Obsessed with Last Samurai Standing? Here Are 9 Shows And Movies That You Can Watch Next
Because six episodes are too few for a single season
2025 has been the year of battle royales and high-stakes game shows. Last Samurai Standing slid right into that cultural moment. It’s adrenaline-heavy, morally messy, and addictive enough to ruin your sleep schedule. Bonus points if you’re into good action choreography. And if you’re still replaying sword flashes in your head, overthinking who you would (foolishly) trust, and wondering whether you’d survive a scenario like this (you wouldn’t — don’t lie), you’re clearly not done with this genre yet.
The good news? You don’t have to be. Here are nine shows and movies across samurai epics, psychological death games, and pure survival thrillers that scratch the exact same itch as the Netflix hit. Read on to find out.
Squid Game
Yes, the obvious pick. With its global popularity and the final season that dropped this year, Squid Game remains the blueprint for modern survival television. For the unversed, the story follows Seung Gi-hun (Lee Jung-Jae), a financially wrecked gambler who enters a series of children’s games where losing means instant death. What makes it still worth watching is its razor-sharp commentary on inequality and the twisted spectacle of violence-as-entertainment — themes that Last Samurai Standing also thrives on, just set against a more historical backdrop.
Alice in Borderland
If you want pure, unfiltered death-game madness without the emotional hand-holding, this is your show. Alice in Borderland dumps its main character, Arisu (Kento Yamazaki), into an empty Tokyo where he must play a series of games based on playing cards. But that’s the game part. Alice in Borderland takes Squid Game a step further, with the players creating their own microcosm of a society (read cult) in a hotel outside the arenas, wildly changing the premise of the game. The show’s mix of challenging puzzles and brutal stakes mirrors Last Samurai Standing’s fondness for pushing characters to their breaking point, just without the katanas.
Blue Eye Samurai
Blue Eye Samurai is not a death game, but if you are into historical fiction with brilliantly choreographed swordfights, you would be doing yourself a disservice by missing out on this show. This animated series follows Mizu, a young woman who dresses as a man to seek vengeance in Edo-period Japan. The animation is elite, the political world-building is tight, and the series explores gender dynamics, rage, and survival with an honesty that never turns overly sentimental. If you liked the samurai code elements of Last Samurai Standing, this is mandatory viewing.
Warrior
What if a martial-arts-driven period drama had the energy and pacing of a modern action franchise? Warrior, inspired by Bruce Lee’s writings, answers that question beautifully. Set in late-1800s San Francisco, it follows Ah Sahm (Andrew Koji), a Chinese immigrant who becomes entangled with violent tongs, corrupt officials, and shifting loyalties. It isn’t about samurai specifically, but its choreography and internal code-of-honour conflicts deliver the same (I daresay even better) high you got from watching fighters in Last Samurai Standing navigate ethics under pressure.
Shōgun
If you want actual prestige with your sword fights, Shōgun is where you go. The series doesn’t rely on death-game mechanics, but the psychological warfare is somehow more vicious. After all, it’s a political drama for the most part. While it does tend to overly romanticise some of the cultural nuance, the constant tension that one wrong move could cost someone their head makes it for a thrilling follow-up to the netflix show.
The 8 Show
Think claustrophobic capitalism on steroids. The 8 Show traps eight strangers in a layered building where each floor represents a different contestant, and time equals money. Every choice they make affects the payout, the group dynamic, and the mental stability of the participants. It’s not as physically violent as most death-game stories, but it’s morally vicious, and its commentary on desperation and greed sits comfortably next to the tensions of Last Samurai Standing.
Night Has Come
This Korean teen thriller takes the classic forced killing game trope and throws it into a high school trip gone catastrophically wrong. The show leans into paranoia: not everyone is who they claim to be, alliances shift all the time, and trust becomes currency. It’s fast-paced, messy in the right way, and captures that group-dynamic chaos that fans of elimination-style narratives obsess over.
Saw
James Wan and Leigh Whannell’s Saw made death games into an acclaimed franchise before they even were a thing. Full disclosure: Saw is more slasher horror than battle royale, but it absolutely scratches the “choices under pressure” itch. Characters face moral dilemmas, impossible decisions, and elaborate traps that expose who they really are. The psychology aligns surprisingly well with the manipulative, strategy-heavy structure of Last Samurai Standing.
The Hunger Games
This is the OG battle royale movie series for Gen Z, and the latest book of the series, Sunrise On The Reaping, came out just this year (the teaser to the movie adaptation is out already). Katniss Everdeen’s journey through the Capitol’s deadly reality show of teens killing each other and her attempts to stop it started a whole genre of dystopian social commentary series that marked the 2010s film franchises. The political manipulation, sponsorship dynamics, public image pressure, and shifting alliances all resonate with Last Samurai Standing’s blend of survival and showmanship.