Both films are built on the same structure: a small band of swordsmen is recruited one at a time, prepares a village or a town for a battle it cannot win straight, and then fights it in a long final act that occupies the last third of the film. Miike's film is a remake of Eiichi Kudo's 1963 picture rather than of Kurosawa's, and that is the honest qualification on this line. The recruitment sequence, the fortified settlement, and the extended terminal battle are conventions Seven Samurai fixed for the jidaigeki, and 13 Assassins is working inside them deliberately, including the deaths distributed across the band.