Streaming giant Netflix has dropped the trailer of its upcoming adult animated series Blue Eye Samurai. Set in 17th-century Edo-period Japan, Blue Eye Samurai follows Mizu, a mixed-race master of the sword who lives a life in disguise seeking to deliver revenge.
Wife and husband team Amber Noizumi and Michael Green (Logan, Blade Runner 2049) co-created the animated series. Alongside Noizumi and Green, Jane Wu (Mulan, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Game of Thrones) served as supervising director and producer, Erwin Stoff as executive producer, and Blue Spirit as the animation studio.
Here’s a synopsis of the plot: In 17th-century Japan, when borders are closed to the outside world, citizens would never see a face that was not Japanese, except in rare cases of illegal trade. Our hero, Mizu (Erskine), knows there were only four white men in Japan at the time of her birth and sets off to kill these men, one of whom might be her father, who made her a “creature of shame.” But revenge is not an option for women, so Mizu must forge her revenge quest while hiding her gender as well as her blue eyes.
Mizu is joined on her journey by Ringo, an overeager soba maker who dreams of greatness; Taigen, a pompous samurai whose rivalry leads to an uneasy truce; and Princess Akemi, Taigen’s betrothed, whose gilded life seems a foil to Mizu’s. Her revenge quest leads us across Edo-era Japan in a provocative series that immerses the viewer in vivid adult animation with a live-action edge.
While it may seem like anime, the series is a different aesthetic and not anime. “It’s a 2D/3D hybrid, utilising technologies of both,” clarified Green. “But even when we use 3D, we wanted it to have a 2D handcrafted feel.” Green noted that they did use a lot of filmmaking techniques that don’t always show up in animated television though, including a pre-visualisation department, a stuntvis department, and a wardrobe department.
Since Noizumi and Green do not come from an animation backgroud, they trusted the series’ supervising director Wu to do her part. When Wu started thinking about the visuals, she knew she couldn’t do anime. “Not because I’m not a fan, but because there’s been such great samurai animation out there that I was just going to get lost in that voice and I couldn’t do better,” she said. “I didn’t want this to look like a game. I knew that I didn’t want this to look like a Pixar- or a Disney-animated story.” The visual language of the show is really drawn from Japanese art. “I designed the characters after Bunraku puppets, which is a traditional Japanese puppet performance that dates back over 300 years, and these puppets are about three-feet tall. They aren’t for children.”
The Blue Eye Samurai cast includes Maya Erskine (voicing Mizu), Masi Oka (Ringo), Darren Barnet (Taigen), Brenda Song (Princess Akemi), George Takei (Seki), Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa (The Swordmaker), Randall Park (Heiji Shindo), Kenneth Branagh (Abijah Fowler), Stephanie Hsu (Ise), Ming-Na Wen (Madame Kaji), Harry Shum Jr. (Takayoshi), and Mark Dacascos (Chiaki).
Representation was Noizumi and Green’s top priority when selecting their stacked voice cast for this project, from the key players to the group actors who were murmuring in the background of scenes. “We weren’t looking for people who had a ton of voice-over work experience. I think most of them did, but we wanted to make sure that everybody was actually Asian. We didn’t want to cast anybody who wasn’t,” said Noizumi.
Blue Eye Samurai premieres on 3 November on Netflix.
