The First Onimusha Anime Trailer Is Amazing

Onimusha Netflix anime Musashi

Earlier in the year, Netflix revealed that it was working with Capcom to resurrect the cult classic samurai video game Onimusha in the form of an anime series. It was a bit of a surprise, given the Onimusha series has been largely dead for a decade now, but sometimes all a dead series needs is a bit of a jump start. If the first trailer for the Onimusha anime is anything to go by, this could be the jump start it needs.

The Onimusha anime follows the fictionalized adventures of Miyamoto Musashi, a Japanese swordsman, philosopher, and strategist from the 16th century. According to Netflix, Musashi will be slicing through evil with his blades while traveling through “a land plagued by poverty,” which sounds like a pretty interesting setup for a series.

The series looks to be using a mix of 3D and 2D elements, and the result is pretty striking. There are times where the 3D looks a hell of a lot like the 2D animation it’s made to mimic, and the hand-drawn backgrounds are absolutely gorgeous. That’s hardly surprising, with Sublimation taking the reins, one of the masters in 3D animation. Take a look for yourself in the trailer below.

There are a few notable things worth discussing about the new series. The first is that it wildly diverges from just about everything featured in the games it’s based on, which mostly featured original characters rather than historical figures like Miyamoto Musashi. This is probably a good thing, as it means Netflix has a lot more flexibility with its storytelling and doesn’t have to compete with expectations from fans of the game series.

The other noteworthy morsel of information is that the series has controversial and famed director Takashi Miike in a supervising director role, which is just about the most out-there pick Netflix could have gone with. Once you’ve let that initial shock pass, though, you can kinda see it. Miike is best known for his shockingly violent films, and there certainly does seem to be a lot of heavy violence in the Onimusha trailer. He’s also known for his legendary storytelling, able to weave surprisingly complex stories in between gratuitous violence, all of which sounds great for Onimusha.

Onimusha follows in the footsteps of the Castlevania Netflix animated series, which took a long-dead series and revived it in animation to great success — and may have even led to a new Castlevania game. A spinoff series, Castlevania: Nocturne, is set to be released on Netflix this month, and is likely to be similarly successful for the streamer.

Onimusha will be released exclusively on Netflix on November 2, 2023.