Netflix’s best new show is an animated revenge thriller

Sometimes a television show will remind you why you enjoy stories. Not just television series or animation, but the bigger, grander concept of storytelling in general, and how someone’s personal experience can inspire something greater and universal, without ever losing that individual spark.

Blue Eye Samurai Michael Green, a husband and wife team (Blade Runner 2049( ) and Amber Noizumi. It was inspired by a very personal moment in Noizumi’s life: After the birth of the couple’s child, she looked at her child’s blue eyes and wondered why she was so thrilled to see white features in her daughter. Noizumi began to explore this theme and developed the tale of Blue Eye Samurai, Netflix’s newest animated show.

The entire product is made up of Blue Eye Samurai clearly comes from a personal place for Green and Noizumi — and that passion speaks to just how brilliantly evocative and exciting it is. It’s a lot longer than most animated TV, but it deserves to be that long because of its scope. It’s not a show that takes time to gel. From the beginning, it hooked me in, and there wasn’t a second where I felt my attention waning throughout the eight episodes. Blue Eye Samurai reminded me that the best stories feel like they speak directly to you, even if they’re about places you’ve never been and experiences you’ve never had.

[Ed. note: This review contains spoilers for Blue Eye Samurai.]

Image: Netflix

Blue Eye Samurai starts off in familiar territory: a revenge-driven samurai, a lone warrior who doesn’t have time for friends or any meaningful relationships. There are enough little twists that make it stand out from the start. Mizu, a woman of mixed race (Maya Erskine), is the warrior in the middle. She hides her identity as a biracial person and also her gender to succeed in life. And the men she seeks to kill are the four white men who were in Japan at the time of her birth — one of her four possible fathers.

Along the way, Mizu crosses paths with Ringo (Masi Oka), an eternally optimistic noodle maker determined to achieve greatness despite his disability; Taigen (Darren Barnet), a self-made samurai searching to regain his honor, who also shares a past with Mizu; and Akemi (Brenda Song), the highborn daughter of a lord who seeks forge her own path in a world where women don’t have much of a path at all. The show is still centrally Mizu’s, but the three other main characters all prove to be fantastic foils to bolster her arc. Even when they’re not on screen together, the series ably weaves their stories together. Each character’s arc unfolds in tandem with the other, reflecting and advancing the larger story. In their own ways they all speak to the greater themes of the show, an overarching story about Japan’s isolationism and the Western influence. The larger stakes become more real when they are tied to the characters. We can better grasp the world through their stories and journeys. It’s a beautiful synergy, and a constantly tricky balance that Green and Noizumi brilliantly pull off.

Image: Netflix

Image: Netflix

This is all further elevated by the show’s animation. The historical drama genre isn’t what one would think of as a good story that can be enhanced by animation. Blue Eye SamuraiThe medium is what makes it so spectacular. This allows for dynamic images and storytelling that is pushed up to higher levels. The story of one particular episode is told using traditional Japanese Bunraku puppets. It juxtaposes the actions in the present with those from a past flashback. This hybrid 2D-3D style, which has a soft, painterly look to it, is rarely seen on mainstream animated television, much less adult animation. The animation is reminiscent of a traditional cartoon. ArcaneIt is a visual masterpiece that has raised the bar for television animation. It is stunning, with its distinct character designs and gorgeous background settings.

The art especially shines in the show’s fight sequences. The fight scenes were so intense that I was unable to look away. Blue Eye Samurai, Even though the battles can be long (and even, екретне документDuring those). It is a vibrant, new fight choreography. The animation is certainly a part of the reason, as is how exciting and new each fight is. But it all comes back to Mizu, and what a strong, compelling character she is — and how she would not exist without the world around her being what it is. She has a mixed style of fighting, which is the result of her unconventional childhood. It’s a mixture of various techniques. She understands the fundamental differences between each of them and that no one combat style is superior.

The entire product is made up of Blue Eye Samurai Harmony is achieved when everything works in sync. I initially became drawn to this show, because like me, it features a main character who is of mixed race. Mizu was so different from me. She is shaped by her own world and story. They are both very real people, and they all have their own stories. It makes the show both familiar and unique; though I’ll never live in Edo-era Japan or challenge someone to a duel for my honor, through the writing and the acting, I understand the greater stakes of the world the same way Noizumi spun her personal experience into something much bigger. It uses animation and action to help push that story along to something broader and more fantastical, but never loses sight of the main character’s central conflict amid the spectacle and expanding cast. It’s the best show I’ve watched in years.

Blue Eye SamuraiNetflix has released the new movie.