Western Animation / Blue Eye Samurai

Revenge does not hesitate

In 1633, during the Edo Period, Japan closed its borders to the outside world. Completely. Citizens would never see a white face, nor any face that was not Japanese. A child born of mixed race would be considered less than human. Pitiable. Monstrous.

Mizu is the child of just such a union, the half-breed offspring of a Japanese mother and a white European father, something anyone can see just by her distinctive blue eyes. All her life she has been shunned, despised, and feared. An outcast. Now, she seeks revenge on the men responsible.

There were four white men in the whole of Japan when Mizu was born. One by one she will find them. One by one she will kill them.

Blue Eye Samurai is an animated series from Netflix, and created by husband and wife team Michael Green and Amber Noizumi. Its first season premiered on November 3, 2023. On December 11, it was announced by Netflix that the series had been renewed for another season.

A trailer can be seen here. The entire first episode can be seen here on YouTube. Netflix also released a Deliberately Monochrome "Special Edition" of Episode 6 on YouTube here.

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Blue Eye Samurai contains examples of the following tropes:

A-C

• Absurdly Sharp Blade: Lampshaded with Mizu's blade being made out of Thunderbolt Iron, but it still cuts in single strokes things that would be exceedingly hard to cut at all.
• Action Dress Rip: Downplayed when it comes to the actual Clothing Damage, but checks all the other boxes otherwise. When sparring with Mikio, Mizu is rather easily overpowered, having to make tiny steps due to her kimono. She loosens it in a rather provicative way, allowing her to make regular paces - and she proceeds to trash Mikio around with frightening ease.
• Advertising by Association: Both the official trailers and posters claim that the show is made by the writer of Logan and Blade Runner 2049.
• Agony of the Feet:
  • As big part of her Combat Pragmatist approach, Mizu repeatedly attacks the feet and lower calves of her enemies. If she isn't cutting them off, then she will stab, bludgeon or stomp on them, while also routinely breaking or crushing bones.
  • She ends up on the receiving end of the trope when one of the traps in Fowler's fortress pierces her left leg slightly below her ankle. It significantly impedes her moves, but doesn't really slow her.
• All for Nothing: Madame Kaiji's request for Mizu to Mercy Kill Kinuyo and Make It Look Like an Accident in order to avoid Boss Hamata slaughtering everybody in the brothel in retaliation proves to be this on two fronts. Firstly, whilst Mizu does initially succeed in the kill and posing the body of Hamata's personal bodyguard to make it look like a Mutual Kill, she is seen by a young boy on leaving the building. Unable to bring herself to kill the witness, she instead tries to get him to alert the guards to the scene and keep quiet about her, only for the boy to reveal the truth to Hamata, prompting his Thousand Claws gang to assault the prostitutes as Kaiji feared. Secondly, despite the odds, Mizu proves skilled and determined enough in the subsequent melee to slaughter all the gang members save Hamata himself, depriving him of any power or leverage he had in the town and meaning that Kinuyo's death was ultimately avoidable if Mizu had simply fought the gang directly from the start.
• All Girls Like Ponies: Despite growing up in a male disguise and being incredibly unladylike in general, adult Mizu is still drawn to and shows great interest in horses.
• Allohistorical Allusion: Fowler comments that Japan might have managed to keep the rest of the world at arm's length for "a couple of centuries" were it not for his presence in the country. In real life, the sakoku isolation lasted until the arrival of the Perry Expedition in 1853 (the show is set in 1657, almost exactly two centuries before).
• Already Met Everyone: Mizu met prior with certain characters, often in a rather unsettling manner
  • Taigen is the leader of the group of children tormenting young Mizu. She rubs it in his face, unnerving Taigen but he only recognises Mizu after noticing her blue eyes.
  • While still working in Master Eiji's forge, Mizu received some harsh training from Chiaki and was the one forging his sword - the first she ever did entirely on her own. This time, it's Chiaki who recognises her first, taking the job on the sole mention of a blue-eyed half-breed, but she later connects the dots even before he reveals his face.
  • While "meeting" is a big word (she was simply carried in a norimono and loudly announced by the carriers), Mizu did spot the face of Akemi inside and they exchanged glances. This becomes important much later, when Akemi is trying to poison Mizu, but Mizu easily recognises the princess and what's going on, only pretending to be fooled.
• Alternate History: The show takes place in the early Edo Period, with the main action in 1656 and 1657. While the show is very accurate on details of Japanese life at this time, it makes three major changes to history for the plot: the Itoh clan rule instead of the Tokugawa, the highly limited Western trade of the period is done through four British criminals rather than the Dutch East India Company (who operated openly, if under strict restrictions, from the island of Dejima off the coast of Nagasaki rather than in secret), and Japan has never adopted firearms for any of its armies (firearms appeared in Japan around 1270, as primitive metal tubes invented in China and called teppō, and Western-style arquebuses were adapted and manufactured by the thousands during the Sengoku era, with warlords like Oda Nobunaga utilizing them effectively against their enemies).
• Ambiguous Situation:
  • We never learn if Master Eiji ever figured out Mizu's true sex, which might or might not significantly affect the way he treats her and what sort of person he is. He did figure out on his own that she's one way or another "impure". For added ambiguity, he stops Mizu as she's about to confess the truth to him.
  • It is never made clear who actually sold Mizu out to her enemies: her husband (who grows terrified of her due to her combat skills and lust for battle), her mother (who is addicted to opium and needs to fund her habit), both, or neither.
  • Did Heiji Shindo really want Mizu to kill Fowler or was he just luring her into a trap? His hatred for Fowler is genuine, but he delivers Taigen to Fowler bound inside a sake barrel; exactly the trap that Taigen feared he was planning.
• Anachronism Stew: Fowler repeatedly refers to 'the British', in the modern sense (as in, the inhabitants of Great Britain and Northern Ireland). In the 1600s the term would've been used to refer to the 'Britons', the inhabitants of Wales and Cornwall, seen as being the last descendants of the population of pre-Roman Britain. At this point in time England, Scotland, and Ireland were all still separate kingdoms, and the inhabitants were viewed as separate "races".
• And This Is for...: Violet, as said by Fowler when he proceeds to punch the living shit out of Mizu.
• An Arm and a Leg:
  • Mizu fighting style involves lobbing off limbs of her enemies, be it feet and hands or entire arms and legs, particularly when they can't properly guard them. Even if the mooks on the receiving end survive the attack itself, they are in no condition to keep fighting.
  • She later takes off the right arm of Heiji Shindo when he has the bright idea to threaten her and grab her own arm.
• Arranged Marriage: And both cases turn out to be Perfectly Arranged Marriage, against all odds:
  • Mizu's mother arranges for her to marry a disgraced samurai, still a high station for someone like Mizu. For all his gruff exterior, Mikio turns out to be an accepting and caring man, and things start to work out for them... until Mizu bests him in a sparring duel, while also being sexually aroused by the fact.
  • Akemi ultimately is married off to the shogun's second son. As she rather quickly finds out, he's a Shrinking Violet Nice Guy and the gruff exterior, along with the gossip about his cruelty and merciless nature that makes him too haughty to even talk to people, are part of the ruse to hide the fact that the man has a stutter. In fact, Akemi is so well with her new husband, she ditches Taigen when she has the opportunity to simply run away with him and a large pile of money.
• Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy: Taigen, who is very confident in his status as master swordsman. And then Mizu defeated and humiliated him, making him fixated on revenge and regaining his honour.
• Artistic License – Biology: Blue eyes are a recessive trait. A Japanese person would need to have at least one western ancestor in order to have a blue-eyed child with a westerner.
• Artistic License – History:
  • Akemi's stance towards ohaguro as disgusting and ugly is a modern, Western perception of it. It's far more likely she would be practicing it herself on her own, if not as part of her Proper Lady image, then as The Fashionista due to the period-appropriate fad for it.
  • Mizu's bridal kimono is white. It wasn't until the 20th century that white started to be used in Japan in any other context than mourning, not to mention the Western-style bridal gowns.
  • The fire of 1657 which dominates a large portion of the first season's finale (to the point of being the episode's name) really did happen, with most of Edo burning to the ground just like in the show. In real life, the fire started in a temple, and the main keep of the shogun's palace survived; but in the show, the main keep is where the fire starts, and it goes up like a match.
• Ask a Stupid Question...: When one of the students at the Shindo Dojo boasts that Taigen has won 24 duels and asks Mizu how many duels she has won, she gestures at the beaten bodies that litter the floor around them and asks if she should have been counting.
• Audible Sharpness: Oh yes. Every single blade when picked, unsheathed, thrown or even held in a menacing way, makes a stock "sharp" sound - they don't even need to be swords for the sound effect to be applied.
• Autobots, Rock Out!:
  • A Japanese-language cover of "For Whom The Bell Tolls" (originally by Metallica) kicks in when Mizu is fighting Heiji Shindo's gigantic henchman in episode 6.
  • Tomoyasu Hotei's theme from Battles Without Honor and Humanity plays during Mizu's Training Montage in the first episode.
• Bait-and-Switch Gunshot: After locking Shindo soldiers inside the burning shogun castle, Akemi and Seki are running away. A gunshot is heard. Akemi slows her pace, then stands still. Then she looks back, and Seki is lying on the bridge, dying.
• Bargain with Heaven: Abijah Fowler, on a lark, offers to make a pact with Jesus. He goes into a chapel, proclaims that he's never had much use for Christianity and won't pretend otherwise now, but says that if he does succeed in toppling the Shogun he will take is as a sign that God has favored him. In return, he will spread Christianity throughout Japan.
• Battle Amongst the Flames: The final fight between Fowler and Mizu in the end of season 1 takes place amid the burning palace and the Great Fire of Meireki.
• Be Careful What You Wish For:
  • As they grow closer, Mikio wants to spar with Mizu so he can see her in combat. The sparring quickly stops being funny when both Mizu easily overpowers him and is also aroused by fight.
  • Ise wishes a better lot for herself, so she is overjoyed with the prospect of becoming a part of the shogun's court for real, rather than just doing a "princess act" as a prostitute. The very same day, she faces a court intrigue and is murdered to keep the incoming coup hidden.
• Because You Were Nice to Me:
  • Ise tells Akemi about the coup plans - something she knew for quite a while - only after Akemi offers her a position as part of her court entourage, despite Ise being nothing but rough towards Akemi during her stint in madame Kaji's brothel
  • While he has a hard time saying it aloud, Taigen grows to respect Mizu and helps her around as he sees he owes her more than she disrespected him prior.
• Been There, Shaped History: In the final episode the battle between Mizu and Fowler indirectly results in (a version of) the Great Fire of Meireki in 1657.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: Once Taigen and Mizu begin actively cooperating, they continue to bicker and argue as their relationship deepens. Taigen even grows noticeably aroused when they are sparring, but embarrassingly tries to claim he's thinking of Akemi.
• Beneath Suspicion: The Japanese in the conspiracy against the shogun are also plotting against Fowler - including Heiji Shindo. While Fowler is more or less aware of the fact and does catch some of the members of the inner circle red-handed when trying to double-cross him, he never suspects Heiji, treating him as a good friend and the one person he can always trust. Heiji is meanwhile so terrified by how callously and effortlessly Fowler delt with Master Chiba and took over his army, he decides to switch sides once more and support the Irishman.
• Best Served Cold: Mizu dedicated her life to the study of fencing and finding the four men who might be her father - and killing them all. She vowed this when she was a child, but proceeds to hunt them down as an adult.
• Better to Die than Be Killed:
  • One of the Shogun's retainers commits seppuku when they are cornered. Fowler bemusedly remarks that he didn't think the man had it in him, then asks if anybody else would like to follow suit. The Shogun says Fowler should put away his gun and that he will die with honor, perhaps indicating that he will also commit suicide, but Fowler says that for him he needs to specifically be seen having a dishonorable death. So Fowler shoots him in the face.
  • In the finale, while fleeing the great fire, the Shogun's wife orders her sons to bar the doorway behind them so that nobody else will be able to escape. When they protest that these are subjects and loyal retainers, she says that they've seen their father's dishonorable death and should have killed themselves when they had the chance.
• Bifurcated Weapon: Mizu's katana can also be integrated into a naginata.
• Bilingual Bonus: The dialogues run on Translation Convention, but the various writings are left in Japanese. They aren't there just for aesthetics.
• Bittersweet Ending: The ending of the first season has its ups and downs. Fowler's attack leaves the Shogun dead and most of the capital burned to the ground, but Mizu and her companions manage to save Akemi, the Shogun's wife and children, and put all of Fowler's co-conspirators out of commission before putting a stop to his plan. Akemi breaks off her relationship with Taigen to pursue courtly power and Mizu sails away, alone with Fowler in chains, to search for revenge in London.
• Bizarrchitecture: Downplayed, as the architecture is mundane in nature. Tanabe Island fortress is a mix of Japanese and European defences and general architectural aesthetics. On top of that, it's full of disguised death traps, which makes one wonder how the place operates on its own, rather than as a dungeon for outsiders to try crawling through.
• The Blacksmith: Master Eiji is a well-established swordsmith - enough that people can recognise his craft and signature. He also took Mizu as his apprentice when she was a child, which does give her a few handy abilities.
• Blood Is Squicker in Water: Played absolutely straight. No matter the amount of blood or water, the deep crimson will stay in a single spot, rather than dissolving easily.
• Body Double: When she decides to go searching for Taigen, Akemi has a servant of hers dress up in her clothes, face away from the door, and be silent. Her father is neglectful enough that it takes him a full three days to figure it out.
• Break the Haughty:
  • Taigen's humiliation at Mizu's hands. It's then followed by going through the Torture Cellar of Heiji Shindo and being rejected by Akemi in the finale. The guy can't catch his breath between people shattering his ego.
  • Discussed and eventually admitted by Seki. His goal when "running away" with Akemi is to make sure she has had enough of the hardships of being on the road, comes to her senses and returns to her father, accepting the Arranged Marriage. But while Akemi is humiliated, she's also furious over being played, and leaves without Seki on her further search of the blue-eye samurai.
• Bribe Backfire:
  • Mizu sees a traveller arrested for trying to bribe a gate guard. Since she had been planning to do the same thing she tries to quietly step out of line, only to be picked out by the guards who ask why she's trying to sneak away.
  • Heiji Shindo tries to simply buy off Mizu to prevent her from further complicating the coup he and Fowler have been planning. Not only does he achieve nothing, but after being too pushy, he also loses his right arm for his trouble.
• Brick Joke: At the festival in Mihonoseki, an old woman says that she is planning to wish for a new husband if she wins the contest. Two episodes later, when Akemi travels to Mihonoseki, the old woman reappears with her new husband in tow; though she didn't win, her wish still came true.
• Briefcase Full of Money: A wooden box full of ryo shows up few times as the in-universe variant:
