The Big Picture

Collider’s Steve Weintraub moderates an exclusive Q&A with the creatives behind Netflix’s Emmy-nominated adult animation series,
Blue Eye Samurai
.
Creators Michael Green and Amber Noizumi are joined by supervising director Jane Wu and supervising sound editor Myron Nettinga to discuss bringing this original series to the screen.
During the Q&A, they talk about finding the animation style, challenging sequences, martial arts and bringing authenticity to the series, the ensemble cast, and tons more, including details on
Blue Eye Samurai
Season 2.

At the end of 2023, Netflix released Season 1 of Blue Eye Samurai, an adult animated series with an original story by husband-and-wife team Michael Green and Amber Noizumi. In the show, Mizu, voiced by Maya Erskine (PEN15), is a half-Japanese, half-white woman in Edo-period Japan, a time when the borders to the outside world were closed, meaning her whiteness was a sign of disgrace. Growing up in shame, Mizu disguises herself as a man (because, at the time, only men could seek revenge) and sets out on a quest to kill the only four white men in Japan at the time of her birth.

Noizumi and Green’s story is brought to stunning on-screen life with the help of Marvel alum Jane Wu (The Avengers), who serves as supervising director and producer and dedicated her skills to overseeing the acclaimed martial arts sequences. The series has gone on to receive numerous accolades. In addition to its six Annie Awards and a Peabody nomination, Blue Eye Samurai has since earned three juried Emmy wins (Character Design, Production Design, and Storyboard), post-Q&A, and has two Emmy nominations for Outstanding Animated Program and Outstanding Sound Editing, attributed to co-supervising sound editors Myron Nettinga (Kill Bill: Vol. 1) and Paulette Lifton (Yellowstone) and their team.

To celebrate the series and its successful reception, Collider was thrilled to team with Netflix for a special screening of Episode 5, “The Tale of the Ronin and the Bride,” where our own Steve Weintraub moderated an exclusive Q&A with Green, Noizumi, Wu, and Nettinga to dig into the conception, the animation, and what it’s been like to release Blue Eye Samurai to the world. Taking place at Netflix’s headquarters, the creatives behind this groundbreaking series discuss working with their “whole team of geniuses” to take this idea from script to production to screen.

We find out which sequences were the trickiest to bring to life, why they chose this beautiful animation style, what their backgrounds in live-action brought to the world of animation, and how they cast the show with talent like George Takei (Star Trek), Kenneth Branagh (A Haunting in Venice), Ming-Na Wen (Mulan), Brenda Song (Dollface), Stephanie Hsu (Everything Everywhere All at Once), and Randall Park (WandaVision). They also share their progress for Season 2, how many episodes, when we can expect it to drop, and more.

You can watch the full Q&A in the video above, or you can read the transcript 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.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

The Creators “Didn’t Know Anything About Animation” Before ‘Blue Eye Samurai’
They’re quick learners.

COLLIDER: What would surprise people to learn about the making of Blue Eye Samurai?

MICHAEL GREEN: First of all, this room holds special importance. It took a very long time to make this show. We met with Jane and decided on working together, Amber and I, in March of 2020. Then, about 18 months after that, we had our first footage — 45 seconds from the first episode of Ringo and Mizu walking through the bamboo forest. Right here, in this screening room, we showed it up on here with our Netflix execs, and everyone went, “It’s gonna work.” [Laughs] For about 18 months before that, no one was very sure.

AMBER NOIZUMI: Also, most of us had never met because we’d only been on the computer, and we’re like, “Oh, you’re tall!”

GREEN: Yeah, “You’re tall! You’re short.”

JANE WU: “You have legs!”

NOIZUMI: This is where the magic happened.

This is our first time doing a screening at Netflix HQ in this room, and as you just said, this is where the creative people are actually watching and discussing whether or not it’s working. For each of you, what ended up being the toughest part of making the first season?

NOIZUMI: For me, I didn’t know anything about animation, so that was hard. Luckily, we had Jane and the whole team of geniuses who taught us what it would actually mean to make our show. We had written these scripts and we had these visions — the little movies that played in our minds — but didn’t know what actually went into all the many, many steps to make an animated series. There are a lot, so we’re taking that into Season 2.

