The Beauty Behind the Blade: How ‘Blue Eye Samurai’ Brings Edo-Period Japan to Life

Blue Eye Samurai, Netflix's hit animated historical drama created by the husband-and-wife team of Michael Green and Amber Noizumi, traces its roots to the birth of their now 15-year-old daughter. Half Japanese – half white, Noizumi was excited to have a baby with big blue eyes - her “little blue-eyed samurai.”

From that seemingly casual, loving reference has come a powerful, beautifully stylized, critically acclaimed and award-winning animated series that follows a mixed-race sword master living a life in disguise and shame while seeking vengeance in Edo-period Japan. At a time in Japanese history when it was illegal for anyone white (foreign) to reside in country, a blue eyed, mixed-race child could only mean one thing: shame.

Just this past Wednesday, the show won three juried Emmy Awards for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Animation: Brian Kesinger for Character Design, Toby Wilson for Production Design, and Ryan O’Loughlin for Storyboard. Last February the show took home 6 Annie Awards. And it has been nominated for two Primetime Emmy Awards; winners will be announced on September 15.

Blue Eye Samurai takes viewers on an epic journey to early 1600s Japan for a story of a mixed-race sword master, Mizu, living a life in disguise and disgrace – hiding her eyes behind amber-tinged glasses - while seeking revenge against the country’s four white men, one of whom must be her father. Since making its streaming debut last November 3rd, Blue Eye Samurai continues to garner accolades and fans. A second season pickup is already in hand.

Noizumi and Green serve as executive producers and writers on the series. Erwin Stoff also serves as executive producer; Jane Wu serves as supervising director and producer. The show is animated by Blue Spirit. The stellar voice cast includes Maya Erskine (Mizu), George Takei (Seki), Masi Oka (Ringo), Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa (The Swordmaker), Brenda Song (Akemi), Darren Barnet (Taigen), Randall Park (Heiji Shindo), and Kenneth Branagh (Abijah Fowler). The supporting voice cast includes Stephanie Hsu (Ise), Ming-Na Wen (Madame Kaji), Harry Shum Jr. (Takayoshi) and Mark Dacascos (Chiaki).

AWN recently had a chance once again to talk with Noizumi and Green, this time with Wu, whom they spoke so highly of in their November 2023 interview, which you can read here:

The Gorgeous and Graphic ‘Blue Eye Samurai’ Arrives

The trio spoke about their approach to developing and producing the show, their use of Ukiyo-e art and Bunraku puppets for inspiration, and how their live-action background helped them visualize and present their story in ways not found in most animated projects.

Dan Sarto: A lot has happened since we spoke last October. A tremendous amount of critical acclaim for the show, it’s a hit with fans, now has multiple Emmy noms [and 3 wins post interview], and a Season 2 pickup. You probably couldn't ask for a better set of outcomes in today's animation space.

Michael Green: We were very nervous when we talked to you. We had no idea we'd be sitting here.

DS: Well, I remember my first take when I watched the show. I enjoyed the rich look and visual tone, but mostly, I remember the story and action pacing was quite consistent through the episodes. And I never said to myself, “Really?” I thought it was a great show then, and obviously, a lot of people think that as well. Let’s jump into some questions. Jane, I want to start with you. Amber and Michael really talked you up when we spoke last year.

Jane Wu: Oh, dear.

DS: ... and they were talking about the fact that, coming from live-action TV and being thrown head-first into the animation world, they relied so much on you, and you were just an unbelievably talented partner in this process. What were your original thoughts when approached with the project? What was your take on the story, and how did you envision the look and tone of the animation?

JW: I’ve told the story that once I accepted the position and read the script, which was very inspiring, I went home and panicked for about a week, because I knew that it could not be anime, because there's so many beautiful Samurai anime shows out there and I wasn't going to go anywhere... we weren't going to touch that.

And I didn't want this to be Western animation-styled show because this is an Eastern type of story, and I wanted the aesthetics to be Eastern. So, I think, after I calmed myself down, it was really just drawing from inspiration of my childhood and things that I can remember of images that moved me, that spoke to me.

A lot of it was watching Bunraku puppets with my aunt, how the stylized movements could really convey emotion, and how the proportion of those puppets worked. So that was the jumping-off-the-cliff moment for me to say, “Okay, I think that's what I want this show to look like,” and really just asking myself, "What do I want to see," because I know this is a show I've always wanted to see.

I thought, if I created that look, that could help with the storytelling, and I think other people might like it. I just didn't realize it was going to blow up like this.

DS: In the earliest stages of visual development, where was your focus? Did you focus on the world first, the character designs… How did you first approach the look?

Amber Noizumi: Before we had even signed on with Jane, Michael and I talked a lot about those Ukiyo-e paintings, like Hokusai, who made the famous wave painting and other woodblock paintings at the time and trying to exist in that world.

And when we tried to do some research when we were writing, we couldn't find a lot of visual references, so we looked at paintings of what people were doing. What would Tokyo, Edo, and Kyoto look like at the time? What would the people have been doing? So, we looked at a lot at those things.

And then, when we met with Jane, she had the same vision. She wanted that sort of woodblock aesthetic too. Not exactly woodblock line drawings, but the way that the characters… the feeling the characters inspired.

JW: To what Amber was saying, it's taking the script and the story and re-imagining them in the animation space, and the magic that animation can provide that no other medium can provide.

