against the soldiers he was supposed to train. | |
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BlazBlue: Hakumen at first would look and sound like a traditional Japanese samurai, with not just the armor and sword but also the appropriate fighting style (only with a strange-looking helmet). Beneath that helmet, however, he's the Western (likely English) Jin Kisaragi - who is still this by himself, with his Iaijutsu Practitioner style. His decidedly Japanese name is because he's adopted to the family. | |
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Jef Costello from Le Samouraï is a French hitman that follows the Bushido Code of Honour. | |
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In countries like South Korea, when the Soul series came knocking, Namco feared backlash for the character Mitsurugi, since samurai are rather taboo in Asian countries that aren't Japan. For the first Soulcalibur (after Hwang, who was created to replace Mitsurugi in Soul Edge, became his own separate character), they gave him a makeover and called the result Arthur (pictured), a blond British gentleman with an Eyepatch of Power. Eventually, Arthur received a larger role as a minor character appearing alongside rather than in place of Mitsurugi. Arthur is loosely based on the real life William Adams. | |
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Nioh: Based off of the real historical figure, William Adams is an Irish-born Englishman who soon adopts samurai armor and samurai weapons in the game. Late in the game, you meet the first actual non-Japanese samurai ever, an African man known as Yasuke who was a retainer to Oda Nobunaga. |
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Simon Blackquill from Ace Attorney, a samurai-themed prosecutor, becomes this as a result of the series' Thinly-Veiled Dub Country Change shifting the characters from Japan to America. As a result, in the localization he's an American/British man who dresses and acts like an old-fashioned samurai, complete with iajutsu, a loyal pet hawk, and Undying Loyalty to the woman he considered his master. note Janet Hsu, a member of the series' localization team, has stated that she views heavily Japanese-coded characters like the Feys as Japanese in the localization, so the same could possibly be said for the Blackquills. Simon is still American, however. | |
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Samuel "Jetstream" Rodrigues from Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is a Japanese-Brazilian cyborg (in reality a human with a nanotechnology armor) with part-Japanese ancestry who has an iaijutsu-based fighting style. He inherited from his father a katana named "Murasama", modified by him to be a High-Frequency Blade just like Raiden's own sword. Raiden himself is the Foil of "Jetstream" for being a Ninja with non-Japanese origins. | |
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The eponymous protagonist from Afro Samurai is a black samurai with considerable skills in a Schizo Tech version of feudal Japan. | |
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