Summary
Blue Eye Samuraiis set during Japan’s Edo period and follows Mizu, who has faced discrimination her entire life for being mixed-race Japanese during a period when Japan had closed its borders to the rest of the world. Hiding herself as a man in order to travel alone and exact her revenge, Mizu is hunting down four white men, one of whom is her father, who she plans to kill. Along the way, Mizu meets many people, some of whom she bonds with, which will force her to decide how much she is willing to sacrifice for her quest.
Blue Eye Samuraitook the world by storm with an innovative animation style, ruthless action sequences, and a dark story with engaging characters. This is not a traditional hero’s journey, with Mizu balancing between helping others and seeking her revenge at any cost while continuing to face adversity and struggling to let her walls down. Blue Eye Samurai takes inspiration from traditional Japanese stories and culture while also infusing a live-action feel into the animation that brings it to life like never before. TheBlue Eye Samuraicast, led by Maya Erskine, is star-studded with George Takei, Brenda Song, Randall Park, and Kenneth Branagh.Blue Eye Samuraihas received not only Emmy and Peabody nominations but six Annie Awards.
Blue Eye Samurai Ending Explained: Where Is Mizu Going?
Mizu’s revenge is not yet complete as she heads out to unchartered territories after the stunning season finale of Netflix’s Blue Eye Samurai.
Screen Rantcaught up with Michael Green, Amber Noizumi, and Jane Wu to talkaboutBlue Eye Samurai. Green reflected on the success of the series, with two Emmy nominations, learning more about animation through this project, and casting Erskine. Wu explained why this was the project that brought her back to animation, how they approached the fight scenes, and drawing inspiration from live action. Noizumi broke down the research process and why they looked beyond voice actors when casting.
Michael Green Reflects On The Journey To Blue Eye Samurai’s Success
Michael,Blue Eye Samuraihas received significant award recognition, including Emmy nominations and Annie Awards. How does it feel to see this series receive such a claim?
Michael Green: It’s been amazing. I mean, we worked on it very hard for a very long time, and you hope for the best, but for so long you’re just trying to live up to the goals and the aspirations. And then finally it’s out there and you don’t hear anything for a while, and then you start to hear some numbers are coming in. And then you start hearing Netflix saying, Yeah, I think we might be happy.
And then one day they come in and say, actually, we want to make more of the show. And you’re like, Wait, that’s good news. That was a good big surprise. And then award recognition. It was crazy surprise because you don’t know if people are going to find it or if it’s going to resonate. Nothing makes you more grateful than finding out that people who aren’t even related to you watched it.
Now, one of the highlights of the series is attention of detail, especially in the Edo Japan era. Amber, what research did you undertake to portray the Samurai era and its cultural authenticity? Can you discuss prioritizing historical accuracy forBlue Eye Samurai?
Amber Noizumi: We read every book that we could get our hands on, and we hired a researcher. So anything we couldn’t find, we asked him. We watched a lot of Samurai movies, which we drew inspiration from, and our art team did a ton of research. We had a food researcher. Food historian was his title.
Michael Green: Eric Rath. He wrote the book on sushi.
Amber Noizumi: We hired a live action costume designer. She did deep, deep dives into and finding kimono prints that hadn’t been seen in hundreds of years. So it was really an enlightening experience for all of us. Really it was what elevates our show? And what can we use that elevates our show and our story and how do they talk to each other? Sometimes there were so many historical details that we wanted to put in and we couldn’t because of time.
“How Do We Still Keep The Magic Of It And How Do We Celebrate Art”
Jane, you’ve worked as a story artist onThe Avengers,Guardians of the Galaxy,Mulan, andGame of Thrones. You’ve also directed animation before. Can you talk about returning to your animation roots for this series and working with Michael and Amber to create the tone forBlue Eye Samurai?
