Blue Eye Samurai anime on Netflix: Why the shock hit works

The standards for achievement on Netflix have at all times been slippery, notably relating to the platform’s hit-and-miss efforts with anime. But within the month since its November 1 launch, Netflix’s Blue Eye Samurai has established itself as a bona fide hit, spending two weeks within the international prime 10 and reaching the highest 10 mark in 50 nations (in keeping with Netflix’s stats web site). It additionally acquired 4.8 million views over its eight taut episodes throughout its first two weeks and garnered a standing, in keeping with Netflix, as one of many most-liked exhibits on the platform. Critics are deeming it the finest Netflix present and the finest animated present of the 12 months.

This roster of wins makes Blue Eye Samurai an outlier for anime on Netflix. In its early years, Netflix delivered a slate of stable Japanese imports, together with its first unique sequence, Knights of Sidonia, in 2014. That was practically a decade in the past, and regardless of scoring some large hits with the anime crowd, like 2018’s Devilman Crybaby, and touchdown some premier titles, just like the high-profile 2019 launch of anime OG Neon Genesis Evangelion, mainstream success with anime titles has eluded the platform — till now.

What’s it about this explicit present — the comparatively acquainted story of a solitary samurai in search of revenge — that drew within the views, the place scores of different anime titles on the platform have faltered?

There are a couple of key components. There’s the totally attractive animation, for one factor, created by French Canadian animation home Blue Spirit. (Which means it’s not technically an anime, because it wasn’t made in Japan, however given its anime aesthetic and Japanese setting, most followers are hailing it as one anyway.) There’s the great social media buzz the present acquired in its first few weeks of launch.

But Blue Eye Samurai, for all it’s a “typical” anime, accommodates a couple of components that not solely really feel recent however, crucially, like a daring and revolutionary step ahead for Netflix, away from its regular rote, formulaic storytelling.

What does a Netflix sequence really feel like, precisely, and what’s Blue Eye Samurai doing that’s completely different? Over the course of the present, Blue Eye Samurai shows a creative excellence and narrative innovation that the majority Netflix productions by no means attain. Let’s see if we will parse it out.

Netflix centered on constructing mainstream curiosity within the sequence earlier than its premiere

Within the months earlier than its debut, Netflix positioned Blue Eye Samurai as a mainstream launch somewhat than a distinct segment one. In September, it gave an unique preview of the present, alongside a profile of sequence director Jane Wu, to Self-importance Honest — an outlet not often identified for highlighting cartoons. The unfold featured attractive manufacturing stills, giving readers a style of the stylized art work they may anticipate from the sequence.

One of many key issues Netflix did to spice up curiosity in Blue Eye Samurai can also be one thing uncommon for the platform: It launched the primary episode of the present at no cost on its major YouTube channel on November 1, the place it has since been seen over 3 million instances. That’s two days earlier than the total sequence formally dropped on Netflix — a tantalizing teaser to extend the present’s standing as a binge fest.

It’s evident from the opening moments that Blue Eye Samurai is delicately animated, with an intriguing premise and a foremost character, Mizu (voiced by Maya Erskine) whose outcast standing as a biracial loner in remoted Edo-era Japan instantly attracts you in. Mizu, a feminine character who was raised as a boy, continues this efficiency into maturity as a result of it permits her to bypass the strict gender roles imposed on ladies of the time.

Mizu battles childhood trauma in addition to deep self-loathing — a strong mixture of internalized disgrace and internalized misogyny. As a samurai, she’s skilled her entire life to change into a deadly weapon, all as a way to kill the handful of white males who had been residing in Japan on the time of her delivery. Her aim by way of this eradication is to get rid of her organic father, who deserted her and her mom and, she believes, left the 2 of them to a destitute destiny. She’s so decided to move as a Japanese man that she painfully binds her chest and wears tinted glasses to cover the true shade of her eyes from the world. The sequence showrunners, husband and spouse staff Michael Inexperienced and Amber Noizumi, advised Self-importance Honest they had been impressed by their very own biracial daughter, whose eye shade proved to be a shock to the entire household.

The present preempts objections to “various” and international programming

Right here now we have one of many key traits of Blue Eye Samurai that makes it really feel like a shift within the regular Netflix method. Proper-wing viewers typically mock the platform as a result of they argue it presents various storytelling because the default, in ways in which conservative audiences view as superimposed or hamfisted. This “pressured variety” declare, though it’s absurd, has change into related on the precise with Netflix notably, partially resulting from Netflix’s efforts to make inroads in hiring and storytelling. (These efforts, it needs to be famous, have additionally been undermined each by job cuts and irritating programming choices, together with cancellations of lauded various choices.)

The best way Blue Eye Samurai handles its storytelling, nonetheless, notably sidesteps the standard trollish arguments that variety has been injected into the story for its personal sake — that’s, on the expense of the story itself. That’s nearly by no means true, however right here it’s indisputably false. The present subverts the acquainted trope of a minority character combating for autonomy in a racist society by taking as its foremost character a biracial outcast whose whiteness makes them identifiably monstrous inside their tradition. Not solely is the character’s racial id the motivation for the whole plot, however the story cleverly deconstructs racism for a really broad viewers by depicting a society that comes with anti-white prejudice as a part of its nationalist, xenophobic construction.