  • Heiji Shindo offers the exorbitant sum of 50,000 ryo (slightly less than 2 pounds of pure gold) in a wooden box as part of his bribe to make Mizu give up her Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
  • Princess Akemi offers madame Kaji a smaller box, containing five-fold the amount of money the prostitutes working for Kaji owe her via their contracts, effectively buying their freedom. It's not as much as a bribe this time, but a handy way of showing respect to Kaji and also helping her and her "troupe".
  • In the finale, Seki shows up to rescue Akemi from the dungeon, and as they run away from the burning Edo castle, he is carrying with himself a box with part of her dowry - enough for Akemi to run away and do whatever she pleases for the rest of her life.
• Broken Pedestal:
  • Ringo's admiration for Mizu and desire to become Mizu's apprentice samurai vanishes when Mizu allows Akemi to be arrested and taken back to her father; while Mizu claims (not unreasonably) that this is ultimately for Akemi's own good, Ringo sees it as a dishonourable betrayal of a comrade and of a samurai's responsibility. He deliberately removes the bell Mizu tied on his leg to demonstrate his abandonment of service.
  • Akemi for her Old Retainer Seki after discovering he was the one who arranged her marriage to the shogun's son, and only went on her mission to find Taigen on the expectation that she would eventually give up.
• Brutish Character, Brutish Weapon:
  • The Four Fangs are armed with an assortment of "dishonourable" weapons that are big, mean and gut people like fishes.
  • The Giant Mook is carrying around a kanabo almost as big as he is.
  • The Thousand Claws gang is armed with tekagi-shuko, which technically aren't even weapons but can still kill a man in a really messy way.
• Bullying a Dragon:
  • Upon seeing her blue eyes, Hachiman hurls racist insults at Mizu despite her having sliced off two of his fingers. He loses two more fingers for his foolishness.
  • While Taigen does give Mizu more of a challenge than the other Shindo students, it still isn't wise to insult someone who just bested you in a sword duel, let alone call them a derogatory nickname you gave them as a child. Considering what Mizu did to Hachiman, he's lucky she didn't do anything worse than slice off his topknot.
  • The Four Fangs arrive at the noodle restaurant Ringo used to work at to ask his father information on where Mizu went. One of the customers tells these four armed and intimidating warriors to shut up, and is promptly carved up like a turkey for his insolence.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday:
  • Mizu remembers all the pain and trauma Taigen inflicted on her as a child. He barely remembers her, and it takes him to see her eyes to finally even connect the dots about who the mysterious samurai causing trouble in his dojo is.
  • In turn, Mizu thinks nothing about defeating Taigen, not even in terms of their past animosities. He meanwhile is so obsessed with being the one to defeat and kill her, he gets tangled into her revenge plot and suffers greatly just to have a chance to settle their personal score - the one that Mizu can't even grasp.
  • Invoked later on, when Mizu is trolling princess Akemi, pretending she can't even recall the name of the obnoxious samurai she beat in Kyoto, lobbing one insult after another toward Taigen.
  • As Mizu finds out, Fowler sired an entire slew of half-breed bastards, so one of them coming to his door to kill him doesn't phase him in the slightest.
• Call-Back: A handful is spread here and there, usually getting the pay-off a few scenes later, often as Brick Jokes. But the one with the longest takes half of the first season. When Taigen is being tortured for information on Mizu, Heiji Shindo gives orders to his Torture Technician in the third person. When the coup against the shogunate fails and Taigen finds Shindo, he reflects that exact same style of command by saying:
  Taigen: He will kill you with a sword.
  [He slowly pushes vertically his sword from the collar bone down, until the entire blade is inside the torso of Heiji]
• Cannot Spit It Out: Invoked and lampshaded by Taigen as he has trouble thanking Mizu for saving his life and later saying she's a better swordsman than him. In both instances, he has to force himself to say it aloud.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: Fowler manages to convince Mizu not to kill him by offering to take her to London to find her other potential fathers. Without him, she'll be unable to find them or navigate London.
• Casting Gag: In the Japanese dub, this is not the first time we hear Mutsumi Tamura, as Mizu, voicing someone with glasses, and also being hellbent for revenge.
• The Cat Came Back: Mizu repeatedly tries to get rid of Ringo, first tying him to a tree, then hiring prostitutes to seduce him, then threatening to kill him if she ever sees him again. Each time, he pops up again, and she eventually decides to accept it after he saves her at a checkpoint. She does, however, force him to wear a bell, just like a cat, so he would stop sneaking up on her.
• Cat Scare: As Mizu is sneaking into Boss Hamata's house via the rafters, a bird flies out at her, which she instantly kills on reflex, then catches the dead body before it falls on the guards below. Mizu actually looks bothered by this and places it gently back in its nest.
• The Cavalry: Ringo continuously shows up from nowhere to save the day, often in the most unexpected ways.
  [After Ringo shows up as literal cavalry and offers Mizu a gateaway ride]
  Mizu: Useful.
• Cavalry Betrayal: Mikio shows up on horseback just as the group of soldiers shows up to capture or kill Mizu. She smiles, hopeful and assured of him, while the music swells... and he turns his horse, riding away. Cue her tears ruining her make-up as she faces the soldier on her own, furious like never before.
• Censor Steam:
  • In contrast to the casual use of nudity with adults, when the teenage Kinuyo undergoes a moxibustion treatment, the smoke from the burning mugwort obscures her body.
  • During the final forging scene, Mizu is naked and facing the camera, but the smoke from the kiln obscures her crotch.
• Central Theme: Coping with the circumstances of one's birth seems to be one. Each member of the main cast was born in a way that, in the extremely hierarchical culture of Edo period Japan, sees them shunted into a particular role they are trying to escape from:
  • Mizu is mixed-race, which sees her subjected to bigotry and discrimination. She only wants revenge on the people she views as responsible, namely one of the white men who may be her father.
  • Taigen was born the son of a poor fisherman in a dirty backwater town, and seeks fame and riches through becoming a Master Swordsman.
  • Akemi is the daughter of a nobleman, which means she's destined for either a political marriage, or being sold to a brothel if she refuses. She's trying to find a way to escape that choice.
  • Ringo was born without hands, which sees him looked down upon as useless; he tries to find something to be a master at anyway.
  • Fowler was born into grinding poverty, losing his family to famine and his people were crushed by a colonizing power. Since then, he's been driven by insatiable greed and the desire control all aspects of his life, so nothing will ever render him so helpless again.
• Changed My Mind, Kid: Ringo shows up to save Mizu and Taigen from drowning, despite having left Mizu's service in the previous episode.
• Chef of Iron:
  • Ringo is a soba cook, but he's also pretty apt with a knife - something that Mizu brings up when they are both forced to fight. He also overcomes the Giant Mook by simply poisoning the stew and then sending him down the ravine in a single push.
  • Mizu, settled down into a housewife life, faces a group of soldiers after her bounty with nothing more than a kitchen knife. She kills first of them with it, before switching for an actual weapon.
• Chekhov's Gun: In the first episode, Akemi is carried in a norimono, while her servants loudly announce her. She passes next to Mizu, and they exchange fleeting glances. While it looks like a neat transition trick to switch POV from Mizu to Akemi, it does come back a few episodes (and weeks in-story) later, when Mizu sees through Akemi's masquarade as a madame Kaji's courtesan and isn't fooled for a second with the attempt to give her poisoned sake.
• Chekhov's Skill:
  • Mizu is shown meditating upside down, supporting herself on one hand. Which comes in handy later in the episode when she falls off a cliff headfirst, only to land on her outstretched hand.
  • Mizu spent most of her life as a swordsmith apprentice. She can easily spot a solid piece of ironwork. And the weights she's wearing aren't just for the purpose of training or protection - she designed them for the telescopic shaft of a naginata.
• Cliffhanger: Episode 4 ends with one, as chief Hamada orders his Thousand Claws army to "kill everyone, and then burn it down", as his countless mooks approach the brothel run by madame Kaji.
• Clothing Damage: Mizu continues to wear the same set of clothes, while going from one duel to another and also facing various enemies and death traps. As a result, as time goes on, there are more and more stitches holding her clothes togheter.
• The Coats Are Off:
  • When Mizu starts to fight against the students of the Shindo dojo, she takes off her winter cape.
  • She does it again when about to face the Thousand Claws.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Taigen gets captured by Heiji Shindo and put into his Torture Cellar to get information on Mizu. Both Heiji and Fowler are present at the scene, and while Fowler is bored, Heiji is clearly enjoying the sight.
• Collector of the Strange: Madame Kaji is famous for peculiarities - which means both catering to all kinds of fetishes, but also the company of truly unique courtesans.
• Color Motif: Each of the main characters has a specific color or color palette that crops up around them repeatedly: Blue for Mizu (obviously), Green for Taigen, Red for Akemi, Grey for both Ringo and Eiji, Yellow for Shindo, and Orange for Fowler.
• Combat Breakdown: Despite her inhuman strength and stamina, Mizu does tyre down, and the sheer amount of enemies can be simply overwhelming for her. The only time this trope isn't applied is when she's going through the Shindo dojo - mostly because the students need better training. Prominent examples of this trope include:
  • The fight against the Four Fangs takes so much effort that she isn't even assured she will make it through, being winded already when there are still four of them. By the end of it, she very literally can barely stand, and won against Chiaki mostly due to a trick attack.
  • Facing the Thousand Claws gang, she first gets badly stabbed, which makes her vulnerable, and eventually the blood loss makes her comatose. Then she gets quite literally dogpiled on, unable to even move from under the doors that pin her to the ground. She makes it through with a combination of sheer grit and fury, but her naginata works as much as a weapon as it does as a crutch to keep her on her feet. Once the fight is over, she walks away for a bit and falls unconscious for the second time, tired and badly wounded.
  • When Storming the Castle, Mizu fights against a contingent of mooks. Except earlier on, her left leg got pierced through by a trap and her sword is firmly lodged over a pit trap full of spikes, so she has to improvise really hard. Half-way through, she's so tired, she pulls a grenade, and intimidates with it the guards she's facing, just to catch breath.
• Combat Pragmatist: It happens a lot, throughout characters to entire factions:
  • Mizu is entirely motivated by her Revenge. She couldn't care less for what's honourable or even to follow any kind of etiquette, and she is there for the kill of whoever stands in her way, with the least possible effort put into it. One of her favourite moves is to cut, stab, bludgeon, stomp or break feet of her enemies and then continue to finish them off when they are in too much pain to even register what's going on.
  • Fowler tends to bring guns to swordfights, and as a foreigner, he holds Japanese customs in contempt, but also finds them useful for his schemes - after all, it's easier to fight against fools who care more about showmanship than defeating their enemies. When he and Mizu fight for the first time, he keeps hitting her exactly where he shot her earlier.
  • Four Fangs in general, and Chiaki in particular, are just blood-thirsty thugs for hire. While they do use excessive power and make a mess of their victims, that's because they always go for the quickest, most effective blows and rarely waste time on any talk.
  • Thousand Claw Clan is a massive gang of common thugs that simply use their numbers and brute force to get what their boss orders them to do.
• Combat Stilettos: A variation. During her spar with Mikio, Mizu is wearing geta with really high teeth. It doesn't impede her in any way, and she does some impressive acrobatics despite her footwear - further contrasted with her kimono, which she had to loosen up to move properly.
• Come with Me If You Want to Live: A wordless variant. Mizu and Akemi are effectively enemies, but they are both targets for the Thousand Claws gang. When Mizu regains consciousness and slices through the two mooks about to attack Akemi, she reaches her open hand to the princess. Smash Cut to them running together through the brothel.
• Comic Sutra:
  • Despite them being brought up on a regular basis, the audience never learns what the "12 and 20 positions" cover. It's further implied that the "full set" is particularly Head-Tiltingly Kinky, given it's something only prostitutes do.
  • A lot is implied about the services at madame Kaji's tea house, but the most that's shown is a bowl with an octopus.
• Compensating for Something: Madame Kaji's opinion on men - the worse and more brutish they act, the weaker they really are.
• Composite Character: "The Tale of the Ronin and the Bride" reveals that Mizu herself counts as one for the titular story, which parallels much of her own past and ongoing search for revenge. She is both the Ronin obsessed with retribution against those who wronged him and unheeding of pleas to cast aside vengeance for personal happiness, and the bride betrayed by her love, transformed into a demonic Onryo from her broken heart, with the climax of the episode intermixing both the past and present fights to drive home the similarities.
• Contrived Coincidence:
  • Meteorite fall saves Mizu's skin and gets her under Master Eiji's wing within a single afternoon. Years later, she uses that very Thunderbolt Iron to forge a sword for herself.
  • When badly wounded early into her revange path, Mizu stumbles into her own mother and is provided help.
• Crapsaccharine World: 17th Century Kyoto initially comes across like a bustling showcase of the shogunate's prosperity. It doesn't take much, however, for the corruption and rot beneath the surface to make themselves felt across every level of society.
• Creepy Blue Eyes: Mizu's blue eyes mark her out as mixed-race, and the Japanese around her consistently remark on how disturbing they are, comparing her to monsters and demons (specifically the onryo, a type of female ghost driven by vengeance for wrongful death). Racism aside, she's undoubtedly a very cold and ruthless woman.
• Creepy Souvenir: Heiji Shindo has an entire collection of half-rotten, dried out right thumbs of the people whose loyalty he bought earlier.
• Cruel Mercy: Mizu leaves Taigen alive after their duel in the first episode, but cuts off his topknot after he continues to insult her. He views this mark of shame as being worse than death, and says that he wished Mizu had killed him instead.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • Mizu singlehandedly fights her way through the entire Shindo Dojo without suffering even a single blow, only running into difficulty when she faces Taigen, the best fighter besides the dojo master. Despite initially struggling to defeat him, Mizu reveals she's been keeping specially-designed weights on her arms and legs 24/7 to improve her performance as a fighter. On taking them off, she instantly moves faster than Taigen can react to and is inches from cutting his throat before the master intervenes.
  • The initial assault on the Shogun's castle by the insurrectionists is this, thanks to Fowler's guns which can outdistance arrows and shoot through protective bulwarks.
• Curtain Clothing: When ending up in madame Kaji's brothel, Akemi assembles herself a presentable gown out of old-fashioned kimono and a few of the random ornaments that she puts into her elaborate hair-do.
• Cynicism Catalyst: Earlier in her life, Mizu abandoned her revenge at her mother's urging to marry an older man named Mikio. He was a former guard of the Shogun who had fallen out of favour, and could provide Mizu and her mother with a secure home. Despite herself, she slowly began to fall in love with Mikio, and he with her — until the revelation of her combat skills (and the humiliating ease with which she beat him when sparring) soured his affection into shame and contempt. Mikio (or her mother, or both) then leaked her existence to bounty hunters, and Mizu saw him ride off to leave her to die. She proceeded to butcher the hunters without mercy and returned to her path of vengeance.

