Imaginary Worlds - Making Blue Eye Samurai

Episode Date: January 17, 2024

I was blown away by the Netflix animated series Blue Eye Samurai. I’m not alone, it has 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. I was pleasantly surprised to discover the supervising director and producer of the show, Jane Wu, began her career as an animation storyboard artist. In fact, we were working at different animation studios at the same time in L.A. We talk about why she took a live action approach to planning animated sequences in Blue Eye Samurai, and how she wanted to represent Japanese culture in a way that’s never been done in Western animation. Jane also discusses how her background in martial arts and how her personal history helped her understand the main character Mizu, a woman with dual identities on a quest for revenge 17th century Japan. Use the promo code IMAGINARY at shipstation.com to sign up for your free 30-day trial. Go to hensonshaving.com and enter IMAGINARY at checkout to get 100 free blades with your purchase. (Note: you must add both the 100-blade pack and the razor for the discount to apply.) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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and why we suspend our disbelief. I'm Eric Malinsky. I was blown away by the animated series Blue Eye Samurai, which is on Netflix. And I'm not alone. The show has a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. And in this episode, I try not to give away too many spoilers beyond the premise. If you want to watch it first, the first season is very bingeable. But I should warn you, just because it's an animated show doesn't mean it's for kids. The content is very adult.

A lot of people have compared it to Game of Thrones. In fact, George R.R. Martin is a fan of the show. Blue-Eyed Samurai takes place in 17th century Japan. The borders are closed. Westerners are forbidden. Anyone born of mixed race is considered less than human or demonic. The main character is a samurai named Mizu. Mizu has blue eyes. At the time I was born, there were four white men in

all of Japan. Men who traded in weapons and opium and flesh. One of them took my mother and made of me a monster, a creature of shape. Mizu is on a quest to kill these men, but it's complicated. She's not a hero trying to track down bad guys for the sake of justice. Mizu's motivations come from a sense of self-hatred and internalized racism. And the fact that Mizu is biracial isn't her only inner conflict. Mizu is also a woman pretending to be a man in a society where women are given very limited roles.

The only person who knows her secret is her apprentice, Ringo. I never, ever, ever, ever tell anyone that you're a girl. I never, ever, ever, ever tell anyone that you're a girl. Mizu also has a special sword that is out of this world. The metal was forged from a meteorite, so it's blue like her eyes. And as we just heard, it can slice a tree in half. And because she can fight with just about anything, she actually thinks it's a waste to use that sword on fighters who can't rise to her level. Are you afraid to fight with steel?

Thank you. No one has yet deserved my blade. Mizu walks softly through the world. Her large hat tilts over her eyes, which are further concealed through tinted glasses. Her fighting style actually reminds me of Daredevil. She's fast and quick. She trains obsessively. She can take down an army of bad guys if she fights from the shadows. And she never gives up, despite sometimes having terrible injuries. Her enemies are so afraid of Mizu, they see her not just as a man, but a monster. The man I met is no man.

A demon. Eyes empty. Nothing can stop him. The animation is stunning. It looks like a painting come to life or hand-drawn animation from an earlier era, but it's made with the latest technology, so the camera movements are really dynamic. And since I used to work in animation, I really wanted to know how the show came together. The show is set in Japan, but it's not made in Japan. The show was created by an American couple.

They're a writing team, Amber Noizumi and Michael Green. The animation was produced in France. And as I kept learning about the show, I became fascinated by the director, Jane Wu. She grew up in Taiwan and California. And I got a chance to speak with Jane.

We talked just after Netflix announced that Blue-Eyed Samurai was renewed for a second season. I had always told my team, I said, I think the show's going to do well. I mean, if anything, I'm proud of it. A couple of our friends will like it. Maybe some critics will like it. And that was enough for me. I just, I never expected this kind of global response that we've been having. And it's, it's made all the hard work and the long nights very, very worthwhile. Jane began her career as an animation storyboard artist in Los Angeles. I was also an animation storyboard artist. In fact, we were working at different studios across LA in the early 2000s. Back then, I was drawing storyboards with pencil and paper. Today, people draw them directly onto digital devices like an iPad or a Wacom tablet.

