Netflix is coming out with more and more animated shows.
This does not displease me!
After a few years of looking at the Netflix lineup and thinking ‘meh’, several new shows caught my eye. Among them, one named ‘Blue Eye Samurai’ seemed particularly interesting to watch and review. With my love of anime and Japanese culture, I wanted to check it out.
And so, on a random weekday evening, I started watching it with my girlfriend. It has really hooked us in!
Blue Eyed Samurai is Visually Pleasing to Review
First of all, Blue Eye Samurai is visually stunning. Taking inspiration from traditional Japanese anime aesthetics and more occidental style animation, it manages to look familiar yet unique simultaneously. If you watched Arcane, it has a certain vibe of it with its’ 2D/3D hybrid style.
As the show goes on, the rain and gloomy bamboo forests are replaced with snowy mountaintops and cherry-blossomed dojos. It eventually moves on to sun-soaked valleys fading into starlit nights, becoming an absolute feast for the eyes.
But the landscape isn’t the only aspect that the show nails.
The violence, oh my, the violence.
If you are an anime fan, you are no stranger to haemoglobin, this show is… a love letter to that culture. Disclaimer: do not watch if you do not want to see some heads rolling, neatly slashed off in the most badass way by an expert swordsman. Or should I say swordswoman?
An Epic Story Based on Legend
That brings us to the next point. The next thing this show gets VERY right is the story and characters. Without spoiling too much, the story is loosely based on a legend that happened in the Edo era during the 17th century.
In that period, strangers were scarcely allowed in Japan, and to be anything other than typically Japanese-looking was rather not socially accepted. In the very first scenes, we are introduced to our main character. They wear orange-tinted (radical-looking) glasses in a vain attempt to hide bright blue eyes, mixed in with some flashbacks of a blue-eyed child being pretty obviously bullied and shunned from a young age. Oh and … is this blue-eyed individual a man or a woman?
Hard to tell.
But from this point, the main thrust of the story becomes obvious: it’s going to be a good old revenge story, and I am just gripping to the edges of my seat, settling in for this seriously epic quest.
This blue-eyed warrior has some sort of devil inside, and I am ready to witness some butt being kicked. But surprisingly, even early on the story is skillfully mixed with some more serious themes that are less typical of anime and cartoons we have known to love such as the place of gender roles in society, dealing with xenophobia or being shunned for various reasons seen through the lens of various characters and finding oneself despite having suffered such trauma, and honestly, I am all for it.
As far as I’m concerned, my verdict is simple: Blue Eye Samurai is a great show and a joy to review. Sign me up for season 2.
Opposably Verdict: Thumbs Up!
