Samurai Troopers making a comeback was most certainly not on my 2025 bingo card—at the same time, it shouldn’t have been surprising considering that the series just passed its 35th anniversary. Some sources—namely American—are calling this a sequel, but I suspect that might have something to do with language barriers and relying on translation software. The trailer that was released suggests a remake or re-imagining as opposed to a true sequel.
If it were a true sequel, it would have picked up after Message with the new armor designs, but instead, the trailer shows us the original armors from the series—not the OVAs.
Speaking of the trailer—it looks like we get a similar story but with new characters in a modern setting. Which that right there, actually soothes any misgivings I might have. This is being led by Sunrise and based off the trailer, it looks like Sunrise learned from the mistakes made by Yashahime by going with a remake/re-imagining instead of a straight sequel2.
Yoroiden Samurai Troopers was never popular enough in the States to warrant the attention that Voltron later received. Voltron came from an era where it was popular to take similar but unrelated Japanese series and mash them into the same universe—Robotech (Macross) was from the same time-period. Samurai Troopers (rebranded as Ronin Warriors) wasn’t released in the States untill the mid-90s. The only series in the mid-90s that was similar to Samurai Troopers would have been Saint Seiya3 but the visuals and story between the two were too different to attempt that kind of butchering merging that was done with GoLion and Macross.
Table of Contents
RIP Ronin Fortress (1999—2004)
I ran a fansite dedicated to the American version from late ’99 to early 2004 called The Ronin Fortress (roninfortress.com—if you feel like browsing Internet Archives). It was cheesy, campy, and incredibly cringe-worthy but also introduced me to a lucrative career choice in web development.
Will I resurrect that old fansite?
🤣—fuck no. I’m too old for that kind of stuff and too old to bother with the nonsense and drama that comes from being involved in a fandom. Especially not in today’s divided world where you have a group of people willing to do anything to censor content that they deem to be problematic.
My Feelings on the Nostalgia Craze
Even though I said I’m not resurrecting the fansite, I’m pretty excited—even if my “excitement” feels more like a warm bowl of oatmeal at the moment. This is in spite of the general feeling of antipathy I get when I hear about something that’s thirty or forty years old getting a sequel or remake when it’s not needed. Another reason why I don’t feel any antipathy about this announcement is that it’s not an attempt by an American company to cash in on the nostalgia craze that’s been going around1.
Could We See a Rebranding as Ronin Warriors?
Please no—just no. Some things are best left in the past, and the American dub is one of them5. Even though the American dub was a hallmark of my late teens and early twenties—it’s how I feel. So why do I feel this way?
Stick to the Source
Second, the dub was awful compared to its Japanese original. Other countries handled dubbing into their own languages far better than the American version did.
When you get down to it, the Ronin Warriors dub was really a heavy-handed attempt to “Americanize” a setting that was very obviously not Western in origin, and it definitely showed in some of the name choices and the dialog from the earlier episodes6.
The only name-change that made sense was Nasuti (Mia)—the dropped consonants in the Japanese language meant that Nasuti was pronounced as “Nasti” so that name-change was understandable for an English-speaking audience, but others? Eh…
For example, changing Touma to Rowen made no sense. The Spanish translation to Tomas made far more sense. Don’t get me wrong—Rowen was one of my favorite characters and the inspiration for Rowan Ōkami in Silent Shadow—BUT c’mon dubbers, stick to the source material. Snarky me thinks that the American company responsible for the translation may have thought that “Thomas”—which would have been the English equivalent of Touma—didn’t have enough “cool” factor for the ’90s, and thus changed it.
Another one that was a head-scratcher was Shin (Cye)—did the writers actually mean Cy—short for Cyril? Or did they opt for a non-Asian name because Shin, and this would apply to Seiji (Sage) and Touma (Rowen), looked more European than Asian?
Stop Ruining My Childhood
Here in the States, we seem to be in the midst of a Gen-X/older Millennial nostalgia kick, with older properties like Goonies getting sequels or remakes—Marvel Cinematic Universe sequels notwithstanding. Apparently, originality is hard for Hollywood at the moment. I’ve got strong opinions about Goonies getting a sequel in that it didn’t need to happen. I’ll really lose my shit if they decide to remake Explorers4, though.
We also have a live-action Voltron movie coming out sometime soon. As if the series remake a few years ago wasn’t bad enough. I only watched the first season of the new Voltron, and while the animation was good and I liked that they brought in names and elements of the original One Hundred Beast King: Go Lion, it was a series we could have done without. Especially considering how the writing at the end really pissed off the fans.
Popular series from this time-period (2016—2020) were heavily into letting their fans down at the end—remember how Game of Thrones ended? Both Game of Thrones and Voltron’s ending made me incredibly happy that I didn’t get emotionally invested in either.
Asides & Footnotes
- It should be said that this is really Sunrise’s attempt to cash in on the nostalgia factor in Japan. ↩︎
- I liked Princess Half-demon but the story was all over the place, and let’s be honest—most people wanted to see what the original gang was doing after fifteen years instead of focusing on the kids. ↩︎
- The difference in the size of the cast between Samurai Troopers and Saint Seiya would have likely made that kind of merger difficult as well. ↩︎
- Don’t shit on River Phoenix’ legacy like that, please… ↩︎
- Awful is probably relative here. Considering the dubs we’d had prior to 1995, Ronin Warriors was pretty good for its time and stayed fairly close to its source material. ↩︎
- The Siegfried & Roy reference in the first episode? ↩︎