WU: The schedule. The schedule and budget were rough because we had never done a show of this kind of scope or with these kinds of visuals before, so nobody had a comp as to how much we would actually cost or how long this would take. So, a lot of this was finding it as we went along.

MYRON NETTINGA: From the sound end I would say because the picture is so amazing, really doing it justice was really intimidating because it looked so amazing. Because it’s a different type of animation, of that level, I really wanted to make sure that we did it justice by grounding it in a live production kind of feel but then taking it to that next level of hyper-reality and all this action, and really, really focusing the action and bringing it to another level to match what this animation is doing.

You never know how something’s going to turn out when you’re making it. What has it meant for all of you to have a show so embraced by both critics and audiences?

GREEN: We only just found out recently that people had seen it and liked it, so it was great! [Laughs]

NOIZUMI: It was surprising for us because we had this quirky little idea 16 years ago, and we were like, “How are you going to make a show about an Edo period, half-white samurai who’s disguised as a man?” To go all of those years and to then finally get the idea sold and to spend the better part of the pandemic working on it, and then all of the many, many steps and years that went into it, and then to see that people are watching it and liking it, and now we’re nominated for an Emmy — it’s pretty crazy and surreal for us.

GREEN: It felt like we were building something in our basement for so long, and the neighbors are like, “What’s all that noise?” And then finally, we got to show people what it was.

WU: For me personally, having worked in Hollywood for so long, when it comes to representing culture and authenticity, this was the first time I got to work on something where the culture is very near and dear to me that we really got to represent it authentically, and I didn’t have to fight for it. Everybody here and the Netflix executives all understood why it was important, and so the fact that the audience is embracing it is saying that the audience is ready to watch things and learn stories that are culturally authentic and important.

Related ‘Blue Eye Samurai’ Review: Get Swept Up in Netflix’s Bold and Bloody Animated Revenge Saga This breathtaking action series lives up to its promise.

You guys won six Annie Awards, and you’re up for a Peabody and two Emmys. What is that like?

NOIZUMI: Season 2.

GREEN: [Laughs] We’re so focused on making Season 2. Every once in a while we’re like, “Oh, yeah, this is great!” Really, it was just that we got to tell a story that we were dying to tell and we really wanted to continue telling the story. Amber and I have been talking about this for so long. We knew the beginning, we know the middle, we know the end, and we’re really, really feeling privileged that we get to get there — well, we don’t know about the end yet, but we know about the middle.

I have to ask a curve ball. Michael, you were involved in Logan. Would you like to tell people what you did?

GREEN: I co-wrote Logan.

3:00 Related Why ‘Logan’ Was — And Always Will Be — The Best X-Men Movie of The Fox Era We’re still waiting for that solo X-23 movie…

I definitely want to know what you thought about seeing Deadpool & Wolverine. What was your thought — and this is a minor spoiler — at the beginning of the film watching Deadpool fight with Logan’s dead body?

GREEN: You know, that was the strangest, best form of flattery. They cared enough to dig him up and use him as a weapon. We just saw it recently. We took our son, and we laughed our guts out for two hours. It seems like we were in great company because everyone’s gone to see it and everyone’s had a great time. It was a lot of fun.

I heard it made a billion dollars.

GREEN: At least. It’s still going. I mean, come on. It’s the greatest.

Logan’s also fantastic. I just want to throw that out there. You and James [Mangold] did such a great job on that.

Related Who Are All the Different Logan Variants in ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’? That’s a lot of Logans!

Myron, Episode 6 is nominated for an Outstanding Sound Editing Emmy Award. What makes this episode stand apart from the others?

NETTINGA: As Michael expressed to us, this is a unique one-off episode of sorts. It’s in the story structure, but it’s a very unique challenge in that episode. It’s Mizu working her way up to the top of the castle to get to Fowler, and there are all these different challenges that aren’t really part of the typical story we’re seeing on the rest of the eight episodes. Everything in there was unique for the most part. It’s quite a ride of its own. How did you describe it, Michael?

GREEN: I think we just said to you — because by that point, we’d gone through [Episode 5] together, and we knew that you were kind of a genius — “Go nuts.” You and your team went to town, and we had a ball.

