As trailer really amps up the bloodshed and backstabbing to lean into the Squid Game comparison. That’s understandable, given how successful that series was for the streamer, but it’s also doing Last Samurai Standing a disservice.
Are the similarities there? Sure! People killing people in an arena-style setting with the tantalizing allure of cash hovering over their motivations is basically the Squid Game way. But Last Samurai Standing has its own history: It was originally a 2012 novel, Ikusagami, by author Shogo Imamura, and then a 2022 manga series based on said novel. It also is, of course, Japanese rather than South Korean, so its historical and political concerns are set firmly within the Meiji period of the late 19th and early 20th century, when Japan was leaving its feudal past behind and becoming more industrialized (and Westernized). And its action style isn’t Squid Game’s blunt-force bloodshed, but rather gorgeously choreographed martial-arts and sword-fighting sequences, with characters twirling through the air and being ever-so-artfully sprayed with blood. There are plenty of reasons to watch Last Samurai Standing on its own terms. Here are five.
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The fights
It’s 1878, and the government’s transition from feudalism is leaving the country’s villages and underclass behind. Cholera is killing tons of people, especially children. The government has abolished the samurai class, banning swords and forcing most of them into poverty. Amid that discontent, a mysterious flier goes out around the country, calling former samurai to a temple to learn about how to win 100,000 yen. Once gathered, the former samurai find a squad of guards in all-black, military-style outfits (notably without any official insignias), who lay out the rules of the Kodoku game. The samurai must travel to Tokyo, stopping at seven checkpoints along the way. They must have a certain number of points to pass through each location, and the only way to amass points is to kill each other and collect the fallen samurai’s wooden nametag. If they quit or tell outsiders about the game, they’re killed.
With that inciting incident, there’s potential for all kinds of fights, and Last Samurai Standing absolutely delivers all kinds of fights. The series’ lead actor, Junichi Okada, is also its action choreographer, and he puts together a wild variety of configurations that keeps the series fresh: one person versus two, eight people fighting each other, a brawl during a religious festival, a duel to the death during which the fighters hop back and forth over a river. Each episode introduces new characters and gives us a little bit of their backstory, like a member of Japan’s indigenous ethnic group, the Anui, whose bow-and-arrow ability is an act of faith toward his gods. That constant expansion of the ensemble elevates the fight scenes, too, adding variety to them based on what the characters’ action specialties are. It’s a clever format that keeps the focus on the action, where the series is at its best.
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The lone wolf and cub
Although there are about two dozen main characters in Last Samurai Standing, the most central are Shujiro Saga (Okada) and Futaba Katsuki (Yumia Fujisaki), who end up as unlikely allies: He’s a samurai once so infamous he earned the nickname “Kokushu the Manslayer,” she’s a child whose village has nearly all died from cholera and whose mother is now also ill. When Shujiro sees her at the first temple meeting, he takes pity on her and protects her from the other desperate samurai; eventually, he agrees to protect her as they travel to Tokyo together. You can see the story beats coming from a mile away — he’ll teach her to toughen up, she’ll help soften him — but as another spin on the iconic ’70s manga series Lone Wolf and Cub, it works perfectly. That’s just Last Samurai Standing respecting its genre elders!
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The political machinations
To give away too much would be to spoil the broader plot of this first season, which ends on a cliffhanger. But for fans of FX’s Shōgun — the samurai way being honorable in a way industrialization wasn’t, that kind of thing — but there’s also a fascinating subplot about the intrusion of Western perspectives on Japan’s changing approach to law enforcement. For now, it hits upon some satisfying anti-colonialism sentiment, but it could also eventually collapse if Last Samurai Standing puts too much narrative weight on it. That’s an issue for season two to deal with, but the question of whether Japan was too influenced by outside actors is at least compelling in season one.
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The semi-supernatural stuff
What if there were a sorta-mythical warrior named Gentosai Okabe (Hiroshi Abe) who was so badass that he could take on a bunch of samurai at once without breaking a sweat, and who was sworn to a martial-arts discipline and tasked with hunting down and killing lapsed disciples of said discipline? And what if he was depicted as practically immortal, and whenever he moved around, the score got all dissonant and discordant, as if his very presence distorts the world around him? All spooky, all fun! Last Samurai Standing is unclear about the details of Gentosai’s whole deal, but uses him fantastically, showing only glimpses of his face and relying more on his body in movement, and the tinkling of the bell attached to his walking stick, to amplify viewers’ fear and anticipation. His presence suggests a supernatural element to this period of Japan that was dying out because of the country’s modernization, and although Last Samurai Standing doesn’t hit that point too explicitly, his character being such a Terminator-style fiend adds a welcome contradictory undercurrent to the show’s otherwise nostalgic affection for the past.
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Kanjiya the Butcher
Shujiro is a noble, moral man who is matter-of-fact about the samurai way being over, is struggling with PTSD from his last battle, and is only competing in the Kodoku to provide for his family. The character’s steadfastness, and Okada’s gravitas, makes him a great hero, but it also gives Last Samurai Standing the space to surround him with a number of wildcards. These other contestants have their own motivations, secrets, and grudges, and the series introduces them via solo closeups and video-game-esque start-up music to signal their importance to the story. Many of them are scene-stealers, like the mysterious Kyojin Tsuge (Masahiro Higashide), who describes himself as a “strategist” and who Higashide gives a wily, almost fey characterization on the strength of his sarcastic smiles alone. But best of all is Hideaki Ito as Bukotsu Kanjiya, the series’ most cartoonlike character (complimentary). On Tokyo Vice, Ito was achingly handsome; here, he’s unrecognizable, an avatar of burn-it-all-down nihilism. He’s got scars all over his face, carries a sword that’s as long as he is tall, and delivers every line as a taunting snarl. Ito’s chewing up scenery like none other, and he gives Kanjiya’s personal vendetta against Shujiro real urgency. How can you not love a character who’s nicknamed the “Butcher” and bites off dudes’ fingers during fights? That might not be the samurai way, but it sure makes Last Samurai Standing entertaining.