Now, if you're an animation storyboard artist, particularly for television, your job is to take the script and draw what it's going to look like on screen. You choreograph the action sequences, you figure out the key poses of the characters, and you figure out the camera angles. You ask yourself, should I draw this in a long shot? Should we cut to a close-up? And then your storyboards are sent to the animators and other artists who bring the ideas to life. The fact that Jane came from storyboarding made total sense to me. When I watched Blue-Eyed Samurai, I was impressed by how cinematic the shot compositions were. The visual language of the show reminded me of samurai films by Akira Kurosawa, westerns by Sergio Leone,

and Quentin Tarantino movies like Kill Bill. But Jane did not go to school for animation. She studied fashion and design. And after she graduated, she worked in fashion and she ran a comic book store. I had wanted to get into penciling for comics, but there weren't a lot of females back then doing it. And in fact, we would have booths at Comic-Con. I used to just bring my drafting table out there and I would also draw in the artist alley. And I would get comments like, hey, you draw pretty good for a girl. But I met a lot of comic book artists that eventually went into animation and they thought, oh, hey, Jane, you'd be really good at this. animation. And they thought, oh, hey, Jane, you'd be really good at this. So she put together a portfolio, submitted it to Sony Animation. And to her surprise,

she got a job. I was just literally dropkicked into animation and really learning on the job. And I struggled for several months. And I was just thinking to myself, like, oh, man, I'm like too old to be reconsidering another industry. So I talked to a few veterans and they gave me some exercise and some books to read. And I just gave myself that summer to figure it out, because if I couldn't, I was going to go back to fashion. But in that training session, I just like come home every night after work and just start training myself. Something did click. And I remember handing it in. And my director is just like, you know, a little crooked smile and go, yeah, that's pretty good.

We walked away and I was like, yes. Wow. So it's funny. You know, it's always like pretty good. Well, you're saying, I think in one interview you the storyboard department was dominated by guys yes i noticed that even we as storyboard artists noticed the same thing like why are we all men because i mean i think we had one woman who is a storyboard artist but then the other departments were not all men full of women yeah so i i never understood why that was like a macho thing to be a starboard artist because in children's television they call it pink blue and beige beige is for um preschool stuff where it didn't you didn't have to go into

the boy space or the girl space but once you got a little bit older into the action space they start dividing whether it's a girl show or a boy show. I predominantly fell in the boy show section because I did action. I don't do comedy. I don't do cute. I don't do any of that stuff. I just do action. And that's always where I loved to be. And I never learned how to draw cute because of what I'm interested in.

Like, it kills me to draw Smurf. I can't do it. Like it kills me to draw a Smurf. I can't do it. And I knew that I come in sort of as a unicorn in which I do understand that action space. I do understand kind of like that testosterone. And back in our days, what we call tomboy is today's non-binary, right? So I grew up as a tomboy. I always hung out with guys and most of my diet of things that I watch is like John Woo and martial arts films and things like that so I fit and then I remember a lot of the guys would just try to outdraw each other you know and put the camera in like these really impossible angles and one day I you know, let me read the script

and see what the characters are going through. Let me start trying to board what these characters are going through instead of like forgetting, forget all these dynamic angles and all that special effects stuff. Right. And I remember people coming up and saying, Oh, I really liked your boards. Yeah. It was like really like I could feel it. And I think that's when I really found my voice that I didn't have to try to be one of the guys that I just had to really understand the characters and understand how I interpret that character's moment. I heard that when you were approached with Blue-Eyed Samurai, that there are many levels that you identified with Bizu. You were like, I get this character. to be one of the bros in order to be accepted, in order to have work. I stopped using my name and just used my initials so nobody could judge me as a woman first, but judge my work first.

