Blue Eye Samurai

Blue Eye Samurai (2023) is an American animated television series produced and streamed by Netflix, animated by the French Blue Spirit animation company, and written by Amber Noizumi and Michael Green.

Set in 17th century Japan, during an alternate history version of the Tokugawa Shogunate, Blue Eye Samurai tells the tale of Mizu, a swordsmith and master swordsman who is on a campaign of revenge. She (or 'he,' or 'they,' for Mizu's own definition of her gender identity is left up to the interpretation of the audience) seeks to assassinate the only four white European men remaining in Japan after it closed its borders against the outside world, because Mizu - visibly of mixed ethnicity and savagely abused and threatened because of it - believes one of them must be her father, and guilty of conceiving her without her mother's consent.

As of the time of this writeup, only one season has been released, consisting of eight episodes of varying durations, and no second season has yet been announced. As it is common practice by Netflix to cancel shows at the peak of their popularity, especially those focusing heavily on social justice and multiracial LGBT characters with complex relationships to their own identity, fans of Blue Eye Samurai are aggressively promoting the show by word of mouth, in the hope of demonstrating enough investment and enthusiasm to persuade Netflix to greenlight a second season and not drop the show completely. In just the first fourteen days after its release, the fanfiction website Archive of Our Own has fifty new works of fan-created fiction and art based on the characters from the show, and tumblr is lively with discussion and fan's artistic renderings of the characters, as well as roleplay requests and offers.

In my opinion, this outpouring of fan engagement is more than earned, because every detail of this show is a labour of love. The animation and character designs are exquisite and distinctive, demonstrating how much careful study was done of the fashion of the Edo Period, the martial arts performed by samurai, and the architecture and urban design of the time. The voice acting is evocative, the writing airtight and rich with pathos and nuance. Mizu herself is an incredibly believable and sympathetic character, but there is also much to love and gleefully hate about the other major allies, rivals, and villains in the story, like season one's chief foe, the diabolical Abijah Fowler.

Every kind of social marginalisation is explored in this series in a respectful and immersive way; sex workers, people with visible and invisible disabilities, racial and gender-based discrimination, all are handled with a realistic and empathetic lens, and none are tokenised or played off as a joke, nor are any of them either fetishised, nor desexed and depicted as less capable of consent than other people.

This is not a show which goes out of its way to accommodate westerners' cultural squeamishness about nudity, and full frontal nudity of all body types is shown with casual frankness, as is the truly extraordinary amount of violence and gore Mizu enacts in her revenge quest. The fight choreography is at once poetic and barbaric, intense and explicit enough to incite a flinch response even from audiences with a stern constitution for such subject matter, but bearing all the gruesome fascination of watching a train wreck in slow motion. All this to say: this is not a show which most would likely consider suitable for children as viewers, but the highly charismatic and expressive character designs might lead an unwary child to mistake it for an age-appropriate anime series, so discretion is advised.

I have been thoroughly delighted by Blue Eye Samurai, and I can eagerly recommend it to those who have enjoyed the Kill Bill films by Quentin Tarantino and Lady Snowblood (修羅雪姫), both of which inspired the series to such an extent that the writers make clear allusions to both in the musical soundtrack, as well as those who have enjoyed Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, Netflix' Castlevania animated series, or the game Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. It would perhaps also appeal to fans of The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett, having related themes of found family, redemption, revenge, and restoring a damaged sense of one's identity and honour. It might please readers of The Count of Monte Cristo, though Mizu shows far less benevolence toward innocent bystanders, in her pursuit of revenge, than does Edmond Dantes. The artistry of the animation and acting, the strength of the writing, and the brevity of the first season all make Blue Eye Samurai an easy show to sample and decide if it is right for you. Here's hoping we get a season two.

Iron Noder 2023, 10/30