YMMV / Blue Eye Samurai

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Just about anything regarding Mikio. Does he feel humiliated due to being defeated by his wife? Or is he terrified of her because of that? Or maybe not terrified of Mizu's prowess, but the fact that she is clearly and obviously aroused by combat - or perhaps the way she drove live steel in a friendly sparring match, without consent from her sparring partner? Did he or did he not sell her out? And if so - why? Did he return because he genuinely changed his mind, or said so because it was a handy excuse?
  • Does Taigen regret his childhood bullying of Mizu because he grew up to respect "him" or because he outgrew his previous behaviour?
• Anvilicious: Fowler's speech to the Shogun about letting the white man in is completely unsubtle in its anti-colonialist message.
• Awesome Music:
  • Mizu Suite starts out as sweeping, inspirational, and somewhat eerie before transitioning into something more daunting and at times exciting, fitting both the show and Mizu's character perfectly. The first segment even shows up as a Recurring Riff throughout the rest of the soundtrack.
  • Episode 6 has two standout examples:
    • The episode opens with a Japanese-language cover of For Whom The Bell Tolls, which combines the instrumentation of the original song with more traditional sounds to amazing effect.
    • Jinī Jinī Jinī, an insanely catchy rockabilly song which plays over Mizu's battle against Shindo's castle guards.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: Mizu is a woman. If you didn't figure it out the moment she opens her mouth in the opening of the first episode, the dubbing for your language went the extra mile to conceal her identity. Yet it's treated as a big reveal at the end of the episode that yep, she's a girl.
• Complete Monster:
  • Abijah Fowler is a ruthless, cruel, and wantonly bloodthirsty Irish Arms Dealer and one of the Four White Devils who plots the takeover of Japan. Once a boy who lost his family to famine, Fowler turned to a new outlook on life where nobody else but himself mattered. Growing sadistic over the years, Fowler plots a violent coup against the Shogun that will see thousands of his men dead and the crowning of a puppet shogun for Fowler to control Japan from the shadows, with Fowler hoping to personally kill the Shogun and his entire family. Having birthed plenty of bastard "half-breed" children during his time in Japan, Fowler has them and their mothers killed, their bones littering his underground tunnels. Using his traitorous henchmen as target practice after their failed attempt to kill him, Fowler ultimately wishes to open up Japan's borders to destroy the country's culture as his insurrection leads Edo to ruin. With the death of his own sister treated as a mere afterthought, Fowler's newfound philosophy is nothing more than an excuse to hurt those he deems beneath him.
  • Heiji Shindo is Fowler's fellow mastermind in concocting the heinous plan to overthrow the Shogun. A seemingly-respectable lord who uses his political power to run a variety of crime rings involving Human Trafficking and gun smuggling, Shindo serves as Fowler's hands and feet in setting the stage for their grand plan to slaughter thousands of people in Edo. Shindo enjoys overseeing brutal torture sessions of prisoners, notably subjecting Taigen to days of it, and he routinely forces men who swear allegiance to him to chop their own thumbs off for his "collection". Fostering ambitions of his own, Shindo tries to betray and murder Fowler to carry out their plan for himself, only to let the blame for the treachery fall on someone else to save his own skin when Fowler survives. When Fowler's invasion of Edo begins, Shindo infiltrates the Shogun's castle and murders multiple innocents to open the way for Fowler's continued slaughter.
  • "Peculiarities" & "The Tale of the Ronin and the Bride": Boss Hamata is a brutal crime lord near the district where benevolent brothel owner Madam Kaji operates. A believer in ruthless, overwhelming force, Hamata slaughters anyone who opposes him and everyone connected to them in a scorched earth policy he has practiced many times. When he took a shine to the mute girl Kinuyo, Hamata had her taken to be his personal concubine against her and Kaji's will. Upon Kinuyo's death at the hands of Mizu, Hamata leads his forces to have Kaji and her brothel butchered.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: Ringo isn't exactly there when it comes to his mental capabilities, and it goes beyond him being simply a naive guy from rural nowhere. He's incredibly talkative, was born deformed, implying a genetic defect and it usually takes some time for him to grasp certain concepts, all while he acts in a childlike manner despite being an adult man.
• Evil Is Cool: Despite being an utter monster, Fowler's surprising cunning, nightmarish brutality, layered backstory, and voice actor's memorable performance made him a fan-favorite.
• Foe Yay Shipping: Mizu x Akemi has proven to be a popular ship, both due to Girl on Girl Is Hot and the interesting dynamic the two develop, especially when they finally properly meet. A lot of fanfics pairing them explore what could've happened if Mizu had indulged Akemi's attempted Honey Trap or defended her from her father's men and taken her on as a travelling companion.
