Over the last few years, even more depressing than the dearth of frank depictions of human sexuality onscreen has been the strangled conversations surrounding it. A certain subset of (often youthful) so-called “critics” will have you believe that all sex scenes are problematic, as though weird shit isn’t going on in most people’s bedrooms at least semi-frequently; as though actors aren’t shooting scenes knowing full well what they’re getting into.
Enter Blue Eye Samurai, a criminally under-marketed new Netflix series that improbably, via the animation medium, threads its high-octane heroine’s revenge narrative with the most densely sexual plotting I’ve seen since Game of Thrones turned fucking into mundane exposition. It’s a welcome refutation to the sexless content deluge we’ve lately been subjected to.
In Samurai, our main character is Mizu, a mixed-race swordswoman who has spent much of her life disguising herself as a man because of the danger posed by her identity. Mizu is brought to life by PEN15’s Maya Erskine, who does a killer job pitching her voice down to a gravelly, quasi-dude register rife with one-liners. Mizu’s mother is Japanese and her father is white; he’s one of just four white men living in Japan during the Edo period, the time of her birth.
Mizu, derided as a “dog” by her vicious community for her round, azure eyes, has vowed to kill all four of the pasty interlopers who haunted her childhood, casting aside all other earthly pursuits in favor of her bloodlust—which includes a fervent need to kill her own white father.
Interestingly, the show does not make clear whether Mizu was the product of a consensual relationship between her parents, or something more sinister. Hopefully, it’s a topic that will be broached if we get a Season 2. (Please, Netflix?)
Mizu’s compelling costuming reflects her suppression: wide-brimmed hat, eye-shielding glasses. Her cloak-like, nearly omnipresent outfit, which is very Comme des Garçons-chic, reinforces just how little our heroine cares about matters of the flesh. Her goal is vengeance, and she spends much of the series’ eight-episode first season slashing her way through bad guys like butter, refusing to be sidetracked by something as petty as a crush.
But running parallel to Mizu’s story is that of a princess named Akemi, who rails desperately against her father’s determination to marry her off into rote sexual servitude to some lord or another. Instead, in a novel twist, Akemi elects to willingly engage with paid sex work on her own terms.
After running away from her palace, Akemi finds employment at a brothel, where she demonstrates her skill at man-wrangling by bringing an imposing client to orgasm solely by declaiming stanzas of erotic poetry.
And what a delight it is to watch that same brothel’s madam inform Mizu that closing herself off to the indulgence of her own sexual desires will ultimately hinder her deadly mission.
Through a keyhole, Mizu observes as a warrior—whom she watched expertly decapitate an opponent a few scenes earlier—engages in a threesome with another man and a woman.
“To deny desire is to cut out a corner of your own heart. To sever a limb and still expect to fight true, ” the brothel’s big boss, Madame Kaji, tells Mizu as the latter, the stoic warrior, gazes upon the strangers in flagrante. “He was honest with his desire. That is a swordsman who knows the shape of his soul.”
This is just a portion of the whole conversation, which feels like a lyrical and rare exchange on television, let alone animation, about the essential nature of healthy sexual exploration—not just for all human beings, but for people who are truly serious about their primary vocations.
“Sex? An art?” Mizu says at one point, skeptically. “The gentleman was wise to seek me,” Madame Kaji responds with an affirmative smirk.
On shows like Mad Men, without making their thesis statements verbally explicit, characters like eternal cad Don Draper (Jon Hamm) have countless affairs in the name of creative stimulation and personal expression. But there’s something dark and alcohol-sodden about their every indiscretion; Draper is a desperate man seeking oblivion.
By comparison, Samurai offers the perspective that “to master the way of battle, one must become acquainted with every art:” Sex is a crucial skill if one is to carve a path to greatness.
“We always want to make sure that these sex/bedroom scenes have a point of view,” director Jane Wu told Polygon this week of the show’s approach to sexuality. (Wu, by the way, logged a season on Thrones.) “When you give them a point of view, it doesn’t become gratuitous. And a lot of these points of view are from women’s points of view.”
Blue Eye Samurai invites us in as Akemi and Mizu pursue their passions, whether explicit or otherwise, and the results are gripping. Akemi’s arc might seem to be more traditionally romantic, but her story eventually gives way to sexual ambition. Initially disgusted by the prospect of submitting to the man her father selected for her to marry, Akemi eventually comes around to the idea that she can seize control of her life by controlling her husband in bed, and does so.
We also learn that Mizu, who seems so single-minded in her quest, is so romance-averse for a reason: She had lived an entire past life with a husband who bedded and spurned her in a heartbreakingly swift cycle.
Lastly, and perhaps most refreshingly in a TV landscape that’s usually so chaste, it barely even shows the sliver of an ass crack, Blue Eye Samurai features a hearty, truly unprecedented number of animated genitals.
There are not one, but several instances of octopuses affixed to women’s private parts. An unnamed “extra” is shown getting led around by his neck in a dog collar. A villain voiced by Kenneth Branagh delivers a sinister monologue outlining his plan for world domination, while a prostitute pegs him with the protruding nose of a mask.
What more needs to be said?
