Onimusha: Way of the Sword launched on September 4, 2026 across PS5, Nintendo Switch 2, Xbox Series X/S, and PC — and it’s already being praised as one of the year’s best action games. But if you’re the type who wants to soak up every bit of lore before picking up the controller, or if you’ve finished the game and want more story to chew on, Capcom has you covered. An official prequel webtoon is live right now, it’s completely free, and it’s canon to the game’s timeline.
What Is the Onimusha Prequel Webtoon?
The companion webcomic is titled Onimusha: Way of the Sword — Fated Rivalry, and it’s being published officially on Webtoon. All you need to read it is a free Webtoon account. The comic is rated Mature (18+), which tracks given how blood-soaked the source material is.
The webtoon is confirmed to be an 8-episode prologue, with new chapters dropping every Saturday. The first chapter went live this past Saturday and already racked up over 20,000 reads in its first few days. Considering the game only launched last week and the webtoon wasn’t heavily marketed ahead of time, those are solid early numbers.
Who Is This Story Actually About?
Here’s what makes Fated Rivalry interesting as a companion piece — it doesn’t follow Musashi Miyamoto, the main character you play as in Way of the Sword. Instead, it centers on his rival: Sasaki Ganryu, also known as Kojirō Sasaki, one of the game’s primary antagonists.
If you’ve already played the game, you’ll know that the rivalry between Musashi and Ganryu is at the core of the whole story. In Way of the Sword, the two legendary swordsmen are ambushed and killed by the supernatural Genma right as they’re about to duel — and Musashi wakes up in Hell, kicking off the entire adventure. The webtoon takes place before all of that, exploring how Ganryu got to that fateful moment and what drove him down the path he’s on when the game begins.
The setup is genuinely compelling for anyone interested in the game’s villain. Ganryu is already one of the most skilled swordsmen alive, but a duel with Musashi ends in humiliating defeat — and he can’t let it go. What follows, according to the comic’s description, is a bloody, obsession-fueled quest for power that leads him to discover the Oni Gauntlet, the same mysterious artifact at the center of the main game’s supernatural powers. His hunt for stronger and stronger opponents puts him on a collision course back toward the one man who’s ever beaten him.
It’s a classic “how did the villain become the villain” structure, and the Musashi vs. Ganryu rivalry has enough historical and cultural weight behind it — rooted in Japan’s legendary duel at Ganryūjima — that the Onimusha spin on it has a lot of material to work with.
Who Made the Webtoon?
The webtoon is being produced by Laurel Pursuit, a US-based studio with genuine comic credentials behind them. They’ve previously worked on the distribution of the Dungeon Crawler Carl graphic novel and created original webcomics including Defiance of the Fall. They’re not a random contracted studio thrown at this — they know the format.
The art is being handled by a team of Webtoon creators: jjolee, hilluhri, and BAEKSSE. Based on the first chapter, the visual style leans into the period’s brutality while keeping a clean, readable panel structure that works well in the vertical scroll Webtoon format. The color work in particular gives it a mood that fits the Onimusha universe without trying to copy the game’s visual direction wholesale.
Where Does This Fit in the Onimusha Timeline?
The Onimusha series has always been set in an alternate version of feudal Japan where demons called Genma and supernatural artifacts called Oni Gauntlets coexist alongside real historical figures. The original games — Warlords, Samurai’s Destiny, Demon Siege — were all set during the Sengoku period, Japan’s age of warring states.
Way of the Sword is a significant jump forward in the in-universe timeline. It picks up more than 20 years after Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams (2006), moving the action to the early Edo period and into the historical Japanese capital of Kyoto, which has been twisted by a supernatural force called Malice and overrun by Genma. This is the first mainline Onimusha game since Dawn of Dreams — a two-decade gap in both real-world publishing terms and in-universe story time.
Fated Rivalry slots in just before Way of the Sword begins, making it genuinely useful context if you want to understand Ganryu’s headspace before the game kicks off. Unlike the Netflix anime adaptation from 2023 — which most fans treat as a separate non-canon story — this webtoon is explicitly designed to flow directly into the game’s events.
Is It Worth Reading Even Without Playing the Game?
Honestly, yes. If you have any interest in samurai fiction, supernatural action, or the historical mythology around Miyamoto Musashi and Sasaki Kojirō, Fated Rivalry works as a standalone story premise even if you haven’t touched Way of the Sword yet. The Oni Gauntlet introduces enough of the world’s rules in the first chapter that a newcomer isn’t going to feel lost.
For people who have played the game, the webtoon adds a layer of texture to an antagonist who the main story doesn’t have much time to fully develop — because the Musashi and Ganryu storyline moves fast. Having 8 dedicated episodes exploring what Ganryu went through before that fateful ambush by the Genma makes him a considerably richer character in retrospect.
How to Read It
The webtoon is free on Webtoon — just create an account and search for Onimusha: Way of the Sword, or head directly to the series page on Webtoon’s website or app. Chapter 1 is live right now. New chapters drop every Saturday, with 8 episodes total planned for the prologue. Whether additional chapters get made after the initial run remains to be seen — it likely depends on how the game performs and how the webtoon’s audience grows over time.
Onimusha’s history outside of games has been rocky. A film adaptation was pitched back in the early 2000s and eventually cancelled. The Netflix anime came in 2023 but didn’t land as part of the main series canon. This webtoon is different — it’s officially positioned as prologue material, built in direct coordination with the game, and it’s a much more controlled, canon-respecting way to expand the story than previous attempts. For a series that was dormant for 20 years before Way of the Sword revived it, getting both a genuinely great new game and quality supplementary material in the same launch window is a good sign for where Onimusha goes from here.
A big week for gaming news across the board — if you’re catching up, Destiny 2 Project Sunrise just confirmed working vaulted Strikes are coming back, AdHoc Studio is officially co-developing Until Dawn 2 for January 2027, the Persona 6 Steam achievements leak dropped a huge amount of story detail, and Blizzard workers ratified a landmark union contract with genuine AI and layoff protections built in.
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