And I realized that after that guy had made that comment, say, hey, you draw pretty good for a girl. I was like, oh crap. That's because you can see my face. But if you couldn't see my face and you couldn't see my name, you would not know that a girl drew this. She eventually moved to Disney animation, and her reputation as a storyboard artist grew to the point where Joss Whedon asked her to plan out action sequences for The Avengers. And from there, she made a transition to live-action storyboarding. She worked on a bunch of Marvel films.

But she felt more creative freedom when she got a job as a storyboard artist on Game of Thrones. They're all just spokes on a wheel. This one's on top, then that one's on top, and on and on it spins, crushing those on the ground. I'm going to break the wheel. I'm going to break the wheel. Boy, that experience was such a game changer in terms of this is what a really good team does and operates. You did the battle against the White Walkers in the Frozen Lake. Yeah, and also the death of the dragon.

Yeah, and also the zombie bear in there too oh yes was that one of those moments where you're like we want to show what you can do on tv or absolutely so when i when i came on to blue eye samurai when they were you know when we were all just talking about it and when they were thinking about hiring me and i was thinking about joining and we were all just trying to see if we were all good fits. And I said, I want to do for this show what Game of Thrones did for TV.

I want to break the wheel. Oh, to quote Daenerys. That's right. And I broke the wheel. Yeah. In Blue-Eyed Samurai, we learn a lot about the precision and craft of making metal into the perfect sword.

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And the razor itself has a real solid feel to it. It's time to say no to subscriptions and yes to a razor that will last you a lifetime. Visit hensonshaving.com slash imaginary to pick the razor for you. Use the code imaginary and you'll get two years worth of blades free with your razor. Just make sure to add them to your cart. years worth of blades free with your razor. Just make sure to add them to your cart. That's 100 free blades when you head to h-e-n-s-o-n-s-h-a-v-i-n-g.com slash imaginary and use the code imaginary. I was not surprised that Jane went from animation to live action and back to animation again. A lot of live action science fiction and fantasy relies heavily on computer animation.

They need storyboard artists to plan out those sequences. Jane wanted to try something in reverse with Blue-Eyed Samurai. She said she wanted to take a live action approach to making animation. That sounded intriguing to me, but I was a little confused. How do you make animation like it's a live action show? First and foremost, it means lensing. I think, especially in a TV space, when you're doing 2D animation, there is no lensing. But we are in CG space now. We hardly do any 2D animation. And when you're in a CG space, guess what? There is lensing. There is a virtual camera because that's what you do in live action. That's what a director does. The

first thing you do is lens up. Can you talk about that a bit more? I mean, that's like something I learned as a film major. I remember being shocked at every time you put a new lens, how much that changes what you're seeing through the camera for people who may not understand what that means. Lensing influences how the story is delivered visually. Take, for instance, when the character feels weird, you can pull up for a close up and use a very wide lens so that the edges distort to help sell the fact that the character feels weird at this point.

But, but as you're saying, it's always emotion and story base. You don't, you, you know, you don't do the thing that those storyboard artists are doing. Like this would be cool.

You know, what if the camera was inside the Coke can, you know, it's more just kind of like, why, why is this happening? How is the character feeling? And how can this lens?

Where's the motivation? Yeah. Yeah. Here's an example. There was a scene in Blue-Eyed Samurai which just hit me like a gut punch. I won't give away the content of what's happening on screen, but I can tell you that they use a virtual lens. So half the screen is Mizo in a close-up. The background action is out of focus, but all the action is happening in the

background, and what's going on in the background is really disturbing. And the fact that the background is out of focus tells us that she's becoming emotionally detached, and that's a really important moment in her journey. Here's another thing Jane did differently. When I was a storyboard artist, the first thing we'd do is figure out what the character is doing. Then we'd figure out what kind of background to draw. And when you design the background, you have to design it in a way that spotlights the character. The downside to that approach is that sometimes the backgrounds in animation can feel more like backdrops on a stage than actual places that the characters are interacting with.

