Blue Eye Samurai Interview: Creators On Clint Eastwood Inspiration & Live Action Feel In Animation

Amber Michael blueeye Samurai is a masterpiece I love this show uh the animation's gorgeous the characters have so much depth it got to a point where I almost forgot I was watching an animation at all um and if for anybody that likes Kill Bill Warrior or Game of Thrones this is right up your alley uh amber how did this show come about you know it only took uh 15 years um just 15 years uh you know the short answer is is we had a baby much to my surprise she had blue eyes we started calling her our little blueeyed Samurai and we're like wait that's a great idea um but a lot of it you know came from just my my mixed race background just you know kind of feeling stuck between two worlds and deciding what if we put those feelings into a world in Japan where the borders were closed where it was so homogeneous and that era is still heralded as the Golden Age of Japan the Golden Age where nobody was allowed in who looked different and what that must have felt like and just like it's let's make a good story out of that absolutely I'm totally identified with character Mizu I am also of mixed race half asian origin so this completely hit home for me Michael I've never seen anything like this show ever uh can you describe blueeyed Samurai visually you know when you said in your introduction to it that you forgot you're watching anation that was our goal I mean yes we wanted we want to make sure that our artists felt completely off leash to make the most beautiful possible version they could that everything about this was going to be really bespoke but what we said is if we do all that right and we make these characters both on the page but in their design feel real and um feel different that people might have the experience of just kind of forgetting that they were watching and have a high degree of attachment as if they were watching movie stars playing these roles um not just movie stars voicing these roles so um that was really it like everything about it was a live AC action aesthetic we come out of live action our supervising director Jane woo has an animation background but has been working as a storyboard artist uh in live action you know the highest levels of live action in Marvel and Game of Thrones on and on and on and um so we just we wanted to take as much of the lessons of our background and apply it to animation and hopefully to come up with something that really you know everyone every show says they want to do something different we might have accidentally done that yeah I absolutely agree as soon as I started watching the show I was completely in and I could not turn it off Amber uh Maya kin George te masoko Ming Na win Brenda Song Randall Park Kenneth BR Stephanie Shu Mark dcus Harry shim Jr and the list goes on and on can you talk about bringing this fantastic cast together for blueeyed Samurai and the importance of representation in the casting definitely I would like to say that it was so hard to bring these people together that we worked night and day wooing them and sending them flowers um doing promposals at their front but really they were all so excited they all just said yes it took it took nothing and I think it was because of the Asian representation we made it clear to them uh our our casting directors uh Marjorie simpen and or Suds they went to these people and asked them and they just said yes because people wanted to get get involved with something that was telling a story that was so you know about Asian culture and just be a part of that I mean it it hasn't been done so many times so um yeah we we're very fortunate to have the talents of all these amazing people incredible Michael when this series starts off it feels like a Clint Eastwood Western in the East uh what were some of the Cinematic cinematic Inspirations you guys Drew from for blue samurai while crafting the series oh so many and thank you yes we talked about Clint Eastwood and you know both in uh how we were going to introduce the character The Man With No Name you know good by the ugly Once Upon Time in the West was a major touchdown but also when we spoke to my urin about building her performance that you know Mizu is literally the man with no name in the first episode she does not get called Mizu until later and we wanted the audience to have that experience of treating a mixed race Woman as a Clint Eastwood type strong silent male character um we had so many influences I mean you know the first time we met Jane woo our supervising director and nerded out about like oh my God you love zichi and we talked about you know Lone Wolf and Cub I mean this was an excuse to go deep and by the entire series and read through them um you know obviously Kurosawa movies but then also mizuchi you know Lady Snow blood Oni Baba you know Kuru by shindo which we loved so much that we actually named the character hiji shindo and shindo Dojo so um our our you know you can easter egg our influences shots borrowed from uh great films uh if we end up getting compared songs borrowed SS borrowed refence if if people say they stole from Hariri we'll be like thank you yes please yes accuse us of stealing from Geniuses uh amber the animation style oh my goodness I have never seen anything like this it was like these beautiful like painted brush strokes but mixed together with this two 3D animation I want to pre I want to say this is not an anime this is an adult animation can you talk about the animation style and collaborating with blue blue Spirit Studios on the challenges of bringing bluee Samurai to life well definitely we wanted the show to look like something nobody had ever seen before we said from the from the beginning this is not going to be an anime you know we all love anime but we need it we need it to be different we need to expand our audience we need everyone to know that this is not for just for anime lovers this is for a whole new audience um so we had to work to find that that right balance and that right style and we worked you know with our supervising director Jane woo and with the talents of many many other people and the collaboration of blue Spirit to find the right balance within within our guidelines that we were provided and you know I think I think it worked out our Miner Toby Wilson came at it we have to give him props comes at it with so much passion I mean everyone did our our character designer Brian kessinger uh one of our supervising animators Mike greenh hold like these these people would work with blue Spirit day and day out to make sure the details were just right that the the emotions on the face were clear and then of course that the movements were right that Japanese women were walking you know if they were meant to be a proper Japanese woman they walk a certain way that feet go a certain you know like we had to get the Ino just right the kimono sleeves