History Recap / BlueEyeSamuraiS01E05TheTaleOfTheRoninAndTheBride

* LoveMakesYouEvil: When she first set out to find the "white devils", [[GainingTheWillToKill Mizu lacked the ruthless attitude]] needed for her RoaringRampageOfRevenge, and was nearly killed by some petty opium traders while trying to talk them down and assuring them she meant no harm. In the show's present day, she'd have carved through without breaking a sweat. It's being rejected and betrayed by Mikio [[LoveIsAWeakness after falling in love with him]] in their brief marriage that makes Mizu become the "demon" she is now.

* LoveMakesYouEvil: When she first set out to the find the "white devils", [[GainingTheWillToKill Mizu lacked the ruthless attitude]] needed for her RoaringRampageOfRevenge, and was nearly killed by some petty opium traders while trying to talk them down and assuring them she meant no harm. In the show's present day, she'd have carved through without breaking a sweat. It's being rejected and betrayed by Mikio [[LoveIsAWeakness after falling in love with him]] in their brief marriage that makes Mizu become the "demon" she is now.

->"No one man can defeat an army, but one ''creature'' can. [[StartOfDarkness How does such a creature come to be?]]

** Downplayed, but as part of her attempt to make amends with Mikio, Mizuhad put on a nice white outfit (perhaps the same one she was married in), and makeup to look pretty for Mikio's return. She's still in that attire when the men come to try to claim the bounty on her.

* LogicalWeakness: Even setting aside other issues with WolverineClaws, a major weakness they have compared to someone who is using a sword is their reach, as the swordsman has a weapon that can be dangerous from much further away, allowing him to kill someone armed with the claws while the swordsman is safely out of range. When Mizu converts her sword into a makeshift ''naginata'', this is even more pronounced, as the now ''much'' longer reach that Mizu has on her weapon makes the Claws attempting to fight her nearly suicidal.
* LoveMakesYouEvil: [[GainingTheWillToKill Mizu lacks the ruthless attitude]] needed for her RoaringRampageOfRevenge, and nearly gets killed by some opium traders she'd have carved through without breaking a sweat in the present day. It's being rejected and betrayed by Mikio [[LoveIsAWeakness after falling in love with him]] in their brief marriage that makes Mizu become the "demon" she is now.

* MaritalRapeLicense: Averted. Mizu clearly anticipates that Mikio might try to invoke this license, and her first night after their marriage she goes to bed with her sword, ready to strike if Mikio tries to touch her. Mikio, however, gently tells her he will never do such a thing.
* MookChivalry: Justified; after Mizu slaughters the first Claws to take her on, [[WhoWillBellTheCat the rest are reluctant to tangle with her]] (until she's seemingly helpless under the door). She also retreats into the brothel to restrict the number of opponents who can attack at the same time.

* TheReveal: There's two at the end of the puppet fhow. First, that the puppet show was being performed for none other than the shogun himself (along with his family and some attendants), and then there's the fact that Akemi is there, especially the WhamShot of Akemi's blackened teeth.

* SparingTheFinalMook: At one point during the fight in the brothel, Mizu comes across a very young member of the Claws, who is hiding out in a room, trembling with fear, and puts his hands up to show he means no harm. She moves on wordlessly, sparing him. However, later on Mizu comes across the same Claw outside the brothel, after she's defeated the rest of the Claws, and by this point she's no longer feeling merciful (perhaps influences by the trauma of the flashbacks she's been having throughout the fight, perhaps because she was going to spare another Claw earlier only for him to nearly kill her), and kills him without hesitation.
* StockScream: The famous Wilhelm Scream can be heard as kills one of the Claws in particularly impressive fashion.

* WreckedWeapon: After wrestling her way free of the Claw who wounded her, Mizu cut through both sets of his WolverineClaws with her sword. She must have either spared him or he ran away at that point, because the scene shifts without us seeing what happens next, but it's the same man who later grabs her from behind and nearly strangles her to death.

** The Ronin's desire for revenge in compared to a storm, one that begins as a gentle breeze.

** The ronin's bride is from the clan with the phoenix crest. The phoenix is known for springing back to life after it dies. After her the ronin's wife is reborn, but as a terrifying, monstrous spirit that kills him in revenge for how he murdered her and their child. Mizu, whose plot in the flashbacks borrows elements from both the ronin and the bride, is also symbolically reborn from the ashes after her life with Mikio is forever destroyed.

* ApatheticCitizens: When Mizu is wounded and staggering down the road, most people ignore her staggering forward and asking for help. The most she gets for a response is a woman stopping her child from getting close to Mizu. The prostitutes on the bridge don't notice Mizu's condition at first, and so they approach her like she's just another customer, but Mizu is close enough they can see the bad shape she's in and are appalled at the sight.

