There has been a lot of debate about what is a drama and what is a comedy, especially in the Emmy race. We have so many shows that fall right in the middle that the length of the show has literally become the arbiter. But it has become even more confusing in another category: Outstanding Animated Series. If you look at shows like Arcane And Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal against The Simpsons And South Parkthere could not be a bigger difference in tone. This year the race is the same with shows like X-Men ’97 And Scavengers rule against Bob’s Burgers and (again) The Simpsons. These are such different types of shows that it can be difficult to make a clear decision about the best animation. Not for me though. This year Blue-Eyed Samurai should win.
The animation is simple but beautiful. Using a 2D/3D hybrid animation, every facial expression and movement is captured. The people seem real while still having the freedom that animation gives them. The way people move in a fight is a mix of realistic fighting while still letting us experience the action that could never happen in real life. There are the gorgeous backdrops of the mountains and forests to the detailed cities.
There are small details like the orange tinted glasses Mizu wears to hide her eye color, or the intricate design of Mizu’s sword hilt, or the waves that seem to be embedded in her blade, they add character to this world and make it stand out.
Episode two, “An Unexpected Element,” is a wonderful depiction of the fighting and scenery. Mizu fights four Assassins on a mountaintop, the wind blowing through the characters’ hair and the lead Assassin’s mask moving as he speaks. As Mizu falls off the cliff onto a ledge and Assassins follow her, we see the beautiful details of the cliff and the blood spilled as she kills several of them. We see the great fighting as they jump over the cliffs, culminating in an epic final duel on a beach with the waves crashing around them. It’s beautiful in its look and the characters’ movements, and terrifying in its violence.
The beauty of animation design would be nothing without good characters and world building, and this show has both. Our villain, a white Irish smuggler, Abijah Fowler, has to live in hiding because he’s a white man and at the time all non-Japanese were banned from Japan. Even though he makes the ruling class rich, they look down on him and let him stay in a building. Now he’s brutal and heartless to everyone around him, even his allies, and yet you see why he’s bitter and that he might even be right in some ways. Then you want Mizu to kill him.
One of the most explored aspects of this society is the way women are viewed. We see young girls being sold to brothels without question due to lack of money or because they cannot be married off. It’s never direct, but when we see the men relaxing with these women or Mizu walking around a town, the fate of the women is made very clear. This is even true for the upper class when we see that Akemi, who has a rich and powerful father, is treated no better than the whores we see all over this world. She is meant to be married off to her husband, that’s all. She is better dressed and lives in a better house, but to most, she is not human. Then we have Taigen, a brave warrior who has risen in the world thanks to his skills and even has a chance to marry above his rank. But one defeat and the upper class casts him aside. The structure of society is tremendously unfair to everyone except those at the very top, and what’s clever is that the show never tells us that, we just learn it by watching our characters live it.
However, Mizu has this more than any other character and that is what makes her so fascinating. Her birth as a woman and with foreign eye color alone means that she is at best immediately disrespected and at most hated. But her birth is unfortunately the least of her problems.
She’s not a noble warrior either, she wants revenge plain and simple, and while we sympathize with her goal, the fact that she’s willing to abandon and hurt people she cares about and that she makes morally questionable decisions to achieve her goal makes her much more complex. Episode 5, The Story of Ronin and the Bride, tells us more about her backstory, which shows that there’s a lot more going on with Mizu than is initially known. Her lack of trust has deeper reasons.
What’s interesting is that this episode felt out of place to me at first. Combining it with the fight she’s currently waging distracted from the deeper details of why she sought revenge. But the more I thought about the show, the more I appreciate it. It turns the simple idea of revenge on the person who killed my mother into “I want revenge for the corruption of society as a whole.” If she helps others, it’s because she’s built some kind of relationship, but even then it’s no guarantee that she will do so, or that it will help her in her quest. But what she will do in which moments is completely unknown, opening up many more possibilities.
What also makes her entertaining is how cool a fighter she is. She takes on impossible challenges and adapts in fights. We learn how she got that way, and that helps us believe she could be so good. But most importantly, we see her fail, like in the mountain battle I mentioned above. She falls, she gets injured, and she collapses when a new enemy appears. She would have died if that opponent had no honor. As good as she is, she’s not invincible, she can die, get injured, and need time to recover. That makes it infinitely more interesting to watch her in a fight, where we can see her fight and never know exactly how she’s going to come out on top. In fact, we know she can lose.
The trip Blue-Eyed Samurai What attracted me to this film was that it was familiar in its tropes but wonderfully new in its execution. It offers a clear view of the world it inhabits and how the characters react to it. Even when things are horrific, the animation is beautiful. It is surprising, has layered character motives and actions that are exciting to watch. I hope it wins the Emmy.
Blue-Eyed Samurai is now streaming on Netflix.