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As soon as this groundwork has been laid, Blue Eye Samurai trots out one compelling trope after one other. Mizu’s rival, Taigen (By no means Have I Ever’s Darren Barnet) might not know his arch-frenemy can be a lady, however he’s overtly interested in him anyway. In the meantime, Taigen’s ostensible love curiosity, Akemi (Station 19’s Brenda Music), is much less enthusiastic about love than she is in gaining her freedom, even gladly selecting work in a brothel over a soft palace life. Our plucky sidekick, Ringo (Heroes’ Masi Oka), was born with out fingers however has realized to be a reliable cook dinner and tradesman regardless of his incapacity; when Mizu rebuffs his makes an attempt to change into her apprentice by insisting he couldn’t deal with combating, he holds up his arms and says merely, “My entire life has been a battle.”

Whereas such a second might simply really feel maudlin, the present’s deep characterizations and persistently spare tone maintain it rooted in naturalism and assist to steadiness its over-the-top violence and battle. It additionally helps that Netflix, heeding voice actors’ requires correct trade casting, has chosen a roster of high-profile ethnically Asian actors, with just one absolutely white actor (Kenneth Branagh doing a baffling Welsh-Scottish-Irish-American accent) in the primary solid. Crucially, as a result of the roles had been written in English, the English-language voice solid sounds extra pure than overdubbed international works typically can. That’s one other main longstanding hurdle that Blue Eye Samurai overcomes simply: the reluctance of mainstream audiences to interact with media that’s both poorly dubbed or subtitled. Erskine notably shines in her function because the intentionally low-key Mizu, however the solid additionally options standout performances from greats like George Takei, Ming-Na Wen, and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa.

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In different phrases, the varied and star-studded solid helps elevate the present and additional sells it as a reliable grownup Netflix drama somewhat than reinforcing the false however persistent stereotype that anime is for youngsters. It rapidly turns into apparent that Blue Eye Samurai, like most of the samurai tales it’s following, isn’t remotely a youngsters’s story. It’s ultra-violent, splattered with gore and inventive horror-movie kills, and dripping with extra stylized bloodshed than Kill Invoice. Intercourse of all types, from the kinky to the violent and obscene, is all depicted presentationally, with none sense of disgrace. Girls are persistently centered within the act, allowed to take cost and direct each their pleasure and their companion’s; in different phrases, the present gives us a really mature depiction of intercourse that manages to by no means really feel exploitative, even when it’s exhibiting us extraordinarily darkish sexual acts.

It’s additionally stone-cold: A second early in episode one quietly tells us what we’re in for when Mizu unflinchingly walks previous a mom and youngster who later are revealed to have frozen to dying whereas ready for somebody, anybody, to provide them support. It’s completely brutal — however by the point the viewers has realized that its foremost character is likely to be a traumatized sociopath murderer who’s advantageous with the dying of youngsters, we’re already invested in her revenge quest.

For as soon as, Netflix will get out of the way in which of nice storytelling

The key to holding that quest accessible and entertaining for audiences over the course of the present’s eight episodes lies in two components which have historically not been Netflix’s forte: writing and animation.

Wu’s appreciable background in storyboarding and vogue design helps tonally offset the choreographic combat animation, which concerned actual martial artists performing key combat scenes utilizing motion-capture imaging. The outcome feels vibrant, with settings and scene particulars drawn from historic depictions of Japan and Japanese folklore, in addition to references to different basic anime and samurai tales like Seven Samurai, Samurai Champloo, and Rurouni Kenshin.

A latest live-action trilogy adaptation of Kenshin proved to be a broad success for Netflix, adopted by a wildly fashionable but lackluster adaptation of One Piece. Writing for Vox sister web site Polygon, Joshua Rivera neatly factors out the methods through which Netflix’s mundane “home type” bogs down One Piece’s in any other case vibrant, well-cast anime-inspired manufacturing: flat colours, boring cinematography, and a story shortchanged by Netflix’s company tradition and by a reluctance on the a part of the writers to easily take time to savor the characters they’re serving us.

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As an animated sequence helmed by a single inventive staff, Blue Eye Samurai faces few of these hang-ups. It’s stuffed with extremely stylized visible sequences and experimental camerawork. The characterizations and writing are constant all through, whereas additionally counting on a taut sensibility that by no means absolutely lets go — a rigidity, a slight launch, after which a painful shift. The basic Japanese consciousness of impermanence and loss, mono no conscious, feels embedded all through the storytelling construction. When it’s not buying and selling in motion tropes codified by Akira Kurosawa, the present has visible and thematic ties to the good filmmaker Kenji Mizoguchi, with rigorously designed scenic tableaus supposed to deepen our understanding of the society we’re in and the characters we’re accompanying.

Whereas this aesthetic type and tone might be well-known to anime followers, it’s uncommon for anime that options this a lot understatement — once more, mingled with scenes of ultraviolence that verge on splatterpunk — to make their approach to mainstream viewers. But the rewards are plentiful. The experimental fifth episode overlays three separate narratives, utilizing a Japanese puppet present to tie all of them collectively by way of allegory and folklore. By the tip of the episode, we’ve realized one thing essential about our foremost character through a visible feast of storytelling: One layer reveals a wonderful, uniquely tragic love story that additionally serves as a heartbreaking commentary on poisonous masculinity; one other layer offers us a tremendously staged, edge-of-your-seat battle of life and dying. On the shut, we notice, these two tales are the identical story — the story of a lady doing no matter she will to not solely survive however maintain her id from destroying all the pieces she touches in a society that isn’t prepared for her.

That such a narrative wound up on Netflix is a marvel. That it discovered its viewers is a reduction. And if the ultimate episode falls prey to what seems like superimposed company stress from Netflix to ship fan curiosity in a second season somewhat than a plot decision — properly, simply this as soon as, maybe the company overlords have the precise thought.