I wouldn't dream of telling you how to live your life, but if you're planning to play Onimusha: Way of the Sword on September 3, that gives you one weekend and approximately 120 waking hours to fill with samurai movies before the game's release. What else are you going to do—not watch so many classic Japanese films that you intuitively know how to walk the path of the blade the moment you pick up a controller as Miyamoto Musashi? Seems like a bad way to live to me.
But okay, benefit of the doubt: Maybe you're not planning to spend every second of the next week with your eyes peeled open going nuts on the Criterion Channel samurai tag because you have some appropriate gaming plans already established. Perfectly reasonable to devote the hours you could spend watching Akira Kurosawa's whole oeuvre to playing the remasters of the first two Onimusha games, Onimusha: Warlords and Onimusha 2: Samurai's Destiny, which are only about 3½ and 8½ hours long, respectively. You might even be able to rush through the first game more quickly than you could watch Seven Samurai!
Otherwise I can't think of any particularly good excuses. Job? Eh. Cooking? C'mon. Loved ones? The samurai code demands sacrifice for a greater purpose.
Assuming you're not yet ready to devote yourself wholly to such a singularly focused existence, here's a small selection of great samurai films you can watch between now and next Friday, each of which I think makes for a particularly good appetizer for Onimusha: Way of the Sword.
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