Jane took the opposite approach. Her team created 3D models of the environments. Then they decided how the characters were going to move and react to those spaces. Because also in live action, you would scout the set to say, okay, you guys, and then so the director, everybody who's working on it, you know, is on stage. And you would say, I think I want to just mainly shoot this way, because the lighting is better here, or this looks more dynamic here.

And that means we don't have to worry about the set behind me. That's all the pipeline that I pulled up front first, where in animation, that's usually last. When you get into a dramatic space, and that's the space that I come from in live action, and our script, Blue Eye Samurai, is very dramatic. So I needed to ground the world in order for the drama to live. Yeah, and I gotta say, I love that

even though it's 3D, the characters are drawn 2D, even if they're drawn like on a Wacom tablet or something, because I just feel like you cannot replicate the emotions in a character's face through CG the way you can.

There's something about a hand drawn. So our characters are not hand drawn. Our characters are all CG. What? Yeah. There's not someone on a Wacom tablet drawing that? No. We are doing what's called a two and a half D. I wanted a traditional animation look. I rarely

like super CG look because I think it can get too game-like and it sometimes get into the uncanny valley. And I wanted these characters to look very stylized haven't been a character designer before I think this is where it helped where I realized that in in in 2d it's all about line quality it's all about that line so we spent weeks looking for that line on the character and the whole entire idea of blue eye samurai was just to feel the artist's hand the craftsmanship of it all. Wow. They're blowing my mind. Good.

Tell me about the character designs. There aren't a lot of Asian characters designed for Western animation outside of, you know, I mean, there's anime. And then in the West, there's, you know, maybe Mulan, like Turning Red. This is a very adult show. I don't think I've seen this many Asian characters in animation before. What did you want to make sure people got right? I wanted people to understand the diversity amongst Asian faces and amongst Asian skin color as well. It ranges from dark to light.

See, here's the thing. I feel like when Hollywood says diversity and then you have an ensemble team and then you put every single ethnicity group in there, so that means you only have one person representing that one color. Do you know how much responsibility that person has to have? And then the writer that's writing it, Do you know how much responsibility that person has to have? And then the writer that's writing it, that's why things get stereotyped. But if you do a show that is all one color, what you're diversifying is the characters, the personalities.

And then from there, you can go, oh, I know people like that. Because you can then show assholes. You can now show smart people, dumb people, sexy people, non-sexy people, big people, little people. You show that diversity in that same group. And that's where you find the relatability in it. That's what I want try to bridge the gap. No. And I love that you didn't do that.

Well, but that's also in children's space you do that because children can't see these little details or then they just look boring. Right. And I get that. You want to dramatize it for kids because kids see things in a bigger shape and simple forms. That's just their brain development. But as adults, you can see nuances and that's what makes Blue-Eyed Samurai an adult show. It's not the sex, it's not the violence, it's the sophistication in how we delivered it. I understand costume and history and all that stuff. And if I can catch things that are off,

I don't want to watch it. That means you didn't do the research. That means you didn't think I was smart enough to see that. In terms of capturing aspects of Japanese culture, there's one particular episode I wanted to ask her about. Episode 5 of Season 1. Again, I don't want to give away too much, but I can tell you that there are two main storylines, which are interwoven seamlessly. The first one is Mizu taking on an army of bad guys.

