Capcom’s first mainline Onimusha in two decades starts with a long, mostly wordless stretch of cinematics that does all the setup work before you ever hold the controller properly. It introduces Miyamoto Musashi as a wandering swordsman with no patience for etiquette, kills him off, and then hands him the artifact the whole game is built around.
Quick answer: The opening runs roughly 15 minutes. Musashi cripples Yoshioka Seijuro in a duel, fights his way out of the village of Rendaino, is fatally stabbed by a Genma-possessed Sasaki Ganryu, and wakes in the underworld, where a monk in white forcibly fuses the Oni Gauntlet to his arm and sends him back.
The opening cutscenes in order
The sequence plays as one continuous run with occasional title cards naming the location and each new character. Here is the order of events.
| Beat | What happens |
|---|---|
| Rendaino | A body drifts past a water wheel. A pale, spear-carrying figure walks the misty riverbank and ambushes Musashi under a bridge. |
| The village | Musashi shares his rice ball with hungry children, walks through a silent village watched by frightened elders, and spits out a rotten persimmon. |
| The temple | He climbs the stone stairs to the temple gate, narrating his own view of the path of the sword. |
| The duel | Yoshioka Seijuro draws to defend his school’s honor. Musashi ends it with a single slash to the arm. |
| The chase | Seijuro’s followers ambush him on the stairs. Musashi flees through the village, a house, and finally a bridge in a storm. |
| Sasaki Ganryu | A flamboyant swordsman meets him in the woods, then is attacked and twisted into a Genma. |
| Death | The Genma overwhelms Musashi and runs him through. |
| The underworld | He wakes in a crimson river of lanterns under a red moon. A monk offers, then forces, the Oni Gauntlet onto him. |
Rendaino and the first ambush
The cold open sets tone before it sets plot. A wooden water wheel turns in the dark, a corpse floats by, and a title card names the place as Rendaino. The pale spearman who attacks Musashi under the bridge is labeled Hitotsume Gasa, and Musashi handles him by defending and disengaging rather than trading blows.
The village stretch is character work. Musashi gives up his rice ball to a group of starving children and their dog, then walks a street where every door is shut against him. The rotten persimmon he bites into and spits out is the punchline. He ties back his hair, a temple bell rings, and the title card finally names him.
The duel with Yoshioka Seijuro
Musashi climbs to the temple courtyard, where Seijuro is waiting. The head of the Yoshioka school talks first about honor and then about slaughtering Musashi’s family. It buys him nothing. Musashi draws, opens Seijuro’s sword arm with one stroke, and the duel is over almost as soon as it starts.
Crippling rather than killing Seijuro is what drives the rest of the sequence. It leaves the school humiliated but alive, and its followers immediately come for Musashi on the stairs.
The running fight through the village
Outnumbered, Musashi runs. The chase is deliberately unheroic. He cuts loose stacked logs to crush the men behind him, drops bamboo scaffolding to seal off a street, and ducks into an alley to catch his breath. It is the same pragmatism the combat system leans on, with the environment treated as another weapon.
Two things happen while he is hiding. A wounded Seijuro shouts that he wants Musashi’s head, then is dragged off into the dark by something unseen. Moments later the village dog gives away Musashi’s position, forcing a brawl inside a house that ends with him crashing out through the roof.
The last of the clan corner him on a wooden bridge in heavy rain. The fight ends when a falling tree tears the bridge apart and dumps everyone into the river. Musashi drags himself out on the bank, exhausted but intact.
Sasaki Ganryu and the first Genma
Barely recovered, Musashi runs into Sasaki Ganryu in the woods. He is introduced as a preening, theatrical swordsman and he is clearly meant to be the rival of the piece. The conversation does not last. Something attacks Ganryu mid-scene and warps him into a Genma, one of the underworld monstrosities the series has always used as its antagonists.
Musashi loses. The creature overpowers him and stabs him through, and the intro cuts away with him dying.
The underworld and the Oni Gauntlet
He comes to floating in a crimson river filled with drifting lanterns, a red moon overhead. A robed figure credited only as Man in White greets him and explains, calmly, that he is on his way to hell.
The monk offers the Oni Gauntlet as a second chance, a mystical artifact that grants demonic power and a return to the living world. Musashi refuses. The monk fuses it to his arm anyway, and the sequence closes on the title card.
That gauntlet is not just a story object. In play it is a sentient tool that absorbs the souls of dead enemies, splitting them into yellow souls for health, red souls for upgrades, and blue souls that charge the Oni Armaments. It also powers Oni Vision, which marks every enemy in an area. A voice speaks from it during the game, and identifying who that is remains an open thread.
Names and labels shown on screen
| Label | Who or what it marks |
|---|---|
| Rendaino | The village where the opening takes place |
| Miyamoto Musashi | The protagonist, modeled on Toshiro Mifune |
| Hitotsume Gasa | The pale spearman from the riverbank ambush |
| Yoshioka Seijuro | Head of the Yoshioka sword school |
| Yoshioka Follower | The clan swordsmen who chase Musashi |
| Sasaki Ganryu | The rival swordsman who becomes a Genma |
| Man in White | The monk who forces the Oni Gauntlet on Musashi |
Do you need to have played the older Onimusha games?
No. The story is self-contained. Capcom built the narrative so that it does not depend on the earlier games or the Netflix animated series, specifically so newcomers can follow it from the first scene. The one carryover is the Genma, who remain the antagonists as they have been since 2001.
Note: the intro is set before the main body of the game, which takes place in an Edo-era Kyoto choked by clouds of Malice. That Malice is what has let the Genma cross over into the living world.
Release date and where to play it
Onimusha: Way of the Sword arrives on September 4, 2026 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC. Capcom moved the date up three weeks from an original September 25 target. The campaign runs around 20 hours, and there are two difficulty settings, Story and Action, with the latter aimed at experienced action players.
A free demo is already out if you want to try the combat before launch. It covers a Kiyomizu-dera Temple mission that ends in a duel with Sasaki Ganryu, and it was later extended with an additional playable section.
Watching the intro before you start is not required, since the game opens with it, but it is a decent gauge of what the rest looks like. The deliberate pacing, the environmental kills, and the emphasis on a single clean strike are all things the combat system asks you to do yourself once the gauntlet is on.
