The Elusive Samurai Drops One of the Year’s Best Openings

The Elusive Samurai has now made its premiere as one of the standout new releases of the Summer 2024 anime season, and with its first episode has impressed fans with its opening theme sequence! The Elusive Samurai is the latest series from Assassination Classroom creator Yusei Matsui, and has been running in the pages of Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump magazine for a few years. But the series is about to become a lot more popular fairly soon thanks to its new anime adaptation premiering over the Summer, and it got things off to a very strong start with its opening theme sequence. 

The Elusive Samurai ends up having quite the brutal premiere hidden within its packaging, and that’s part of what makes its opening theme sequence so special. Titled “Plan A” as performed by Dish, the opening shows off the slate of characters fans will meet over the course of the anime while hiding just what kind of intense story there really is to be found here. It’s why the manga has been such a sleeper hit, and that’s going to be the case with the anime as well if the opening is anything to go by. 

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How to Watch The Elusive Samurai

Directed by Yuta Yamazaki for studio CloverWorks, The Elusive Samurai is now airing new episodes as part of the ongoing Summer 2024 anime schedule. Yasushi Nishiya will be serving as character designer with Akiko Fujita as sound director, and the main voice cast for the anime includes the likes of Asaki Yuikawa as Tokiyuki Hojo, Yuichi Nakamura as Suwa Yorishige, Hinaki Yano as Shizuku, Mari Hino as Kojiro, Sayumi Suzushiro as Ayako, Aoi Yuki as Kazama Genba, and Kikunosuke Toya as Fubuki. 

You can now find The Elusive Samurai streaming exclusively with Crunchyroll alongside their launch in Japan, and they tease what to expect from the series as such, “In the year 1333, the Kamakura shogunate government comes crumbling down. A trusted vassal, Ashikaga Takauji, betrays the shogunate and organizes a rebellion. Hojo Tokiyuki, the rightful heir, escapes the massacre with a Shinto priest named Suwa Yorishige to Kamakura. On the run and fighting to stay alive, Tokiyuki sets in motion his plan to reclaim his birthright.”

If you wanted to check out Yusei Matsui’s original manga release, you can find the newest chapters of The Elusive Samurai now available with Viz Media’s digital Shonen Jump library or Shueisha’s MangaPlus service.