Trivia / Blue Eye Samurai

• Actor-Shared Background:
  • Mizu is half-white and half-Japanese, like her voice actress Maya Erskine.
  • Some of the characters are played by actors who are, even partially, of Japanese descent. These include Masi Oka (Ringo), Darren Barnet (Taigen) and George Takei (Seki).
  • Fowler is Irish much like Kenneth Branagh.
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: Some media news sites have incorrectly referred to the show as a Japanese anime, when it is actually an American and French production. This is most likely due to it being set in Japan with mostly Japanese characters, which is (understandably) more common in Japanese media than in American media.
• Creator Couple: The creators, Michael Green and Amber Noizumi, are a married couple.
• Dueling Works:
  • The series premiered on November 3, 2023, the same day as the first episode of the second season of Invincible.
  • The animated adaptation of Capcom's Onimusha series premiered on Netflix the day before, November 2, 2023. Both are eight-episode CG shows starring a samurai in an Ancient Japan setting. However, despite Onimusha being made in Japan, helmed by the famed Takashi Miike and based on a pre-existing IP (and having its main character modeled upon legendary actor Toshiro Mifune), Blue Eye Samurai quickly eclipsed it in popularity and critical acclaim, while Onimusha did not make much of a splash.
• Fake Nationality: While Maya Erskine is genuinely half-Japanese, much of the voice cast portraying the almost entirely Japanese cast are a variety of Asian-Americans and Asian-Canadians of non-Japanese origin. Notable examples include Randall Park (Korean), Ming-Na Wen, Byron Mann, and Patrick Gallagher (all Chinese - Macanese/Malaysian for Wen, Hongkonger for Mann and Irish/Chinese for Gallagher), Brenda Song (Thai/Hmong), among many others
• Inspiration for the Work: According to Amber Noizumi, the original idea for the series was rooted in her and Green's biracial daughter, who like Mizu has blue eyes. Noizumi has also said that Mizu's treatment for being biracial was inspired by her own experiences as half-white, half-Japanese when she grew up.
• Playing Against Type: Randall Park is mostly known for Plucky Comic Relief and Nice Guy roles especially by the 2020s. Here, he plays Heiji Shindo, one of the show's most despicable villains, and who's villainy is very much played seriously, with not even much in the way of Black Comedy to balance it out.

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