I would go so far as to say that beyond Shaolin Temples, Musashi is the single greatest source of abilities and characters for all martial arts films. Not to mention the AMAZING rival he had that is shown throughout these three films.

The wild character in the Seven Samurai is largely based after the first part of Musashi’s life (and played by the same actor, Mifune), and in many ways each samurai in the Seven Samurai embody some aspect of Musashi’s character over the course of his lifetime.

Yeah, I know it’s three films, and I know the plot development takes a long time, but consider this:
1) Musashi is strung up in a tree by a Buddhist monk, trying to break him of his wild ways after the entire town and regiment from the local head honcho can’t bring him in. “I punish you with the hand of your parents!” Just awesome.
2) Afer being let down from the tree by his love interest in the films, the same Buddhist monk tricks him into an attic full of Buddhist manuscripts for years to calm him down and teach him something.

You tell me if you don’t get choked up when Musashi FINALLY heads off to the final fight in the third film telling the woman who has waited like 20 years for him to finish his samurai training that “a wife should send her husband off with a smile.” when he’s about to head off maybe to be killed. And she just says “Hai.” demurely in typical Japanese fashion, her long penance rewarded.
3) Musashi gets a disciple by the famous “picking flies out of the air with chopsticks” legend- yes Musashi started that.
4) Pretty much every woman in the film falls in love with him, while he is still trying to do right by everyone, they are out to get him/still in love with him or both throughout.
5) On the way over to the final fight- with the greatest other swordsman in Japan (he’s the teacher to the Emperor himself, in fact), HE CARVES HIS OWN SWORD from wood, and fights not with a sharp blade, but with a wooden practice sword. His main sharp samurai sword is reduced to whittling duty. This is an allusion to the fact that Musashi, out of respect for the relative quality of his opponents, only fought with a wooden sword for the later part of his life.

So, to summarize, he’s only using a wooden sword against his greatest opponent ever, and still wins.