D-H

• Death Course: Abijah Fowler lives in an island fortress with all levels of his castle protected by guards and traps. Even though Mizu is informed of a Secret Underground Passage (which is also booby-trapped) the guards are quickly alerted to her presence, and she has to fight her way through, while also having to deal with the traps. By the time she gets to Fowler, she's so exhausted and debilitated from her injuries she can't defeat him - and Fowler opens their confrontation by shooting her.
• Death by Irony:
  • Mikio teaches his wife Mizu how to throw a knife, which she pretends to not do well at first. After he betrays her, she kills him with a thrown knife.
  • One of the same high-quality foreign rifles that Fowler and his cohorts intended to use to take over Japan is what Akemi and Seki use to trap the remaining soldiers inside the burning palace.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance:
  • Even with the Alternate History conceit, the show does an accurate portrayal of Japanese culture during the early Edo period. This is an extremely hierarchical era, in which women could not enter large cities without a chaperone, ticking off the wrong type of samurai can be a death sentence, and having foreign blood not only made you stand out but marked you as non-human.
  • Specifically regarding woman, the cultural norm of Edo Japan means that, at the same time, women should Stay in the Kitchen, and yet prostitution is legal and (somewhat) accepted. And it's not seen as a contradiction in-universe, but rather as a hallmark of male dominance over the society.
• Deliberately Monochrome: Netflix released a version of the episode "All Evil Dreams and Angry Words that's entirely in black and white, with a few strategic Splashes of Color such as blood, parts of hallucinations, a few explosions and fires, and, very briefly, Abijah Fowler's eye to confirm that it's green and not Mizu's blue. The flashbacks are black and white tinted with a cool or warm Color Wash.
• Dented Iron:
  • Every other episode, Mizu is not in her top form due to previously sustained injuries - either still not healed or just received. She makes up for it with her grit, but is still much slower than usual in all the instances.
  • After being on the receiving end of tortures, Taigen really tries to help Mizu with her fight against Fowler, but the best he can achieve is being the one beaten down by the Irishman, unable to even stand on his own.
• Devious Daggers: Fowler is carrying a dueling one, and of European design at that.
• Didn't Think This Through: Mizu tries to lock the members of the Thousand Claws gang inside the madame Kaji's brothel... and only afterwards realises there are twice as many of them outside, confused what the hell she's even doing, before charging at her.
• Dirty Coward: Boss Hamata of the Thousand Claw Clan will have anyone murdered for any transgression. But when Mizu is forced to kill his whole gang, all he can do is pathetically beg for mercy before the people of the outpost he was ruling kill him.
• Distracted by the Sexy: After Ringo follows her despite her protests, Mizu hires some prostitutes to distract him and keep him out of the way.
• Dodge the Bullet: Once Mizu fully appreciates how dangerous guns are and learns that she cannot parry them with her katana, she focuses on dodging the person doing the aiming.
• Dog Pile of Doom: A rare, non-comedic example. Since there are so many of the Thousand Claws, they pin Mizu to the ground under the door she tried to use to stop them and prepare to kill her once they reach her.
• Don't Make Me Destroy You: Mizu refuses to use her sword against the Shindo Dojo, instead wielding a wooden bokken. When they frustratedly demand that she draw her sword, she responds "but then you'll die" and continues to use the bokken until Taigen shows up.
• The Drifter: Mizu wanders from place to place, just looking for the next clue on the location of the four white devils she wants to kill, and happens to stumble into other people's trouble on the way to her own goal.
• Eat That: As a power move toward her new daughter-in-law, the Shogun's wife serves Akemi utterly disgusting foods at her wedding, including rabbit liver covered in horse semen, chilled fox brain, and a potage made from fetal pigs' blood. Akemi eats them all gamely, only hesitating briefly at the final meal: the corpse of her pet bird.
  Lady Itoh: I hope you can handle the duties of an Itoh wife.
  Akemi: You'll find I can handle anything.
• Emergency Weapon:
  • Mizu has an old quirk of using kitchen knives as weapons when under pressure, especially since they are easy to conceal and hardly suspicious.
  • At one point, Akemi gets her hands on a dinky blade, too, but that makes it easy to conceal in the folds of her obi.
• Establishing Character Moment: When Mizu is entering Kyoto, the gate guards stop before her basket weaver with her daughter, pointing out that her permit is invalid (it's for her dead husband). You think that Mizu would be her chaperone in turn, but she coldly passes the woman begging at the gates and bribe the guard to enter the city herself without a permit. However, as Mizu is leaving Kyoto the same day, she wordlessly tosses Taigen's golden comb to the woman still huddled next to the gate, obviously worth way more than the baskets the woman wanted to sell inside - but the weaver still first suffered for no real reason.
• Every Man Has His Price: Heiji Shindo offers Mizu a fortune in form of 50,000 ryo and a profitable lordship, effectively setting her for life, if only she gives up her Roaring Rampage of Revenge. Despite this being an unbelievable offer for someone of her station (Mizu is a half-breed outcast and, unknown to everyone else, a woman) she turns it down, saying she has no interest in money, power or happiness. She also notes that someone as experienced in commerce as Shindo would be prepared for this refusal, and so will have a second, less pleasant offer. He does.
• Evil Minions
  • The Shindo dojo students are a group of nameless, arrogant wanna-bes. Mizu doesn't even draw her sword against them, being content with going through the dojo with a bokken.
  • Thousand Claws gang are tens of Faceless Goons that exist solely for Mizu to have someone to cut through in a really messy manner.
  • The forces under Fowler are an Evil Army or mooks that shoot first, ask questions never. Unlike other examples, they are highly dangerous - at least when they are carrying firearms. When Mizu faces them in a swordfight, she defeats them despite being unarmed herself.
• Faceless Goons: Mooks are rarely without some face covering gear, be it a bandit scarf or menpo.
• Fantasy Gun Control: While the Japanese are no stranger to gunpowder weapons, much like in the real Edo period, the shogunate has made owning firearms illegal, which makes the presence of European guns smuggled in by Abijah Fowler even more of a game-changer.
• Felony Misdemeanor: Mizu's mother describes her prospective new husband as somebody who has "transgressed", but then explains that that doesn't really mean anything since lords will execute their men for tying a belt incorrectly.
• Fetish:
  • Takayoshi Itoh loves ohaguro out of a kink, rather than fashion. Or so we are told.
  • Madame Kaji has a reputation for catering to the "peculiarities" of her customers, no matter how weird they would be.
• Fetishes Are Weird: There’s several references to Abijah Fowler’s perverse cravings for new sexual experiences. He is shown being serviced in an orgy and being pegged by a prostitute wearing a long-nosed tengu mask (with said nose). The more heroic characters are depicted engaging in vanilla sex. On the other hand, Madam Kaji's teahouse specializes in fetishes and she holds a positive view of them overall, only despising Fowler because he hurts her women.
  Kaji: To deny desire is to cut out a corner of your own heart. He was honest with his desire. That is a swordsman who knows the shape of his soul.
• First-Episode Twist: Mizu's gender is not revealed until the end of the first episode.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing:
  • If one knows what's the main point or simply meaning of Hadaka Matsuri, it's far less shocking when all the people of Mihonoseki start to undress.
  • Chiaki has a highly distinctive Evil Laugh, which he utters before unmasking.
• Flames of Love: The scenes of Mizu forging steel (while naked, no less) are intercut with Princess Akemi making love to her husband-to-be.
• Foot Bath Treatment Thermally inverted when Mizu gets impaled through the foot by Spikes of Doom. First given chance, she treats the injury by shoving her foot in an ice cold (literally) bucket of water. Given that she's Made of Iron, it's enough to keep her going.
• Foreign Queasine: Exaggerated. At a meeting of conspirators, Fowler offers two of them completely regular cheese curds. But thanks to cultural and dietetic differences, for them it's disgusting filth, as cheese curds are a combination of milk, fermentation, and, worst of all, not being part of Japanese cuisine. One of them is brave enough to try it, even saying that it has a "good sourness", which Fowler laughs at.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Mizu has a diagonal cross-shaped tattoo on her left forearm, with a dot in one of the corners, which is worked into the design of the Netflix logo. She often strokes it when thinking about her vow to kill the four white men who sired her. The tattoo is a Kill Tally of her targets, the dot in one of the corners signifies that she's already killed one of them prior to the series starting. Fowler is actually her second target.
  • When Mizu finally confronts Abijah Fowler and he sees her tattoo, realising its significance, he immediately deduces that her victim was "old Violet" out of all his old partners. This, along with his off-handedly mentioning how he needed to send special instructions in how to tweak the construction of the guns to London in order to have them smuggled in as bits and pieces of seemingly-ordinary furniture and goods, hints at the reveal he surprises Mizu with when she finally has him at her mercy. His remaining two partners are not in Japan, unlike him and Violet, but in London, having left the country before the borders closed.
• Forging Scene:
  • Mizu was raised by a blind swordmaker, and flashbacks to her childhood show her learning how to forge the metal herself. The flashbacks are tied into the metaphor of her growing up and becoming a hardened person.
  • After her sword is broken during the first fight against Fowler, Mizu tries to reforge it. She fails at first, and only succeeds after receiving wisdom from her swordmaker father.
• Four Is Death: As stressed repeatedly, at the time of Mizu's birth there were a grand total of four white men in Japan who might be her father (and thus four men who she wants to kill). Apparently all four of them were extremely ruthless gun/opium/people traders with no moral compunction.
• Four Eyes, Zero Soul: While Mizu is only wearing the glasses to conceal her eye colour, they end up only enhancing the perception of her as a blood-thirsty demon.
• Full-Frontal Assault: In the end of the first episode, Mizu, who was resting in a hot spring, hears a rustle in a nearby bush. She grabs for her sword and faces what she takes for an assailant completely naked. It turns out Ringo followed her once more.
  Ringo: Peaches.
• Gambit Pileup:
  • There's a lot of conniving going on in the politics of this version of Edo Japan, with Mizu, Abijah Fowler, Heiji Shindo, Akemi, Mizu, the Shogun and many others all having schemes of their own that alternatingly intersect or clash as the story goes along.
  • On top of general cross-scheming, the coup plot has four distinctive parties: the official unified front of Abijah Fowler, Heiji Shindo, their inside men on the court and lord Daichi. Except the Japanese are also scheming against Fowler, lord Daichi is scheming against other Japanese and Heiji Shindo has a personal grudge against Fowler, willing to switch sides as the situation plays up if it means Fowler is out of the picture one way or another.
• Gene Hunting: Mizu's quest is to find her father... and kill him. Which she is doing by slaughtering everyone on a short list of people who could have been her father.
• The Ghost: There are four white men in Japan Mizu is after. We only meet Abijah Fowler in person in this season, with Mizu having already killed one of them (Violet) at some point in the past and the remaining two (Skeffington and Routley) being away in London. The closest we get are their abstract silhouettes in a flashback.
• Gilded Cage:
  • Akemi lives a life of soft pampering, but would give it up for freedom. She despises this life so much that when Seki points out that her choices are to return to the cage or prostitution, she chooses prostitution. When she joins the Shogun's palace, she receives a pet songbird in an actual golden cage as a wedding present.
  • Fowler's castle is an impregnable fortress, and it is filled with luxuries and all the manifestations of his power, but he is atrociously bored and fed up with his isolation. Unusually for this trope, he could leave the cage if he chose to (By returning to Britain), but that would mean the end of his business in Japan and he can't bring himself to give up all that money and power.
• Going Native: Fowler, at least to a certain level. He finds it annoying, because if he has time to waste on learning and mastering Japanese customs, it means he's spending it wrong.
• Good All Along: The shogun's second son is said to be an abusive monster who kills his wives and won't even deign to speak to women. When Akemi gets him alone, however, it's revealed that he's actually silent to conceal his stutter, while the stories of his brutality are invented by his mother and her servants to terrify his wives.
• Grand Dame: What little is shown of the shogun's wife suggests that she utterly dominates her sons, and she appears to have no intention of stopping after her husband dies and her sons now rule.
• Grass is Greener: On two different occasions, comparisons are made between Akemi's station as a princess in Gilded Cage and that of the average prostitute. Akemi herself claims that being married off for a political alliance for her father is no different than being a prostitute, while both Seki and a prostitute state that any woman would trade places with Akemi if they could.
• Groin Attack: Mizu is routinely dispatching those - sometimes for the pain, sometimes due to the nearby femoral artery. She saves her life by giving Fowler one during the finale, too, but quickly switches the target to his face when he bends down.
• Half-Breed Angst: One of the central themes of the series. And considering the sheer amount of crap Mizu was given throughout her life, it's no wonder she's carrying an endless supply of self-hate and is so obsessed with eradicating all the men that could be her father out of sheer resentment of how much they've ruined her life.
• Half-Hearted Henchman:
  • The young kid from the Thousand Claws gang. He can't stomach the brutal fight around him and just hides. Mizu kills him anyway in the end, simply because he chose to hide, rather than run.
  • The Sole Survivor of the group of mooks that Mizu faced when Storming the Castle. He freezes mid-combat, and when all the other mooks are dead, he wordlessly offers Mizu help. This time, she spares the man.
• Half the Man He Used to Be:
  • Mooks that stand on Mizu's path tend to get slashed in halves - usually horizontal, but at one instance, she cut a man diagonally from shoulder to pelvis, all in a single stroke. It helps that her sword is an Absurdly Sharp Blade.
  • If they won't simply gut someone open, then thanks to their oversized weapons the Four Fangs tend to hack people into pieces.
• Have You Told Anyone Else?: Ise, the courtesan who overhears Fowler bragging about his plans to overthrow the shogunate, ultimately tries to report them to Akemi. The princess relays Ise to her father, lord Daichi Tokonobu. After making sure Ise didn't pass the message to anyone else, lord Daichi throws her out a window, revealing he's part of the plot against the shogun.
• Heroic Second Wind:
  • When facing the Thousand Claws gang, Mizu is completely overwhelmed twice, one of those involving losing her consciousness from blood loss. She gets better on both instances just when it seems it's over.
  • Taigen attempts it when he and Mizu are facing Fowler for the first time. But since he went through a few rounds of Cold-Blooded Torture earlier, Fowler is simply amused and confused that the guy is even still alive in the first place, tossing Taigen like a ragdoll.
• Hidden in Plain Sight:
  • Mizu routinely blends with the environment by simply standing still in semi-dark areas and using the general confusion to her advantage.
  • The Western guns aren't shipped to Edo assembled, but as parts of various other objects.
• Hidden Weapons: Mizu is likely to carry a kitchen knife on her. As harmless as it sounds for a weapon, she killed bunch of people with those.
• Hired Guns:
  • The Four Fangs are bandits-slash-Bounty Hunters that work for anyone willing to pay, without asking any questions.
  • When her attempts to get help or information from madame Kaji fail, Mizu in turn offers her sword to sort out any business Kaji has in mind.
• Hollywood Genetics: The gene for blue eyes is recessive, which means that the only way for a blue-eyed father to sire a blue-eyed child with a brown-eyed mother is for that mother to have had a blue-eyed ancestor of her own somewhere in her past. Combined with The Reveal that the woman Mizu always thought was her mother was (if Abijah Fowler is to be believed) only a maid paid to hide and protect her, this implies there may be more to Mizu's background than even Mizu knows.
• Hollywood Healing: Characters (particularly Mizu, our lead) get some pretty brutal injuries that should probably cripple them for life, but manage to recover more or less fine given enough time.
• Hourglass Plot: Akemi, twice.
  • At the start, she's little more than a tool for her father to use as a political bargaining chip, and has to go along with it because she has no resources to her own name. At the end, she's the shogun's sister-in-law, and her father is now utterly dependent on her goodwill to avoid being executed for treason.
  • At the start, she's an innocent young maid who seeks happiness, while her lover Taigen is ambitious and seeks greatness. At the end, he has learned a measure of humility and now is content to find happiness, while she has learned how to claim and wield power, and so seeks greatness.
• How We Got Here: A recurring plot structure, but the most prominent case happens in the fourth episode. After the prologue, we are shown events from Mizu point of view, concluding with the scene from the prologue, and then we switch the POV to Akemi, to reach the exact same moment once more. When both POVs collide, the story continues in a regular way.
• Human Notepad
  • When visiting madame Kaji's tea house, Mizu is shown a courtesan doing an erotic version of this to a client.
  • Mizu has to purify her soul before forging a new sword, so she strips naked and writes the Heart Sutra all over her body. She eventually approaches her estranged apprentice Ringo (the only person who knows Mizu is a woman) to help her write the words on her back. As Ringo agrees to help, it becomes a gesture of reconciliation between the two.
• Human Shield:
  • Quite a few times Mizu uses an unfortunate mook to shield herself from attacks by other mooks.
  • Ringo uses the body of the Giant Mook to cover himself and the horse he's riding on when showing up as very literal cavalry.

