Last Samurai Standing begins with a familiar premise. Desperate samurai dispossessed by the restoration of the emperor enter into a deadly game for a life-changing cash prize — all for the entertainment of anonymous elites. Unlike its inspirations Battle Royale and Squid Game, however, Last Samurai Standing’s violence is chaotic, fast-paced, and kinetic, though it hides a careful choreography that makes the series a more electric proposition than its predecessors.
Viewers have Junichi Okada to thank for that. As well as starring in and producing Last Samurai Standing, he serves as the series’ action planner. Many will be familiar with the results of an action planner’s work — sometimes called an action director, elsewhere a “coordinator,” and even “choreographer” — though perhaps not what the role entails. In the case of Last Samurai Standing, it’s a role that touches on nearly every aspect of the production, from the story to the action itself.
“I was involved from the script stage, thinking about what kind of action we wanted and how we would present it in the context of this story,” Okada tells The Verge. “If the director [Michihito Fujii] said, ‘I want to shoot this kind of battle scene,’ I would then think through the content and concept, design the scene, and ultimately translate that into script pages.”
The close relationship between the writer and director extends to other departments, too. Though an action planner’s role starts with managing fight scenes and stunt performers, they also liaise with camera, wardrobe, makeup, and even editorial departments to ensure fight scenes cohere with the rest of the production.
Image: Netflix
It’s a role which might appear a natural progression for Okada, who is certified to teach Kali and Jeet Kune Do — a martial art conceived by Bruce Lee — and holds multiple black belts in jiujitsu. Though the roots of his progression into action planning can be traced back further, to 1995 when he became the youngest member of J-pop group V6.
“Dance experience connects directly to creating action,” he says. “[In both] rhythm and control of the body are extremely important.” Joining V6 at the age of 15, that experience has made Okada conscious of how he moves in relation to a camera during choreography, how he is seen within the structure of a shot, and, critical to action planning, how to navigate all of that safely from a young age.
That J-pop stardom also offered avenues into acting, initially in roles you might expect for a young pop star: comic heartthrobs and sitcom sons. But he was steadily able to broaden his output. A starring turn in Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Hana followed, as did voice acting in Studio Ghibli’s Tales From Earthsea and From Up on Poppy Hill. A more telling departure was a starring role in 2007’s SP, in which he played a rookie in a police bodyguard unit, for which he trained for several years under shootfighting instructor Yorinaga Nakamura.
“What I care about is whether audiences feel that ‘this man really lives here as a samurai.’”
In the years since, Okada has cemented himself as one of Japan’s most recognizable actors, hopping between action starring roles in The Fable to sweeping period epics like Sekigahara. Those two genres converge in his Last Samurai Standing role of Shujiro, a former Shogunate samurai now reduced to poverty, working through his PTSD and reckoning with his bloodthirsty past in the game. These days, it’s less of a concern that the character butts up against his past idol image, he suggests. “What I care about is whether audiences feel that ‘this man really lives here as a samurai.’”
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