The opening of Onimusha: Way of the Sword does something most samurai stories save for the finale. It kills the hero. Miyamoto Musashi walks away from one fight, straight into a second one with his rival Sasaki Ganryu, and does not walk away from that one. Everything the game is built on — the Oni Gauntlet, the soul absorption, the Genma — starts because Musashi loses.
Quick answer: Musashi survives a Yoshioka ambush on a bridge, then meets Ganryu, who turns into a Hitotsume Gasa mid-duel. Musashi is stabbed to death by a pack of them, wakes on the way to hell, and a figure called the Man in White straps an Oni Gauntlet to his arm against his will to send him back alive.
The bridge ambush that starts the sequence
It opens in a downpour. Musashi is cornered on a wooden bridge by a group of Yoshioka followers shouting at each other to stop him, and he fights his way through them rather than standing his ground for a proper duel. The bridge does most of the work for him. A falling tree smashes through it, dumping the pursuing swordsmen into the water below while Musashi barely clears the collapse.
He sheathes his sword, mutters that it was close, and heads into the forest. That escape is the detail everything else hinges on. He has technically beaten the Yoshioka leader, but he left survivors, and survivors talk.
Sasaki Ganryu’s confrontation and the Hitotsume Gasa reveal
Ganryu is waiting in the woods, and he opens with mockery — Musashi ran, the rumor is true, and if you leave enemies alive they will invent whatever story they like. Musashi’s answer is characteristically dry. He beat their leader, which sounds like a win, and he knows a third-rate swordsman who gets less bearable every time Musashi beats him. Ganryu claims he does not recall ever losing.
We both want the same thing, Musashi. But there’s only room for one at the top. And it won’t be a coward who runs from duels.
Both men draw. The exchange is over almost immediately — Musashi lands a strike, and instead of blood, Ganryu comes apart into something else. He transforms into a Hitotsume Gasa, one of the game’s monstrous Genma, mid-sentence.
How Musashi dies in the opening cutscene
One Hitotsume Gasa becomes several. They surround Musashi, chanting about prey and killing him, and they stab him repeatedly while he tries to shove them off. There is no last-second reversal. He bleeds out, and the game moves on without him.
He wakes floating in a burning red body of water under a blood-red moon. Nothing about the geography is explained to him, and he can barely speak.
The Man in White and the forced Oni Gauntlet
A figure in white pulls him out of the water, opens with “that could’ve gone better,” and confirms the obvious. Musashi is dead. More precisely, he was on his way to hell and got intercepted for a conversation, because the Man in White considers it a waste for him to pass through Hell’s Maw this early.
The offer is simple. Put on the gauntlet, take the power of the Oni just like the legends, and go back topside.
Musashi refuses. He tells the Man in White to pull someone else up, because he walks the path of the sword on his own strength and does not need a monster’s power. The refusal does not matter. The Man in White tells him that when someone gives you a gift, you take it and say thank you, then forces the gauntlet onto his arm while Musashi screams at him to stop. The scene ends on a threat dressed up as a pleasantry — that the two of them will come to see eye to eye — and then the title card.
The full cutscene sequence in order
| Beat | What happens |
|---|---|
| Bridge ambush | Musashi fights off Yoshioka followers in the rain; a falling tree destroys the bridge and drops them into the water. |
| Confrontation | Ganryu accuses Musashi of turning tail; the two trade insults over who is the better swordsman. |
| Transformation | Musashi’s strike lands and Ganryu shifts into a Hitotsume Gasa. |
| Death | Multiple Hitotsume Gasa surround and stab Musashi until he dies. |
| Afterlife | Musashi surfaces in burning red water under a red moon, en route to Hell’s Maw. |
| The gauntlet | The Man in White offers the Oni Gauntlet, is refused, and attaches it by force. |
What the death scene sets up for the Ganryu boss fight
Ganryu gets an Oni Gauntlet too — a silver one against Musashi’s gold — and the two characters split on what to do with it. Musashi spends the game resisting the thing bolted to his arm and looking for a safe way to be rid of it. Ganryu leans in, treating the gauntlet as the shortcut to the top spot he was already arguing about in the forest.
That difference plays out directly in their rematch. When they meet again on a bridge, Ganryu drops in blade-first, blocks with the gauntlet’s pulsating core, and boasts that it has made him so strong he has been bored halfway back to death. He notices Musashi is wearing one as well and calls it blessed luck. The fight itself opens with him taunting that death cannot stop them, and Musashi replying that he wishes it would stop Ganryu at least.
After Kiyomizu Temple, Ganryu keeps pushing into forbidden Oni Gauntlet techniques that raise his power while eating away at his sanity, eventually harvesting human souls to feed it. The proud duelist from the opening cutscene becomes a corrupted one. In the demo, he is the boss at the end of the main quest “The Stage is Set at Kiyomizu,” and he fights as a human duelist rather than a Genma — parries, deflects, blade locks, and a grab that shows up once his health drops to around half.
Onimusha: Way of the Sword is scheduled for September 4, 2026 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC, and Nintendo Switch 2, with a fictionalized young Musashi in early Edo-period Kyoto. The opening cutscenes are the setup for the whole premise: a swordsman whose entire creed is that strength comes from the man alone, kept alive by a power he explicitly told someone he did not want.
