Blue Eye Samurai Interview: Season 2, Awards, and Creators Plans for the Series

At the end of 2023, Netflix released Season 1 of Blue Eye Samurai, an adult animated series with an original story by husband-and-wife team Michael Green and Amber Noizumi. In the show, Mizu, voiced by Maya Erskine (PEN15), is a half-Japanese, half-white woman in Edo-period Japan, a time when the borders to the outside world were closed, meaning her whiteness was a sign of disgrace. Growing up in shame, Mizu disguises herself as a man (because, at the time, only men could seek revenge) and sets out on a quest to kill the only four white men in Japan at the time of her birth.

Noizumi and Green's story is brought to stunning on-screen life with the help of Marvel alum Jane Wu (The Avengers), who serves as supervising director and producer and dedicated her skills to overseeing the acclaimed martial arts sequences. The series has gone on to receive numerous accolades. In addition to its six Annie Awards and a Peabody nomination, Blue Eye Samurai has since earned three juried Emmy wins (Character Design, Production Design, and Storyboard), post-Q&A, and has two Emmy nominations for Outstanding Animated Program and Outstanding Sound Editing, attributed to co-supervising sound editors Myron Nettinga (Kill Bill: Vol. 1) and Paulette Lifton (Yellowstone) and their team.

To celebrate the series and its successful reception, Collider was thrilled to team with Netflix for a special screening of Episode 5, "The Tale of the Ronin and the Bride," where our own Steve Weintraub moderated an exclusive Q&A with Green, Noizumi, Wu, and Nettinga to dig into the conception, the animation, and what it's been like to release Blue Eye Samurai to the world. Taking place at Netflix's headquarters, the creatives behind this groundbreaking series discuss working with their "whole team of geniuses" to take this idea from script to production to screen.

We find out which sequences were the trickiest to bring to life, why they chose this beautiful animation style, what their backgrounds in live-action brought to the world of animation, and how they cast the show with talent like George Takei (Star Trek), Kenneth Branagh (A Haunting in Venice), Ming-Na Wen (Mulan), Brenda Song (Dollface), Stephanie Hsu (Everything Everywhere All at Once), and Randall Park (WandaVision). They also share their progress for Season 2, how many episodes, when we can expect it to drop, and more.

#BlueEyeSamurai #BlueEyeSamuraiSeason2 #Animation

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