Final Samurai Standing begins with a well-known premise. Determined samurai dispossessed by the restoration of the emperor enter right into a lethal sport for a life-changing money prize — all for the leisure of nameless elites. Not like its inspirations Battle Royale and Squid Game, nonetheless, Final Samurai Standing’s violence is chaotic, fast-paced, and kinetic, although it hides a cautious choreography that makes the collection a extra electrical proposition than its predecessors.
Viewers have Junichi Okada to thank for that. In addition to starring in and producing Final Samurai Standing, he serves because the collection’ motion planner. Many will probably be accustomed to the outcomes of an motion planner’s work — typically referred to as an motion director, elsewhere a “coordinator,” and even “choreographer” — although maybe not what the function entails. Within the case of Final Samurai Standing, it’s a task that touches on practically each facet of the manufacturing, from the story to the motion itself.
“I used to be concerned from the script stage, fascinated by what sort of motion we wished and the way we’d current it within the context of this story,” Okada tells The Verge. “If the director [Michihito Fujii] mentioned, ‘I wish to shoot this type of battle scene,’ I might then suppose by way of the content material and idea, design the scene, and finally translate that into script pages.”
The shut relationship between the author and director extends to different departments, too. Although an motion planner’s function begins with managing struggle scenes and stunt performers, in addition they liaise with digicam, wardrobe, make-up, and even editorial departments to make sure struggle scenes cohere with the remainder of the manufacturing.
It’s a task which could seem a pure development for Okada, who’s certified to teach Kali and Jeet Kune Do — a martial artwork conceived by Bruce Lee — and holds multiple black belts in jiujitsu. Although the roots of his development into motion planning may be traced again additional, to 1995 when he grew to become the youngest member of J-pop group V6.
“Dance expertise connects on to creating motion,” he says. “[In both] rhythm and management of the physique are extraordinarily vital.” Becoming a member of V6 on the age of 15, that have has made Okada acutely aware of how he strikes in relation to a digicam throughout choreography, how he’s seen throughout the construction of a shot, and, crucial to motion planning, the right way to navigate all of that safely from a younger age.
That J-pop stardom additionally supplied avenues into performing, initially in roles you would possibly count on for a younger pop star: comedian heartthrobs and sitcom sons. However he was steadily in a position to broaden his output. A starring flip in Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Hana adopted, as did voice performing in Studio Ghibli’s Tales From Earthsea and From Up on Poppy Hill. A extra telling departure was a starring function in 2007’s SP, by which he performed a rookie in a police bodyguard unit, for which he educated for a number of years beneath shootfighting instructor Yorinaga Nakamura.
“What I care about is whether or not audiences really feel that ‘this man actually lives right here as a samurai.’”
Within the years since, Okada has cemented himself as one among Japan’s most recognizable actors, hopping between motion starring roles in The Fable to sweeping interval epics like Sekigahara. These two genres converge in his Final Samurai Standing function of Shujiro, a former Shogunate samurai now diminished to poverty, working by way of his PTSD and reckoning together with his bloodthirsty previous within the sport. Lately, it’s much less of a priority that the character butts up in opposition to his previous idol picture, he suggests. “What I care about is whether or not audiences really feel that ‘this man actually lives right here as a samurai.’”
For Okada’s work on Final Samurai Standing, as each producer and motion planner, that concerned lacing high-octane however plausible motion with the respect for historical past and character research of the interval dramas he loves. “Reasonably than being one hundred pc devoted to historic accuracy,” he provides, “my purpose was to concentrate on leisure and story, whereas letting the ‘DNA’ and great thing about Japanese interval drama gently float up within the background.”
A concentrate on what he defines as “‘dō’ — motion,” pure leisure that “by no means lets the viewers get bored” punctuated — with “‘ma,’” the energetic vacancy that connects these frenetic moments. Each may be conversations, even when one makes use of phrases and one other communicates dialogue by way of sword blows. That is most obvious when Shujiro faces his former comrade Sakura (Yasushi Fuchikami) inside a claustrophobic financial institution vault that serves as a charnel home for the sport’s much less lucky contestants.
“The entire battle is split into three sequences,” Okada says. The primary begins with a second of virtually excellent stillness, a deep breath, earlier than the 2 launch into battle. “A struggle the place pleasure and mutual respect collide,” he says, “and the place the velocity of the methods reaches a stage that actually surprises the viewers.” It’s all captured in a single, zooming take with quick, tightly choreographed motion harking back to Donnie Yen and Wu Jing in Kill Zone.
So intense is their duel that each shatter a number of swords. The subsequent part sees them lash out in a extra determined and brutal method with no matter weapons they discover. Lastly, having fought to a weary stalemate, the struggle turns into, Okada concludes, “a type of duel the place their stubbornness and can are absolutely uncovered” as they hack at one another with shattered blades and spear fragments.
Picture: Netflix
It’s a rhythm that many fights in Final Samurai Standing observe, pushed by a string of bodily and emotional issues that type the idea of an motion planner’s device equipment: how and why somebody fights based mostly on who they’re and their atmosphere. Right here it’s two former samurai in a chic and terrifyingly fast-paced duel. Elsewhere we see ability matched in opposition to brutality, or inexperience in opposition to experience.
“I outline a transparent idea for every sequence,” Okada says, earlier than he opens these ideas as much as the broader group. From there, he would possibly add notes, however in Final Samurai Standing, motion is a collaborative affair. “We maintain refining,” he says. “It’s a back-and-forth means of shaping the sequence utilizing each the concepts the group brings and the choreography I create myself.”
There’s a third issue which Okada believes is the collection’ most defining. “If we get to proceed the story,” he says, “I’d like to discover how far more we are able to lean into ‘sei’ — stillness, and usher in much more of a classical interval drama really feel.”
As a lot of a triumph of motion as Final Samurai Standing is, its quietest moments are those that stick with you. The charged seems to be between Shujiro and Iroha (Kaya Kiyohara) or their shuddering fright when confronted with specters of their previous. Most of all, Shujiro watching his younger ward, Futaba Katsuki (Yumia Fujisaki), dance earlier than a waterlogged torii as mist hovers. These pauses are what elevate and invigorate the breathless motion above spectacle.
The pauses are additionally emblematic of the steadiness that Final Samurai Standing strikes between its interval setting and pushing the boundaries of motion, all to inject new pleasure into the style. “Japan is a rustic that values custom and the whole lot it has constructed up over time. That’s why moments the place you attempt to replace issues are all the time tough,” Okada says. “However proper now, we’re in the midst of that transformation.”
That’s an evolution that Okada hopes to help by way of his work, each in entrance of and behind the digicam. If he can create avenues for brand new generations of expertise to hold Japanese media to a broader viewers and his group to realize better success on a world stage, “that might make me very joyful,” he says. “I wish to maintain doing no matter I can to assist make that doable.”
The primary season of Final Samurai Standing is streaming on Netflix now, and a second season was just confirmed.