Blue Eye Samurai

Tue, 26 Dec 2023 22:44:20 +0000

Netflix has created a masterpiece with Blue Eye Samurai.

There are some standard tropes - lonely samurai, mad skilled, dark past, revenge/mercenary for hire, amateur and naive apprentice, etc. A female protagonist with non-japanese ancestry adds a bit of novelty but not sufficient enough and the first couple of episodes feel pretty standard.

But then as the characters develop and the backstory is revealed, the show really takes off. I distinctly remember watching S1E5 - The Ronin and the Bride - and unable to contain myself with excitement. There is a play in the episode - a story within a story - that is used to reveal Mizo’s past. This is sheer genius. They could have just shown her backstory and the episode would still have been good. But this incorporation of a Japanese myth being told as a play which then parallels Mizu’s life makes this episode great.

Severance

Tue, 12 Dec 2023 09:28:43 +0000

I saw Severance a while back when it was released but was reminded of it by a brilliant episode of Very Bad Wizards.

I enjoy reading and watching sci-fi dystopian worlds. It is one of my favorite genres, one that sci-fi explores particularly well. However, rarely do any of these stories get under my skin. Even the deeply poignant ones with no redemptive qualities, like Blade Runner, never perturbed me. I was moved by it emotionally and might have shed a tear at the final scene, but I was feeling things from a distance.

Series on PostDoc Problems

Blue Eye Samurai

Severance