I-M

• I Am Not Left-Handed: When it seems that Mizu is outclassed by Taigen, she reveals that she had weights strapped to her arms and legs the whole time, takes them off, and defeats him effortlessly.
• I Just Want to Be Special: Ringo dreams of achieving greatness. He doesn't particularly care about what form said greatness takes.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: Mizu would very much like to have a regular life, preferably with "regular" looks, too. And she even tried that for a while, which ended with a tragedy. Instead, he is driven purely by her revenge, either achieving it or die trying.
• I Never Told You My Name:
  • Downplayed in the opening of the first episode. Hachi does introduce himself, but Mizu throws at him the infamy that goes with his name, making it obvious that she knows way more about him.
  • Mizu recognises Taigen, even if they hadn't met for decades, and proceeds to mock him by alluding to tidbits from his past.
• I Was Beaten by a Girl: A given reaction, due to the premise alone:
  • Mikio takes it really bad that his wife bested him in combat.
  • Fowler starts to laugh when realising the blue-eyed half-breed after him is a woman. Mizu makes him reconsider his amusement with a sequence of knees to his face.
• Ignore the Fanservice:
  • Mizu is directed to a brothel as a prank by students of the Shindo Dojo, and once she realizes what happened she asks the prostitutes for directions to the Dojo itself. The two greeters repeatedly try to get her to come inside and partake of their services, but she refuses without any hesitation or temptation.
  • When Mizu visits Madame Kaji's brothel, she refuses all offers of service and repeatedly asks specifically to speak with Madame Kaji herself. Greater and greater temptations are offered — some of which she does at least appear curious about — but she remains focused.
• IKEA Weaponry: The western guns are hidden among various European objects Fowler delivered to Edo as wedding gifts - all it takes is connecting properly the right parts.
• Imposed Handicap Training: Part of Mizu's training was strapping weights onto her arms and legs. She still wears them even when on her journey. Whenever a situation starts to become difficult she takes them off resulting in boost to her speed and strength. The iron wraps can also be bundled tighter and fixed into the hilt of her katana to create a truly bitchin' naginata.
• Improvised Training: Combined with in-universe Unconventional Learning Experience and Awesomeness by Analysis. Mizu is a self-taught swordswoman, but she spent years repeating various moves of samurai that had to present their techniques to Master Eiji to get a proper sword for their needs, and from time to time, she had an actual tutor to help her around. This does significantly colour her fighting style - since she's not following any particular school, while knowing so many of them and their signature moves, she cuts through routine-trained mooks like a hot knife through butter, while always going for the lowest, most effective, and least tiring blows in the process.
• Improvised Armour: While having tea with Heiji Shindo, Mizu (who was raised and trained by a swordmaker) praises the ironwork on his family-sized tetsubin. The enormous (albeit heavy) lid comes in handy as a shield when she's ambushed by Heiji's archers.
• Improvised Weapon: Mizu is really apt with this. In one instance, she killed a mook with the lower leg of another mook, which she just ripped off moments earlier. By piercing the guy with the tibia.
• Informed Attractiveness:
  • Akemi is very beautiful. Don't question it, she just is.
  • Inverted with Mizu. She looks just like every other character, and can even be pretty when dressing like a woman, but due to her mixed heritage everyone - including Mizu herself - treats her as a disgusting monster.
• Inhuman Eye Concealers: Mizu hides the fact that she is mixed race by wearing a pair of tinted glasses that hide the color of her eyes. She also tends to lower her hat to further obscure her features.
• Inksuit Actor: Several characters, including Seki, Taigen, Ise, and Madame Kaji, look a lot like their voice actors.
• Insistent Terminology
  • The Japanese characters consistently talk about "West". As far as the Japanese were concerned, Europeans arrived from the South, and the term nanban explicitly refers to the southern origins of those particular barbarians.
  • There are numerous references to God, with capital letter - by Japanese.
  • Everyone keeps calling Mizu a samurai, even if she wearily explains that she's not one or has never claimed to be one.
  • Mama needs her "medicine", even if everyone knows that she's just smoking opium due to her addiction.
• Instantly Proven Wrong:
  • One of the two shogunate emmisaries points out that nobody would dare to attack dignitaries like them, as it would bring wrath the entire shogunate against such a person. His partner agrees... and is instantly pierced by Mizu's sword, In the Back to boot.
  • The same emmisary sends a letter to Heiji Shindo, informing him that he and his men were unable to find any guns and most likely Fowler is a fraud, while Heiji is risking his life by associating with a man who won't provide their coup with the vital firearms. Just as Heiji finishes the letter, Fowler arrives at his chamber and asks him to follow for a presentation - where Fowler assembles a rifle out of seemingly random objects and explains the ruse.
• Internal Reveal: Audiences can figure out Mizu is a woman the second she speaks. Ringo finds out by accident at the end of the first episode, while Fowler only learns that the murderous half-breed after him is a woman when giving her a Killer Bear Hug.
  [Chuckles after realising what's up] Oh, you just keep getting better.
• Interplay of Sex and Violence: A recurring theme as naked violence and raw sex are explicitly compared and contrasted either by characters themselves or by the editing.
  • The most notable and explicit case is probably Akemi telling Taigen how she imagines Taigen will kill Mizu in a duel while they have sex and climaxing at the same time as her narrative of violence.
  • Whenever humiliating her opponents in combat, Mizu tends to make things sexual, consciously or not.
  • As far as Mizu was concerned, her sparring with Mikio and besting him in combat was a sexual foreplay. Unfortunately, for him it was a terrifying display of her prowess and lust for blood.
• Intimidation Demonstration: When Mizu is storming the Tanabe Island fortress, the last mook left alive is utterly terrified of her performance and willingly helps her, just for a chance of being spared. He is.
• Ironic Echo:
  • Heiji Shindo has Taigen tortured by describing every torturous act in the depersonalized third person ("He will hit you with a fist"). When Taigen kills Heiji Shindo, all he says is "He will kill you with a sword".
  • While showing the delights offered in her brothel, Madame Kaji keeps asking Mizu to name what she desires. However she refuses to cooperate with Mizu's mission of murder, so Mizu offers to kill anyone she chooses.
    Mizu: You provide services. So do I. (draws her sword) Name your desire.
• Ironic Last Words: "The only white devil I see is you". As said half-mockingly by a soldier trying to collect a bounty for Mizu in what will become her Start of Darkness and firmly establishing her as a ruthless, revenge-driven monster.
• Irony:
  • The only one who truly accepts Mizu for who she is is Master Eiji. He's also the only person not giving her crap for being either half-breed or a woman (which he might or might not be aware of). In real life, iron-working and sword-making are some of the most sexist traditional crafts of the Japanese culture that also are only for the "true Japanese", so Mizu's sole presence in the forge would cause a scandal at best, end up really bad for her on average.
  • Mizu, who is so single-mindedly focused on her revenge, has a hard time understanding why Taigen is so obsessed with besting her.
  • Taigen points out that Heiji Shindo's offer to Mizu to smuggle her inside Fowler's castle in a sake cask is an Obvious Trap. Taigen ends up the one inside the cask, after being captured by the Giant Mook, and Heiji proceeds to torture him for fun.
  • There are various characters who keep asking Mizu what sort of samurai she is. That's the thing - she isn't. And she's not even a man.
  • Taigen wants a rematch with Mizu to prove that he's the greatest swordsman around. When he sneaks on her during her fight with Chiaki, this causes her to get distracted and end up badly wounded, which in turn makes her unable to fight a formal duel against Taigen.
  • All Fowler achieves with his coup plot is the shogunate doubling-down on sakoku policies, since leaving even a small crack in the wall proved to be too dangerous.
  • And of course, madame Kaji's words to Mizu after she defeats the Thousand Claws gang.
  Kaji: (not realising the truth) You are more man than any come through my door.
• It Amused Me: Thanks to being locked year-long inside the fortress except for the annual trip to Edo, Fowler is incredibly bored, with lots of his most vile acts being done just to kill time. It's even invoked by madame Kaji when she brings up the state of her prostitutes after Fowler is done with them.
• "It" Is Dehumanizing: When describing Mizu, various characters refer to her as "it", to highlight either her half-breed status, or her revenge-driven personality devoid of any other feelings. Either way, she isn't seen as human.
• It's Personal with the Dragon: While Taigen defends the shogun out of his personal respect and samurai's honour, he goes after Heiji Shindo, Fowler's inside man, out of personal reasons - Heiji personally ordered and commanded the prior Cold-Blooded Torture of Taigen and greatly enjoyed the sight of it.
• Japanese Politeness: Fowler finds it hilarious how Japanese culture is so focused on courtesy that his conspirators will desperately try to avoid giving offense at how disgusting his food is while they are plotting a bloody overthrow of the Shogun.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: Akemi's father is ignoring what she wants and marrying her off to the shogunate for his benefit, but it seems this is just the way things are for women in Japan at the time. However, Akemi later finds out that her father is in on Fowler's plan to kill off the shogunate and take over, and was planning to use her to get more power though a technicality as the last "heir" of the shogunate.
• Jidaigeki: While it's obviously not Japanese-made, the series is a Decon-Recon Switch of the whole genre of Japanese period movies.
• Kill Tally: Mizu has a tattoo on her arm with four spaces, one for each of the four white men she is pursuing. One of the notches is filled in, revealing that she has already killed her first target.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: The one guard who manages to survive Mizu's slaughtering of the guards outside of Fowler's castle does so by cowering against the wall and refusing to fight. When he realizes he's the only one left, he uses his rope to gather Mizu's sword for her. She leaves him alive when she heads deeper into the castle.
