Last Samurai Standing

No it's not Japanese Squid Game :, It's Awesome!!

"**Some of the participants are as strong as monsters**" 😂🤣😅... *I was like that's true my man run if you can*. 🏃🏽‍♂️🏃🏽‍♂️

Wow : I loved it!!! loved the background stories, loved the fight sequences, loved the cinematography, loved the mystery 10/10🌟

If someone says this is just like Squid Game, don't believe them because this is more than games and killing each other. It's *espionage, mystery, intrigue*. I get Squid Game reference though but I also saw many parallels with Japanese death game genre movies like Battle Royale, As the Gods Wills, Harakiri, Kaiji etc.

If you’re familiar with jidaigeki or samurai films, you’ll recognize the historical backdrop — the fall of the samurai class and the dawn of a new world order. That old-world-vs-new. The political tension runs deep.

I loved the layered mystery: the characters’ backstories, the “who’s behind it,” the “what’s the purpose.” Even the side characters get a bit of depth, you connect with them, you feel for them.But the background characters are also explored in great depth and you're able to connect and sympathize with them.

Our Samurai has PTSD, but is forced by cholera and poverty to raise his sword again and he unwittingly assembles a team of misfits along the way.

Through his team of weaklings and misfits some of whom cannot fight but have a fighting spirit, you will find plenty of inspiration about the meaning of

*real strength, being strong, good vs evil, finding yourself, friendship, found family*

And that it's okay to "*waste*" some of your "*precious*" tags on someone weaker than you or who has no chance of winning... that's the beauty of life.

Waiting for S2 announcement.

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Last Samurai Standing is set during the final days of the samurai during a cholera epidemic. Stripped of their wealth and their reason for living, warriors with nothing left to lose sign up for a no holds barred race from Kyoto to Tokyo. The prize is 100,000 yen, enough money to sustain a family for a century. The only catch? The contestants have to capture wooden tokens from the other contestants to pass each check point and to finally enter Tokyo.

Shujiro Saga is a skilled samurai who has been retired after a devastating battle that obliterated everyone on the battlefield with new weaponry. Swords have been outlawed in the new government and the samurai have been shuttled aside. Suffering from debilitating PTSD, he couldn’t use his sword if he had to. To top things off, his family is suffering from cholera and he has no money for medicine. When he hears about a gathering of samurai for a contest with a 100,000 yen prize, he has no choice but to join. At the gathering he finds other desperate people and also samurai desperate to fight, a deadly combination made worse by the conditions of the contest and the ever watchful, heavily armed guards. Along the way from Kyoto to Tokyo, Saga becomes allied with, or rather babysitter for an eclectic group. Aside from the rank-and-file contestants after them for their tokens, is also a shadow from his past intent on taking more than his token.

The comparison to Squid Game was inevitable despite the fact that these kinds of gruesome games have been played out in the movies and television shows for decades. The main thing the two have in common aside from pitting players against each other is that both focus on people who have been pushed to the edge economically and emotionally. I suppose the other is that whenever the camera diverted to the wealthy elite betting on the contestants, the emotional momentum came to a standstill. None of the people behind the game was particularly compelling, in fact, the Big Bad was downright disappointing. The drama was at its best when it focused on the contestants.

Okada Junichi made for an excellent conflicted lead. A loving father and husband, he was also believably Kokushu the Manslayer. I won’t go into his entourage so as not to spoil too much. The acting there was hit or miss. One of the villainous contestants was simply drawn as a mindless killing machine, though the actor chewed through the scenery in the bloody performance. In this contest, aside from Saga, mercy or complexity was rarely a strength.

The Last Samurai Standing was on its way to an 8.5 from me as I was quite enjoying it. For the genre, it delivered on what you’d expect, though no real surprises. The fights were well choreographed and not for the squeamish. The last episode veered into unrealistic territory which was jarring. Yet it also set up huge stakes beyond the contest for our intrepid little band of contestants. Surrounded by powerful enemies, it will be interesting to see how or if the writers can bring this to a satisfying conclusion when the second season rolls around.

14 November 2025
Trigger warnings: The heads rolled in this drama like a macabre bowling match. If you ever wondered what the Yojimbo blood spewing fight would look like in color, well, here’s your opportunity.

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