Which is, we took a lot from Yoshida-san, who is a Japanese painter but was trained in the West, and had this beautiful blend, a fusion in the way he designed his environments. We keyed into that, and with the Bunraku puppets...

For me, the most important thing about animation is always the line quality that you give all your characters. So, I'm really, really hyper-focused on the line quality. I wanted a very thin, Rapidograph, delicate line quality to juxtapose against all the brutality that was going on. So, all the decisions that you see on the screen were hyper-designed to bring forth what this is supposed to be. None of it was accidental.

DS: I imagine nothing was accidental.

MG: No. And then it was just tenacity. Once we found it [a style], it was the group decision to not let go. There are a lot of times where you're working on things, and you have concept art and everyone's so in love with it, and then you build something that looks like the Xerox of the Xerox of the Xerox of the concept art. We were really tenacious about, “No, it's gonna look like this,” and that was from the people who could make it real.

JW: Yeah. And if I could just mention having a team that comes in after the decisions have been made that can carry off that execution was just incredibly humbling.

MG: We should talk about our production designer, Toby Wilson, our lead character designer, Brian Kessinger, if we start naming names... Every person came into this with the mindset, “What if we hit the ball as hard as we can?” And they all did. They all saw what those early explorations were and said, “Wow, we can do our best work here. And it'll be hard, but it'll be worth it.”

DS: There is a lot of live-action production sensibility that went into the visuals, like using stunt teams to help choreograph the camera work on action sequences, as well as the camera work in general. You really did a good job from a production design and camera standpoint on helping focus where viewers should be looking at the screen. There were many times a lot was going on in a shot and it would have been easy to get distracted.

So, my long question is, what did you bring into the animation that you see more often in live-action? How did your live-action storytelling background help the animation?

JW: I think it's where we place the camera. The guideline that I've given all my directors and storyboard artists is, don't put the camera where the camera can't physically be, because in a live-action set you can't put a camera through a wall, though Michael keeps reminding us there can be wild walls. But that's something I'd like to not break, because that's part of the grounded reality of the filmmaking.

It's not to say animation doesn't do that, but I think it's also timing, in how long we hold onto a particular scene, and it's also how we compose a scene. Those things are slightly different in our show than most animated shows. Because of the type of story that we're telling, it allowed us to put the camera in different places, and places that you're not used to seeing in animation. Does that make sense?

DS: Absolutely makes sense. And Micheal, when I ask people that have written extensively for live-action and are now working in animation, they will usually say to me, "We write the same way," and "It's not like we wrote any different in thinking for animation." Looking back on Season 1, as well as what you've been doing for the new season, did you change the way that you approach storytelling knowing that you're writing for animation?

MG: As to storytelling? No.

AN: Not storytelling. But we learned some things from Season 1 to Season 2 to just make it more producible.

MG: But that's with any show.

AN: Right.

MG: On any show, you learn how to make your show better, more efficient, how to help your team ahead of time, what are indulgences you can permit and what you need to be a bit more cautious about. Character and story and emotion, animation or live-action, it's the same.

It's always about how do you take those intentions and realize them on screen so that the audience can engage at the level you want them to. If you want them to feel genuine rage, you have to make sure that your character is emoting that. And a lot of that goes straight to what Jane was saying about being aware of camera work.

In our earliest conversations with Jane, we were all coming from a vocabulary of just thinking about where we're putting the camera, that camera work was going to be part of our consideration. We all agreed early on that we wanted a show that could hold close-ups on characters.

And you would do it, the same as in live-action, in animation. But a lot of times animation - certain types I should say because there's so many… it's such a varied field - will distrust a close-up because they aren't giving as much effort into expression and performance and micro-expression, subtle performances there.

And we always went into it trusting that our studio, Blue Spirit, was going to bring the depth of performance that they're known for, that they had brought to the show early on, and they've always delivered. So, we've been able to continue writing the show with our highest aspirations in mind knowing that they were going to see it through.

AN: It's also trusting your audience to engage with the character at that level. I think so many people are afraid that someone's going to be bored by that, holding that close-up or taking the time to breathe, thinking, “Oh, no, this generation that's watching animation watches TikTok, and it has to be 20 seconds,” or whatever it is.

But when you write it a certain way and trust your audience to get it, they reward you. And I think they have.

JW: Also, because we knew that we were going to hold in close-up, a lot of the designs were considered, when we created characters, to hold those close-ups. So, eyes have different shapes once you go into close-up, so you know exactly who you're looking at, so they don't have the same generic eyes all over again.

All these things were considered, much like you would consider a specific actor and you would do camera tests on them to make sure that they could hold for a close-up.

DS: Regarding Season 2, using the experience you gained developing the show and producing your first season, what are you changing or otherwise adjusting moving forward from both a storytelling and animation production standpoint?

MG: The show gets bigger. We're meeting more characters, we're getting more ornate in some places... going to new places, without revealing what they are just yet. But as with any show, it's about the relationships between your core characters. So, it's about, even if you separate, it's to bring them back together.

DS: Jane, what about for you? Is it pretty much just continuing the frenzy that animation production always is? Are there things that were learned?

JW: I would say right now, there's a lot of panic to make sure we hit our deadlines, and all that stuff, but I'm really excited to continue the camera work conversation because I still think there's a lot to be done and pushed into the nuances of camera that we can use.

And I think what's really special about our production is that the level of excellence that we can bring on a screen, on a TV production timeline, is insane. And that's the excellence that we want to strive to continue giving our audiences.

Dan Sarto is Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network.