So, basically everyone I ever talked to about Blue Eye Samurai was absolutely bananas for the show. "All-time great," "best show of the year," "award-worthy," etc. And...I thought it was good. I found it slow at times, and I'm not someone who's usually impressed by anything accomplished when it comes to animation, so the visuals were just fine, didn't add anything for me. It wasn't distracting at least, the animation quality; that's about as much as I usually hope for when it comes to animated shows/movies.
One of the things that bugged me on several occasions was the number of times that our protagonist Mizu got stabbed. It reminded me of the Punisher series on Netflix, where Frank Castle got stabbed, shot, mauled, hit by a car, blown up, a thousand different potentially fatal injuries, and he just kept going. If you want me to believe in the danger that this character is facing, you can't fake-kill them over and over. By the end of the first season, I was nigh convinced I was watching a superhero show, and not an historical fiction.
I also didn't love how the villains were sooooooo evil. Part of what we kept getting told by the narrative was how this character, Mizu, was being consumed by their thirst for vengeance. We're asked to question them, is all this bloodshed worth it, just for the vengeance of...being born, I guess? But then when you show me that the person Mizu is hunting is the absolute most despicable, vile, heinous person ever to walk the face of the planet, that conversation becomes less compelling. Yes, revenge makes sense, this guy is an absolute monster.
Don't get me wrong. There were some fun characters, a lot of interesting interactions, and the story was engaging and mature, which I appreciated (not just for the boobs... but I mean, nothing wrong with a few boobs now and then). I just wasn't as wowed as everybody else. Good show, not all-time great show.
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