Netflix¡¯s ¡°Last Samurai Standing¡± is a TV lover¡¯s fever dream: Take the violent survival games and critiques of capitalism of ¡°Squid Game,¡± but set them in an era of Japan similar to that of the critical and commercial hit ¡°Shogun.¡±
Since premiering last week, critics and fans alike have summed up the six-episode series as such, and it¡¯s a fair assessment. Based on Shogo Imamura¡¯s historical novel and manga ¡°Ikusagami¡± (which serves as the show¡¯s Japanese title), ¡°Last Samurai Standing¡± follows former samurai Shujiro Saga (played by Junichi Okada) who enters a mysterious fighting event in order to win a big-money prize to save his cholera-stricken wife and son. Starting in Kyoto, the competition turns out to be a bloody race to Tokyo, requiring participants to hack and slash their opponents apart to collect enough wooden tags to advance, all while suit-clad aristocrats watch on.
It¡¯s not a direct match ¡ª ¡°Shogun¡± is epic in scale, while the deadly minigames of ¡°Squid Game¡± are far more creative than ¡°Last Samurai Standing,¡± which amounts to ¡°kill as many people as possible.¡± (If YouTuber MrBeast attempted to the latter, he¡¯d be tried at The Hague.) Yet the general conceit of Netflix¡¯s latest Japanese original certainly resembles both. Imagine adding in a splash of ¡°Battle Royale¡± and you have a good sense of the series.
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