The second story is a series of flashbacks, which give us insight into how Mizu became the person that she is. But there's a third element to the episode, which works as a framing device. The episode starts with a performance of traditional Japanese puppets called Bunraku puppets. And throughout the episode, the puppet show works as a commentary on the other storylines about Misu. Long before our great shogun ordained the sun to rise, there lived a ronin. Jane was thrilled when she read that script because she already had a deep appreciation for Bunraku puppets. she read that script because she already had a deep appreciation for Bunraku puppets. So our characters are designed after the Bunraku puppets,

because as a young person, I remember watching it with my aunt on Japanese TV and always fascinated by them. And because they, the way they move, it's so haunting. You actually forget that there's puppeteers there. And I remember for Blue-Eyed Samurai, I wanted the same haunting feeling. And also for my fashion background, I knew I needed these characters to be long and lean. Could you actually describe what Boon Rocko puppets look like? They're three feet tall puppets.

It takes about three people to operate them. The person that operates the head is considered the puppet master. The person that operates the foot is on the lowest totem pole. And then you have to learn from the feet up to the head. And it takes a whole generation to learn that skill set. The puppets themselves have no hard spines or anything. It's really just the fabric of the costume, the head and the hand, and maybe the feet are the only thing that are hard. So the body has this very languid movement, but then also can be stiff at times.

And it's all because of the skill set of the puppeteers and that's what i was trying to capture in blue eye samurai well i want to i mean i have to say episode not to keep showering you with compliments here but um no no keep it no no do it don't stop don't stop yeah episode five of of season one was one of the best hours of an animated show I have ever seen. It's brilliantly done. So the way it was written or the way you're seeing it is exactly the way it was written. And it was written beautifully by Amber Noizumi. We did it sort of like live action. Those two storylines, we shot it or boarded it linearly and then we edit it right so you planned it out as if they were two separate half episodes and then you edited them so we had an artist just do the bunraku

stuff we had two artists do the flashback stuff we had another two artists you know so it was just a way to keep things consistent in terms of performance so the funny thing is when i first started watching the show, my first instinct was, was this animated in France? Yes. Yeah, and it was. Thus, we are not anime. I just want to make it clear

because I've been getting feedback saying, oh, I love the anime. I'm like, okay, I'm not going to correct it because it's a compliment. We are not an anime because we were not produced in the East. This is 100% produced in the West. We also don't have big doll eyes,

which stylistically makes it anime. Yeah, because I feel like, I actually, I really admire French animation because they, it's often realistic, but not stiff. You know, like,

I feel like it's very, it's realistic, but very fluid. And I feel like you're either, I feel like a lot of animation is either realistic and stiff or fluid and cartoony. Is that, I mean, is that why you picked a French studio?

Yes, it is mainly because, look, there's been so many great Japanese animes out there that I'm not going to reproduce because I'm going to fail. Like all those great samurai anime, I'm not going gonna touch those and i know i didn't want to do the mulan disney thing i didn't want to go that western it had to be it really had to be a hybrid and everything in the show the philosophy of the show came from mizu she's a hybrid therefore the

production's hybrid everything on the show is hybrid. So were there many Asian artists working at the studio, which is like in the middle of France? Nope. So what did you, what were some of the things that you wanted to make sure they got right? I dragged a suitcase full of kimonos over to France in like a hundred degree heat,

wearing all these layers to show them how heavy actually a kimono is. In a kimono system, it's not a bathrobe. You have to puff and layer it because the look is to be upholstered. And what the erogenous zone for Asia is not the same as here. So therefore, you have to pad up and it's not about the bust. It's not about the waist. It's not about the booty. So it was to show them how padded things are. It was to show them how heavy those kimono fabrics are, how a woman walks in a kimono, how they sit in a kimono. Everything is different because of what the costume does to you. So that was very important. And then I also dragged stunt sword, which was a foam sword over to show them

a couple of martial arts move and to show them how to punch and kick so that they can feel what part of the bodies move. I got to say, as a starboard artist, I don't know what great shape I was in at the time. So in hand to be a sword, I mean, what was it like working with them in that regard? It obviously looked like a lot of them don't get off, get out of the chair, but I think they were all happy to, you know, be up and moving and learning a new skill and learning. And they were definitely very enthusiastic. A lot of people who listen to this show are artists who really enjoy being creative at their workstations. They also sell and ship their work around the world. But if you're stuck in the trenches of trying to fulfill

