"Blue Eye Samurai," Season 1

Mizu (Maya Erskine)

[WARNING: spoilers. Also: I've acceded to spelling the series title the creators' way.]

Before I begin the review in earnest, a quick trip back to biology class:

Think back to ages ago. You may remember learning about the Punnett Square in biology class. It's a mathematical way of determining the probability that a certain trait might present itself in offspring. Take as a given that the allele for brown eyes is dominant (B), and the allele for blue eyes is recessive (b). So a brown-eyed person can be fully brown-eyed (BB) or brown-eye dominant (Bb). Either way, what you see is brown eyes. For a recessive trait like blue eyes to appear, both alleles in a pair need to be recessive (bb). In the Punnett Square on the left, you see what happens when, say, a full-blooded Japanese woman (BB) is raped by a white man with blue eyes (bb). Her offspring will all be brown-eyed. Now, if this woman were brown-eye dominant for whatever reason (Bb), there's a 50% chance (see the right-side Punnett Square) that she'll have a blue-eyed child.

This matters because it's the elephant in the room: the premise of Netflix's 2023 animated adventure series "Blue Eye Samurai" is that the main character, Mizu, is the product of a rape: her Japanese mother was ravished by a blue-eyed Westerner. So unless Mizu's mother was herself somehow brown-eye dominant (Bb), Mizu, as a first-generation blue-eye (bb), is a biological impossibility. The first season never clears up the question of who Mizu's mother really is (in fact, the woman we think of as her mother turns out not to be her mother at all), so whether we're in the realm of fantasy or reality is unclear.

"Blue Eye Samurai" is a Franco-American cooperative effort with French animation studio Blue Spirit. It was created and written by Michael Green and Amber Noizumi, who are husband and wife. Jane Wu was the supervising director and producer. The series stars the voice talents of Maya Erskine, Masi Oka, Darren Barnet, Brenda Song, George Takei, Randall Park, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Kenneth Branagh, Ming-Na Wen, Harry Shum Jr., Mark Dacascos, Orli Mariko Green, Judah Green, Patrick Gallagher, and Ann Harada.

The main story focuses on Mizu (Erskine), a blue-eyed, half-Japanese girl who is the child of rape. As a half-breed in 1600s-era Japan (the Edo Period), young Mizu (OM Green) is known locally as a demon, an onryo, a freak of nature. Her mother (who turns out to be a maid [Harada] charged with caring for Mizu) warns her to dress and act like a boy and to do what she can not to call attention to herself. Mizu fails miserably at being inconspicuous, and she is tormented by the local boys, who are led by chief bully Taigen (J Green, then Barnet as the adult Taigen). During one such bullying session, a mysterious meteor streaks across the sky and comes crashing down near the dwelling of old, blind Master Eiji (Tagawa), a renowned swordsmith. Mizu helps Master Eiji transport the rock to his abode, where he discovers the metal is of a curious nature. Despite Eiji's command to leave, Mizu refuses to depart and becomes Eiji's apprentice. As she learns the art of swordsmithing, Mizu also picks up fighting techniques from the samurai who routinely visit Eiji for his swords. Knowing she is at a physical disadvantage as a girl, Mizu strengthens herself by training (and walking around with) metal weights strapped to her arms and legs.

Mizu eventually confesses to Master Eiji (who never learns she is a girl) that she has long harbored a desire to avenge herself on the four Western men she is aware of living in Japan. During this period in Japan's history, Westerners have been mostly kicked out, and their presence in the country is technically illegal, but some Westerners remain, hiding in remote places and sometimes interfering in Japanese affairs. Mizu doesn't know which of the four Westerners on her list is the true father, so she plans to kill them all, including an Irishman named Fowler (Branagh). Fowler is sequestered on a small island and is supervised by Heiji Shindo (Park, at his smarmiest), and Mizu eventually finds out Fowler's location. Fowler, for his part, becomes aware of Mizu and sends out the Four Fangs, assassins whose leader, Blood-soaked Chiaki (Dacascos), once came to Master Eiji for a sword.

Fowler, meanwhile, has plans to kill the shogun with the help of a contingent of Japanese soldiers trained to use European firearms. While gathering information about Heiji Shindo and Fowler, a grown-up Mizu humiliates her old bully Taigen, who has become the star samurai at the Shindo dojo, run by Heiji's brother). Taigen swears revenge and goes looking for Mizu. Meanwhile, Mizu is aided on her quest by a cheerful noodle chef with no hands named Ringo (Oka), who is a strange combination of bumbling and super-stealthy. 

