Last Samurai Standing season 1: Shujiro Saga’s warrior skills are on display at the Kodoku, and Futuba’s hopeful nature adds some emotion to Shujiro’s broken life

Netflix's Last Samurai Standing premiered six episodes of its first-ever season on November 13, 2025, and amassed a lot of views and good reviews. The show is about the end of the Samurai era and is completely based on the manga series called Ikusagami, written by Shogo Imamura.

The show had also been lauded as one of the best action TV dramas of 2025. Last Samurai Standing is set during the Meiji Restoration Age at the end of the 19th century, with the feudal caste system of that time being dismantled and rendered obsolete.

The show is an eclectic mix of a lot of violent fight sequence scenes and also progressive social commentary.

The plot arcs and storylines of season 1 of the show are built up over six episodes, and have Shujiro Saga in the role of the protagonist. Shurijo is shown to be a formerly gifted assassin who worked for some of the highest-ranked government officials and has the nickname of the ‘Manslayer’.

The beginning of the show began with the Boshin War, with Shujiro and his other Samurai friend being defeated. The story follows how Shujiro finds himself struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder, and finds Futaba, a woman who treated him not as a warrior but with a lot of empathy. 

Details explored on everything that happened in season 1 of Last Samurai Standing

Netflix's Last Samurai Standing, created by directors Michihito Fujii, Kento Yamaguchi, and also Toru Yamamoto, instantly became a hit amongst its audience and viewers after its premiere on November 13, 2025.

The first season, which is made up of six episodes, began with Shujiro Saga, one of the most coveted former assassins for high ranked government officials, with the nickname of the ‘Manslayer’, and another samurai getting brutally defeated by the imperial forces in the Battle of Toba-Fushimi, during the exodus that happened during the Boshin War. Almost 10 years after that incident, Shujira was shown still suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder in 1878.

He ended up losing all his family members to the cholera pandemic, and he grew increasingly hopeless when he received an invitation to a Tenryū-ji temple in Kyoto for a competition with 100 billion yen as the prize money.

He traveled there and realized he was one of the 292 warriors who were present there to win the game, and they were all being hosted by Enju, who told them that they were a part of a game called Kodoku. The rules of the game were that each warrior needed to take the entire Tokaido route and kill the other participants to take their tags.

In the end, only nine among them could reach the end, and all would need to have at least 30 tags each. When the game started, Shujiro ended up saving Futuba Katsuki, and they ended up becoming comrades and took on several vicious killers together, which were filled with a lot of aesthetically pleasing swordfight scenes.

Although the first season of Last Samurai Standing did not conclusively show its viewers about which warrior won the Kodoku game, the season ended with Shujiro killing Bukotsu, who was a formidable enemy, and he also ended up getting closer to Futaba, who added a lot of hope to his life. 

Stay tuned for more updates.