Surrounded by zombies in a desolate mountain village, Miyamoto Musashi (Ôtsuka Akio) hatches a plan to corral the creatures and blast them en masse. But the samurai needs bait, so he dangles a young girl named Sayo (Yamane Aya), the town’s sole survivor, in front of the horde. A close-up centers her trembling face and chattering teeth. “Don’t worry,” Musashi says, flashing an impish smile. “I won’t let them lay a finger on you.” Sayo steels herself, nodding with quiet confidence in her newfound companion.
The scene, which takes place midway through the second episode of Netflix’s Onimusha, is emblematic of the animated series, based on Capcom’s supernatural samurai video game series of the same name. Beneath the show’s slick, ferocious action—a hallmark of supervising director Miike Takashi—lies a surprisingly touching emotional core.
Set during the Edo period, Onimusha begins shortly after Musashi accepts a covert mission from a lord to quell a rebellion. The lord assigns to Musashi’s charge the accomplished but aging Kensuke Matsuki (Ôtsuka Hôchû), who brings along a charming crew of underlings. “We were summoned to assist that assistant,” says Goromaru (Kimura Subaru), summarizing the group’s hierarchy for Kaizen (Okitsu Kazuyuki), a cloistered monk chaperoning Musashi while the swordsman wields an ancient demon-slaying relic safeguarded by his order.
Onimusha borrows more than a little from Seven Samurai, including its focus on seven warriors and Musashi’s resemblance to Japanese actor Mifune Toshiro. Though works inspired by Kurosawa Akira’s film often reduce the members of the ragtag squads at their center to clichéd archetypes, this show’s characters achieve a notable sense of individuality. Goromaru and the two hawks he commands in battle prove particularly compelling. The birds tear monsters to pieces—and drop chunks of their foes onto Goromaru, like vile little gifts for their caretaker. “The hawks actually love him too much,” says the bookish Sahei (Yamashita Daiki).
Onimusha wastes no time unraveling its intrigue: Traitors are revealed immediately after they’re suspected, and the origins of undead ghouls are explained moments after they’re defeated. But director Shin’ya Sugai and writer Kurata Hideyuki relax the pace in unhurried scenes whose striking compositions deepen the relationships of the characters and the world around them.
In the first episode, “Demon,” Musashi and Matsuki stand atop rocks in a stream and discuss the task ahead of them. Matsuki seems wistful, a soldier fearing obsolescence as his nation approaches an era of peace. While Musashi’s rock rises above the water, Matsuki’s rests below the current, his submerged feet signifying a futile struggle against the momentum of history.
Elsewhere, red and orange leaves fall to the ground as the party travels through hand-drawn woods, marching toward both their duty and harsher seasons. (Like its source material, the series depicts its characters in 3D and backgrounds in 2D.) They eventually cross a deteriorating bridge and later, when doubling back, find that it’s been cut down. The chasm before them is one of their journey’s countless points of no return—each step taken, friendship formed, and death endured irrevocably shaping their shifting path forward.
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I don’t know how much this person got paid to write such a stellar review, but this show is pretty crappy on many levels.
The storyline lacks depth, the character development is non existant. The only connection to the original game is the gauntlets design. The animation is the same horrible style that ruined the Berserk 2016 show.
If you were excited to watch this show because you enjoyed the game, reset your expectations. This is a half assed animated show that doesn’t relate to the older more flushed out and interesting story that we enjoyed as kids.