I recently finished Blue-Eyed Samurai, and Mizu’s increasingly powerful plot armor comes very close to ruining the whole show.
spoiler
They make a point of inflicting fairly realistic injuries, and of showing the required treatment, and in the early going they even need time to heal, but the farther we get into the plot, the more intense and more frequent the injuries, while at the same time the less time it takes for Mizu to heal enough to function at a superhuman level. The arrow through the ankle is one that comes to mind. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with power-fantasy anime (or anime-adjacent animation), but it felt like a bait and switch, especially since no one else seems to have it so the stakes end up yawningly low.
Blue Eye Samurai isn’t realistic, it’s authentic. Recall the thousands of arrows falling on Mizu during the ambush. The fucking sword bounce. The absurd technology and traps in Elijah’s house.
This isn’t a realistic depiction of feudal Japan, this is an authentic depiction of feudal Japan. It’s a show about how this period felt to live in. And people in feudal Japan believed in onryo. Mizu is an onryo. As their quest for vengeance progresses and they suffer more punishment, they become more and more obviously supernatural.
That’s a fair take, but for me it just went past the point of willing suspension of disbelief, and I don’t find that meta-narrative compelling. It may well be a reason for me to re-evaluate it though, to decide if I think it’s poorly done versus something where what they wanted to do simply didn’t connect with me.
I recently finished Blue-Eyed Samurai, and Mizu’s increasingly powerful plot armor comes very close to ruining the whole show.
spoiler
They make a point of inflicting fairly realistic injuries, and of showing the required treatment, and in the early going they even need time to heal, but the farther we get into the plot, the more intense and more frequent the injuries, while at the same time the less time it takes for Mizu to heal enough to function at a superhuman level. The arrow through the ankle is one that comes to mind. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with power-fantasy anime (or anime-adjacent animation), but it felt like a bait and switch, especially since no one else seems to have it so the stakes end up yawningly low.
I disagree because
Blue Eye Samurai isn’t realistic, it’s authentic. Recall the thousands of arrows falling on Mizu during the ambush. The fucking sword bounce. The absurd technology and traps in Elijah’s house.
This isn’t a realistic depiction of feudal Japan, this is an authentic depiction of feudal Japan. It’s a show about how this period felt to live in. And people in feudal Japan believed in onryo. Mizu is an onryo. As their quest for vengeance progresses and they suffer more punishment, they become more and more obviously supernatural.
That’s a fair take, but for me it just went past the point of willing suspension of disbelief, and I don’t find that meta-narrative compelling. It may well be a reason for me to re-evaluate it though, to decide if I think it’s poorly done versus something where what they wanted to do simply didn’t connect with me.
It wasn’t that that ruined the show, it was the ending.