The official Japanese website for Production I.G's Miyamoto Musashi: Sōken ni Haseru Yume (Musashi: The Dream of the Last Samurai) anime film has re-launched with a new promotional video on Friday. (The website had a preview launch in December.) In addition to hosting the promo and a separate 80-second trailer video, the website confirmed that the film will open in Japan on June 13. ANN is hosting still another trailer with different visuals and English subtitles.

Award-winning anime creator and director Mamoru Oshii (Patlabor, Ghost in the Shell, The Sky Crawlers) developed and wrote the film. As the website states, the film deals with "the fact and fiction about the Niten Ichi-ryū of Musashi Miyamoto, the seeker of the way of the invincible sword." Miyamoto is a legendary swordsmen who pioneered the Hyōhō Niten Ichi-ryū style of two-sword fighting and wrote The Book of Five Rings, a book that has been compared to Sun Tzu's The Art of War for its insight on tactics and strategy.

Mizuho Nishikubo, an animation director for Oshii's Ghost in the Shell films, Patlabor 2: The Movie, The Sky Crawlers, and the anime sequence in Kill Bill: Volume 1, is in charge of the actual direction of the film. Samurai Champloo and Kill Bill: Volume 1 animation director Kazuto Nakazawa, designed the characters, while Kazuchika Kise (Blood+, Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone, Ghost in the Shell films) is supervising the animation process.

The historical Miyamoto figure has directly or indirectly inspired several earlier manga and anime stories. Perhaps the most popular manga based on Miyamoto is Takehiko Inoue's ongoing epic samurai series, Vagabond.