Last Samurai Standing Cut Nearly 100 Fighting Styles — Season 2 Could Unleash Them
Netflix’s Last Samurai Standing, touted as Squid Game meets Shogun, has Junichi Okada teasing a gauntlet of lethal fighting styles—plus tactics that didn’t even make the cut—in a razor‑tense survival saga built for edge‑of‑your‑seat combat.
Netflix has another Japanese thriller people are pitching as Squid Game meets Shogun. It is called Last Samurai Standing, and the hook is simple: broke samurai thrown into a fight-to-the-last contest with politics simmering underneath. The headline here, though, is how the show uses action not just as candy, but as storytelling.
Okada is not just starring - he is designing the way people fight
Junichi Okada - yes, the Japanese actor also producing and serving as action choreographer - told The Hollywood Reporter he bakes character logic into every strike and parry. He is not just stacking big moves; he is solving problems scene by scene.
He broke down moments where Kaya Kiyohara's character lures an opponent with one motion and then switches intentions mid-beat. He also walked through a sequence with Iroha taking on a much bigger man, and how the team rethought the choreography so she is not unrealistically trading power blows. The guiding idea: tactics that make sense for who is fighting and why, not just what looks cool.
'In one episode, I came up with about 100 concepts, but most of them are not actually adopted.'
That is Okada admitting there are times when three or four different ideas are layered into a single fight, and even more tucked inside a single shot. A lot of those concepts end up on the cutting room floor because the final goal is clarity and coherence, not a kitchen-sink highlight reel.
Quick facts for the curious
- Title: Last Samurai Standing
- Genre: Action, samurai drama, thriller
- Platform: Netflix
- Release: November 2025 (now streaming in the U.S.)
- Creator: Michihito Fuji
- Lead actor and producer: Junichi Okada
- Female lead: Kaya Kiyohara
- Fight design: Led by Okada, who prioritizes character-driven, realistic, tactically logical combat
- Style blend: Traditional sword work plus martial arts, adjusted to each fighter's body, strengths, and strategy
- Story focus: A lethal samurai competition that mixes survival stakes with political intrigue
- Themes: Survival, honor, strategy, the fading samurai order
- Training: The cast put in six months to internalize their characters' fighting rhythms
- Status: Netflix has not announced Season 2 yet, but with the response so far, a renewal would not be surprising
Yes, the death-game wave is still very much a thing
Call it Battle Royale's long shadow. 2025 has been loaded with Asian Netflix survival stories, and Last Samurai Standing slots right into that boom. If Battle Royale worried about rebellious youth and societal rot, and Squid Game skewered money-obsessed despair and class pressure, this one points its blade at a different target: a decaying feudal system, lost honor, and violence that is sanctioned when it is convenient for those in charge.
The broader dystopia mood is back too, with titles like The Long Walk and The Running Man bubbling up again. Are we inching toward a pop-culture future where cash-for-blood competitions are the default cautionary tale? Ask me again in a year.
Bottom line
Last Samurai Standing sells the spectacle, but the real flex is how the action reads like story beats. You can feel the thought behind each feint and finish. If you have watched it, I am curious: did the fighting land for you as more than just flash?
Last Samurai Standing is streaming now on Netflix in the U.S.