Blue Eye Samurai (Netflix): TV Review - A Sharp Blade Skillfully Wielded
/****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!!
My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
My Recommendation: SEE IT. A fantastic animated series…but be forewarned, it has lots of nudity, sex and violence.
Blue Eye Samurai is a new adult animated series on Netflix that tells the story of Mizo, a half-white, half-Japanese samurai who sets out to exact revenge in 17th century Japan.
The series, which is created by Amber Noizumi and Michael Green and directed by Jane Wu, stars the voice talents of Maya Erskine, George Takei, Brenda Song, Randall Park and Kenneth Branagh.
I had never heard of Blue Eye Samurai until Netflix, and its AI’s infinite wisdom, used their algorithm to throw a trailer at me the second I logged onto their service. I watched the trailer and thought, “Hey, maybe this is something my 8-yr-old son and I could watch together!”
Then I watched the first episode…and holy shit this is not something my son…or any child under the age of maybe 16, should be watching at all. It is chock full of ultra-violence, sex…including some very, very weird sex, and nudity…including a cavalcade of animated cocks and balls flopping around like it’s a sausage and grapes stir fry gone awry. When this series says it is “adult”, you better believe it.
But just because the show isn’t good for kids, doesn’t mean it isn’t good. In fact, Blue Eye Samurai is terrific and one of the best series I’ve seen all year.
It is difficult to avoid ALL spoilers in a review of this show, but it’s also best to watch the show without knowing any of the spoilers. So, if you want to avoid any spoilers go watch the series now as I highly recommend it for anyone who loves samurai films and top-notch adult (R-rated) animation.
If you want to dip your toe in the water with a review containing one spoiler (which is widely known), then continue reading.
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Blue Eye Samurai follows the journey of Miza, who is deadly samurai, but is also a young woman passing as a man. That’s the big spoiler that is revealed pretty early on in the 8-episode first season, and it is a main plot point as the season develops.
She is on a mission to kill the four white men who illegally remain in Japan after the Shogun has closed the country’s borders to outsiders, one of whom, she knows not which, is her father.
The storytelling on Blue Eye Samurai is exceedingly well-done as it seamlessly jumps back and forth between Miza’s tormented past and her violent, revenge-filled present.
Each character comes to the screen fully developed, there are no caricatures or cardboard cutouts here. Whether it be Miza’s sidekick Ringo, or her samurai opponent Taigen, or Taigen’s fiancé Princess Akemi, or Akemi’s tutor Seki, or any other of the myriad of characters they are all fully formed and believable human beings.
The fight sequences in Blue Eye Samurai are both fantastic and gruesomely realistic. Main characters suffer grievous wounds, and there are multiple savage slayings that are as good as anything you’ll ever see. That all of this is captured by animation only makes it all the cooler.
The plot of Blue Eye Samurai jumps back and forth between not only Miza’s past and present, but also Miza’s story and the story of Princess Akimi’s struggle for freedom in a male dominated Japanese culture.
The animating (no pun intended) principle of the series is a common one in our current cultural moment, namely feminism in the form of the girl power narrative.
I usually find the egregious girl power garbage in modern movies and tv to be absolutely embarrassing because it’s so often just trite and vapid pandering or blatant virtue signaling.
But Blue Eye Samurai is none of those things. It tells a compelling girl power narrative by splitting the female archetype into two. First is Mazi, the female heroine using her physical prowess on the male hero’s journey. Then there is Princess Akimi, the traditional female heroine using her feminine wiles to gain advantage in a male dominated society. That Mazi has a side-journey into traditional femininity, and Akimi one into warrior-dom, makes the characters and their archetypal narratives all the more intriguing and potent.
Both female protagonists are also deeply flawed, physically fragile and vulnerable, and make numerous errors on their journeys, which gives the story and characters a power that eludes the plethora of recent female protagonists in film and tv that are both invulnerable and perfect.
Now, to be fair, there is the usual man-hating stuff littered throughout the series, but considering the times presented and the times we live in, it is relatively benign.
As someone who is almost instinctually repulsed by girl power narratives due to their relentless ignorance regarding the power and purpose of archetypes, it is so refreshing and invigorating to see creatives get it right, which is why I loved this series.
There is a second, and maybe more, seasons coming of Blue Eye Samurai and to be frank, I am concerned…as it felt to me the first season should have been stand alone. And from what I can gather and/or project, it would seem following seasons are even more vulnerable to the cultural politics which season one exquisitely and successfully navigated. I’ll keep my fingers crossed the series doesn’t devolve into what it avoided in the first place.
One final thought, and that is that as someone who has long loved Japanese cinema, it’s a goddamn great time to be alive. Godzilla Minus One is kicking ass across the globe and here in America. Japanese master Hayao Miyazaki’s fantastic film The Boy and the Heron is garnering critical and audience appreciation (and possibly Academy Awards recognition as well). And now Blue Eye Samurai is telling a kick-ass, modernized animated version of a Kurosawa film. I feel like I’m in heaven.
The bottom line is if you love high-quality animation, Samurai stories and Kurosawa films, and can either tolerate or get titillated by animated sex/nudity, then Blue Eye Samurai is for you…it sure as hell was for me…but it’s most definitely not for my young son…not for another decade or so.
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