• Kung-Fu Clairvoyance: When Mizu and Taigen face off against each other, they each mentally predict the moves and counter moves of their fight before actually moving their bodies. Several of the potential outcomes include both of them wounding each other and succumbing to their injuries, so they each reposition themselves to alter the outcome.
• Lady of War: Defied. Not only Mizu is pretending to be a man, but even during her short stint of playing a demure wife, she was neither feminine nor graceful, yet still very apt with all sorts of weapons, in no small part due to spending her life in male disguise anyway.
• The Lady's Favour: After announcing to Taigen that her father agreed to their marriage, Akemi gave him her golden comb. He proudly puts it on when facing Mizu in the same episode. After Mizu defeats him and cuts off his topknot, she takes the comb with herself, leaving Taigen only his cut-off hair.
• Large and in Charge
  • Fowler is noticeably larger (and fatter) than any other character and is the brains behind the grand political plot of the series.
  • Chiaki is the biggest of the Four Fangs and leads the gang.
• Leave No Witnesses: Subverted, with disastrous consequences. When infiltrating boss Hamata's house to Mercy Kill Kinuyo, Mizu also kills the guard who was at the door. She arranges the two bodies to make it look like he strangled Kinuyo trying to rape her, and she fatally stabbed him in self-defence, which ties all loose ends and lets Mizu leave... until she stumbles outside on a boy. Still feeling bad about killing an innocent person, rather than killing the child, she tells the boy to call the city guards. Instead, the kid goes to boss Hamata.
• "Leave Your Quest" Test: A really brutal one, as if Mizu didn't suffer enough already. In the past, she did abandon her revenge, then married, settled down, and was actually happy with her life, even going as far as embracing the socially-mandated role of a quiet housewife to keep her relationship going. It wasn't until she was betrayed by either her own mother or husband - whom she ultimately killed herself - that she became fully dedicated to her revenge.
• Lethal Chef: Part of the expectations of a good wife is the ability to cook. Mizu not only lacks any kind of practice beyond the bare basics, but never accounted for the taste of her dishes prior, having only to serve herself and Master Eiji. After a single bite of her food, Mikio simply excuses himself with work and leaves the rest of the bowl untouched.
• Logical Weakness: The Thousand Claws are fighting with tekagi-shuko. This means they have to get really close to do anything at all. Mizu outranges them with her sword and later assembles herself a naginata to further increase the distance, while fighting in an open space - rendering the gang members helpless against her.
• Looks Like Orlok: When Mizu is tripping, she starts seeing the prisoners in Fowler's dungeon as Nosferatu-like creatures, who proceed to attack her. Or at least that's what she sees and think.
• Love Makes You Evil: Invoked. Mizu managed to abandon her revenge, marry and settle down with a man she loved... until she became betrayed. The broken heart is what pushed her right back to track the white men she swore to kill, now with nothing to lose and making her hollow.
  Tayū: [in the Framing Device] 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.
• Loving a Shadow: Platonic version. Ringo dedicates himself to Mizu without knowing anything about her, and repeatedly refers to her as an honorable samurai. When he is disillusioned by her abandonment of Akemi, Mizu points out that she never said she was a samurai in the first place and has always been on a quest for revenge, not honor.
• Ludicrous Gibs:
  • Whenever Mizu is facing mooks, the extreme violence (and the mutilations that go with it) is played for Black Comedy. Including stuff like tossing cut-off hands of his comrades in the face of charging mook or using a torn-off leg as a bludgeon.
  • In-universe, the bunraku play is spraying "ribbon blood" almost non-stop.
• Made of Plasticine: When Storming the Castle, Mizu has to face a bunch of mooks while unarmed due to her own blade being stuck in the wall. She proceeds to fight them unarmed and, at one point, breaks the leg of one of said mooks with an open fracture, rips it off and then uses it as a bludgeon. This is all played for some very dark laughs.
• Make It Look Like an Accident:
  • When Madame Kaji asks Mizu to kill Kinuyo, she explains that it can't look like a rescue or Hamata will know to slaughter Kaji's entire brothel. Mizu kills one of the guards, and arranges the bodies so that it looks like he attacked Kinuyo and she managed to stab him while he strangled her. Unfortunately she was seen leaving the building by a boy passing by, and he exposed the entire plan.
  • Mizu's mother is shown smoking an opium pipe and falling asleep with it, so it's little wonder their house eventually burns down, taking her in the process. Except she set it up to cover Mizu's tracks and, at the same time, get free from her.
• Male Frontal Nudity: The show doesn't shy away from showing the uncensored junk of male characters.
• The Man Makes the Weapon: Mizu is capable of fighting people with anything she will get her hands on, and it doesn't even have to be her own weapon or even a weapon in the first place. A few different characters even point out that she doesn't really need her own sword to be dangerous.
• Martial Artists Are Always Barefoot: Inverted. The only character that is consistently portrayed as not wearing and openly avoiding wearing shoes is Fowler, who holds martial arts in the highest contempt. Everyone else is wearing at least sandals.
• Match Cut:
  • Between onryo's mask from Mizu's story to Master Eiji and her own (younger) face.
  • Between the samurai showing his moves and the teenage Mizu literally stepping in his tracks, repeating his moves.
  • Between Mizu Meditating Under a Waterfall and a flashback, where she's kneeling in front of Master Eiji to tell him she's leaving.
  • Between the demonic face of the onryo from the bunraku play and Mizu in running make-up.
• Mauve Shirt: A villainous example. The other three of the Four Fangs other than Chiaki aren't even given names, but they are distinct and colourful enough to stand out from the regular mooks. They also give Mizu far more trouble than... pretty much everyone else thrown in her direction.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: There are no explicitly supernatural elements in the series, but Eiji's quasi-mystical observations about the spiritual nature of swords might have some basis in reality with the way the plot goes. Most tellingly, both times he says a sword will shatter because of some perceived spiritual problem of the wielder (first with Chiaki and his lies and then with Mizu and her myopic revenge) this is exactly what happens.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Four Fangs, a group of four mercenaries to do your dirty work in the most straight-forward, brutal way possible.
  • Thousand Claws gang has a lot of members, fully justifying the fact that everyone refers to them as the Army. In fact, they actually might count close to a thousand, given that there are eight claws per member.
• Mercy Kill: Madame Kaji asks that Mizu kill Kinuyo, a young woman who was taken from her brothel and forced to be a sex slave under Boss Hamata, the brutal town overlord. Kaji would prefer to ask for Mizu to rescue her, but if Hamata knew Kaji was involved he would simply slaughter them all and take Kinuyo back anyway. This is the only way Kaji can free her.
• Million Mook March: Two thousand of gun-totting soldiers enter Edo, marching like neatly-lined automatons, while the sounds of their march can be heard from afar.
• Minion with an F in Evil: The young teen that's just been accepted into the Thousand Claws gang. He simply hides, terrified, when the carnage starts. The first time, Mizu spares him, seeing he poses no threat to her. But when they meet for the second time - and he's still hiding - she just wordlessly impales him with her blade.
• Money Is Not Power: Heiji Shindo is smarter than most wealthy villains, since he seems to realize that there are some things his money won't buy. That is one reason he is scheming with Fowler to achieve political power, and when he tries to buy off Mizu's vendetta he comes prepared for her to reject his monetary bribe and has other offers ready. Nonetheless, when their coup is foiled and Heiji Shindo is at Taigen's mercy, he tries to buy his way out by offering Taigen anything he asks for. Taigen doesn't even respond to the bribe offer before killing him.
• Mook Chivalry: Despite - or maybe because of - being an animated series, the mooks have a nasty tendency to stand still and just wait for their turn to be cut into slices. However, the few times they do charge all at once, Mizu still beats them silly, only getting more angry due to the amount of bodies she has to deal with at once.
• Mook Horror Show:
  • A few times, the situation is presented from the perspective of the terrified mooks that have to face Mizu. She even exploits it when fighting against the Thousand Claws gang in madame Kaji's brothel, trying to avoid confrontation with them all by simply scaring them enough to reconsider the perspective of chasing after Mizu.
  • When Fowler runs for his life after the failed coup, Mizu sets the path in front of him on fire. He turns to look at her and, for once, is afraid - while Mizu just gives him a Death Glare as the inferno starts to swallow the room, looking like the demon everyone takes her for. He ultimately leaps into the fire, just not to face her in combat.
• Morality Chain: Ringo becomes this for Mizu, and she relents to seek slightly less brutal means than usually after a lot of pestering from him. The key word being "slightly".
• More Deadly Than the Male: Zig-Zagged. On one hand, Mizu is stronger than the men around her, but she is passing as one. On the other hand, she's more ruthless and cunning than most of the people she faces - to say nothing about her battle lust.
• Mushroom Samba: Part of the defences of the castle with Fowler is a hallucinogenic powder. It's implied the bad trip they give is enough to get rid of most people who managed to reach this far, and Mizu ends up struggling for the rest of her go due to the recurring hallucinations.
• Mutual Kill: When Mizu and Taigen face off against each other, they each mentally predict the moves and counter moves of their fight. Several of the potential outcomes include both of them wounding each other and succumbing to their injuries, so they each reposition themselves to alter the outcome.