* BaitTheDog: Mikio's entire character is essentially this. While he and Mizu start off tense, he also often shows a kindness and decency that has been absent from Mizu's life (he never says anything bigoted about Mizu being mixed race or having blue eyes, he's obviously impressed with her strength when she does chores that require heavy lifting, respects the work Mizu does with helping him tame horses, and acts gentle and kind to her no matter what happens... until Mizu reveals how bloodthirsty she can be in battle. They he may have betrayed her, and even if he didn't, he abandoned her to die and killed her mother over an argument.

* BerserkButton: If Mikio ''wasn't'' the traitor (and thus just desperate to cover his tracks after being accused), he flies off the handle more than he'd ever been seen to when Mizu's mother calls him dishonorable and weak. (Then again, those words would be a ''massive'' provocation for a samurai from that era.)

* TheCavalryArrivesLate: Samurai serving Akemi's father arrive not long after Mizu has finished fighting the Claws. If they'd arrived sooner they could have been useful against the Claws and made the whole thing much easier on Mizu. If it had been anyone but Mizu fighting against the Claws, they probably would have found nothing but Akemi's corpse, just from getting there a few minutes too late.

* DaddyHadAGoodReasonForAbandoningYou: Mizu's mother tries to claim this, saying that Mizu was better off alone after the fire. It's not particularly convincing.

* DramaticIrony: A sincerely impressed Madam Kaji tells Mizu that she is more of a man than any that has ever walked through her door, which is pretty ironic since Mizu is a woman passing as a man. This makes it ironic on a meta level, [[AlternativeCharacterInterpretation unless the shrewd and perceptive Madam Kaji has realized that Mizu is a woman]]...

* HeroicBSOD: In the aftermath of fighting off the men and while Mikio and her mother get into an argument about who's at fault, Mizu clearly mentally shuts down as she turns away from both of them and starts walking away, her eyes even going into an unfocused ThousandYardStare. She doesn't snap back into focus until she hears her mother screaming in pain from Mikio stabbing her.

* InterplayOfSexAndViolence: It's clear from the sparring match she has with Mikio that Mizu gets a thrill from combat that is more than just adrenaline. It's possible that this, along with her relative carelessness with his life (since the sparring match ends with Mizu pushing a blade against Mikio's neck after he tried to stop Mizu from escalating things and end the fight entirely on several occasions), is why Mikio sold her out if he was the traitor.

* KickingAssInAllHerFinery: Downplayed, but as part of her attempt to make amends with Mikio, Mizuhad put on a nice white outfit (perhaps the same one she was married in), and makeup to look pretty for Mikio's return. She's still in that attire when the men come to try to claim the bounty on her.
* LeaveYourQuestTest: Both the Ronin and Mizu are given the chance to put aside their RoaringRampageOfRevenge and start a new life with someone else.
* LogicalWeakness: Even setting aside other issues with WolverineClaws, a major weakness they have compared to someone who is using a sword is their reach, as a sword wielder has a weapon that can be dangerous from much further away. When Mizu converts her sword into a makeshift ''naginata'', this is even more pronounced, as the now ''much'' longer reach that Mizu has on her weapon makes the Claws attempting to fight her nearly suicidal.
* LoveMakesYouEvil: [[GainingTheWillToKill Mizu lacks the ruthless attitude]] needed for her RoaringRampageOfRevenge, and nearly gets killed by some opium traders she'd have carved through in the present day. It's being rejected and betrayed by Mikio [[LoveIsAWeakness after falling in love with him]] in their brief marriage that makes Mizu become the "demon" she is now.

* MookChivalry: Justified; after Mizu slaughters the first Claws to take her on, the rest are reluctant to tangle with her (until she's seemingly helpless under the door). She also retreats into the brothel to restrict the number of opponents who can attack at the same time.

* NoodleIncident: Mizu obviously wants to know more when her mother mentions that Mikio is in disgrace with his lord, but her mother simply waves it off, saying that lords put samurai into disgrace over the most minor things. We never find out what happened to get Mikio disgraced and sent away to the mountains.

* RegretfulTraitor: Even if he didn't sell her out to the men who come to claim her bounty, Mikio is still this, since he sees Mizu in trouble, and while he obviously looks sad and full of regret to abandon her, he still does so.
* TheReveal: The puppet show was being performed for none other than the shogun himself (along with his family and some attendants), and particularly the WhamShot of Akemi's blackened teeth.

