Onimusha: Way of the Sword Characters, Cast & Face Model

Musashi and the Mifune face: the headline story

The reveal that carried this game’s marketing: the young Miyamoto Musashi you play wears the face of Toshiro Mifune — Kurosawa’s leading man, dead since 1997. It is official and deliberate: Capcom announced “the face model is none other than the iconic Toshiro Mifune,” and the backstory has real texture. Development started in early 2020 with Mifune already the archetype in mind — director Satoru Nihei has said that when he asked himself what makes a samurai cool, the answer was Mifune’s image of a young warrior “covered in blood and mud.” Securing the likeness from Mifune Productions took about two years, closing around 2022.

The limits matter as much as the license: it is the visual likeness only. No generative AI is involved, and the team is not recreating Mifune’s movement or speech — the performance is an original creation wearing an iconic face. It also continues a series tradition: the first Onimusha modeled its hero on Takeshi Kaneshiro.

Every named character so far

Japanese names come from Capcom’s official cast announcement; several English names are compiled by outlets from credits and trailer identification, since Capcom has not published a full English cast list — those rows carry flags above.

Ganryu: the rival who keeps coming back

If you searched for “Kojiro,” this is him — Capcom uses the historical alias Sasaki Ganryu. He mirrors Musashi with his own Oni Gauntlet, fights with the swallow-cutting Tsubame Gaeshi, and Capcom’s dev diary frames him as a recurring duel across the whole game, not a one-off. You can fight him today: he is the boss of the free demo, and his two-phase duel is the best Issen practice available.

Who is NOT in it

Capcom states plainly that no characters from previous Onimusha games return. That rules out searches for Nobunaga (the old saga’s demon king), Jubei from Onimusha 2, and Kaede from the original. The old cast belongs to the timeline this reboot leaves behind; the demonic Genma are the connective tissue, now led by Shuten Doji from his stronghold on Mt. Oe. One caution for launch week: a name like “Sayo” circulating in autocomplete has no basis in any official or press source we can find — treat character lists on content-farm sites skeptically.

The English dub itself has been debated since the TGS trailer — Push Square wasn’t sold on it, and its reader poll leaned 71% toward Japanese audio. Both tracks ship with 14 subtitle languages, so nothing is locked either way.

Frequently Asked Questions