For some reason after finishing a new dark souls character I've really been in the mood for any sort of samurai entertainment- movies, novels, anime, etc. Sadly I don't really know much about the genre. I liked stuff like Musashi, samurai champloo, and uhh wutang clan. I tried watching Yojimbo but it wasn't really my thing. I've also noticed that there's not really any samurai video games for some reason.

Anyways what's your favorite samurai movie, novel, game, etc?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Samurai by Akira Kurosawa. I think it is the best samurai movie ever made.

Samurai Jack is an awesome show, do watch it. NO you need to watch it!!!!

I'll 2nd both of these and add Shoguns Assassin which is a movie made of overdubbed scenes from the Lone Wolf and Cub series but done well imo (the originals are good on their own though) and 13 Assassins which is only a couple years old. Harakiri and Zatoichi are worthy mentions as well.

I loved the original Way of the Samurai on PS2 but sadly the games got progressively worse with each installment.

Zatoichi

Ichi

Seven Samurai

When the Last Sword is Drawn

13 Assassins

I looked into Lone Wolf and Cub after reading Vagabond. I'd rather not buy all the books like I did with vagabond but I haven't found a website that feels right for reading manga.

Hell, anything made by that man is excellent.

Seppuku Mania

That is what came to my mind, too.

How is this for cultural differences... You saw the 1954 movie while I watched the anime series (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samurai_7) based on that

[EDIT]

Also wanted to put in a vote for Samurai Jack, mentioned above

You all should really read Musashi. It might have come nearly eighty years ago but it holds up fantastically. The Lord of the rings of samurai novels.

Seven Samurai was an excellent film. The Last Samurai was another good one.

Overall, however, I don't much like "Samurai" fiction. Too often it glorifies Samurai without taking into consideration that they were basically a bunch of thugs. The Last Samurai was a good movie, well put together and enjoyable, but it was absolutely terrible from a historical standpoint.

Shogun 2 Total War is pretty awesome for samurai stuff, great game overall.

Mount and Blade Warband, with the Gekukujo Mod (takes place in japan around the same era as Shogun 2, but is a mount and blade game and you lead armies of samurai, friggen awesome!)

Samurai Jack is a pretty good show.

Bushido Blade on the Ps1 was pretty awesome game too.

Though i do agree with FueledByCoffee, Samurais were really just war mongering warlord thugs in reality, too often are they painted as honorable noble warriors when they werent honorable at all, they just used honor and their code as a cover for them taking from people. In those days, samurai would beat peasants for not bowing low enough when they walked by, because Samurai were revered and supposed to be above peasants.

Samurai Cop of course.

I've watched a lot of the older films that were sub titled not over the top flying through the air kung fu action but more realistic drama epic battle types. I wish there were more movies like The Last Samurai and Christopher Lambert's The Hunted. I know nobody likes TC but he wasn't bad and I loved Ken Watanabe and the guy played Ujio. I'd love to see a big epic Samurai flick made based on a true story. There has to be plenty of material/history for that.

Shogun 2 is the first thing that comes to mind.

The Last Samurai also comes to mind, but IMO that movie was kinda meh...

Well, the Last Samurai was pretty much the Satsuma Rebellion plus white people.

There's actually... well, it's main affectation (The perfect body double) is not historical, but check out Kagemusha. Most of what you'll find is Japanese, and most will be set during the Sengoku Jidai.

Yeah, Musashi is a true epic. Really enjoyable.

dude i've played so much of this in the past few weeks
i took on 10 Ainu bandits in heavy fog while listening to Liquid Swords and it was the best

Way of the Samurai is a good/weird game with a big focus on open-endedness and replayability. WOTS4 is coming to Steam soonish and i'm pretty hyped for that and you should be too.

Bushido Blade is my favorite fighting game ever, hands down. Muramasa is my favorite side-scrolling action RPG thing (that isn't Fortune Summoners).

Some that haven't been mentioned yet:

Twilight Samurai

Onibaba

Kuroneko

One of the story segments in Kwaidan features a sad and very scary tale of a samurai. A must watch - and the rest of the film.

Lady Snowblood - OK, pushing the boundaries here, but it's a great film.

Chasing the neighborhood kids down the road while waving a katana and screaming gibberish. Good times...

I enjoyed Seven Samurai, but reading subtitles for that long was painful. I'd like to see a well dubbed version.

Shogun (both the novel and the miniseries) and Gai-jin by James Clavell are really good.

Samurai Champloo was really good too I thought.

Way of the Samurai 1-3 are pretty nice Samurai games. Way of the Samurai 4 was released about a year ago for the PS3 and is unfortunately a bit weaker, and surprisingly also released for PC on Steam later this year. Bushido Blade was a pretty cool Samurai game for the PS1 too.

Aye, have it on DVD, very nice. I also like the mini-series Shogun even though it's all fictional and Akira Kurosawa didn't really like it at all.

The Hunted is an enjoyable movie, yeah. The Last Samurai, not so much

I am the exact opposite of you. I categorically refuse to watch dubbed movies. Ever. I've been known to avoid watching classic foreign films for years (decades, in some cases) until I could find a subtitled version.

Here are a few Samurai films I've seen and can heartily recommend:

Seppuku (Masaki Kobayashi 1962)
Yojimbo (Akira Kurosawa 1961)
Sanjuro (Akira Kurosawa 1961)
Throne of Blood (Akira Kurosawa 1957)
The Sword of Doom (Kihachi Okamoto 1966)
Chushingura (Hiroshi Inagaki 1962)

I also second the recommendations of Seven Samurai and Lady Snowblood (the original Lady Snowblood, not the sequel Lady Snowblood 2: Love Song of Vengeance).

Is anybody familiar with the Samurai Trilogy movies based on the book, Musashi? I have been thinking about purchasing them, but not quite ready to take the plunge.