"Blue Eye Samurai" is an action-packed animated samurai series set in Edo-era Japan and voiced in English by a predominantly Asian cast. Starring Maya Erskine ("PEN15"), George Takei, Brenda Song, Darren Barnet, Randall Park, Stephanie Hsu ("Everything Everywhere All at Once"), Ming-Na Wen and Kenneth Branagh, among others, the series uniquely depicts the discrimination that Japanese women and Japanese of mixed race backgrounds faced during this period. Specifically, Erskine voices Mizu, a mixed-race Japanese woman who pretends to be a man in order to exact a violent revenge.
Salon spoke to co-creator/executive producer Amber Noizumi and director Jane Wu about creating an authentic series that grapples with marginalization and identity formation.