NETTINGA: I have to say, I had so much fun on this show. We all work hard in this business, but I rarely have had such an opportunity to have such fun and work with such great people. And this isn’t blowing wind up skirts. Seriously, this was amazing. Everybody that worked on it — you guys, my team, and Amie Doherty, the music composer — were all fantastic. We live for those moments. The fact that it is actually getting recognized, as well, is really a real nice thing because we all work hard and do our best, and when that gets recognized, it’s really special.

‘Blue Eye Samurai’ Introduces the “Language of Live-Action” to Animation

You all come from a live-action background. How did your live-action background impact, influence, and play a part in bringing this series to life?

GREEN: On a couple of levels. With Amber and I on the writing level, we came at it with grounded emotion and grounded character. Yes, there are going to be really heightened, stylized things within that, but these characters are on a journey that’s emotionally recognizable. Then, on a technical level, I should throw it to Jane on that.

WU: I actually have an animation background. I left Disney to join Marvel on one of their first movies — The Avengers — and then was stuck in live-action for the most part. So, Blue Eye Samurai is my first time back into animation, so I like to consider this my homecoming. What I brought back was the language of live-action in-camera. So knowing both productions, I basically was bilingual in both animation and live-action, so that gave me a lot of ideas to systematically surgically include camera and certain pipelines so that we wouldn’t break pipelines. It was a lot of fun. It’s like having a fusion restaurant. It’s like I’m introducing new flavors.

Can you explain what you did at Marvel because it’s pretty cool?

GREEN: It’s really cool!

WU: I designed all the action sequences. They would take a couple of us who were considered the veteran team, and they would say, “You have these characters, you have these things to play with, now go! Come back in two weeks.” So we had to think about all the action stuff. I’ve done nine Marvel films, and the last one I did was Shang-Chi [and the Legend of the Ten Rings]. I did the scaffolding sequence, which was great because I used to play with them back in the old country, climbing all over them, and so I knew what they would do, bringing authenticity to it.

Related ‘Shang-Chi’ Star Says a Sequel Is Still Happening Simu Liu promises that more MCU content is to come for him.

When you think about your Marvel time and the nine films you worked on, besides Shang-Chi, is there another sequence that you’re like, “I can’t believe I just did this?”

WU: No, I was too busy because then they put me in another thing and I’m busy doing that. I see it, and I go, “Oh, there it is. Yeah.” The turnover rate at Marvel, because we were working on film after film after film, we didn’t get a chance. It wasn’t until I came out of it did I lift my head up that I see what I had done. Somebody pointed out that I had done that many Marvel movies, and I just thought, “Okay, it’s time to leave. It’s time to do something else.” [Laughs]

Myron, I interrupted before you could answer about live-action.

NETTINGA: For this, I really approached this like a live production to really ground the show. What’s great about animation is it’s a blank palette and you can do whatever, but the first and foremost goal for us was to ground it and make it feel like it’s real. You’re not watching an animation, you’re watching a real story that’s shot with cameras and everything. Then from there — I’ve worked in animation, as well — you’re able to start stretching reality a little more and more. You get into this hyper-reality thing where we get into some of these fight sequences, and you’re like, “Okay, that would never happen in real life,” but you feel like you’re immersed in this real live-action. The way it was shot — and I’ll say shot, even though it’s animation — it looks so real you kind of suspend your disbelief that this is just animation because it’s not “just,” it’s amazing. So, using that live production experience and how I would approach a live production mix and design is kind of the same thing I brought to this.

‘Blue Eye Samurai’ Has Been in the Works for 16 Years
“There’s a lot we don’t know.”
Image via Netflix

[Michael and Amber,] the two of you are together in real life, and this is the first thing that you have done together. What took so long?

GREEN: [Laughs] I mean, we’ve made some children together, which is arguably harder.

NOIZUMI: We’ve been talking about things for years. There was this ongoing conversation since we met over 20 years ago. We love hashing out ideas. He would read my stuff, and I would read his stuff.

GREEN: I don’t think there’s anything I’ve ever written that Amber wasn’t my first reader and the first person I talked to.

NOIZUMI: And so we started talking about this idea 16 years ago. It took some time before he became available and I became available, and our children let us work for a minute.

GREEN: We wrote the first season in between making all those quarantine lunches when the kids were home. We’re very good at pizzadillas now.

When you were developing the idea and you were figuring it all out, did you know all the answers to all the questions, or are you still figuring it all out as you’re writing now?