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The inspiration for the show came after their daughter was born. Emra Noizumi said that when she first saw her daughter's blue eyes, she was delighted, and then she started to wonder why she valued blue eyes. That led her to think about the history of race relations in Japan. When Jane was asked to direct the show, she immediately identified with the character of Mizu on many levels. Growing up here, I'm the Chinese girl, right? And then when I go back to Taiwan, I'm the American girl. And I never understood why I needed to be labeled why I couldn't just be me and if I'm being labeled is there an expectation that I need to have that's where the whole self-hatred comes in and when I was younger that's that's where

Mizu is at her point I'm much older now I'm a little bit more well-adjusted. So this is where Mizu Mizu ends up. So in guiding this character through her quagmire and the things that she has to go through, I know how to guide that in terms that I've gone through it myself. And you have a background in martial arts too. I do. I studied Wushu for a bit. And I think once I had my daughter really had no time. So I really should say I'm retired. Also, my body won't do what it's supposed to do anymore. So I'm retired. But it definitely has helped in that. I think I'm one of the few storyboard

artists out there that can choreograph a whole fight set. And then you can just give it to the stunt crew and they'll know what to do with it. Yeah, tell me about that. So you work with Sonny. Sonny's son was the fight choreographer. Yes. Tell me about your friendship with him and the work that you both did in choreographing the fight scenes. He came to the United States as a tender young man of, I think, early 20s early 20s and you know we have a group of martial arts community so when he came he was all always at my house having dinner and and we were always looking for a reason and an opportunity to work together and when this opportunity came up I'd like he was the first one I immediately called. I said, drop whatever you're doing. You need to come and do this with me. And he just went, yes, sir. And he just came along.

And it was wonderful because we both have the same background in martial arts training, although he's like a thousand times better than me. So therefore, in choreographing, a lot of these fights set, it was really seamless. Also, he was working from China at that time. And his team was all Chinese, right? And I'm still fluent in Chinese. So he and I can speak in Chinese and be more fluent and have it even more seamless. Because I'm fluent in languages and I'm fluent in cinema in terms of all the Asian cinema and all the Western cinema, I've always been looking for an opportunity just to merge the two because being bicultural, I'm here as a Chinese person go, why do you Americans do it like this and you don't do it

like this? Or me being a Chinese person going, why do you Chinese people do it like this and you don't do it like this? One of the things I really pounded into Sunny's head is that it's always character first. It's always story first. So when we talk about an action scene, we always talk about where Mizu is in her head and what changes emotionally in this scene. So did you do that with all the every, when you were choreographing the fight sequence, what were some of the thoughts in terms of like any just in general, the fight sequence? How would you translate? This is what means is going through emotionally. And this is how this will get translated through action. Yeah, we go through a story first and we go through some of the bigger keystone points that need to be hit. And then we would talk about

what are some of the martial arts movement or body movement or action that can happen to help service that. So for instance, in the pilot 101, when Mizu goes into the dojo and all those students are mouthing off to her, for her to pull out people's teeth is a way for her to say,

shut the F up. Be warned. You face my Shindoryu. The problem with Shindoryu is it's trash. Because it's not exciting to see swords go clack, clack, clack, and stab, stab, stab. You can't really feel that. But my God, you know what a toothache feels like, don't you?

So if I pull out teeth, you know how painful that is, right? By the way, we use the pronouns he, sorry, she for her, even though in the show people call Mizu he. On the crew, you refer to Mizu. I think some articles have actually referred to Mizu as they. I think we're happy that people are having discussions about who Mizu is. This is why we wanted to make the show. Well, actually, in the script, sometimes, you know, in 101, it went from when we're speaking about Mizu, we speak as a he, but then physically, you know, it's a she. So we're just happy that people are having these conversations about this character. that people are having these conversations about this character. I mean, in terms of, as a more delicate question, in terms of like this, I mean, there's a lot of sex on the show as well. Yes.