Elsewhere, young Princess Akemi (Song), ahead of her time, is wrestling for control of her own future. At first, it seems she might be married off to Taigen, with whom she is initially in love, but later, her father (Gallagher) declares she must marry the second son of the shogun (Shum Jr.), a cruel tyrant by reputation. Akemi struggles to learn how to maneuver within the strict confines of castle intrigue and the frustrating strictures of life as royalty.

As the season progresses, the relationships between and among the main characters change and develop: Taigen proves not to be quite the arrogant bastard he first seems to be; Ringo is not as blindly cheerful as he initially appears to be; and even bad guys like Heiji Shindo and Fowler aren't as simple as they first appear.

The story moves along at a steady clip without ever rushing to get from one plot point to the next. The complexity of the subplots arises naturally and organically, making the story hard to predict. While the motivations of the various characters are clear, the morality of their situation is not and often seems to change as new facts are learned. The style of the animation reflects this blend of simplicity and complexity: it combines some lightly 3D elements with plenty of hand-drawn 2D, all done in tune with what I might call a somewhat Westernized Japanese aesthetic. The voice work is superb, as you might expect from a stable of superb actors. Maya Erskine, half-Japanese herself, is the perfect choice to play half-breed Mizu. Season 1 ends with a shot that will strongly remind people of Arya Stark's final scene in "Game of Thrones," but that's not really a complaint. Also of note is how the story is saturated with Japanese mythology without ever creeping into magical realism: there are no talking dragons or mythical beasts: those things remain within the confines of the imagination.

From a Korean-speaker's perspective, there are elements of Japanese language that will cause some giggles. A character called Seki (Takei), the attendant/advisor who has raised Princess Akemi, has a name that will remind Koreans of the swear word saekgi/새끼, which means the offspring of an animal (so 개새끼/gae-saekgi = dog-offspring, i.e., son of a bitch). Japanese islands also terminate in the suffix "-seki," so there are many chances for Koreans to have a laugh. One prominent minor character is named Madame Gaji (Wen), and in Korean, a gaji/가지 is an eggplant. Funnily enough, Ringo talks about his hatred and avoidance of eggplants early in the season.

The cast is an ensemble of Asians, Caucasians, and others from all over. I suppose this doesn't matter much since all the characters speak English, mostly with American accents except, obviously, for Fowler, with Kenneth Branagh—who is Irish by birth—leaning hard into his Irish brogue. I'm tempted to complain about Hollywood's propensity for assembling a motley crew of Asians (hey, they all look and sound the same!) instead of choosing an exclusively Japanese or ethnically Japanese set of actors, but because this is an animated series, I don't think this is as problematic as it might be for a live-action story.

"Blue Eye Samurai" definitely falls under the category of adult animation: it features plenty of swearing, full-frontal nudity (both male and female), blood, gore, and all manner of adult situations that are in no way kid-friendly. It's always interesting to see animation that isn't just for the kiddies, and luckily for us viewers, "Blue Eye Samurai," despite its biologically ridiculous premise, tells a constantly compelling story, packed with flashbacks, seeming time jumps, smash cuts to completely different scenes, and phantasmagoric hallucinations. I'll be curious to see where the plot goes for Season 2.

The theme of revenge makes the plot seem simple at first, but the complicated weave of subplots and themes and characters keeps the narrative tapestry riveting. This is a well-crafted story focused on a woman's journey through her own hell. Mizu is an excellently written female character, not presented as a Mary Sue who merely appears on scene fully formed and kicking ass: she repeatedly suffers grievous harm, isn't always the strongest or the fastest, and has a painful past involving bullying, hard work, and hard training. The Mizu we come to know has earned her place: we understand how and why she has become such a good fighter, and we can feel grim satisfaction as she takes down a long line of enemies. At the same time, we can pity Mizu because her quest for revenge is motivated by a kind of self-hatred: she's convinced that the Japanese around her are right to see her as a blue-eyed demon, an onryo, and in the end, she hates her nameless father for having had a role in bringing her into existence. But we can also respect Mizu's lack of self-pity, which comes thanks to her singularity of purpose. There's isn't a single "woe is me" bone in her body. Mizu is very much like the swords she grew up forging—honed in spirit.

I binged the entire eight-episode season, starting my viewing on Christmas, in the evening, and continuing through the night until the early morning of the 26th. It was that compelling. If you're on Netflix, I highly recommend the series to you and think you'll end up as invested as I was in the fates of Mizu, Akemi, Taigen, Ringo, and Fowler. Overall, "Blue Eye Samurai" is itself something of a half-breed production, Franco-American and East-West in nature, about a protagonist with whom I can relate, at least superficially, as a fellow half-and-half.