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 — “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 recreate 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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