GREEN: I mean, when you’re talking to executives, you do. Of course, we know.

NOIZUMI: We probably have different answers for that question, too. [Laughs]

For example, do you know where it all ends, or do you know who the other white people are that she is hunting? Those kinds of questions.

NOIZUMI: Mostly.

GREEN: Mostly, yeah. We argue about some of the details still, like every once in a while I’ll come in and say, “I know what the last shot will be!” And Amber will very wisely go, “Uh huh.” We have several years until that’s a problem. But we went into the first season weirdly knowing the beginning, middle, and end; we knew Episode 5 was going to be a secret history of Mizu told intercut with the present-day story; we knew that the sixth episode was going to be the quote all action, and “Let’s see how much we can get away with in that.” We wanted each one to be its own little special confection.

But there’s a lot we don’t know. It’s an original, so we don’t have a book to fall back on, which is both exciting and terrifying because sometimes you do not know how deep the pool is. You’re swimming, and you could just sink and sink. That makes you work harder.

Who Betrayed Mizu?
“Everyone was complicit.”

I love Episode 5. I believe you, [Amber], wrote Episode 5, and you, [Michael], directed Episode 5, and this is your first time directing?

GREEN: It is true. Although, I should say, directing this was very much a team effort. If I didn’t have Jane holding my right hand and my left, making sure I didn’t fall over — it was like teaching a toddler to walk, and I’m still bobbling around. I wouldn’t have even bothered trying if I didn’t know I was supported by the greatest team in the world.

With animation, it’s definitely teamwork. Why did you pick this one to be the one that you’re putting your name on as the first time you’re directing?

GREEN: Very simple. I read the script, and I said, “I connect to this one. I could screw up and it’ll still be a lot of people’s favorite.” And here we are. I just loved this story and Amber wrote such a beautiful script.

Do you all have an opinion on whether or not it was her husband or if it was her fake mom who called the guards?

NOIZUMI: I don’t think it matters.

It doesn’t, but I was just curious.

NOIZUMI: I think everyone was complicit in that episode.

WU: I think society betrayed her.

100%. I like throwing these questions out there.

GREEN: Oh, I’m not gonna top that. [Laughs]

Related A Hero Takes a Vow of Vengeance in New ‘Blue Eye Samurai’ Trailer “I have a name.”

I’m so curious about the editing room with a show like this. How did the show change in the editing room in ways you didn’t expect, and how much was changed or altered when you were actually animating and might have had some final shots where you were like, “Oh no, this scene is not working?” How much is it all figured out before you’re animating?

WU: In animation, you do have to make your film up front in the storyboards, so we were very detailed in our storyboards and the way we cut them. Although, the technical part of it is you also have to leave some breathing room in your animatics because what you get back is an interpretation of what that storyboard is. It doesn’t come back 100% like it, but it’s close enough that we can work with it. There are definitely trims that we did, but generally, a good amount of it stayed true to what the script did and what the boards did.

GREEN: Because in developing, as Jane was talking about, the pipeline to, “How do you do this level of animation on a television schedule,” the answer was really about precision. “Measure twice, cut once,” as Jane always said. Certainly, in the animation cell, but that meant the emphasis on the script was just tighter and tougher. We had to put ourselves through the paces. Normally when you shoot something in live-action, you have coverage, and you put things together. We had to make sure we only wrote what we needed to see, and we cut everything [else]. These are very lean scripts and really tight storytelling, so when we went into the storyboards, we would only be asking for what we knew we needed, and very little changed from that point.

This Shot Caused Arguments Among the ‘Blue Eye Samurai’ Creatives
Image via Netflix

Did you have any finished animation that ended up not making it?

NOIZUMI: No.

WU: Not really, because they were so expensive and so exquisite that we found a way to jam it in.

GREEN: Maybe like 12 seconds total. There’s no deleted scene. We wish there were.

NOIZUMI: No DVD extras. [Laughs]

One of the things that people don’t realize about animation is not only does it cost a ton of money, but some shots are way more expensive than others. What were some of the more expensive shots in this that you wouldn’t think are that expensive?

GREEN: The spider monkey shot. The biggest fight we ever got in.

WU: We argued about that so much.

GREEN: It’s the only thing we ever fought about.

NOIZUMI: Well, it was expensive because we did it so many times.