There must have been a lot of conversations around that too. There was a lot of conversations, and we were always very sensitive about who works on them because, and also with the violent scenes too, with the action scenes, we had to make sure that the artist was comfortable and if they weren't comfortable we just recast it to somebody that was more comfortable right so with the sex scenes like particularly in 102 the akimi and taigan in the bedroom scene we use the mirror as a device for ego. By the way, when she says 102, that's season one, episode two. And the characters that she's referring to are a princess named Akemi and a

samurai named Taigen. Taigen had a perfect record until he went up against Mizu. She humiliated him in a sword fight. Now he's worried that he's lost the standing he had to ask for Akimi's hand in marriage. The cut is so clean. A masterful cut. You can't kill yourself over a brawl with some monster. So Taigen kept looking at himself in the mirror until she could say something about his ego and he turns back at her. Once he turns his head and looks at Akimi, now Akimi has the power fluctuated into her character. And now from there on, everything was seen from her point of view. I can see it now. You challenge him and like a dog, he comes running. He faces you, his demon eyes. But your courage drives him back like

a squall against the sea. You unsheathe your magnificent sword. If you have a violent scene or a sex scene come through from a character's point of view, it's never gratuitous. And that's just directing, having a point of view, right? Yeah. Yeah. I think action is actually very easy to board. There's only certain ways you can do a punch. There's only certain placements that you can put the camera to have that landing impact. But when you get to a dramatic scene, boy, is that hard. There's no rule for that, right? It's just like, can you feel it can you not feel

it then you go oh my god maybe i'm doing this wrong like i freak out more in in dramatic action sequences and also to go back to you know when you were talking about action sequences and about you know having sunny choreograph them he only choreographs the big huge stunt sequences and some of the smaller ones like mizu, you know, the beach fight with Chiaki and the waves. That was completely choreographed in my kitchen. Really? How so? I brought a friend in that also is a stuntman martial artist, and we worked it out. And once we were happy with it, I shot it it and then i boarded it and then sent that in as a reference a lot of you know the when mizu was a kid and she got hit by chiaki and

then there was that whip and fall i had to do that fall in the backyard on a mattress and I broke a fingernail. Wow. A Kimmy jumping off of that pelican that was swinging around. I had to get in a kimono and jump off two steps to show them what that landing looked like because she shouldn't land like a superhero. It's amazing how much of yourself you put into this, like in every way. Yeah, literally, right? Yeah. To me, Blue Eye Samurai represents the best of what streaming services can do.

They can fund projects that TV networks probably wouldn't have in the past. And instead of going for the widest possible audience, they're trying to appeal to a more narrow demographic of highly dedicated viewers. But the streaming boom is over. A lot of shows are being canceled. Blue-Eye Samurai was a gamble. It's an original story. It's not an adaptation or part of a franchise. The fact that we can even talk about there being a fan base is impressive.

The show itself actually reminds me of Misu. It doesn't quite fit anywhere, but it's made a name for itself through sheer determination, focus, and talent. I don't know if Blue-Eyed Samurai is going to have a tragic ending or not, but if we get to see how Misu's story plays out, all the way to the end, get to see how Mizu's story plays out, all the way to the end, that will be enough of a happy ending for me. That's it for this week. Thank you for listening. Special thanks to Jane Wu. My assistant producer is Stephanie Billman. If you like the show, please give us a shout out on social media or leave a review wherever you get your podcasts. The best way to support the show is to donate on Patreon. At different levels,

you get free imaginary world stickers, a mug, t-shirt, and a link to a Dropbox account, which has a full length interviews of every guest in every episode. You can also get access to an ad-free version of the show through Patreon, and you can buy an ad-free subscription on Apple Podcasts. You can subscribe to the show's newsletter at imaginaryworldspodcast.org.