The Big Picture

Collider’s Nate Richard speaks with
Blue Eye Samurai
creatives Michael Green, Amber Noizumi, and director Jane Wu.
Netflix’s
Blue Eye Samurai
Season 1 garnered critical acclaim, including multiple Emmy nominations.
Green, Noizumi, and Wu hint at a possible spin-off for the show’s future, tease Season 2, discuss the show’s martial arts and impact on adult animation and more.

A few months before Shōgun dominated our television screens, another just as impressive samurai series made its debut in the form of Blue Eye Samurai. The series was acclaimed by critics, including Collider, who praised its incredible animation, memorable characters, stunning action, and nuanced and emotional story at the center. Given the overwhelmingly positive feedback, we were hungry for more, and it looks like creators Michael Green and Amber Noizumi have plans for expansion — could there be a spin-off in the show’s future?

Blue Eye Samurai swept the 2024 Annie Awards, picking up six wins, including Best Mature Audience Animated Television/Broadcast Production. Most notably, the series is currently nominated for two Primetime Emmy Awards, Outstanding Animated Program and Outstanding Sound Editing for a Comedy or Drama Series (Half-Hour) and Animation.

We were lucky enough to reconnect with the creators, Green and Noizumi, as well as director Jane Wu to talk about the show’s success and ever-growing fandom, their reaction to Shōgun, their impact on adult animation, and the status of Season 2. The trio discusses Blue Eye Samurai’s martial arts, the animation, pitching their idea for a spin-off, Green addresses his departure from Netflix’s Bioshock movie and much more.

You can check out our full conversation below.

Blue Eye Samurai Driven by a dream of revenge against those who made her an outcast in Edo-period Japan, a young warrior cuts a bloody path toward her destiny.Release Date November 3, 2023 Creator Michael Green, Amber Noizumi Cast Maya Erskine , Kenneth Branagh , George Takei , Darren Barnet , Masi Oka , Randall Park , Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa , Brenda Song , Stephanie Hsu , Ming-Na Wen , Harry Shum Jr , Mark Dacascos Seasons 2 Writers Michael Green , Amber Noizumi , Yana Bille-Chung Streaming Service(s) Netflix Showrunner Michael Green , Amber Noizumi Expand

COLLIDER: Congratulations on the Emmy nominations. I was so excited to see that. Probably not as excited as you were. Since we last talked, the show has been released, and it has been such a huge hit. I’ve had a lot of friends come to me, and they were like, “Have you seen the show?” I’m like, “Yeah, I talked to the creators.” [Laughs] What was your initial reaction to the response? Were you expecting it? Was it kind of a shock?

AMBER NOIZUMI: I did not know what to expect. I thought people were going to love it or hate it. I’m sure a few people out there hated it—I don’t want to hear about it—but most of the reaction has been positive. We’re honored and grateful for it.

‘Blue Eye Samurai’ Season 2 Is Still Being Written
Image via Netflix

Can you give us anything about Season 2? We’re moving locations now. I think we’re going to England, as well. Are you changing up some of the animation style?

JANE WU: It’s actually too early to say because we literally are in the middle of writing the script.

MICHAEL GREEN: Amber and I are playing hooky from writing episodes right now talking to you, which we’re glad to do. Jane is leading the team in finding a way to make certain things happen. But the animation style, it will be the same show. There’ll be a lot of surprises. We can’t wait to talk to you about it. We’re just not there yet. Hopefully soon.

Since the last time we talked, we also had Shōgun, which was also created by a husband and wife team. It made me wonder, was this show always going to be animated, or was there ever discussion about it being live-action?

NOIZUMI: No, we never talked about it being live-action. We’d had this idea for a story, and we didn’t see a world in which it could be live-action. Good for Shōgun, they did an amazing job, but when the idea of adult animation presented itself to us, we said, “This is how we need to make our show.”

GREEN: It didn’t exist until we thought about it in animation.

NOIZUMI: And obviously, we’re very tonally different from Shōgun. There are parallels.

GREEN: But we watched it and loved it and are very excited for them, too.

Jane Wu Was Ready To Leave Animation Before ‘Blue Eye Samurai’

Jane, I know you previously worked as a storyboard artist a lot. How did you three meet? Did you guys know each other previously?

WU: I didn’t know them, and in fact, I had just finished another Marvel project, and I got an email from Netflix saying, “We have an animated series that we want you to consider,” and I said, “Oh, no. I don’t do animation anymore.” My agent came back and said, “Well, this is adult animation,” and my ears just perked up, and I went, “What? That’s new.” So I initially took the interview with Mike Moon at the time, who brought me in, and he just said, “I don’t know anyone else that could do this except for you.” And I said, “Well, why me?” And he goes, “Just read the script.” I read the script, and yeah, every page, you’re like, “Oh my god… Oh my god, I know exactly what to do. Oh my god!” So I met Michael and Amber that following week, and we were finishing each other’s sentences.

GREEN: Our side of the conversation was very similar. Our executive at the time, Mike Moon, was a wonderful advocate for the show early on. They said, “Look, we want to pick up your show, but we can’t until we know who the director is.” And we said, “Look, we know live-action people. We don’t know people who know live-action and animation.” And he said, “I’m gonna introduce you to someone.” We said, “Great. Who else do you want us to meet?” He said, “Start with this one person. Her name is Jane Wu.” And we owe an incredible debt of gratitude to them.

Adult animation is having a renaissance moment because I think it used to be mainly just comedies like The Simpsons or South Park. Now, I think your show has really led the way. We’ve seen Invincible, X-Men, and Scavengers Reign. Do you ever communicate with some of these other showrunners or do you ever look at those shows for inspiration?