Image via Netflix

GREEN: We just watched an episode here — There’s the shot where Mizu’s in the hallway, the dollhouse looking down, and how is she gonna get out of this one? That was complicated as fuck, it turns out.

WU: Just to tell you a funny story, I also hired a live-action director to do our episode because I wanted the story of animation to go out in live-action of hard it was because people from live-action go, “What is this? You just draw it, right?” So, when he came aboard, he didn’t realize certain cameras cost more money than other cameras, and this was Alan Taylor, from Game of Thrones, who I invited to direct Episode 7, which is beautiful. And it was interesting watching him put cameras in places that live-action directors would put cameras, and it really spun our show into this beautiful feeling. When a director knows where to put the camera and let the camera tell the story, that is really interesting.

GREEN: But sometimes expensive. We had to build a cliff for him for one of his shots.

It’s so, so beautiful to watch every frame of this show, but people just forget that everything is a creation. You have to decide on everything, and every episode is going to different places. At what point were you like, “What the F are we doing?”

GREEN: [Laughs] Writing a road show was not the most cost-effective thing that’s in television. Anyone, if you want basic television advice, don’t write a road show.

WU: Part of the challenge I really wanted to accept was to design an adult animated show that didn’t feel animated or live-action, and to have it live somewhere in between. I think that’s the beauty of animation and what you can achieve and what art can achieve. I like to consider this more of an arthouse animation more than it is anime or adult animation itself.

The Animation Style was Inspired by Mizu
Image via Netflix

How did you guys decide on Blue Spirit as the company and the look and feel of the animation?

WU: The look was already done in-house in our development pipeline, and then we had tests that went out to different vendors. By far, Blue Spirit came out closest to what I had in my head. Everything came out of who Mizu was, which she’s biracial, so she’s mixed race. This was an Asian show, and I wanted France, a Western company, to animate and Eastern show. I wanted this to be an Eastern-Western. Also, because the filmmaking was so spaghetti Western-y, I really wanted to lean into the diversity of what everybody could bring. I love French animation; they have such an auteur, arthouse feel to it, so I wanted that to feed into our animation.

NOIZUMI: They were the ones who really got the facial expressions. Some of the other studios did a nice job on the action, but we wanted to be able to rely on storytelling through those microexpressions, not just those big emotions that you’re used to in cartoons and anime, maybe — just the microexpressions of the eyebrows and stuff like that. They seemed to really connect to that, and it came out pretty good.

Casting for ‘Blue Eye Samurai’ Was “Good Fortune”
“We asked people, they said yes.”

I love Kenneth Branagh, who voices Fowler. How did you decide on Kenneth and getting Kenneth and the rest of the cast? Were you placing voices from their previous work? How did you decide on the rest of the cast?

GREEN: Kenneth Branagh was good fortune. When we were writing the first episode, I was on set for Death on the Nile, which is a film I wrote, and so I was listening to him between takes. We wrote that character and thought, “Maybe we can ask and see what he says.” He’s a congenially kind person and said yes, and was delightful to work with, and really enjoyed his time with us.

We were screamingly lucky on our casting. We asked people, they said yes. We would say, “Someone like George Takei,” and George Takei said yes. “Someone like Ming-Na Wen. We should write her a letter.” “Oh, don’t worry. She already said yes.” It was the strangest thing. We said, “Someone like Randall Park,” there’s Randall Park. It was working with our casting directors, Margery Simkin and Orly Sitowitz. Then, for Mizu, it was the question of, “Who could be this? Who inhabits her?”

NOIZUMI: At the time, we were rewatching PEN15 — I’ve rewatched it a million times. If you haven’t seen it, please do, it’s hilarious. Maya Erskine is so amazing, and I assume it’s semi-autobiographical about a kid growing up in Southern California being half-white, half-Japanese, and there are just so many little jokes that resonated with me. You could see the pain she felt growing up feeling different, feeling other. She’s so funny, but the pain is real. She is such a genius, and I’m so happy for her — she’s nominated for an Emmy for Mr. & Mrs. Smith, and she deserves all the Emmys. But we were really just to lucky that…

GREEN: She exists. [Laughs]

NOIZUMI: That she exists and she joined our show.

Related ‘Blue Eye Samurai’ Cast and Character Guide Meet the star-studded cast of your new animated favorite.