Jane Wu: Yeah, I consider this my homecoming and what an amazing homecoming. What I’ve always missed was the magic of animation and what animation could bring to a story. In creating the look of Blue Eye Samurai was something the three of us talked about quite a bit about how do we ground it, but how do we still keep the magic of it and how do we celebrate art and all that stuff in a very high level way where it is moving art? Tat’s how we came about to doing what we did. Everything had to be on that high level.
Michael, how did you approach directing an adult animated series differently than other types of projects you worked on?
Michael Green: Our main role was as showrunners working with directors, we came in this with very little knowledge of how animation works. So for about a year we started every meeting going, We’re the least qualified people on this call, so please add 15 minutes to the time for our dumb questions.
Just hiring people who are incredibly talented, who could not only make up for our deficiencies, but were willing to teach us so that somewhere along the middle we started actually feel qualified for the jobs we had. But listening and not only listening to the advice of very talented people, but also listening on advice of who to hire.
Netflix introduced us to Jane, for example, and they said, Hey, we’re going to introduce you to the person we think can bring your show to life. And they were right. Sometimes having some experience in live action you start thinking, all right, I’ve done this before. The most fun thing is going to places where you feel like, I’ve never done this before. I feel like I’m on my first day on set. That was really a fun part of this. Every day was grad school
“Hopefully Find Some Catharsis In Watching Mizu’s Journey”
The animation is gorgeous. We could talk about that all day. But I think what really makes the show is the themes in it. And I think that it’s so relatable to audiences now because the idea of racial purity is unfortunate and still very prevalent to today. And this show also addresses gender and the idea of women have no control over their own bodies, which still continues to be a worsening problem in America now. Can you discuss these themes, Amber, inBlue Eye Samurai, and how the show relates to a contemporary audience now?
Amber Noizumi: Unfortunately, they still are very contemporary ideas, as you mentioned. That Mizu, back in Edo-period, Japan, a woman could not travel without a male chaperon. So of course she has to disguise herself as a man, and women today need permission to do other things with their body. That just kind of puts another level for Mizu on a level of conflict for how she can exact her revenge.
Also it just creates more rage for her, right? She’s always walking this line of internalizing her hatred and externalizing her hatred. Sometimes she internalizes it and then externalizes it to a very bloody degree. And then the idea of racial purity, that also continues to be a major problem. Mizu feels completely torn between two worlds and that she can’t be whole, that she’s broken.
In Japanese, actually, the word hāfu is what they use for people who are half. It’s like two divided halves, not one whole. So Misu is kind of always in pursuit of that wholeness. And I think so many people, not only in America, but all over the world, are always searching for that wholeness and hopefully find some catharsis in watching Mizu’s journey.
Jane, this show is unlike any animated project I’ve ever seen. I don’t think there’s anything that I really can compare it to before or after it, and it really has this live action sensibility to it. Can you discuss drawing inspiration from the world of live action to create something brand new?
Jane Wu: I’d like to describe this show as taking you to a fusion restaurant. You know it’s Japanese, but then you add a little bit of this and that from other cultures and it creates something really interesting and really unique. That’s part of me bringing my live action set into animation, but knowing what animation can take and can’t take and surgically inserting it just so, so that it is seamless. I think that’s part of where my experience comes in to be able to know where those surgical inserts needed to be.
Michael, with innovation comes challenge, what were some of the key challenges you guys faced in bringing this story to life?
Michael Green: I mean, just day one, figuring out how are you going to make this show? How are you going to build a pipeline? Is it 2D? Is it 3D? Is it traditional anime? Is it going to be something else? Who are the right partners? It’s not even R&D, it’s just figuring out how are we going to drive cross country? What kind of car are we going to get in?
It was exhilarating, but that was a big challenge, just figuring out to do it. And then once figure out how to do it then just comes hard work. But the show is sort of when nerds attack, you get the right people who love attention detail, love pushing boundaries, and then you just give ‘em a chance to do their best work and it becomes a challenge, but a great time.