GREEN: It’s great that all those things are happening. Some of them came out before us. Animation takes so long, they were all probably in the pipeline at the same time. We were aware of Invincible and hoped to come out before them, but I watch it and love it. One of the nicest compliments we’ve gotten recently is other places, other studios, and other writers calling us to ask, “Hey, how did you do what you did because we’re getting a chance to do it now, too?” Or other showrunners at Netflix. Now adult animation is expanding, and that’s just beyond expectation that suddenly this show is seen as proof of concept for a genre, but that was kind of our big hope early on. But we watch all those shows and love them. Similarly, with the half hours. Adult animation was synonymous with half-hour comedies. Hopefully, there’ll be more and more of those, too.

Collaborating with Netflix, do you guys get a lot of freedom? Do they ever give you notes on things to add in certain things or do you always get full creative control?

NOIZUMI: They give us a lot of freedom. Really, very few notes.

GREEN: Either on cuts or scripts, we can count on one hand the times. They’ll come in with some reactions or as a great first viewer, but they are creative partners that one could only wish for.

My ears kind of perked up when you brought up that you’re hoping that you’d come out even before Invincible. How long was this project developing? I’m guessing pre-COVID?

NOIZUMI: Oh, yeah. We pitched in early 2019, wrote the first episode in the summer of 2019, and then we signed on with Jane in 2020. March of 2020 was the green light.

GREEN: Then we started production as the world shut down, and never stopped.

‘Blue Eye Samurai’ Creators Tease Their Spin-Off Idea
“We would love to keep going.”

I remember last time we talked, you also brought up that you have a four-season plan for the show. I’m wondering if there are ways you’ve ever thought of expanding it. Everybody is all into their spin-offs. Have you ever had ideas? That cast is just so vast and I want to know more about almost every single character.

NOIZUMI: It may not be four seasons. I was kind of speaking freely off the cuff. [Laughs] But I think you could take any one storyline and spin it out into its own.

GREEN: We definitely talk about it, but never with contracts in hand. But we love this type of storytelling. We love our partnership with Netflix, so we would love to keep going. We’ve definitely talked about how to tell this Blue Eye Samurai story that started in Season 1. What is the beginning, middle, and end of it, and how many episodes did that go, now that we know what it takes to make a season of it. We can’t tell you that because none of that is far enough along to be shareable, but they’re conversations we’ve had. We definitely have a concept for a spin-off we’ve run by our executive at Netflix, Jermaine Turner, and he did not hate it, but that is not a commitment. I wish it was.

Last time, we also talked a lot about the martial arts of the show. I’m curious if we can dive a little bit more into that because, if I recall, you also brought in real martial artists to help orchestrate the action scenes.

WU: I have a martial arts background, and part of Blue Eye Samurai is really showing its authenticity in all aspects of the show. I didn’t want the martial arts to be made up—that would kill me. I brought in my friend, Sunny Sun, who was a stunt director. Much like we would do in live-action, which is to make sure that all the stunts work and shoot all the stunts because when you go into animation, you need to show them what those reference moves are, “And there it is.” So the three of us would launch Sunny and talk about the scenes and what’s emotionally needed, what the characters needed, and then Sunny and I would work on talking about what moves were more authentically Japanese, or sometimes, if it moved to Chinese, I would have to say, “Okay, we gotta wheel it back. That’s Chinese swordplay, not Japanese swordplay.” A lot of the martial arts aspect of it was very, very heavily designed and very, very heavily executed.

Image via Netflix

GREEN: And just to add to it, one of the things that was so great working with Sunny Sun, and Jane with Sunny Sun, is his interpretation for action was always about character, was always about story. What we’ve always said was when you look at action movies, whenever you get to stunt sequences, the most successful are the most like a musical, where the song is about furthering character, plot, and emotion. Sure, there are songs that are aria, that are just emotion, but it’s always, “What story is being told there?” And Sunny is so masterful at absorbing that and interpreting it in song, in dance, but his idiom is violence. Also, he’s incredibly funny. He brought so much wit to it. So, every department we worked with elevated the show beyond expectation, but that one, we couldn’t owe him more.

You just brought up the humor, and I think that’s something that also really stuck out. I did laugh a lot while watching the show, and it’s different in adult animation because it’s like we were talking about before, very comedy-focused. How do you find that balance, like finding the right moment to have that kind of joke?

GREEN: It’s sort of a gut thing.

NOIZUMI: You just know when you need to break the tension a bit. And Mizu being such a straight man, it’s very funny to just put her against somebody like Ringo, who is the opposite.

GREEN: The grumpy, reluctant, occasional hero is just always endlessly funny. They don’t mean to; they’re not joke-funny. But just allowing the show to surprise you that way. We have scenes that we go in that we think are incredibly tragic, and then you find a moment there, and it just makes it feel more real. It’s also just how people like us three handle our own lives. The more frustrated we are, the sadder we are, probably the more we make light of it—jokes at a funeral.

‘Blue Eye Samurai’ Stepped Away From ‘Bioshock’ With “Hugs and Kisses”
Image via 2K Games

The other thing you have at Netflix is Bioshock. Is that something that’s still happening?

GREEN: It is being reconsidered, the version I was working on. It’s not moving forward. Unfortunately, it was just a change in a lot of thinking of the types of movies, and the game company’s interests all kind of shifted. Sometimes things fall apart with hugs and kisses, and that was kind of it. But it does seem like they’re looking at new ways of approaching it. It’s all great people. So, here’s hoping we get to see that one.

Season 1 of Blue Eye Samurai is now streaming on Netflix.

Watch on Netflix