Is Mizu's Revenge a Moral Character Writing?

"Blue Eye Samurai" is undoubtedly a direct and indirect homage to "Kill Bill," but the former does not present its characters as more morally upright than the latter. Although both exhibit varying degrees of Orientalist fetishization, the character writing in "Blue-Eyed Samurai" may be more morally questionable.

Mizu is depicted as a woman of mixed race, born to a white colonialist and a Japanese prostitute. To survive, she conceals her blue eyes and disguises herself as a man. After mastering swordsmanship, she travels around to seek revenge against the white men who abandoned her mother and herself. While the clue of fighting colonial aggression while hiding her identity bears a resemblance to Mulan, Mizu endures intersecting racial and gender hardships and discrimination: on the one hand, there's the indigenous nation's hostility towards those of foreign colonial lineage, and on the other hand, the injustice faced by women in the Edo period. Mizu is essentially a creation of colonial wrongdoing, abandoned by her male father, and her resentment naturally points to colonial evil and male oppression. As a result, Mizu's revenge naturally carries a dual meaning: one of the anti-colonial narrative and the other of the anti-patriarchal narrative. Mizu never meets her biological father, and her hatred towards him is not only a mythical Oedipal impulse but also a product of purely social context.

In contrast, Beatrix's revenge isn't as deeply entrenched in anguish and doesn't involve grand narratives like Mizu's. Beatrix's vengeance stems mainly from her emotional entanglement with Bill, and her journey of revenge is largely a rediscovery of herself on a road trip. Before the crucial trigger for revenge and the "bloody wedding" of characters, Beatrix and Bill have already shared a rich backstory, their love-hate relationship being the underlying thread of "Kill Bill." While Tarantino's East-West appropriation is debatable, the character portrayal of Beatrix in the film is precise and active, with her character growth and psychological changes being an essential part of what makes "Kill Bill" a classic.

However, similar character growth is lacking in "Blue-Eyed Samurai." In the content of the first season, the present-time Mizu hardly undergoes any development, and her character development from her youth to becoming a samurai is filled with tales of hardship. In the series, the swordsmith, upon learning Mizu's identity, speaks of the theory that alloy is tougher than pure metal, where the mythical skill of swordsmithing serves as a symbol of Mizu's complex identity and her narrative of becoming a blade, a samurai. Here, the intersectionality of gender/race and an orientalist narrative of alloy swordsmithing are conflated, implying a typical East Asian narrative logic of "the harder you suffer, the better you are." The injustices suffered by Mizu due to her mixed-race heritage and female gender attributes are rationalized in this narrative as the nourishment for character growth, behind which lies the exploitation of Mizu's suffering. Having experienced bullying by fellow villagers and betrayal by her husband, Mizu is deeply entrenched in misery and confined to the identity category of a vengeful spirit. Despite her title as the Blue-Eyed Samurai, Mizu is no different from the tormented female ghosts of East Asian horror, a depiction further reinforced in the massacre akin to John Wick's style of slaughter. While discussing "Blue Eye Samurai" from a female perspective is not unfounded, perhaps viewing it from the standpoint of a vengeful spirit would be more appropriate.

The first season of "Blue Eye Samurai" almost fetishizes the pre-modern gender and racial concepts of the Edo period, with Mizu being entangled in suffering and revenge, becoming a sparse character medium for anti-colonial and anti-patriarchal imaginings. The categories of race and gender in "Blue-Eyed Samurai" are not the starting points for character subjectivity but become cages for the characters. Mizu's motives revolve entirely around a consciousness of resistance discourse, with little else to define her.

Compared to Beatrix's revenge based on emotional experiences, the revenge narrative in "Blue-Eyed Samurai" leaves little space for character subjectivity, casting doubts on the legitimacy of Mizu's suffering portrayal and revenge.