Capcom is so devoted to samurai authenticity with the new Onimusha, it went and licensed the face of Japan's most legendary actor

Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune—best known for starring in films like Seven Samurai, The Hidden Fortress, and Yojimbo for director Akira Kurosawa—has been dead for nearly 30 years. But apparently that can't stop him from starring in a new videogame in the year 2026.

Since December Capcom has been teasing the revival of its early 2000s samurai action series Onimusha, and during today's PlayStation State of Play livestream it finally showed a bit of combat and some cutscenes focused on Onimusha: Way of the Sword's protagonist, who happens to be one of Japan's most famous historical figures, the swordsman Miyamoto Musashi. And wouldn't you know it—Toshiro Mifune played Musashi in a trilogy of movies released in the 1950s. Capcom apparently decided he was still the man for the job, even 70 years later.

"In Onimusha: Way of the Sword, Musashi is a fierce young samurai who, in a supernatural twist of fate, finds himself wielding an Oni Gauntlet and battling hordes of demonic Genma," Capcom detailed in a press release on Wednesday. And here's the confirmation: "Musashi’s face is modeled after Toshiro Mifune, the late, iconic Japanese movie star who portrayed Musashi in classic samurai films."

The official site offers a bit more color, explaining that Mifune's face was used as the model for Onimusha's Musashi while he's being voiced by actor Kenichiro Thomson. "The protagonist of this game is a fierce young samurai, constantly moving from one bloody and gritty fight to the next. To cement this image of a striking samurai, Capcom has turned to none other than the late, iconic Japanese samurai movie legend Toshiro Mifune to star as the face model for this rendition of Miyamoto Musashi."

After his success as an actor Mifune founded a production company that exists to this day, which presumably controls the use of his likeness. I'd love to know how stingy or eager they are to license out the actor's face. Did Capcom really have to give them the hard sell?

We don't see much of the combat in Onimusha's protagonist trailer, but the swordplay immediately stands out to me as slower-paced and weightier than a lot of action games today, including Capcom's own. Musashi's making some really deliberate swings, here, seemingly with an emphasis on one-on-one duels. I'm not gonna use the word realistic here—at one point Musashi fights a giant demon, and in my favorite moment of the trailer, he leans his full body weight onto his sword to cut a dude clean in half from noggin to nuts. But from this brief peek, I'd say the swordplay steers much closer to Sekiro or perhaps Ghost of Tsushima than, say, a combo-heavy Ninja Gaiden or Devil May Cry. But I'm trying to deduce a lot from about 30 seconds of footage.

In hindsight, the signs that Mifune would serve as the likeness for this Onimusha reboot were all there. Capcom pulled this very trick with an anime adaptation of Onimusha released in 2023 starring Musashi. Props to Redditor Born_Comfort_6258 for totally calling it back in December.