Capcom has made an interesting announcement for their upcoming Onimusha: Way of the Sword.
The series’ producer, Akihito Kadowaki, made this reveal on PlayStation Blog:
“The protagonist of this game is a fierce young samurai, constantly moving from one bloody and mucky fight to the next. In order to cement this image of a striking samurai, Capcom has turned to none other than the late, iconic Japanese samurai movie star Toshiro Mifune to serve as the face model for this rendition of Miyamoto Musashi.”
What makes this announcement interesting is that Capcom produced an Onimusha anime where they also had Toshiro Mifune playing Japan’s most famous samurai legend. We reported on its announcement last September, and it quietly came and went on Netflix in 2023. The anime was directed by another Japanese cinematic legend in Takashi Miike. It’s certainly a bit strange that it didn’t seem to have an impact, even if we account for the stiff competition from the likes of Blue Eye Samurai.
Nevertheless, it’s now clear that that anime was intended to be part of a media mix to promote Onimusha: Way of the Sword. Capcom’s plans for this franchise revival have been planted for years. As we now see, those plans also included remasters of the first two Onimusha games.
If you didn’t play these games back in the day, you may be a little confused as to why Capcom went through all the effort to bring back Toshiro Mifune. Mifune is one of Japan’s greatest stars, and considered one of the greatest actors in cinematic history. He is most famous for his 16 films with Akira Kurosawa, which are themselves considered among Kurosawa’s greatest works. And yes, he was in the Kurosawa films that inspired Star Wars, Rashomon, Seven Samurai, and The Hidden Fortress.
Mifune passed away in 1997 at the age of 77, so it was incredibly unlikely that he would have even been alive today to give permission to provide his consent. But Capcom has cast a famous Japanese actor to play the lead for every Onimusha game up until now.
For the first Onimusha, as well as Onimusha 3: Demon Siege, Samanosuke Akechi was played by heartthrob arthouse actor-singer Takeshi Kaneshiro. Takeshi Kaneshiro is very much still alive and well, and in fact just joined the Oscar’s Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2018.
For Onimusha 2: Samurai’s Destiny, they cast Yūsaku Matsuda, who had also already passed away years before the game’s release in 1998. Matsuda isn’t well known outside Japan, but his influence can be seen in the pop culture characters he inspired, like Kenshiro in Fist of the North Star, Spike Spiegel in Cowboy Bebop, Aokiji in One Piece, and more.
So it may have certainly seemed strange outside of that context, but Capcom was really just picking up on where they left off with this franchise. Even if their earlier plans to hype up this game didn’t quite work out, it seems that they intend to impress us in the lead up to this game’s launch. So we’re certainly looking forward to learning more about Onimusha: Way of the Sword in the near future.
