{"id":40627,"date":"2025-12-01T07:45:41","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T12:45:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=40627"},"modified":"2025-12-01T07:52:40","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T12:52:40","slug":"last-samurai-standing-season-1-2025-starring-junichi-okada-and-hideaki-ito-z-view","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=40627","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Last Samurai Standing&#8221;: Season 1 (2025) starring Jun&#8217;ichi Okada and Hideaki It\u00f4 \/ Z-View"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/stallonezone.com\/zone\/2025\/z120125zview_lastsamuraistanding.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"741\" \/><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Last Samurai Standing: Season 1<\/strong><\/em> (2025)<\/p>\n<p>Creative Director: <strong>Jun&#8217;ichi Okada<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Directed by:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Michihito Fujii <\/strong>(eps. 1-2; 6)<\/li>\n<li><strong>Kento Yamaguchi<\/strong> (ep. 3; 5)<\/li>\n<li><strong>Toru Yamamoto\u00a0<\/strong>(ep. 4)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Teleplay by:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\">(eps. 1-6) <strong>Kento Yamaguchi<\/strong> &amp;<strong> Michihito Fujii;\u00a0<\/strong>based on <em>Last Samurai Standing<\/em> by Shogo Imamura and drawn by \u00a0Katsumi Tatsuzawa<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Stars: <strong>Jun&#8217;ichi Okada, Masahiro Higashide, Y\u00fbya End\u00f4, Hideaki It\u00f4, Gaku Hamada, Arata Iura <\/strong>and <strong>Nobi Nakanishi<\/strong><strong>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Tagline:\u00a0 None.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Plot\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The year is 1878.\u00a0 A cholera epidemic rages through Japan.\u00a0 Shujiro Saga&#8217;s baby daughter died from the disease.\u00a0 Now Saga&#8217;s wife has fallen ill.\u00a0 Saga is a former samurai. Samurai were outlawed ten years prior.\u00a0 With epidemic raging, survival is hard.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Flyers begin showing up everywhere advertising a martial arts tournament in Kyoto that has a grand prize of \u00a5100,000.\u00a0 Shujiro Saga sees this as an opportunity for his family and goes.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Martial artists from all over Japan have come to enter the tournament.\u00a0 They are gathered in a fortress-like setting.\u00a0 An official tells them that if they do not want to be in the tournament they are to leave now.\u00a0 They will have 30 seconds to decide.\u00a0 Once in the game, there is no quitting.\u00a0 He begins counting down.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Some people yell out they want to know what the game will be.\u00a0 The official continues to count.\u00a0 Around the perimeter of the fortress armed guards stand ready to fire.\u00a0 The official reaches zero.\u00a0 Soldiers rush out and give each person a numbered tag.\u00a0 They are now participants.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The official says that the tag must stay on their person.\u00a0 If it is away from their body for more than 10 seconds they will be killed.\u00a0 The goal is to pass seven checkpoints on the T\u014dkaid\u014d Road from Kyoto to Tokyo.\u00a0 They will have one month to arrive in Tokyo.\u00a0 Points will be needed to pass each checkpoint.\u00a0 They earn points by taking other participants tags.\u00a0 They can do this by any means necessary.\u00a0 Anything goes. The official concludes by saying, &#8220;The game begins at the end of this countdown&#8230; 10&#8230;&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">When the game begins, it is mass chaos.\u00a0 Nearly 300 martial artists go to war.\u00a0 There are samurai, archers, brutes, knife fighters, and more. Across the way Shujiro Saga sees Futaba Katsuki, a young girl frozen with fear.\u00a0 She will be easy pickins.\u00a0 Saga rushes to her aide.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Kyojin Tsuge recognizes Saga as the former samurai known as <em>The Manslayer<\/em>.\u00a0 Tsuge says that he has calculated that the points needed to finish in Tokyo allow for up to nine combatants to win.\u00a0 Tsuge proposes that Saga, Futaba and he form an alliance.\u00a0 Saga agrees and they head out.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The giant swordsman Bukotsu Kanjiya who loves to kill wants to end Saga <em>The Manslayer<\/em>&#8216;s life.\u00a0 Bukotsu has a bloodlust and murders any in his path.\u00a0 Other teams have formed with each plotting to survive.<\/p>\n<p>It will be a long road.\u00a0 Not all will survive.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong style=\"font-size: inherit; color: var(--text-color); font-family: var(--text-font);\">Thoughts (beware of spoilers)\u2026\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>Last Samurai Standing<\/em> is based on a 2022 historical fiction graphic novel written by Shogo Imamura and drawn by \u00a0Katsumi Tatsuzawa.\u00a0 Although the characters and tournament are fiction, real-life historical figures and events add to the backstory.<\/p>\n<p>Junichi Okada who served as producer and stars in the series is a charismatic lead.<\/p>\n<p>Hideaki It\u00f4 is awesome and frightening as the giant swordsman.<\/p>\n<p><em>Last Samurai Standing\u00a0<\/em>gets my highest recommendation.\u00a0 Bring on Season 2.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em><strong>Last Samurai Standing: Season 1<\/strong><\/em> (2025) rates 5 of 5 stars.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/stallonezone.com\/zone\/logo\/zview_a.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"100\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/stallonezone.com\/zone\/2025\/z120125zview_lastsamuraistanding2.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"332\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last Samurai Standing: Season 1 (2025) Creative Director: Jun&#8217;ichi Okada Directed by: Michihito Fujii (eps. 1-2; 6) Kento Yamaguchi (ep.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":912,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[17,56,72,50,74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-celebs","category-comics","category-history","category-tv","category-z-view"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/912"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40627"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40632,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40627\/revisions\/40632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}