Death Stranding Creator Can’t Stop Raving About Netflix’s New Samurai Epic

Netflix dropped a new Japanese series, and it did not sneak in quietly. Last Samurai Standing is already pulling raves, and yes, Hideo Kojima just marathoned it and then deleted his gush post. Classic.

Kojima watched the whole thing and could not help himself

The Death Stranding creator took to X (formerly Twitter) with a now-vanished post saying he binged through all six episodes of Last Samurai Standing (Japanese title: Ikusagami). Before the delete, he compared the show’s worldbuilding to a mash-up of Yamada Futaro’s pulp samurai cruelty and the survival-game intensity of Squid Game. He also called out how the series cross-cuts between the contestants in the deadly contest (he literally called it the 'Kodoku-game' side), the shadowy organizers pulling strings, and the government suits watching from above — all at a pace that keeps you from checking your phone. And he did not mince words about the cast: lots of well-sketched players, and the show is not precious about who makes it out alive. (The gist of his take was captured by GamesRadar before the post disappeared.)

'The Tsubaki Sanjuro-style directing moment made my heart skip.'

That reference is not random. 'Tsubaki Sanjuro' points to Akira Kurosawa’s 1962 film Sanjuro, the follow-up to his 1961 classic Yojimbo, which is canon-level samurai cinema. If a shot or sequence made Kojima think of that, you know it popped.

So what is Last Samurai Standing, exactly?

The series is set in the 19th century and adapts Shogo Imamura’s novel of the same name. Junichi Okada stars as Shujiro Saga, a man so desperate to save his sick wife and child that he signs up for a brutal survival challenge with a winner’s purse of ¥100,000. It is lean — six episodes — and it landed on Netflix on November 13, 2025. Early response? As of right now, it is sitting at a pristine 100% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes.

Kojima’s quick-hit takeaways

• He binged all six episodes in one go.
• Called the worldbuilding a blend of Yamada Futaro’s ruthless samurai fiction and Squid Game’s survival mechanics.
• Loved the rapid cutting between the contestants, the organizers, and the government observers.
• Noted the show’s willingness to kill off well-drawn characters from a stacked cast.
• Shouted out a sequence that felt straight out of Kurosawa’s Sanjuro.
• The post praising it was on X — and is now deleted. The internet still grabbed the receipts.

Bottom line: if you are into savage period dramas with a survival-game engine under the hood — and a few stylistic winks that film nerds will clock immediately — Last Samurai Standing looks like a strong weekend binge. This wave was first spotted by Apoorv Rastogi at SuperHeroHype, and the chatter has been echoing through the usual entertainment corridors ever since.