I’ve been waiting for the second season of Blue Eye Samurai for almost three years now. The first came out on Netflix in November 2023, and the wait has got more frustrating with every passing month. I understand the team must be working their socks off to keep it at the level of the first season. That’s a tall order, because in my opinion it’s one of the best seasons of anything Netflix has put out this decade. Every frame is a painting, and nothing else animated looks like it. The winter scenes in particular are magical.
I’ve recommended it to so many people. I know they may reject it because it’s animated, but I still share it, because art needs to be appreciated no matter what. I loved the series so much that at one point I kept it downloaded on my tablet and watched it whenever I travelled. I think I’ve seen it four or five times now. That’s how much I love it.
It’s also why I’m writing about it now and not in 2023. Reviewing something recent that everyone loves is mostly recency bias, but if I’m still coming back to something years later, it’s worth writing about, and that’s what The Standard does most of the time. The only exception so far is Orange County, a song from this year that became one of my favourites almost straight away.
The story is set in Edo-period Japan, when the country had shut itself off from the outside world, and it borrows from Japanese history and mythology. Mizu is a sword fighter with blue eyes, mixed-race in a country that treats her as a monster for it, and she’s hunting the four white men who were in Japan when she was born, because one of them is her father.
Choosing one scene from the series and calling it the best would be a gross injustice, but I have two personal favourites. The first is a fight that happens at night, at a sword school. Before she gets there, Mizu leaves Ringo, the cook who has been tagging along with her, at a brothel, and asks the madam to keep him there so he doesn’t follow her into the fight and get hurt. Then she walks up to the school and knocks on the door. From that knock until the last man falls and tastes the gravel, the whole section is electric.
The second is the one at the top of this post, under a frozen cliff hung with icicles. Mizu and the man fighting beside her are outnumbered, with arrows raining down on them, and it’s Ringo who comes to their rescue and carries them away. Mizu says one word to him: “Useful.” From her, that’s practically a speech. She barely shows any emotion, but all through the series she keeps looking out for other people. For someone who’s been through what she has, that empathy makes her more human than the people who call her a monster.
Mizu’s character arc is all over the place. It’s like a sine curve, up and down and up again, and that only makes her more intriguing. After such a rough childhood, she finally gets a moment of happiness when she marries, and it doesn’t last. Then it’s back to the revenge. She’s one of the strongest characters I’ve seen written, and her relentless thirst for revenge drew me in. The obvious comparison is Mulan, since Mizu also passes as a man to get by. But what Mizu does and what she’s been through make her even tougher.
The show isn’t only about Mizu, either. The side characters have stories of their own. Ringo was born without hands and wants to be Mizu’s apprentice, whether she likes it or not. Akemi is a lord’s daughter who refuses the marriage that’s been arranged for her. Their stories run alongside hers, and they make the series even more interesting.
I feel animation is still seen as something you watch only when you’re a kid. Maybe once you grow up, your inner child dies, and you stop taking the chances that the child in you would have taken. People will happily watch The Incredibles or Toy Story, and they won’t watch Blue Eye Samurai. I don’t understand that. You’re willing to watch a talking zebra or a lion, but not something far superior in terms of art. The Television Academy seems to agree. The show won four Emmys in 2024, including Outstanding Animated Program. It isn’t a children’s show at all. It’s violent, and it was made for adults.
In August, Netflix finally gave Season 2 a release window, January 2027, along with a teaser. The first season ended with Mizu on a ship bound for England, and the teaser shows her in seventeenth-century London. I want to see how she gets by in a completely different country, and how she takes her revenge. The wait has been a catch-22. I wanted the second season yesterday, and I also wanted it to be as good as the first, or better, which was only ever going to happen if the team took its time. January is three months away now, just about long enough for one more watch on the tablet.
