They weren’t lying when they said they wanted to bet on Netflix’s adaptation of video games and popular IPs, and they have real gold in video games. ‘Cyberpunk: Edgerunners’ was one of their biggest hits in the animation field and this year they already released ‘Captain Laserhawk: A remix of Blood Dragon’ and this week the anime ‘Onimusha’.
And we’re still worried if Capcom’s video games will hold up or how faithful they’ll be to the plot.
Miyamoto Musashi came
The legendary samurai Miyamoto Musashi has served as the inspiration for many characters and has appeared in all kinds of fictional works. And in ‘Onimusha’ he would be no less because he already failed in the games but became the main character of the anime inspired by actor Toshiro Mifune.
The plot is set in Japan’s Edo period, with the elder Musashi embarking on a mission to defeat an invading demon army. In addition to his swordsmanship skills, he also has a team of samurai to assist him and the legendary Oni Gauntlet.
‘Onimusha’ works well as a typical samurai movie, with the monk, the clown, the smart and the rest of the gang having a great streak reminiscent of ‘The Seventh Samurai’. Of course add supernatural plot, property and action scenes taken from a video game in the background.
The anime doesn’t cut corners when it should be more intense, which is to be expected from the franchise we’re coming from. Although it must be noted that ‘Onimusha’ strikes a good balance between historical fidelity and some well-executed action sequences from past battles, it is difficult to begin with the somewhat slow pace of the early episodes. Series.
And we have to talk about the animation, which definitely takes you back a bit knowing it’s CGI. Sublimation, the ‘Dragon’s Dogma’ studio, has been handling the ‘Onimusha’ graphic department with a very similar style but is greatly improved from the last installments.
The backgrounds and settings have an attractive finish, and the character animation works most of the time… although it’s not always deceptive with the fake 2D they’re trying to achieve, and above all the stiffness and lackluster models.
If we return to the Onimusha anime, we can easily follow the story, Netflix is doing very well with series like this or like ‘Tekken: Bloodline’, although it leaves some gems for fans of the saga.
It may not reach the level of another video game adaptation that Netflix is releasing, but it’s a decent series with good results, leaving behind a fun story to watch in one sitting. With characters that are easy to like, even if they don’t stray too far from their norm. And the samurai is fighting demons, which are not excessive at all.