• Love to Hate: Fowler is one of the darkest and evilest animated villains to come out of Netflix since the Lord Commander. However, said evilness, along with his subversive portrayal as a cunning, intelligent mastermind and the strength of the writing combined with Kenneth Branagh's voice performance, made him an immediate fan-favorite villain who stole every scene he was in.
• Memetic Mutation: The Great Fire of X^ExplanationMizu caused the Great Fire of Meireki, and is heading towards London, where there was a great, devastating fire just a few years later. People quickly started to joke around that the plot would go all around the globe to trace great fires within Mizu's lifespan.
• Narm:
  • Fowler loudly declaring his plan against the Shogun while Ise has her nose up his ass. Aside from being a very stupid move for a mostly cunning Big Bad, it sounds more like something from a raunchy parody than a straight samurai action show.
  • Out of all possible music pieces to be used (not to mention the series own soundtrack) during Mizu's Training Montage during her childhood, Battle Without Honor or Humanity was picked. In that arrangement. Yeah.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The near entirety of Shindo's compound as depicted in "All Evil Dreams and Angry Words". It begins with Mizu stumbling across a hallway littered with the bones of infants (who are later revealed to be Fowler's bastard offspring) and hardly gets any better from there other than some brief reprieves.
  • Lady Ito orders her elder son to shut the gate of the escape tunnel, leaving the rest of the shogun's lords in attendance to rattle the bars and plead as they are trapped in the encroaching fire and smoke.
• Squick:
  • An unfortunate Shindo student gets the tooth of another student stuck into his eye with enough force to get it lodged half-way through the eyeball.
  • Fowler getting sodomized by one of Madame Kaji's prostitutes wearing a Tengu mask. Especially when after she pauses after the Irishman climaxes, he then tells her that he didn't say stop.
  • Akemi is given a "special" wedding feast on behalf of her new mother-in-law. The courses include chilled fox brain, fetal pig's blood, and raw rabbit liver covered in horse semen.
  • Mizu's fighting style involves a whole lot of broken, cut-off, and torn-off limbs. Which she doesn't shy away from then tossing at the still alive enemies or even grabbing as Improvised Weapons and continuing the carnage.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The Painted CGI-style animation is nothing short of incredible, and the show's well-choreographed, visually striking fight scenes have been a significant point of praise.
• Trans Audience Interpretation: It would be easy to interpret Mizu as transgender or genderfluid given how she often presents as a man and seems far more comfortable doing that than when she is shown presenting femininely. On the other hand, the harm Mizu is put through by having to present as the other gender and what it does to her self-worth is similarly relatable to a trans audience.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Mizu allowing the Tokunobu guards to take Akemi back to Kyoto and her Arranged Marriage leads to both Ringo and Taigen calling Mizu out for only caring about her revenge. However, it comes off as unwarranted considering that A) Mizu is thoroughly exhausted and injured after battling the Thousand Claws army to save the lives of everyone in the brothel, including Akemi herself, and is thus in no shape to take on another group of armed enemies, B) Akemi and Mizu's meeting in the brothel begins with Akemi trying to drug and then kill Mizu, C) making an enemy of Akemi's father and the shogun by killing these men would make Mizu's quest even more dangerous, D) the new group of soldiers are legitimate guards just doing their job rather than murderous gangers intent on massacring innocent women, and E) Akemi originally sought out Mizu to get Taigen to kill her in a duel so that Akemi can marry him instead of the shogun's son, and this may still be her goal. Rather than accepting the show's assertion that Mizu is being heartless, one could easily argue that Akemi is being unreasonable to expect Mizu to stick her neck out for her.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Akemi is consistently portrayed as a self-centred Sheltered Aristocrat and acts incredibly entitled and selfish throughout the whole story, always expecting to get whatever she wants, no matter what. To the point where her arc is not about dropping the behaviour, but embracing it (which is by itself already a rather unsympathetic thing to do). And the only problems she ever has are the first-world ones. Despite all of that, the story clearly expects the audience's sympathy to be on her side all the time. Sure, she is treated unfairly by various characters around her, but she isn't fair herself. This further ties with Mizu's status as Unintentionally Sympathetic: Akemi outright commands Mizu to fight for her, as if Mizu was her personal attack dog or owed anything to Akemi in the first place. Then there is the finale of the season, which makes all prior actions by Akemi moot (and lives she put in the line) as she has a change of heart and decides to play ball with the shogunate for her personal benefit.

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