Myron, can you explain what a sound supervisor does?

NETTINGA: So I’ve got a great team of vetters. I have three designers who all help me out — they’re actually all in Australia — and then another main FX editor who gave me support while I was also re-recording mixer on the show. Then I have a co-supervisor, Paulette Lifton, who also helped me manage a lot of the different team coordination. There are days that I couldn’t spot that she would do the spotting with our lead designer, Sam Hayward. Then I had a team in Canada that I’d do Foley with when I’d pick up special projects, and they signed on. So, I’m kind of overseeing all that and I give them direction on what I want to see come in, and I time that out. If, “Hey, this needs to be better here,” you kind of have to have a vision of what the sound needs to be to mesh what we’re getting in. It’s a lot of juggling of different people and their skill sets and trying to figure out which one has the skill set for, say, [Episode 6], which is the zombie attack or the demon monkeys or the crushing, submerged cave…

WU: Spoiler alert.

NETTINGA: [Laughs] So you’ve just got to see what all the people’s talents are and bring them together as the sound supervisor. Then, on the mix stage, as well. Most sound supervisors do not mix, I do, and so I’m also managing what comes in when we come into the stage. I will say, what was really unique on this show, which I really give credit to all of you for letting me do this, was we had a schedule where we’d get the episode, we’d spot, and then they’d build this whole show, I would get it in as well as the score, I would mix the whole show, and then I would send a version to Michael, Amber, and Jane for review so I could get notes on it. It’s like a premix and then I’d do a semi-final on it, then I’d go through, do those notes, and I’d send it back for another review. Then I’d get those back, do the notes, and then we’d hit the mix stage.

What was really cool about that was there were no surprises for them, like, “Oh, wait, this is a new sound.” We really had it vetted out, so then we could play on the stage. I give them credit and I give Netflix credit for allowing me to do this approach because this is not a standard approach. Usually, what the sound supervisor will do is they’ll have their team go cut the show as they interpret it and then they’ll show up on the stage, and you’ll mix for a couple of days, and at the end of that, you get what you get. This show definitely was not deserving of that, and so Netflix really allowed us to do that and gave me the budget I needed to see that their vision was realized the best I could.

I think this back-and-forth is what led to why this show is so special because it just feels good.

WU: Everything on this show is really elevated, and I think it’s well worth it. If you take your time to elevate something, this is the product that you get.

How the ‘Blue Eye Samurai’ Creatives Were Able to Overcome Challenges
“Every episode is an escape from impossible situations.”
Image via Netflix

For each of you, which scene or sequence of the eight episodes of the first season was the one where you were like, “This is impossible? How are we doing this?”

WU: Spider monkey.

GREEN: In the same episode, Amber had written into this episode something we’d talked about. We knew Mizu had these weights on her arms and legs, we knew she was going to, at some point, somehow, assemble them in a fight to make them into a super weapon that was going to get her out of a pinch. We did not know how she was going to build it. We talked about it, and our design team brilliantly came together with how the pieces were going to come apart and come off and come together. So we were like, “Oh my god, that’s already been solved on a beautiful level.” But how the physicality was going to work, we were bandying about ideas, and Sunny Sun, our stunt coordinator, said, “Let me take a whack at that.” He’d already nailed all these incredible stunts in there, but that section was coming up, and he said, “I have an idea. Let me try it.” Then Jane played it first, and she was like, “You need to play this right now.” We were like, “Why? What’s going on? Is everything okay?” And she was like, “Just play it.” We were like, “Oh my god, she builds it while killing people! She does it on the fly.”

It was so impossible to solve, but what I love about the result is it was every department — yes, there was a script, yes, there was a design, and a directing stunt coordinator was able to solve that last piece of it and make it so entertaining. That’s the teamwork of film and television that, when it comes together, actually makes you well up because it was an incredible thing to come to.

WU: We’re sitting here and getting all these accolades because of the team that we have. They were so absolutely incredible. We couldn’t do without each and every one of them. They played such a critical role in a lot of why this show’s so successful and so beautiful.

GREEN: We had a lot of crazy ideas in the script, and every time we finished an episode, Amber and I were like, “We got away with another one.” Every episode is an escape from impossible situations.

