El último samurái en pie

It's painfully obvious they cut the season in half and I wish such trend would stop. Was it too much to ask for 10 episodes?

I sincerely recommend putting this series on a waiting list until it's complete. The story is too good to be butchered by netflix's schedule, the cut happens just as we were about to head into the climax. Doesn't make much sense and my day is ruined.

Imagine taking squid games and Alice in Borderland setting it in old Japan. That's kind of the premise of this. It takes a bit to get going and figure out who the main characters besides the man slayer would be, but once it does, it sucks you in and you can't stop watching. The fight scenes are epic, the pacing good, and the scenery beautiful. I'm not sure how historically accurate they are, but the sets are pretty. There were a couple of characters, I wish I could have seen more of, one or two that I saw too much of, but those are minor issues. I also wish it was more than six episodes. If you're looking for a day to binge a show, try this one. It was great!

Although this show plays to several tropes that could be better served.

The trope of a tired broken down soldier is beyond old... Do something different. The other trope is the one of the hopeless little girl who need saving, this is monumentally irritating as it sets up somebody who's going to sacrifice himself for the monumentally inept person.

Otherwise I do enjoy all the scenes. I just wish they wouldn't use some of the old tropes.

It's an entertaining mesh of "Squid Games", "Battle Royale", "Hunger Games", and a handful of other ideas rolled into some neat historical fiction.

If anything, I'll be curious to see what the consensus is regarding the English dub and Netflix's use of AI deepfake technology for the characters' mouths.

The scenes really bring to mind those 1970s Japanese movies - like Kurosawa's 12 Samurai - while also giving a slight nod to The Last Samurai with Tom Cruise. Yet despite these influences, it still feels like an original version of what it is meant to be. The acting is good, the framing is excellent, and the action is engaging.

Its only weaknesses are the lack of depth in some of the characters, and that the story logic is weak in a few places, sacrificed for the sake of making the plot more appealing. Considering its budget and the production team and actors, I think it is even better than Shogun, and it feels like a fully Japanese and very likable work.