N-P

• Naginatas Are Feminine: Ironically it was Mikio, Mizu's husband, who first demonstrated to her the usefulness of the naginata, saying it's old-fashioned but useful when you're outnumbered. In that same episode, we discover the metal plates present-day Mizu wears wrapped around her legs and arms can be curled up and connected together to form the shaft of an improvised naginata. Mizu also plays with this trope in that while she is a woman, she isn't particularly feminine and is also successfully passing as a man to everyone around. The only time this trope is played straight is the flashback, where Mizu in her bridal kimono and make-up, defeats a group of bounty hunters, fighting with Mikio's naginata.
• The Nameless: Mizu isn't named for the entirety of the first episode and her name only comes up in the second. Lampshaded by a dialogue later on
  Chiaki: All Kyoto is talking about the unnamed samurai who cut through Shindo Dojo.
  Mizu: I have a name.
  Chiaki: [Advancing with sword drawn] No-one will ever know it.
• Never Heard That One Before: Mizu has faced Half-Breed Discrimination her entire life. When she ends up in a brothel and one of the prostitutes insists on still serving her, Mizu, anticipating the typical reaction she gets, says, "Whatever clever insult comes next is not as clever as you think". The prostitute in question is Princess Akemi in disguise, who instead goes on to say What Beautiful Eyes!, which Mizu hasn't heard before... but she quickly dismisses it as the trained flattery expected of a courtesan.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Taigen sneaking on Mizu during her duel with Chiaki is enough to distract her in the middle of the charge, lower her guard and get badly cut.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Fowler proceeds to take turns when it comes to effortlessly beating Mizu and Taigen into pulp when her attempt to storm his fortress and kill him goes sideways. Eventually, Mizu is forced to flee.
• No Name Given: We never learn the name of Mizu's mother.
• Noble Bigot: Taigen bullied Mizu as a child for her mixed race, and continues to hold it against her as an adult, but he refuses to turn on her when he feels that their honor is connected.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished:
  • When Mizu - upon Madame Kaji's request - kills Kinuyo, she's seen by a boy. She ignores Kaji's directive to leave no witnesses, and tells the boy to get the night watchman because there's been a fight upstairs. The boy instead leads Hamata right to Madame Kaji's place, where Hamata orders everyone dead.
  • When Akemi gets married and takes in Madame Kaji's girls, Ise is motivated to tell her and the shogunate about Fowler's plan to take over. Unfortunately, she tells Akemi's father, who turns out to be in on the plan and kills her right infront of Akemi.
• No Guy Wants an Amazon: Played for tragedy. Mizu and her husband were actually happy, but one day they decided to spar together. Once she defeated him, he pushed her off and claimed that she really was a monster, and later abandoned her to her enemies when she needed him.
• Not What It Looks Like
  • Mizu finishes her duel with Taigen with a sweeping slash and gasps from everyone. Fade to Black. She walks away from the dojo and Kyoto, tossing Taigen's golden comb to the weaver at the city gates. But she didn't kill Taigen - she just provided him with a humiliating and mocking haircut.
  • Later on, the same trend continues - Akemi notices Mizu is wearing Taigen's scarf. She jumps to the conclusion that Taigen was defeated in a rematch and plans to avenge him by poisoning and butchering Mizu - and the misconception is deliberately up-played by Mizu, as she is trying to goad Akemi into attacking her. In reality, Mizu simply took it after knocking Taigen out to ditch him once more.
  • When Mizu and Ringo enter Mihonoseki, it looks like a Ghost Town and sinister music is playing... but as they reach the town center, they find everyone drunk and in the middle of a matsuri celebration.
  • The reputation of Takayoshi Itoh's, shogun's younger son, is entirely made up as part of an elaborate ruse to explain why he's The Quiet One. In reality, the man is not only very shy, but also has a stutter that's simply unfitting for his station. Akemi apologises when she finds out it's her mother-in-law behind all the cruel steps and acts towards her.
    • On top of that, when he personally gifted Akemi two songbirds in a cage, he did it to apologise for accidentally killing the one she received earlier, not to taunt her.
• Nothing Personal:
  • The only people against whom Mizu holds a personal grudge are the four white men. Everyone else is just collateral damage.
  • Zig-Zagged with Taigen. He gets to fight with Mizu, because he was told to by a dojo trainer. Unfortunately, she makes it very personal for him by defeating him in a humiliating way and effectively ruining his life in the process.
  • And of course, there is Fowler, who has quite different reasons to plot against the shogun than his Japanese allies.
  Fowler: I don't hate the shogun, I just want his chair.
• Not Worth Killing:
  • Mizu decrees that Hachiman doesn't deserve her sword, so she cuts off two of his fingers using a kitchen knife. She cuts off more fingers when he gets back up to spout racist abuse, but still leaves him alive.
  • Mizu uses a bokken (wooden training sword) during her fight against the Shindo Dojo, even after they have demanded that she draw her sword. When Taigen comes to face her, she thanks him for finally providing somebody worthy of her sword. After besting him she still doesn't kill him, but cuts off his topknot to shame him.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • Akemi apolgises her newlywed husband for slapping him in front of everyone when learning the truth about his stutter, his lack of involvement in bullying her and how much he's dominated by his mother.
  • When they meet for the second time, Fowler is genuinely afraid of Mizu and her determination to get him. He would rather run straight into the fire she set to trap him than face her off in combat.
• Offhand Backhand:
  • Being in no shape to face Chiaki in fight, Mizu throws her sword when he thinks she's defenseless. She is crouching, with her back turned to the charging Chiaki.
  • Feeling betrayed and being done with both her husband and mother, Mizu simply walks away from Mikio's household. When he tries to call her back, desperately expressing his love, she throws a knife into his face without even looking in his direction.
• Old Soldier: By the time they meet again, Mizu is obviously an adult, while Chiaki is visibly old, yet still in the Bounty Hunter business.
• Ominous Walk: During the first season finale, Mizu is slowly and methodically going after Fowler, knowing he has nowhere to escape. He, meanwhile, is genuinely terrified of someone so unhinged to just walk towards him, despite the raging inferno.
• On One Condition:
  • Mizu eventually accepts Ringo as her self-appointed apprentice, but she first wraps a bell around his ankle and instructs him that if he takes it off, he will be instantly discharged from his duties. All to prevent him from continuously sneaking on her.
  • A standard procedure by Heiji Shindo is to try to buy off people he can't defeat. For all the money, titles and splendour, he asks for only one thing in return: to cut off the right thumb.
• One-Hit Polykill: More than once, Mizu pierces one mook just to skew another on her blade in the process. And when using naginata, the sheer momentum of her Absurdly Sharp Blade makes her cut through a few people at once.
• One-Man Army: Lampshaded and deconstructed. Mizu is taking on and killing a large number of opponents in mass fights, particularly the entire Thousand Claws gang of Boss Hamata. At the same time, we see a flashback showing the Cynicism Catalyst that enabled Mizu to become the 'demon' she is now, while a puppet theatre serves as the Framing Device.
  Tayū: No one man can defeat an army, but one creature can. How does such a creature come to be?
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: After losing to Mizu in the first episode, Taigen tracks her down to demand a rematch, and winds up becoming her ally to ensure she lives long enough to give him said rematch. He lost his reputation as an unbeatable swordsman (and thus, all the future prospects he'd been working towards) when she beat him, so beating her in an official duel is the only way to get his life back on track.
• Pain Mistaken for Sex: Mizu enters a brothel to get information but refuses every girl in the place to keep her disguise. Meanwhile, Princess Akemi is posing as a high-class courtesan so she can enter the brothel and assassinate Mizu. She enters Mizu's room, declaring to other prostitutes that no man can turn her down. Mizu sees through the ruse and easily overpowers attacking Akemi, who is reduced to pained whimpers, but on hearing the subsequent ruckus, one of the girls chuckles and comments "She's good".
• Painted CGI: The show uses mostly-flat shading and outlines, along with painted-looking backgrounds, over 3D models for the characters.
• Parrying Bullets:
  • Both Mizu are Taigen are skilled enough to cut arrows out of the air with their swords, but only one at a time. Against a mass barrage, all they can do is run and hide under cover.
  • Mizu tries to block a rifle shot when she first confronts Fowler. She does manage to position her katana in between herself and the bullet, but the bullet just shatters her sword and continues to impact her shoulder anyway.
• Passive Aggressive Combat: The shogun's wife and her handmaidens engage in this with Akemi during her engagement dinner, serving her plates they know will make her uncomfortable, but Akemi catches on to their game and eats them without hesitation.
• Persona Non Grata: Despite being the top earner of the shogun, Fowler is never allowed to even see the man and officially doesn't even exist. The "best" he ever got was facing the heir apparent.
• Pimping the Offspring: Omnipresent:
  • The very opening of the first episode has Hachi celebrating just sealing the deal with the parents of two girls he bought from them and will resell later to brothels.
  • Kinuyo's father sold her to the brothel owner Madam Kaji, because she was deaf and mute, while Kaji is a known Collector of the Strange. Instead, Kaji protected and raised her, promising her that she would never let a man touch her again.
  • Another ward of Kaji is a girl that was just bought by her by the time Mizu reaches the tea house, but we later learn she never managed to get her first client before Akemi bought her freedom.
  • This is how Akemi sees the Arranged Marriage her father is planning with the shogun's Spare to the Throne. Actual prostitutes tell her that she's insane and would gladly trade places with her in a heartbeat.
• Playing Possum: When it becomes clear their coup failed, Heiji Shindo hides between the bodies of his slain mooks. Unfortunately for him, Taigen finds him.
• Pragmatic Villainy:
  • Abijah Fowler is, at least by Japanese standards, incredibly straight-forward and goal-oriented. He could rule the country alone, but he knows that setting up a Puppet King will give a friendly face to his regime. Unlike his business partners, he stayed in the country, recognising the sheer amount of money he can make by simply keeping his head low and trading, rather than protesting against sakoku.
  • Heiji Shindo is first and foremost a merchant, always looking for a bargain. Mizu is making a name for herself with her swordfighting? Send his best enforcers. She defeated those? Negotiate with her directly. She doesn't want money or titles? Deliver Fowler to her. He is also perfectly capable of adjusting his own plans, because for him, making some money is better than making none, and staying alive poorer is better than dying.
  • Lord Daichi's insistance on marrying Akemi off isn't about being a heartless monster - even if he clearly disrespects her and sees her as a lesser. In a twisted way, he tries to both secure his powerbase and fulfil her wish for freedom while doing whatever she wants - but as the Sole Survivor of the Itoh clan, rather than a wife to a Spare to the Throne.
  • The shogun himself. Despite setting up sakoku policies and prohibiting any foreigners from being in Japan, he still allows Fowler to operate - as long as he stays away from anyone's eyes - and pay him hefty tribute for the ability to get filthy rich himself. It backfires horribly when Fowler spends all those years planning how to overthrow the shogun, procuring an army, weapons, and allies for that goal.
• Pretender Diss: When facing Taigen, the champion of the Shindo dojo, Mizu is informed that she's no match for him.
  Student: Taigen has won 24 duels. How many have you won?
  Mizu: [looks at the crowd of students she beat down with a bokken] Should I have been counting?
• Prove I Am Not Bluffing: When negotiating with Mizu, Heiji Shindo mentions off-handedly that he has 500 of his best archers stationed around should Mizu decide to do anything rash or stupid. Taigen says it's just a bluff, but both Heiji and Mizu just smirk at each other. The ambiguity is resolved when Mizu cuts Heiji's hand off and Rain of Arrows almost literally blots the sky.
• Pure Is Not Good: Mizu's Swordfather tries to get her to understand the drawbacks of their metal being too pure. Metal that is too pure becomes brittle and easily broken, so they need to use multiple different purities to get an effective sword. He is blatantly trying to get her to understand how this applies to her and her revenge as well, but she never seems to have gotten the message during her childhood. After her sword is broken by Fowler and she returns to him to recuperate and reforge it, she finally seems to understand what he is saying about how dedicating herself solely to her revenge is not a good way to live her life.
• Real Event, Fictional Cause: The city of Edo really did have a massive fire in 1657.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: Heiji Shindo's troops wear black armour with red clothes and serve as the Evil Minions of the show. Even their banner is red with black markings on it.
• Reforged Blade: Subverted. Mizu returns with her broken katana to Swordfather, asking him to reforge it for her. However, he recognizes that she's not in the right mindset and refuses. After failing several times to create iron, she decides to take his advice about accepting impurities, melting the blade and adding her first knife, Ringo's bell, and a pair of Swordfather's tongs to the pot, finally creating the ideal metal for a sword. However, she realizes he is right and decides to delay reforging her sword until her business with Fowler is through.
• The Reveal:
  • Through the series, Mizu meets a few people that she crossed paths with in the past.
  • Mizu managed to forge a sword out of the meteorite Master Eiji had been struggling to smelt for so many years.
  • While it comes with Five-Second Foreshadowing, Chiaki is the leader of the Four Fangs.
  • The ink painting Fowler made, depicting a man being torn open by a bull turns out to be a still-life painting of a real body and a cut-off animal head he had arranged in his chamber. All because he was bored.
  • Heiji Shindo indeed had those 500 archers waiting for his sign in case Mizu did anything to him.
  • The bunraku play from episode five turns out to be a show put on the shogun's court, where Akemi is already present after her capture, soon to be married to Takayoshi Itoh.
  • Fowler smuggled two thousand guns into Edo by disguising their parts as commonplace items that simply need to be assembled.
  • Lord Daichi is in cahoots with Fowler and Heiji Shindo as their Puppet King - and he himself designated Akemi as the puppet ruler for himself.
• Revenge Before Reason: Both enemies and allies of Mizu find the lengths she is going to for revenge to be hard to understand.
• Reverse Grip: Mizu has a tendency to switch to it with a whole variety of weapons, often as a way to overcome the defences of people that can parry her regular attacks. The only other characters that do this are murderous thugs.
• Riddle for the Ages: We never learn who and why betrayed Mizu. It's likely that it was either Mikio or her mother - or neither. At least for Mizu, it doesn't matter, the event being her true Start of Darkness and general Cynicism Catalyst regardless of the blame, but the question lingers.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: When Heiji Shindo describes Mizu after an encounter with her, he says she's no man, implying demonic creature or at least The Sociopath. Mizu isn't a man - literally so.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Mizu vowed to kill the four white devils, and nothing is going to slow or convince her otherwise. She just wants her satisfaction.
• Rubber-Band History: Despite various smaller and bigger changes to historical events, Sengoku period still concludes with the establishment of the shogunate of the victorious clan, sakoku policies are still implemented, foreigners are expelled and very limited trade with the outside world is going on, all in roughly the same timeframe as it did in real-life history.
• Rude Hero, Nice Sidekick: The basis of Mizu-Ringo interactions. She's a bitter, cynical, uncaring "monster" on a mission of bloody revenge. He's a Naïve Newcomer with some really wide eyes (literally so) that sticks up for Mizu and intervines whenever few kind words can achieve more than her sword.
• Rule of Cool: The lifeblood of the series. It's one part Decon-Recon Switch of Jidaigeki, one part Animesque shounen, one part Tarantino's action flick full of Homages and Ludicrous Gibs and one part really cool visuals. And because it's animated, it can ignore law of physics or the technical issues of making certain scenes happen.
• Rule of Symbolism: The bunraku play that is weaved into one of the episodes prominently uses phoenix imagery. It becomes pretty blatant when Mizu regains her consciousness after suffering from Combat Breakdown and the scene cuts to the puppet pheonix screaming, flying up in the sky.
• Rule of Three: As part of their character establishing, we see how different people cross a guard post in the second episode:
  •  Mizu was planning to bribe her way through it, and when noticing how the guard reacted to a bribe attempt by another person, she simply backs off to find another route, not wanting to cause extra trouble or get into a pointless fight. The only reason she passes through is because Ringo helped her with his own permit.
  • Taigen rides through the crowd and doesn't even slow down when reaching the gate, but he flashes them a legit travel permit and moves on, solely focused on his goal of facing Mizu again.
  • When the Four Fangs reach that same gate, they don't even slow the horses and cut through both the civilians and the guards manning the gate in brutal fashion, callously following after their bounty.