NETTINGA: It’s tough for me to nail one scene, and I have to go with, again, Episode 6. The entire thing was so unique that every seven or eight challenges we had were all unique. You had to come up with this danger feeling and resolution each time, and it was all unique sound. You had to keep a pace and momentum throughout this entire episode. You didn’t want to feel start-stop like this is herky-jerky, and we were able to really achieve that flow. That entire episode, you just looked at it like, “Oh my gosh.” I remember talking to Michael, going, “This is quite the thing.” But those sequences and trying to just keep that momentum going, even though you’re starting and stopping, starting and stopping, and it’s a lot of challenges, it just pulls you in throughout the whole show, and by the end, you’re exhausted almost, but you have no idea. You just went through that whole adventure.

Jane Wu Brought Authenticity to ‘Blue Eye Samurai’s Martial Arts

I love the character moments. It’s what makes me care about this and everyone on the show, but let’s be honest, the fight scenes are also incredible. Talk about designing the choreography and making it shine as much as those small character moments.

WU: I have a martial arts background, and it would kill me if this was pretend martial arts. The fact that, also, it is a specific culture and it’s a specific type of martial arts, that’s why I hired a stunt team. More than likely, whenever I design an action sequence that has martial arts in it, I’m always asked to perform it, so why not shoot the whole thing so the animators can have something to look at and we can rotoscope from it, and nobody has to ask me, “What does this look like? Can you do it for me?” That was the first idea of how this pipeline was gonna change in terms of animation.

GREEN: At any given moment, you’d be walking through the Netflix snack lounge, and Jane and a few of our team members would be hitting each other with swords in kimonos, and doing it well and getting the moves right.

NOIZUMI: Sometimes, she’d rope random people in.

WU: Like you.

NOIZUMI: I’d be like, “I’m going to my office,” and she’d be like, “Nope, you’re putting on a kimono.” Suddenly, now I’m getting to play swords.

GREEN: But it speaks to we owe a lot to Netflix for not only letting us make the show at all, but letting us make it right. That innovation of bringing a stunt team into an animated show was new, and early on, they said yes to this. They did not need to. They could have said, “Well, that’s not an expense that’s usually incurred.” Similarly, the wardrobe in this is gorgeous because we hired Suttirat Larlarb, who’s a brilliant costume designer I’d worked with before, and said, “We want this to be sumptuous.”

WU: And authentic.

GREEN: And she went deep. She pulled from books and museums and found patterns and kimonos that hadn’t been seen in centuries, and that’s what Madame Kaji wears in this episode.

Image via Netflix

Just like everyone here, we all watch way too much stuff. One of the many reasons why I loved this is that you kept me off-balance in every episode. I didn’t know every scene that was going to come up. There are just so many things that are so well done. Talk about writing these scripts and figuring out where and when to keep the audience off-balance and to put in scenes that we’re not expecting.

NOIZUMI: Michael always says when we’re writing, “We need more weird! We need some ‘what the fuck’.” So sometimes we’re like, “What’s the ‘what the fuck’ that we can put in this one?” [Laughs] But really, all of those moments were meant to be little insights into Mizu because she hides so much. Like the bird, you just needed to see that moment of humanity right before a moment of near inhumanity.

GREEN: She’s not much of a talker, so we wanted the episodes to breathe, but you have to know when to do that. So, being out in nature, breathe. Take a moment. Let the snow fall on your face. Those are the types of atmospheric moments or textured moments that fall out of a series; you’ll have a pilot, and then it’ll suddenly get very conventional. We really wanted to keep those things, just always remembering it’s from a point of view — what is that person experiencing in every moment?

The episodes range between 35 and 60 minutes. Talk about how you decided on the different runtimes. As we’ve talked about, every minute is so expensive. Did you ever feel pressure to get 45 minutes down to 35?

GREEN: They were limited minutes. We had a set number of minutes not to exceed.

WU: In animation, every minute is what you bid on, and so there was a pre-agreement on how many minutes we would have. How we decided to spend those minutes is up to us and how we divided it.

GREEN: We scripted accordingly. We knew that 45 minutes per episode, and we knew we wanted the first episode to be a real solid hour. We spent that on the sixth episode, which we knew we wanted to be a really punchy, half-hour, breathless action piece.