you know the endless coners yes the endless conversations that kimonos are not bathrobes but have an internal structure and layering and you know it's just Everyone Cared so much and blue Spirit was just game yeah I mean there was almost times where I felt I thought it was like rotoscope because the way the camera moved and everything floats so smoothly I was blown away by the animation previs but not rotoscope I mean we used camera lensing and previs and a lot of the vocabulary of building live action uh film but yeah no went that's a great compliment thank you yeah it was incredible Michael I I do want to ask about Jane woo because she is incredible uh she's been was the supervising director on this and producer for bluee Samurai she worked as a story artist on projects she had mentioned the Avengers Guardians of the Galaxy Mulan and Game of Thrones uh she's also directed animation before how did you guys get her back into animation and can you talk about working with her to find the right tone for blueeye Samurai yeah I mean it was when Netflix uh you know read the script and you know had bought it and read it and they basically said we want to pick this up but it takes a director for us to be able to say yes we said great we know directors and live acttion we don't know animation people we need to figure out who to talk to together and uh you know then uh the head of Animation we were working with Mike Moon said um I'm gonna introduce you to Jane woo and we said it's what true story we said great but we like options who else should we meet and he said you're going to meet Jane woo because a there's no one else with that background and B you're going to love her and he was right we were instantly like you know the three legs of a stool is what we always said although stool is probably the wrong word to describe art um but we were just instantly tonally aligned we talked about our favorite references we looked at pictures you know of images uh that we could see being influential for concept art and then it was also just joining hands with her and saying we're not going to take a dive and go from concept art to something completely different we're going to make sure it continues to look like that she said those brush Strokes we see those stay and we're like yep so now we're family incredible Amber I want to talk about one of the amazing characters we meet in this series uh Maya kin plays misu what makes Mizu so unique and relatable and what made Maya the perfect choice to play M Mizu Mizu everybody will relate to Mizu as somebody who's felt marginalized who's felt just that that need to seek revenge or to seek wholeness for herself and Maya ersin in pen5 we fell in love with her I don't know if if you haven't seen pen5 you should it's a it's comedy but there's such a sadness to the comedy in Maya's character and that you see the there's the sadness of her just grappling with her mixed race identity and we knew that you know Maya could bring that to this character and she did in Spades and brought such such depth to Mizu and because because we want to root for mizu's Quest for Revenge but we also want to root for Mizu kind of finding some self acceptance to kind of like maybe not need to kill so many people because she's so angry maybe maybe she can have some friends you know maybe she can open herself up a little bit and that's ultimately we needed to bring some more warmth and Humanity to Mizu to over over time that she's not just a killing machine speaking of that Michael can you talk about mizu's bond with Ringo played by masoka you know it's it's funny when you were just saying that I was thinking like oh my God she's we kind of made her a little like Batman you know where it's like think of bat Meo he's so driven it's I fig I experience this trauma and I will metastasize that into hyper violence um but one of the most Charming things you can do to Batman is give him accidental Partners eventually Batman is at his best when he's tempered with Robin uh who I think we might have called Ringo um but butly very different characters wait a wait a second the analogy breaks down pretty quickly um and uh I can't the honest truth is we've never actually discussed that that was just um we we knew that you know the fun of a character is so driven the most fun you can have is poke them right because they just don't have like stop trying to make me enjoy things you know um and Along Comes someone who is marginalized in his own way who is looked down as other he is disabled he's born without hands but he is in kind of an IR irrepressibly Sunny way that I think masoko very much is in his life um wouldn't let that take him down he F you know I'm born without hands I'll make some tools I'm still a great chef I can still make things work um but he knows how people look at him so when he sees Mizu thinking Mizu is a man who is badass but but is also looked down as very much much other if not disabled in their Community um he sees a hero instantly oh my God you are everything I want to be teach me to be like you and then Mizu can go no please please keep 10 foot distance I have no time or patience for you for that character to warm his way into her life by her side is is just it was just Joy it was joy to write those scenes came easy and made us laugh now last question I do have for you guys is I know that animation takes a long time so please tell me you're already working on season 2 but all honestly I know that how far how long have you plotted ahead and how many seasons would you like to tell this story in we have a lot of stories in our hearts that we're just waiting we're just waiting to make we do are not working on a season two we're waiting we're waiting for season one to Premiere and see how successful it's going to be and so we need everybody to watch it starting November 3rd and then there will be a season two yes which we have it is plotted out season two has an approved outline uh and we we you know in our heart of hearts we want to tell at least you know three four seasons we know that be end of this story we would love to Contin we know the spin-off spin-off series for like Ringo you know we know exactly where this goes in the future we you know we're just hoping that the audience uh for original content shows up and um necessitates further storytelling well I will be shouting uh about this show on the mountaintops because it is absolutely incredible blueeyed Samurai fantastic show I can't wait for people to see this and I can't wait for you guys to announce season 2 uh I need it already thank you guys so much for your time honest the show is fantastic thank you so much really nice to meet you take care

Channel: Screen Rant Plus

Views: 8,091

Keywords: Amber Noizumi, Animation, Blue Eye Samurai, Michael Green, Movies, Netflix, Television, hollywood

Id: bof6P-CJGYA

Length: 13min 46sec (826 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 03 2023