Let's have a western animation thread

[Raging Justice]

I'm finally watching Castlevania: Nocturne and season 2 of Invincible. I finished season 1 of Blue Eye Samurai, which is an amazing show. I made another thread about it but...this forum is pretty much a walking corpse as evidenced by this thread. Actually, this seems to be true of a lot of places online (even reddit). It's like everyone has migrated to social media and discord I guess, two things I have little interest in using. You guys watching any other cool animated shows? I want to know about any cool shows that I'm missing. I love animation but there seems to be so little of it worth talking about these days

I'm wondering if we're ever gonna get that Darkwing Duck reboot

Western animated shows have been mentioned in other threads, so it's not so much that the topic is dead, but that this thread was just forgotten. I mean, you could have posted your Blue Eyed Samurai review here instead.

What the hell, I guess I CAN do a fairly detailed review.



Blue Eye Samurai is basically about a half white female samurai back during a time in Japanese history where they had closed themselves off to the rest of the world. As such, she has to hide her identity in order to avoid anti-white bigotry. She can't let anyone see that she is a "blue-eyed demon". As this is also a place and time where women are largely treated like property (or whores), she ALSO has to pretend to be a male. It's kind of fascinating how the show deals with both bigotry and sexism at the same time. She seeks revenge on one of four white men who impregnated her mother and made her into the "demon" that she is. I assumed that the show was implying that her mother was raped. She doesn't know exactly which one of them did the deed. It seems these four are also involved in criminal activities like flesh trading (trafficking) and selling illegal drugs and weapons (basically stuff imported from outside of Japan)

What I like about the show is that it is clearly made for an adult audience. There is language, bloody violence, and sex is just casually shown and talked about on a regular basis. THIS IS ABSOLUTELY NOT A FAMILY FRIENDLY SHOW. I cannot stress that enough. I like how raw and real the characters feel, much of that comes through in their dialog, particularly when characters are having serious discussions about the gender issues of the time or cultural things (like hearing Japanese characters discuss "disgusting" things that foreigners eat and drink like milk).



I like that the story avoids many tropes, cliches, and predictable stuff, with characters doing things I didn't expect, or revelations about certain characters that I didn't expect. It also very openly and honestly examines bigotry and gender issues and doesn't do it in a preachy way. It's a ballsy show in that sense. The conversations surrounding the gender stuff is really great and realistic (particularly for the time period), and far more intelligent than anything you'll hear in that stupid Barbie movie.

Mizu is an interesting lead character and it's interesting watching her grow over the course of the show while also learning about her backstory. She is a strong and capable lead, but her character has flaws, and this factors heavily into her story.

The show also has disabled characters and does a wonderful job of presenting them as capable, useful people who have learned to live with their disabilities and even turn them into strengths.



Like any revenge tale the show explores the cost of being obsessed with revenge, but it handles it better than most shows because again it tends to avoid predictable scenarios. This is a samurai show too, so there's a wonderful contrast between "honor" and "revenge"

The action is wonderfully choreographed and quite artful in some instances. It is VERY obvious that the makers of this show understand how to do an action sequence and have prior experience in this area. There is a very strong Kill Bill influence that the show makes pretty obvious. You can see clear influences of many other things too like video games (one stealth sequence literally feels like watching someone play Tenchu), Bruce Lee's Game of Death, Zatoichi the Blind Swordsman movies, Westerns, and Akira Kurosawa. What I really liked is how the action escalates over time, with things getting crazier and crazier as the series goes on, and the story justifies this too.






The animation is beautiful, there is some computer generated stuff, so it's not all traditional animation. It didn't bother me at all though. It's all very well done and looks great. The cinematography is superb. Again, there is an artfulness and a soul to everything that the show does. The sounds and the music all add to this. You get a great sense of Japanese culture permeating through everything. In fact, it's sort of interesting how the show manages to show both the beauty and the ugliness of Japan at that point in time. Beautiful landscapes, traditional Japanese music, samurai honor, Eastern philosophy, old traditions and values, but also men treating women like literal trash, xenophobia, women being manipulative and using sex to control men while having zero respect for them, violence and death being treated like insignificant things (a crowd gathers to watch a duel at one point, and after seeing a man's neck slit open with a spray of blood, complain about how short the fight was or that they bet on the wrong guy). It just feels like a no nonsense look at the country at that point in history



There is a little bit of a religious element in this show as well. It's not a huge part of the show, but it is used to show an interesting contrast between Mizu and the main villain as well as high lighting what was going with Christianity and Japan at the time. Speaking of the villain...

The villain is fucking great, with an interesting backstory that again plays into the racial thing in interesting ways, as well as historical things going on at the time. This show is a work of fiction, but it does draw on actual historical stuff. The main villain is one of the most sadistic, vile, depraved, and goddamn funny and entertaining villains ever. He's fucking incredible

Almost every character in the show mirrors Mizu in some way, which I love. This includes the villain.

i also love that actions have consequences. It's almost like Game of Thrones, where just because you like a character, doesn't mean they can get away with doing something stupid. Naivety comes with a price. A big part of the story revolves around fighting to get what you want, but also knowing how to pick your battles and being realistic about what resources you have at your disposal. You see a lot of this with the character of Akemi, probably the most significant female character aside from Mizu



As for cons, Mizu's voice sounds clearly feminine but we are supposed to believe that no one realizes she's a woman. I've heard many complaints about her being able to do stuff that is unrealistic in combat scenarios, but it's a fantasy action show with clear inspiration from other, unrealistic action movies and shows. I guess if you're someone who hates John Wick movies or Kill Bill for being "unrealistic" than you won't like this. My one other complaint regards the character of Taigen. He's a well written character with a great arc, but he's never given a badass moment, as if the writers are too afraid to have another character upstage Mizu or be her equal. I don't think it would kill the show to let one or two other characters besides Mizu be badasses too. It's a pet peeve of mine when shows/movies/mangas, etc. make one character better than everyone and they are the only ones who ever get the truly badass moments. The show uses some modern music at times, which won't be to everyone's liking, but goddam if this wasn't one of the greatest uses of Metallica's For Whom the Bell Tolls ever. It borrows a track from Kill Bill too, which initially made me cringe and go, "Ugh, another show/movie using THAT theme". However, as I said, the show clearly has a sincere love for Kill Bill so I give it a pass.

It's eight episodes, easy to binge, and has already been green lit for a season 2.