---
title: Blue Eye Samurai
rating: 7
type: Television
status: Finished
date: 2024-03-07
year: 2023
image: bes.jpeg
tags:
  - television
colorSortKey: [1, -113, 1]
---
 I wonder how much more I would have liked this show if the ending wasn't so aggressively telegraphed for a second season (as compared to another great Maya Erskine vehicle, [[Mr. and Mrs. Smith]], which left the door open for future episodes but book-ended things _perfectly_), because the lack of committal in the first season's final few moments undermined many of the show and script's finer moments.

The show's largest assets are its aesthetics: incredible animation, terrific music, great voice acting. All of these things have been covered at length; they're all true. Where the show loses me — or perhaps, more accurately, _prevents me from considering it a great piece of art_ — is its inability to thread the needle between naturalistic Game of Thrones-style deconstruction of the samurai myth and loving, caring, homage to the many many works in that mythos.

The show's best moments — Fowler showing off the smuggled guns and instantly contextualizing the threat of gunpowder, the parable of the onryo — are the ones that nail that balance. The show's worst ones are when it decides that it needs to hit the timings and cadences of a sit-com instead.