Netflix has a new action favorite: The samurai adventure has already thrilled some and possesses many of the qualities of a Quentin Tarantino-style action bonanza
Currently, the samurai adventure Blue Eye Samurai is achieving ratings that other series can only dream of: With an 8.3 on Moviepilot, an 8.9 on IMDb and 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, the streaming discovery is well on its way to becoming the best Netflix series of 2023 one month after its release. And it achieves this with many elements that fans usually appreciate in Quentin Tarantino’s films.
A bloody samurai adventure like Tarantino’s Kill Bill: that’s what Netflix’s Blue Eye Samurai is all about
In 17th century Edo-era Japan, the Japanese drive the whites out of their country. Children like Mizu, with a Japanese mother and a white father, become ostracized outsiders as a result. Tricks such as hiding your blue eyes behind tinted glasses only work to a limited extent when you are a sword-wielding samurai roaming the country.
Mizu also has a second secret: she is actually a woman and has secretly learned the art of swordsmanship from a blind master. As a disguised warrior, she pursues a merciless mission of revenge that requires all her skills: to find the last four white men in the country, as one of them must be her father. If she finds him, she intends to bring him to a bloody end.
(Blue Eye Samurai)
With its not at all squeamish avenger, the Netflix series Blue Eye Samurai falls somewhere between Tarantino’s tough-as-nails bride from Kill Bill and a dark version of Disney’s Mulan. The narrative is clearly aimed at an adult audience.
What makes the Netflix series Blue Eye Samurai so outstanding?
Not only fans of Quentin Tarantino will appreciate that Blue Eye Samurai combines many unbeatable ingredients of successful entertainment: the Netflix series is brutal, sexually explicit, visually intoxicating and full of exciting characters. However, violence, such as the regular severing of body parts, is always placed at the service of the story. So we can at least understand Mizu’s motivation for her drastic decisions.
Check out the Netflix trailer for Blue Eye Samurai
As an American series set in Japan, the Netflix production by Michael Green and Amber Noizumi blends the best of both cultures in terms of storytelling and content. The 8 episodes of season 1 are presented as an epic adventure story with different chapters. While one episode focuses on Mizu’s difficult childhood and the next almost unfolds a romance, another scores with non-stop action including wild “camera” rides.
At the core, however – as with Tarantino – it is the successfully unpredictable characters in Blue Eye Samurai who do the most to convince us that we are witnessing something really great here. From Mizu, who hides her gender, to her apprentice Ringo, who has no hands, to the always underestimated Lady Akemi and Mizu’s humiliated rival Taigen, the unconventional characters in the series undergo unexpected developments. And in the Netflix series, this develops such a pull that in the end it is impossible to escape this samurai adventure