S

• Sacred Hospitality: Invoked and exploited. When she's about to be thrown out of the Shindo dojo, Mizu invokes the hospitality for travelers, asking if the school has fallen low enough to not even feed her first. She doesn't really care for the food or the custom, but just needs to stall for time.
• Samurai Ponytail: Most of the Samurai, including Mizu, tied their hair into a topknot hairstyle called chonmage. Taigen joins the plot because Mizu cut his off in their fight, and it is such a mark of shame that he wants a rematch to restore his honor.
• Samus Is a Girl: Mizu is a Sweet Polly Oliver example, but her gender isn't revealed until the last scene of the first episode, the entirety of which led the audience (and the other characters) to believe she was male. In-universe, only two people know the truth, everyone else taking it for granted that Mizu is a man.
• Sarashi: Mizu is shown wearing her modest breasts tightly wrapped. When she was going through puberty, she kept getting bruises and even lacerations from the wrappings.
• Scaramanga Special: Fowler manages to hide his shipment of rifles from both the shogun and his fellow co-conspirators by having the individual components disguised as furniture (stocks as piano legs, flintlock mechanisms as chess pieces, etc) and then assembling them later.
• Scarf of Asskicking: Mizu wears a distinct, even if a plain one. She later replaces it with one taken from Taigen.
• Scarred Equipment: Mizu gets injured several times over the course of the series, and afterwards her kimono shows stitch lines where she repaired the torn cloth.
• The Siege: Defied. Fowler sarcastically points out to the shogun that by effortlessly storming Edo's castle, he saved everyone all the suffering and struggle of being besieged.
• Secret Underground Passage:
  • One of the ways to get inside Fowler's castle is to get through an underground - and underwater - tunnel. It's booby-trapped, turning into a Drowning Pit.
  • Edo's castle naturally comes with one of those, allowing the shogun's family to escape it once Fowler's mooks in the inner chambers are delt with.
• Self-Made Orphan: Mizu's driving motivation is to become one, by kill anyone that might be her father. She also allowed the woman she believes to be her mother to be killed, although Fowler claims that she was actually just a maid hired to care for Mizu.
• Sequel Hook: The first season ends with Mizu sailing away from Japan with Fowler in a cage, heading to London where the remaining two targets of her revenge (Skeffington and Routley) are supposedly located.
• Shoot the Messenger: Fowler erupts in a rage and kills the messenger who brings the news that the Four Fangs are dead.
• Shout-Out:
  • There are countless small nods towards both Zatoichi franchise at large and its 2003 reboot in particular.
  • The men of Boss Hamata, the Thousand Claws, wear kimonos with the Overlook Hotel's infamous carpet pattern.
  • While there are numerous nods towards the film, the fight with Thousand Claws inside madame Kaji's tea house takes direct cues from Kill Bill and the fights against the Crazy 88.
  • Mizu's failed attempt at stealth when storming the Tanabe Island fortress is straight from the Metal Gear franchise - and about just as serious.
  • Mizu putting her head in the bucket of ice water and screaming underwater after her hallucinatory encounter with the baboons while storming the Tanabe Island fortress was likely a similar reference to either or both Perfect Blue and/or Requiem for a Dream.
• Shown Their Work: The series takes various liberties when it comes to portraying the early Edo period, but the creators most definitely did some research on bunraku and thought out how to integrate it into their own plot and visual style.
• Simple, yet Opulent: Mizu's sword. It has the barest of decoration, but at the same time, the hamon is in a very literal "foamy waves" decorative pattern and the blue sheen of the alloy adds to the illusion of a stormy sea.
• Single-Stroke Battle:
  • Most mooks rarely last long enough for a second slash to be needed.
  • The duel at the start of "Peculiarities". It's probably a homage to a similar duel in Seven Samurai.
• Sinister Scraping Sound:
  • When Hachiman is threatening Ringo in the soba bar, Mizu slooooowly pushes the table she's sitting behind, making as much ruckus as possible to draw Hachi's attention.
  • A handful of Sword Drags happens through the series, always with the unnerving scrapping being part of it.
• Skilled And Strong:
  • In the series present, Mizu is an experienced, absurdly honed and further motivated Master Swordsman. Even the most Elite Mooks barely slow her down, while everyone else on her way dies by the dozens with minimal effort. On top of that, she displays feats of Super-Strength in a series that doesn't involve fantastic elements and survives injuries that would cripple people for life.
  • Fowler has mastered the use of a Japanese katana well enough that Mizu comments on the cleanness of a chrysanthemum stem he cut, stating that it shows a master's skill. Despite that, he prefers using brute force in a fight whenever he can't use a gun, using speed and strength and whatever is in the environment to give himself every advantage he can, putting Mizu on the ropes several times despite her sword skills being among the best demonstrated in the series.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Mikio. He only exists in flashbacks, and his marriage with Mizu lasted less than a year (further made to look short due to extensive use of Time-Passes Montage), but he is easily one of the most important people when it comes to the direction and shape her life took.
• So Much for Stealth: In a Serial Escalation style, no less. As Mizu infiltrates Fowler's fortress, she successfully sneaks on one of the guards and kills him without any noise... until he drops his spear, which clatters on the flagstones, alerting a second guard. Mizu kills him in the last moment before he can raise the alarm, only for his blood to leak under the door, alerting a third guard Mizu was unaware of, who pulls the bell rope to sound the alarm before Mizu can reach the door and kill him as well. From that moment on, she has to face an ever-growing number of guards on her path.
• Social Climber:
  • Lord Daichi's father was a pig farmer. He's a daimyo of the Yodo domain (or its in-universe equivalent), getting there despite his lowly origins. He climbed to his station before Akemi was even born, meaning he did it at the tail end of the Sengoku period and might or might not achieve it all due to a string of Field Promotions and later manoeuvring.
  • Abijah Fowler was a nobody and an Irish orphan. He's now one of the most powerful, and definitely the richest man in all of Japan. And while nobody respects him, they grudgingly have to endure his presence due to the money he makes. The man himself is also far above his lowly origins as a starving peasant, dedicating his entire life to climbing out of the mess he was born into.
• Soft Water: Mizu and Taigen jump of the window on the top level of Fowler's fortress, which is a few stores high and placed on a steep cliff, only to land in a half-frozen sea below, full of ice floe. The fall does nothing to them.
• Sorting Algorithm of Evil: Defied by both Abijah Fowler and Heiji Shindo.
  • When they first learn that Mizu is coming after them, Fowler immediately instructs Heiji Shindo to send their most effective and feared assassin team, the Four Fangs, to kill her. Fowler explicitly says that this is so that the situation will be done and not drag out.
  • When Mizu kills the Four Fangs, Heiji Shindo arranges a peace parlay. He points out that he could spend more and more money to hire stronger and stronger thugs one after the other, but he doesn't want to get stuck in that situation. So, instead he offers her a gargantuan bribe (money, and titles, and influence with the Shogun) to put an end to her vendetta right away.
  • The trope is however played absolutely straight when Mizu is facing the Shindo dojo. First she overpowers the students, then their teacher, then Taigen, their top duelist. None of those offer her any meaningful challenge, but they are progressively better trained.
• Spanner in the Works: Mizu is an Outside-Context Problem to the political coup planned by Fowler and Heiji Shindo, but her constant meddling and personally targeting Fowler (not to mention nearly killing Heiji for getting in her way) puts the whole plan in jeopardy. Up to the point where she's the only reason why the coup fails, even if she couldn't care less about all the high politics and has no respect towards the shogun or the shogunate.
• Spare to the Throne: Takayoshi Itoh is the second son of the shogun, and it's even invoked in-universe that the line of the shogunate is secured one way or another, with two sons and a grandson already around during the shogun's life.
• Sparing the Final Mook:
  • Zig-Zagged in the end of the fight against the Thousand Claws. Mizu simply scares off the two remaining gang members after killing dozens of them, but then proceeds with emotionlessly slaughtering the scared kid she spared earlier, even if he possessed no danger to her and she never had to fight him.
  • At one point while attacking Fowler's castle, Mizu faces off against a detachment of samurai mooks. One of them freezes mid-combat and can only watch in horror as Mizu brutally fights her way through the rest of the group. Eventually he's the only one left, and he and Mizu appear to either silently or off-screen come to an agreement, and he retrieves her sword from a trap where she was forced to leave it. After he does so she leaves him alive and goes on her way, leading to him collapsing in relief in the background.
• Speech Impediment: It turns out that this is why the shogun's second son never seems to speak: he has a severe stutter, and thus keeps silent to hide it even though it lets his mother and her servants spread lies about his brutality. When Akemi finds out, she tells him he has no cause for shame and her most brilliant tutor had a stutter, and they consummate their marriage.
• Speed Sex: Taigen and Akemi have sex shortly after his loss to Mizu. Since they're both virgins (or at least Akemi is) and Taigen is distracted, it lasts less than a minute. When she sleeps with the Shogun's son, they go multiple rounds.
• Splash of Color: Netflix released a "Special Edition" version of Episode 6 on YouTube, in which Mizu fights her way through Fowler's castle, that has been changed to be mostly Deliberately Monochrome except for some bits of color like the red of blood and shining blue like Mizu's eyes.
• Spikes of Doom: Part of Tanabe Island's castle defenses. They come in two distinct types:
  • The standard pit full of spikes, with a trapdoor leading to the pit. Mizu not only avoids those, but then throws mooks into the pit by the dozen.
  • When navigating a corridor where The Walls Are Closing In, Mizu is surprised when it also includes metal bars sliding between the walls, further blocking her escape route. And one of those pierces right below her ankle.
• Spiteful Spit:
  • After enduring another round of Cold-Blooded Torture, Taigen spits at the feet of the Torture Technician.
  • Having the plot against himself exposed and killing master Chiba, Fowler spits on his dead body.
  • When Mizu has defeated Fowler and holds him at the tip of his own dagger, all he does is laugh and spit in her face with his own blood.
• Stay in the Kitchen: This being early Edo period, Yamato Nadeshiko-like ideal of womanhood is being enforced by law, against the will of women and often also simple logic or common sense. And it covers all social classes:
  • Mizu passing for a man is effectively the worst offence she could commit, far more grievous than the fact she's a revenge-driven maniac leaving a path of bodies in her wake. When she was married to Mikio, she eventually had to fully embrace the household duties and expectations to keep their marriage from falling apart.
  • At one point, Mizu stumbles into a basket weaver who is denied entry to the city, because she doesn't have a chaperone. She is supposed to literally stay in the kitchen, and the town guard dismisses the woman's explanation that her husband is dead.
  • Even Akemi is nothing more than a political asset to her father, to be married to the right party - something lord Daichi talks very openly about with his own daughter. It's not helping one bit that she's a Rebellious Princess.
  • The prostitutes are kept in high contempt, not due to their trade, but because they aren't married. Even then, while the brothel is run and effectively owned by madame Kaji, she has a male business partner, who is the official owner.
  • Even the most level-headed and accepting men are still portrayed as sexist, often due to it being Inherent in the System, rather than them actively being like that.
• Stealthy Colossus: Ringo is inexplicitly apt as stealth, despite being a really big and rather clumsy guy.
• A Storm Is Coming:
  • The flashback to Mizu's past in "The Tale of the Ronin and the Bride", ends with a Mizu in her bloodstained white kimono walking away from her home forever under stormy skies. A flash of lightning makes a cloud above her look like a demonic face.
  • Season One ends with Mizu as passenger on a ship sailing towards a storm on the horizon, showing that what's waiting for her in London, England won't be pleasant.
• Storming the Castle:
  • The series build up, and eventually delivers with the plot of the 6th episode, where Mizu is climbing her way to Fowler's private chambers, powering through all the obstacles on her way in her usual style.
  • The first season finale is a villainous example, where Fowler is leading a small army of mooks armed with Western guns to effortlessly take over Edo and reach the inner sanctum of the shogun's castle.
• Stout Strength: A recurring design for really strong characters
  • Abijah Fowler is a bull of a man, but there is no denying that he can hold his way in a fight.
  • Chiaki is large and stout and uses both to his advantage, simply using his bulk against people he's facing.
  • Heiji Shindo has a handful of Giant Mooks that are big in every possible way. While they never possess any actual challenge, they are still dangerous due to their size and strength and at the very least intimidate other characters.
• Suicidal "Gotcha!": When the Four Fangs have Mizu backed up against a cliff, she surprises them by apparently leaping to her death. But when they look over the edge they find she's jumped onto a smaller ledge just big enough to hold her and nobody else, so they can't all attack her at once.
• Super-Strength: While the series is devoid of fantastic elements, Mizu is still consistently portrayed as possessing inhuman levels of strength, tossing and kicking people around like ragdolls, holding impossible blocks (few of which result in her enemies hurting themselves) and eventually even performing a gearless Wall Crawl while carrying unconscious Taigen on her back. It is not addressed in any way, other than looking really cool.
• Super Weapon, Average Joe: The whole point of equipping an entire army with Western flintlock muskets. Mizu is shown going through Heiji Shindo's mooks without any trouble (if not easier) than any other group she ever faced, but when the same mooks are given muskets and training, they turn into Badass Evil Army that effortlessly takes Edo by storm.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • Mizu's skill with the sword is incredible...in the modern day. When we see her when she first began her revenge quest in flashbacks, her first interaction with criminals she tried to question resulted in her being pinned, stabbed in the side, then tossed on the street, only surviving because she by chance ran into her mother, or rather, who she thought was her mother. She definitely has natural skill, and later she was able to both defeat her husband in a friendly spar, and slaughter the bounty hunters who come after her, but its clear that her superhuman-level skill now is born from years of experience and the sheer ruthlessness she fights with.
  • The series plays Katanas Are Just Better very straight, with Mizu and Taigen's mastery of the blade being sufficient for them to slice through entire tree trunks in a single blow with enough focus. However, despite both having the skills to slice arrows in flight as a defence when attacked from afar, when Mizu finally ascends up Fowler's castle and breaks into his personal study to confront him, he brings an English matchlock rifle to bear against her instead. Despite having the hand-eye coordination to bring her blade into the path of the bullet, the sword does not cut the projectile in two, and it actually breaks Mizu's Thunderbolt Iron sword instead, illustrating how dangerous and game-changing guns are no matter how semi-mystical the sword skills on display.
    • In the same vein, just having the katana is not nearly enough. Plenty of emphasis is put on stance, grip, distance, strength, timing, and footwork. The first time Mizu tries to cut through a pole, her angle of attack is so bad the impact bounces the sword right out of her hand. There's a reason the katas of katana-oriented swordfighting were so detailed and their masters so revered. They could take decades to learn correctly, and often came down to sheer physics (or, less commonly, repetition through combat).
• Sweet Polly Oliver: Mizu is a woman dressed convincingly as a man, and is shown in the second episode binding her breasts with a sarashi. It's not even revealed she's a woman until the very end of the first episode, though the fact she's played by Maya Erskine might've tipped some viewers off.

