TV Review- ‘Last Samurai Standing’
So it turns out that Edgar Wright’s new vision of The Running Man (you can check out Braden’s thoughts on that here) isn’t the only last-man-standing piece of entertainment based off a book that came out this weekend! The aptly titled Last Samurai Standing dropped on Netflix this past Thursday, and I started it as soon as my weekend started. I’m an action junkie, so I’m always looking forward to checking out stuff like this. By the time I finished its 6 episode season, I found it mostly okay. It’s a decent enough first season with an intriguing story and great, if unexpectedly sparse, fight sequences.
The show centers on Shujiro Saga (Junichi Okada), a traumatized samurai who’s broke and struggling to help his sick family, as cholera plagues everyone. This is when Saga finds an invite for any and all past samurai (once great warriors, now banished by their own government) to meet up in Kyoto for a chance to earn a lot of money. That chance ends up being a battle royale set up by a mysterious and powerful group, and Saga joins 291 other samurai in a brutal fight for survival.
The premise alone sounds like a home run. Of course, if you’ve seen or read stuff like Squid Game, The Hunger Games, or of course, Battle Royale, you’ll see a lot of that DNA here. Bodies stack up within seconds of the tournament starting. Fragile alliances are made. The elite watch as those below them desperately slaughter each other for their entertainment. But to my surprise the show actually isn’t very focused on the battle royale part. It doesn’t take long before we deviate from that and instead follow Saga and his newly formed crew trying to uncover who’s behind creating this slaughter and why.
This had me pretty bummed out as I was watching. I’m aware this sounds bad, and it’s made clear throughout how horrifying it is to pit these samurai, who have been cast aside after all their service, against each other just to be able to make some money for their loved ones at home (Saga is not even close to the only one struggling). But the whole thing with uncovering who is behind this and why kind of drags. There’s a legitimate mystery to it that’s at least engaging enough to make me want to keep going, but I couldn’t help but feel my patience getting thin. Is it so much to ask to want to see more samurai action?
What doesn’t help is how thin all the characters are. We learn what drives them and why they took part in this tournament kind of quickly, and the show doesn’t seem super interested in diving much further than that. Our heroes are kind of all on the same page without much to diversity them, and the same goes for our villains. There are a couple standouts here and there, including a super charismatic guy leading the charge, and two giant ass villains who feel straight out of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. But other than that, it was hard to latch onto anyone here.
I have to give props to its action though. It’s not fight heavy like I thought it was going to be, which was a bummer. Most frustrating of all though is its constant cutting away from the action before it’s about to go down. It happens for pretty much every single fight scene here! But when it does happen, it’s pretty great. There’s spectacular oners and slick choreography here from everyone, and its variety of swords, knives, bows and arrows, and more help keep it from feeling too samey. Best of all, and I can’t highlight this enough, you can actually see what’s happening! Visual clarity in action films goes a long way for me, and Last Samurai Standing delivers that very well.
If this sounds like you’re kind of thing I would definitely check it out. Last Samurai Standing isn’t bad, but doesn’t do a whole lot to necessarily standout either. There’s a lot of ingredients that I think further seasons could expand on, and while I left wanting more, I could see myself continuing it in the future.