** The ronin's bride is from the clan with the phoenix crest. After her death she is reborn, but as a terrifying, monstrous spirit that kills him in revenge for how he murdered her and their child. Mizu, whose plot in the flashbacks borrows elements from both the ronin and the bride, is also symbolically reborn from the ashes after her life with Mikio is forever destroyed.

* ShoutOut: The scrawny teenage mook that Mizu spares (the first time she encounters him) is like a shout out to ''Film/{{Yojimbo}}'', where Sanjuro encounters a teenage farm boy leaving home and joining one of the Yakuza gangs early in the movie because the boy refuses to live his entire life as a penniless farmer. When the boy is the last survivor of Sanjuro's rampage at the end of the film, Sanjuro tells the terrified boy who's screaming for his mother to go back home and live a farmer's life, and the boy gratefully accepts Sanjuro's mercy. This teenager isn't quite so lucky...
* SilverFox: Mikio is a tall, strongly built, older man with gray streaks in his hair and beard who is still quite attractive.
* SparingTheFinalMook: At one point during the fight in the brothel, Mizu comes across a very young member of the Claws, whois just hiding out in a room, trembling with fear, and she just moves on, sparing. However, later on Mizu comes across the same Claw outside, after she's defeated the rest, and by this point she's no longer feeling merciful (perhaps influences by the flashbacks she's been having throughout the fight, perhaps because she was going to spare another Claw earlier only for him to nearly kill her later), and kills him without hesitation.

* WhatTheHellHero: Ringo is deeply disappointed when Mizu refuses to help Akemi, calling it a dishonorable choice and not worthy of a samurai. Mizu snarls back that she has ''never'' claimed to be a samurai, the Akemi is going to be better off returning home instead of continuing to be a runaway, and that her path of revenge doesn't leave room for sentiment.

* RevengeBeforeReason: Even after killing the clan leaders who murdered his lord, the Ronin swears to kill all member of their bloodline. This includes his own wife--even though she has fled her clan--and [[OffingTheOffspring his own son.]]

* EtherealWhiteDress: Mizu shouldn't be wearing a white kimono, but it's clearly played for RuleOfSymbolism as she becomes the ''onryō'', with her [[WhiteShirtOfDeath white kimono splattered in the blood]] of the bounty hunters

** The ronin's bride is from the clan with the phoenix crest. After her death she is reborn, but as a terrifying, monstrous spirit that kills him in revenge for how he murdered her and their child.
** Mizu, whose plot in the flashbacks borrows elements from both the ronin and the bride, is also symbolically reborn from the ashes after her life with Mikio is forever destroyed.

At the puppet performance, the narrator concludes the show, and it is revealed that the performance was done for the shogun and his guests. The shogun then asks Akemi what she thinks of the entertainment in Edo. Akemi replies that there is one thing she believes in the show was inaccurate: She says she met an onryō once, and searched the creature's eyes for any sign of love, mercy, or goodness, and found none. As Akemi speaks, we get a close up of her face, showing her teeth have been blackened, indicating that her engagement to the shogun's younger son has gone forward.

* EtherealWhiteDress: Mizu shouldn't be wearing a white kimono, but it's clearly played for RuleOfSymbolism as she becomes the onryou, with her [[WhiteShirtOfDeath white kimono splattered in the blood]] of the bounty hunters

* TearsOfBlood: The [[YourMakeupIsRunning red makeup]] gives Mizu this appearance.

* EtherealWhiteDress: Mizu shouldn't be wearing a white kimono, but it's clearly played for RuleOfSymbolism as she becomes the onryou.

-->'''Tayū''' How did this terrible creature come to be? Hate alone was not enough. It took one more ingredient: Love... poisoned by betrayal, to bring so much bloodshed and woe.

->How did this terrible creature come to be? Hate alone was not enough. It took one more ingredient: Love... poisoned by betrayal, to bring so much bloodshed and woe.
-->--'''The Narrator'''

At the puppet performance, the narrator concludes the show, and it is revealed that the performance was done for the shogun and guests of his. The shogun then asks Akemi what she thinks of the entertainment in Edo. Akemi replies that there is one thing she believes in the show was inaccurate: She says she met an onryō once, and searched the creature's eyes for any sign of love, mercy, or goodness, and found none. As Akemi speaks, we get a close up of her face, showing her teeth have been blackened, indicating that her engagement to the shogun's younger son has gone forward.

* TheReveal: The puppet show was being performed by none other than the shogun himself (along with his family and some attendants), and particularly the WhamShot of Akemi's blackened teeth.

* YourMakeupIsRunning: Mizu put on makeup in an attempt to look pretty for Mikio and reconcile with him after their fight. Between her tears of grief and rage when Mikio abandons her, the blood that has splashed on her face during the fight, and sweat from exertion, it's a mess by the time Mikio returns.