WU: I was just laughing because Michael comes in, and he goes, “This one’s much shorter. Much shorter. It’s 30 minutes but by far the hardest episode of the whole season.”

GREEN: Yeah, it was things we learned in the doing in animation. That is your commodity, how many minutes you have, so we spent a lot of time in the storyboard phase making sure we were exactly to time and being very careful with our pacing to make sure we used those minutes effectively.

What We Know About ‘Blue Eye Samurai’ Season 2
Where will it take place? How many episodes? When can we expect it to drop?
Image via Netflix

You’ve talked about how you’re working on Season 2 right now. What were the big lessons you learned writing Season 1 and making Season 1 that, as you’re writing Season 2, you know, “We can’t do this,” or, “If we do this, we have two minutes to do it?”

NOIZUMI: As you commented, it was a road show, and every episode was a completely new place. Now, we’re mindful of, “Oh, maybe we can do something where we can reuse this set,” even though we’d really like to do it somewhere different.

GREEN: It’s funny because, in all of our meetings with Netflix, we were saying how we learned our lessons…

NOIZUMI: We’re trying!

GREEN: [Laughs] Jane’s like, “Oh, shit.”

NOIZUMI: No, we’re trying. We are.

WU: [Laughs] I don’t think I learned anything new because this had been two types of production that I know really well jammed together. But now I know these guys better, and so when they say, “We could reuse that, right?” I can say, “Yeah, but they’re gonna dress it differently, and they’re gonna do this.” At least I’ll budget for that.

GREEN: I think we all know how to work together very well. You learn to trust your team and go to them early and tell them what your intentions are so that they know how to prepare for it, and also so you can read their microexpressions of fear and know when to back off a little bit and say, “Can we do this?” Trusting your team is a big one.

I don’t want to do spoilers, but the first season ends in such a way that Season 2 could take place in two different locations. Will Season 2 take place in two different locations?

NOIZUMI: It takes place in many locations.

GREEN: As Jane was saying, she’d rather it take place in one. By the way, speaking of spoilers, Episode 8 is literally titled “The Great Fire of 1657,” so spoiler, there’s a fire. But yeah, we shouldn’t answer that.

Image via Netflix

Where are you in the writing process of Season 2?

NOIZUMI: We are writing Episode 4 of six.

GREEN: Yes, there will be six episodes in Season 2.

Are you aiming for 45 minutes each?

WU: Ish.

GREEN: Might be closer to 44.

You’re writing Episode 4. How close are those first three episodes to being locked?

WU: We’re in panic mode right now because we still have a schedule and we still have a budget, and we’re trying to get all that to talk to each other. We’re in the beginnings of production and getting it started, and everything else is in the planning stages.

GREEN: I think it would have been fun if, for all the questions, we had blood pressure cuffs on everyone.

I am curious about how long it takes, though. So, you write a script, then what is the time frame? How long does it take to animate an episode?

WU: I should have brought my schedule.

GREEN: There’s no one way. It’s a waterfall of things that are happening. But the first season took three and a half years from starting it to it being on Netflix, with a lot of different phases in there. At any given point, one episode is in four different layers.

WU: If you measure preproduction, preproduction should be about nine months in animation, but that’s a half-an-hour schedule. It’s a little bit shy of a year per episode from preproduction to animation, and then he gets it, so that adds a couple more weeks to it. So, like a year.

GREEN: Two years.

NETTINGA: Two years, two weeks. [Laughs]

Related How ‘Blue Eye Samurai’ Sets Up a Season 2 What awaits Mizu, her allies, and her enemies? Season 1 has some clues.

So the goal is 2026 for Season 2, or do you think it’s more 2027?

GREEN: Currently, the plan is 2026.

Do you think you’re gonna make it?

NOIZUMI: We have to!

GREEN: Currently, the plan is 2026. It’s our fondest hope. We would love to have it out as soon as possible.

You’ve talked in the past about how it could be four seasons, it could be three seasons. What’s ultimately your hope?

GREEN: Currently, we’re planning for three seasons. We have a second season pick-up, one hopes the third seasons will exist because we certainly have plans for it. We’re imagining three right now. I think we said four once in an interview, possibly with Collider, and it suddenly became “the lore!” Things you say when you’re not used to being interviewed.

Blue Eye Samurai Season 1 is available to stream on Netflix.

Watch on Netflix