T-Z

• Tampering with Food and Drink: Akemi tries to serve Mizu sake that she added opium tincture to, hoping to at least knock Mizu out and capture her, later switching that plan to slay her once she's out.
• The Teetotaler: While Mizu displays various signs of being a straight edge, most of them might be associated with hiding her true sex. However, she explicitly never drinks, both to keep her head clean and having an implied disdain for intoxication, given that her mother was an opium addict.
• This Is for Emphasis, Bitch!
  Madame Kaji: Stop running to and from men and decide what you want for your fucking self.
  [later in the same episode]
  Akemi: It seems I've decided what I want for my fucking self.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: The Giant Mook is killed by piercing his neck with a sword, putting a grenade inside of the hole and setting him on fire.
• Throwing Your Sword Always Works: Somewhat justified.
  • Mizu only does it either as emergency, or when someone is running away or when facing her final opponent. She proven time and again she doesn't need a weapon to remain lethally dangerous.
  • When the Four Fangs have Mizu cornered, each of them is carrying a few different swords, while their goal is to simply throw her off-balance right next to a steep cliff. So tossing a bunch of sharp objects is a great way to both keep her occupied and distracted. And if any of them - and one does - end up wounding her, all the better.
• Thug Dojo: Despite their renown, the Shindo-Ryu Dojo is full of overconfident jerks, trained by dismissive teachers and the place clearly lacks any discipline - not to mention actual quality training. It seems this was an Open Secret even when Mizu was a child, since when their alumnus visited Master Eiji's forge, the old swordmaker dismissed his "secret technique" as showy, but useless.
• Thunderbolt Iron: Mizu's sword is forged from a fallen meteorite, resulting in its signature blue sheen and its performance in battle.
• Time-Passes Montage: In a Happy Flashback, Mikio teaches Mizu to get an apple from the tree with a thrown knife. A closeup of her hand is shown using the knife to peel apples against a background of fallen leaves that change color with the seasons.
• Tomboy with a Girly Streak: Mizu is effectively a man, but she still displays interest in pretty trinkets and horses whenever she has spare time to waste.
• The Tooth Hurts: Mizu's fight with the Shindo-Ryu Dojo sees a lot of Teeth Flying. She rips out one guy's teeth with her fingers, knocks a few out, and rips another guy's teeth out by slamming her bokken into his mouth and then yanking it out. To top it off, she throws the pulled teeth into another guy's eye.
• Too Important to Walk: Akemi's first presence on screen is as she's loudly announced by her servants, who carry her in an elaborate norimono. Even when she decides to run away and search for Taigen, she does so with the use of the litter, loaded with a whole lot of luggage in tow.
• Torture Cellar: The castle on Tanabe Island has one, manned by a Torture Technician. Both Fowler and Heiji like to watch the man at work, even if Fowler got bored over the years.
• Trailers Always Spoil: The first episode concludes with a three-minute-long montage of events from the rest of the season, spoiling just about anything that's gonna happen waaay ahead of time before those events are even implied or set up in the series. It completely deflates any sort of tension or shock when they actually do happen.
• Training Montage: We get to see a few by Mizu
  • As a teen, she started to study swordplay, by repeating moves of the various samurai that were obliged to explain their techniques to Eiji.
  • Chiaki gave her cruel, yet still effective training tips.
  • The exact same episode with Chiaki has adult Mizu training her balance and swordplay. Both become handy when facing the Four Fangs.
• Traumatic Haircut: Mizu slashed Taigen's topknot, which cost him his status as a Samurai and ruins his plans to marry Akemi. As a result, Taigen is upset over his cut topknot and wants to duel Mizu to regain the honor he lost from the haircut.
• Travel Montage: The map version is used to show Abijah Fowler and Heiji Shindo traveling to Edo, intercut with the decadent and sadistic pleasures that Shindo has arranged at every stop.
• Trickster Mentor:
  • Seki, Akemi's Old Retainer. When she calls him out for betraying her trust and setting up an Arranged Marriage for her, he simply asks why she is free-spirited, well-read and so fiercely independent - or if she really thinks it was her own actions or that he didn't know about her sneaking around as a child. His goal was to prepare her as best as possible for court life, rather than being a Trophy Wife.
  • Chiaki, despite doing it for his own amusement, accidentally becomes one for young Mizu, explaining her various wrongs in her fighting stance and moves. While he did it solely for a chance to beat a helpless kid, his tips were still genuine and Mizu took them to heart.
• The Unfettered:
  • Mizu checks every single box of the trope: she is exceedingly ruthless, doesn't give a damn about honour, social norms or even the law, always faces her problems and obstacles head-on, and never shows any emotions beyond maybe some Tranquil Fury. All in the pursuit of her single goal: killing the four white men, either of which could be her biological father. And as we learn later on, she used to be a better person, but then was betrayed by her beloved.
  • Fowler was just a starving orphan back in Ireland. He dedicated his entire life to never being at the mercy of circumstances again and being a master of his own fate. Considering he is now a ruthless and filthy rich Arms Dealer with enough ambitions to fill a separate chamber, it's sufficient to say he succeeded with everything he wanted and stops at nothing to achieve his goals.
• Unscrupulous Hero: All Mizu wants is the satisfaction of killing all four men who could be her father. Anything and anyone that stands in her way to that goal is just collateral. The only reason she's still heroic is due to the fact that her targets are some of the most vile humans in-universe, and she completely unintentionally ends up crumbling their schemes.
• Unwanted Assistance: Ringo tags along with Mizu, much to her annoyance. She doesn't want his help and repeatedly tells him to just leave her alone, but he always comes back. She eventually grudgingly accepts that he's indeed "Useful". When the main characters end up back in Master Eiji's forge, Ringo becomes unwanted assistance to the old swordmaker.
• Use Their Own Weapon Against Them: If, for any reason, Mizu ends up unarmed, she will quickly disarm and take over the weapons of her enemies and use them to keep fighting. This is best seen when she just keeps changing swords during her climb to the top of the Tanabe Island fortress, starting the fight with bare hands and going through half a dozen different swords taken from the guards she's fighting against, as the blades break or she has to throw them.
• Victory Through Intimidation: After being done with defending madame Kaji's brothel, Mizu can barely stand, but scares off the few remaining members of the Thousand Claws gang by first killing every other member in a really brutal, messy way. They could potentially still overwhelm her, but they are too terrified to even try.
• Villain Decay: Within a span of a single episode, the Evil Army of Fowler turns from Elite Mooks armed with super-weapons to a disorganised mob running for their lives in the midst of a city fire.
• Wall Crawl: Mizu does it as a Dungeon Bypass when the obstacles inside the Fowler's fortress prove too much for her. While having Taigen on her back. And her katana in her teeth. And no climbing gear.
• The Walls Are Closing In: And there are bars of metal further blocking the passage between them
• We Need a Distraction: Mizu vounteers as one in her own plan to save people inside madame Kaji's brothel from the Thousand Claws gang.
  Mizu: Akemi, when I strike, run to the others.
  Akemi: [looks around the empty room] Strike who?
  [Mizu comes to a nearby vase and breaks it by kicking it. Cue ruckus of breaking down panels and footsteps]
• Weapon-Based Characterization:
  • Mizu is an edged weapon specialist. You know. Edged.
  • Various thugs use "dishonourable" weapons, because they are just easier to kill with than others, and there is no etiquette for those, unlike with the ritualised use of katana.
  • The Thousand Claws gang is using tekagi-shuko, which aren't even a weapon, but it's still a really, really horrible way to die when being shredded by those - and the gang rules by fear.
• Weapon for Intimidation: At one point, tired and otherwise unarmed Mizu threatens a group of mooks with a hand grenade. She doesn't intend to detonate it, but she really needs to catch her breath.
• Weapon Specialisation
  • Mizu is apt with blades - doesn't matter if it's a katana, naginata, kitchen knife or soba-cutting hatchet, she will butcher her target.
  • The Thousand Claws gang gets its name from the users wearing tekagi-shuko and fighting with those.
• Well-Trained, but Inexperienced: In a flashback, we learn that Mizu was very well trained, but when facing two random schmucks, she hesitates to even threaten them, not to mention harm them, as they are innocent passerbys in her mind. The series of flashbacks follow, showing that she was not only really good in combat, but enjoyed it a great deal. It took Cynicism Catalyst in the form of killing her own husband and being betrayed to make her put that training into practical, lethal use and become the ruthless, uncaring person she's now.
• Wham Line: At the end of the season finale, Mizu has Fowler at her mercy, but Fowler manages to convince her that she needs him if she's to find the other 2 men, not to mention of Mizu's true parentage.
  Fowler: Don't you want to know which one tried to burn you alive as a baby? Which one killed your mother?
  Mizu: I saw my mother die!
  Fowler: Did you? That wasn't your mother. That was your maid. Paid to keep you hidden, which I hear she did til the money ran out. There's so much you don't know. Skeffington... Routely... You want to find them, you need me. Alive.
  Mizu: Why?
  Fowler: Because I know another word you don't know. A magic word. London.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • One of madame Kaji's "peculiarities" is a white-haired, green-eyed woman. While she makes alive through the events in the brothel, when madame Kaji and her girls reach Edo, she's not present and isn't mentioned.
  • Goro was promised his money for Akemi in the morning after her debut. We never find out if he was paid or even simply made it alive until that morning.
• What Would X Do?: Ringo and Taigen are wondering how to warn the shogun about the impending coup while he's well-guarded and thus beyond their reach. Ringo wonders what Mizu would do, whereupon Taigen scoffs that Mizu would just force the way through the front door... which they then try to do on their own. Since none of them is Mizu, they are far less successful in powering through the obstacles, but they still achieve their goal.
• Wicked Cultured: Over the years, Fowler went native, embracing and even mastering various Japanese arts. It annoys him to no end, because he would rather be spending that time openly conducting business, rather than simply killing it at leisure while trapped in his own fortress.
• Worf Had the Flu:
  • Taigen claims that his defeat at Mizu's hands only happened because he was half-drunk from celebrating his engagement when the fight began. Mizu then beats him up while they're both cold sober (and she has a half-healed stab wound in her side) with a chopstick.
  • The only reason Mizu has trouble with the Giant Mook when Storming the Castle is because she's still dealing with the lingering effects of the hallucinogenics she was given.
• Would Hurt a Child:
  • Kinuyo is implied to be underage. That doesn't stop boss Hamata from abusing her to the point where she regularly needs a doctor to recover from the sores he leaves her with.
  • Fowler had zero issues with murdering his own bastard children.
• Wouldn't Hurt a Child: The only few times Mizu ever hesitated were when facing children. It always ended badly for her.
• Wrecked Weapon:
  • Mizu cuts through the Western pistol of Hachiman, then shatters what's left of the gun
  • Mizu's meteorite sword is shattered by Fowler's bullet in the sixth episode.
• You Can Barely Stand:
  • Since Mizu runs on hate and resentment, she powers through situations that would stop - and often simply kill - anyone else. She suffers from grievous injuries on a regular basis, but never, ever stops from her goal. This unnerves various characters, because they've never met anyone who wouldn't value their own lives to such an extent. Most notably, when she finally climbs to Fowler's private chambers, she is already tired, badly wounded, drugged and her left foot was pierced through - and she just asks where Fowler is, so she can kill him.
  • Taigen is put through tortures so thorough, he can only stand when Mizu supports him. It doesn't stop him from still talking - which he can barely do - about how he's going to be the one to defeat her.
• You Can't Go Home Again: While Mizu arguably never had much of a home to begin with, her leaving Japan to pursue the last two men on her list makes it unlikely she will ever return, as the rules of the sakoku period not only restricted foreigners entering Japan, but also Japanese leaving it - by sailing to another country without leave, she is banished from returning on pain of death.
• You Kill It, You Bought It:
  • The series uses twice a set-up that appears to be conclusion of Mizu killing Taigen: first when she takes his golden comb, then wearing his scarf.
  • Mizu ultimately becomes the owner of Chiaki's broken sword. For added irony, she forged it herself as a teen, and he never paid for it, so it was technically always hers.
  • After dealng with the people plotting against him, Fowler takes over the army that was provided by master Chiba as its direct commander.
• You Talk Too Much!: Mizu puts it poetically when the Motor Mouth soba chef Ringo tries to persuade her to take him as her apprentice.
  Mizu: A breeze can throw a crane off course. You... are a typhoon.
• You Will Be Spared: From time to time, Mizu leaves some of the mooks alive, usually due to being too tired and wounded to keep fighting, rather than due to any other consideration. To wit:
  • She left some of the Thousand Claw gang members alone, letting them run away, since she's bleeding to death. But at the same time, her final kill of the gang is a young teen she spared earlier. In both encounters, he didn't want to fight her and was terrified of the ongoing slaughter, but Mizu is too pissed off to spare him for the second time.
  • The terrified mook she spared when Storming the Castle, simply because he, on his own, agreed to help her, and she's in such bad shape, she simply lies on the floor and gives him a Death Glare.
  • The catalyst for a big chunk of the plot is Mizu sparing Taigen when defeating him in the Shindo dojo. For her, it was just Tuesday, but for him, the humiliation he suffered is enough to keep tracking her and demanding a formal rematch in an attempt to regain his previous status.
• Your Costume Needs Work: When Akemi enters madame Kaji's brothel, Kaji isn't impressed, pointing out they already got the "princess act" covered by Ise. However she quickly realises that Akemi is the real deal, unlike the flesh trader trying to sell her who's spent days being led around by the nose by her, thinking she's a high class courtesan.
• Your Makeup Is Running: In her past, Mizu put on a full face of makeup to meet her husband and to show that she would be a proper wife after he shunned her for her combat skill. When her enemies come and he abandons her, the rain and her tears make it run, and she slaughters her enemies.
• Yubitsume: A more extreme variant. When trying to simply buy Mizu off, Heiji Shindo has only one condition (which is implied to be a routine part of sealing the deal with him): to cut off the right thumb, making the person unable to ever again wield a sword, or at least with the dominant hand.

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