“To Not Show Martial Arts In Its Authenticity Would’ve Just Absolutely Killed Me”
Jane, can you talk about how some of these incredible fight scenes were created and how you approached the action in this? Because, again, it feels as if it was ripped out of a live action format in animated form, if that makes any sense at all.
Jane Wu: It does, because that’s exactly what I did. I have a martial arts background, and so to not show martial arts in its authenticity would’ve just absolutely killed me, and I didn’t want to do that. So we hired a stunt director named Sunny Sun, who works in the live action space with me quite a bit, and it was really knowing where to put the camera.
First of all, it’s always camera, camera, camera. So knowing where to put the camera, knowing how to design the action sequences. Then having Michael, Amber, and I come in to talk to Sunny about what we needed in these fight sequences. So for instance, in 1x05 that is nominated, we talked about how this fight sequence needed to feel like a lover’s dance between Mikio and Mizu that escalates out of control.
So he had a team and we shot it. What’s great about those shoot references, it then can go to our French animators and they can look at how the body actually is moving to replicate that in our animation process.
Amber representation matters, and the show does a wonderful job at casting. Everyone’s level of voice acting varies throughout the show, but what qualities were you looking for in the voice cast? And can you talk about your approach to thinking about representation more deeply than you would get in a live action setting?
Amber Noizumi: We are doing a show about Asians, and we wanted to have Asian voices. Asian voices have been silenced for so long. Let’s let them speak, let’s let them act. Let’s let them play these parts, and so many Asian roles have traditionally been like teachers and doctors and these day player parts, and let’s give everybody these roles and not cast anybody but Asian people.
We wanted people who brought a very grounded performance. In general we didn’t go for people who were animation voices who only did animation voices. We wanted people who brought this live action type performance, this grounded performance to the screen. That’s kind of what we went with. Maya Erskine is amazing. She was a comedic actress, but brought such drama and pain and raw emotion and we’re very, very grateful to have her.
I was just about to say Maya Erskine is incredible in this, and I sometimes forget that it’s even her in this role. Michael, how did you guys land on her? Was she always your first choice as soon as you heard her voice and kind of portray the role of Mizu?
Michael Green: When we were writing, we talked a little bit about if we’re lucky enough to get to make this, who could even be? Not many people out there, but we’d been watching Pen15 at the time. I remember us talking as screamingly funny as it is, it’s so full of pain. It comes from a place of real lived experience and just understanding this is a deep actor and her training is deep.
So when time came, we asked to talk to her and we were very interested in working with her. Five minutes into that conversation, it was covid, so it was on a screen much like this, we knew. We knew that this was a person, she’s a grownup. She’s a very deeply talented actor, which she’s gotten to show more and more since that time. She understood the character completely.
She read a bit for us, not that we need to hear it, but I mean it was moving and she had a lot of insight into what the character was going to be. And then also just the joy of weight. I get to play Clint Eastwood character. I get to play the type of character that’s usually reserved for a 48 year older or older male, and there was some joy to that. She really loved the idea of I get to do the kind of thing that normally is reserved for other types of actors.
About Blue Eye Samurai
Set in isolationist Edo-period Japan (1603-1868), “Blue Eye Samurai” follows Mizu (Maya Erskine), a mixed-race samurai who’s been discriminated against all her life for her biracial identity. As a result, Mizu wears tinted glasses to cover up her blue eyes and therefore keep her whiteness a secret.
Check out our previousBlue Eye Samuraiinterview withMichael Green and Amber Noizumihere:
Blue Eye Samurai
Cast
Blue Eye Samurai is a 2023 animated action-adventure series created by Michael Green and Amber Noizumi. Set In 17th-century Japan, Blue Eye Samurai follows a mixed-race Samurai named Mizu who seeks revenge for the man who abandoned her and took her mother. To do so, Mizu will have to disguise herself and assume the guise of a man as she sets forth across a war-torn nation.
