TL;DR: Last Samurai Standing takes a seemingly gimmicky “samurai death game” premise and elevates it into a gorgeously shot, thematically rich, action-drenched historical saga. Junichi Okada delivers career-best choreography, the ensemble cast shines, and the emotional weight of post-Boshin War Japan gives the series unusual depth. It’s short, sharp, and unforgettable — the best action TV Netflix has released this year.
Last Samurai Standing
If you spend any time doomscrolling through the Netflix homepage like I do — hovering over a title for three seconds just to trigger the autoplay trailer like some kind of Pavlovian content goblin — you may have already seen Last Samurai Standing being pitched as the inevitable fusion of Squid Game and Shōgun. And I get it. When a show opens with nearly 300 broke samurai signing up for a lethal cash-prize tournament, the comparison practically writes itself. But lumping this series into the “another Asian death game” bucket is like saying The Witcher is “just medieval John Wick.” Technically true, spiritually wrong, and depressingly reductive.
I binged all six episodes in a single sitting — a decision my eyeballs regret but my inner historical-fiction nerd deeply thanks me for. Last Samurai Standing isn’t chasing the neon-lit dystopian desperation of Squid Game. Instead, it plants its feet firmly in post-Boshin War Japan (think 1869-ish), where samurai culture is collapsing under modernization, disease, and poverty. These aren’t contestants playing children’s games; these are professional fighters from a fallen era trying to survive extinction.
And the wild part? Netflix actually pulls it off — delivering one of the tightest, bloodiest, most technically impressive action series of the year.
The premise sounds like something your college tabletop group would pitch at 3 a.m. after too much cheap ramen: nearly 300 destitute samurai receive mysterious invitations to the Kodoku, a violent trek across the Tokaido route toward Tokyo. Seven checkpoints. A whole lot of blades. To advance, you need to take your opponents’ tags. You can guess the method for acquisition.
Our emotional anchor amid this katana-soaked gauntlet is Shujiro Saga (Junichi Okada), a stoic ex-warrior with the kind of tragic backstory anime protagonists wish they had. He’s doing it for cash — not out of greed, but to save his wife and child from cholera. The moment they revealed that, my brain immediately went: “Yep. I’m attached. I’m in. This man must live.”
Saga quickly forms an unlikely RPG-style party: the plucky Futaba Katsuki, the acrobatic ninja Kyojin Tsuge, the quietly lethal Ironha Kinugasa, and the devout archer Kocha Kamul. Their chemistry is surprisingly wholesome for a show that averages three arterial sprays per minute, and the dynamic gives the series room to breathe between bouts of steel-on-steel carnage.
Let me get on my soapbox for a hot second: Western marketing teams keep trying to cram everything East Asian into Squid Game’s shadow, and it’s exhausting. Yes, both shows feature a large cast forced to compete under deadly rules. But Last Samurai Standing is driven not by capitalist despair but by historical trauma.
This is a death game where the participants aren’t disposable players — they’re relics of a dying social class. And that twist fundamentally reshapes the emotional tone. In plenty of samurai dramas, we romanticize the era with sweeping honor codes and stoic duels at sunset. Here, the series says: “Actually, the Meiji Restoration wrecked these people’s entire lives, and our society never knew what to do with them.”
That’s the kind of thematic depth that gives this show weight — ballast beneath the spectacle. And trust me, there is spectacle.
I’ve lost count of the samurai-themed shows and films I’ve seen over the years — I grew up obsessed with Rurouni Kenshin, graduated to Kurosawa, then spiraled deep into Takashi Miike territory like any self-respecting film nerd. So when I say that Last Samurai Standing features some of the cleanest, tightest, most technically mind-blowing sword fights on TV in the last decade… I don’t mean that lightly.
Junichi Okada didn’t just star in this thing; he produced it and choreographed the fights. That’s the kind of on-screen/off-screen overlap you get when someone is genuinely built different. His movements are fluid without turning into wuxia floatiness, sharp without looking rehearsed, brutal without ever feeling like mindless splatter.
The fights have personality.
• Saga’s strikes are precise and almost surgical.
• Ironha’s battles feel like high-speed calligraphy.
• Kyojin’s ninja sequences bend physics in ways that made me rewind repeatedly just to figure out how the hell they shot it.
• Kocha’s arrow trajectories curve like someone modded the show with Elden Ring’s magic bows.
Every episode contains at least one duel that made me involuntarily whisper “Holy hell” like some guy reacting to GPU benchmark scores.
Production-wise, the stunt team deserves hazard pay, a fruit basket, and perhaps a national award. The period costuming, smoke-filled forests, and muted color palette make every set piece look like a painting seconds before it explodes into violence.
The Kodoku tournament isn’t just some random violent hobby for wealthy psychos — though that’s certainly part of it. As the episodes unfold, the show teases a conspiracy woven into Japan’s political transition. Someone powerful is shaping the future by systematically erasing the past.
There’s something deeply tragic about watching a group of samurai — once the backbone of a nation — being manipulated into killing each other for scraps. The show uses that tragedy to give its death game a mournful, almost elegiac tone. And while the mystery isn’t reinventing the wheel, it elevates the series far above the pulpiness of its premise.
Let’s be real: six episodes is tight. Too tight.
Several characters deserve more backstory, especially the antagonists. Some emotional beats hit harder than others. And the pacing occasionally sprints when it should jog.
But these are the kinds of flaws you forgive because the overall package is so intensely compelling. I’ve watched longer shows with fewer ideas and worse execution.
Last Samurai Standing isn’t just one of Netflix’s best new action shows — it’s one of the strongest live-action samurai series in years, period. It punches above its weight, swings for the fences, and lands nearly every blow. If you love historical action, complex antiheroes, or just gorgeously choreographed sword fights, this is essential viewing.
