This is a tough one. First of all, it was really great to get another mature story on Netflix: great character development, lots of grey areas between good and evil, risk taking, and the courage to tackle some of the ugly realities of the past and present...it seems like there are less and less stories for adults as the major studios put so much money into the next huge blockbuster...And, nobody can dispute, the art is fantastic.
For me the issue is that the first half of the series is really great, while the second half seems kinda inconsistent and sloppy.
At the beginning, there was some unrealistic stuff when it came to Misu's fighting, but I sort of thought that it was just stylistic, like Crouching Tiger - in Crouching Tiger people can literally fly, but it doesn't matter because that doesn't really impact the plot...it never saves anyone's life. In Blue Eyed Samurai, what I thought was stylistic license in the first few fight scenes turns into our main character being kind of superhuman and invincible...and this kinda ruins it for me. It's great that our hero can take damage, it makes us worry and builds tension...the problem is when our character gets impaled through the ankle and still carry a 200 pound man while climbing a tower, or falls hundreds of feet off a cliff, or falls hundred of feet into ice water and sinks. Some people say that's a nitpick, but these are just a couple examples of our protagonist's invincibility, and it stretches my suspension of disbelief past my limit. Another issue is Fowler's power level - the guy is completely kicking the heck out of our 2 heroes, and then she beats him alone when she's still recovering? I guess she was less hurt.... But it just wasn't satisfying, it was like, well, it's the last episode, I guess she gets to win now.
Besides that, the ending where the invading army comes was really problematic for me. There are thousands of folks invading, and they're completely slaughtering the town, until they're just not, and they all die in a fire.
The Princess's story actually seemed like the more developed story in the latter half of the series, and I was really into it, but then she pulls a kind of Julia from Netflix Cowboy Bebop...she flips on a dime from wanting to escape the bonds of royalty to wanting total power...they don't actually show her becoming a tyrant, but they hint at it and that seems like a betrayal of the compassion she learned in the world outside the palace.
Besides that, the end left too many threads dangling. Taigen? What happened to him? Who knows? The love triangle between him, the Shogun's son and the Princess? His emotional connection to Miss? I at least wanted to see that addressed...Also, Fowler just gets left in a cell? Our protagonist's fire killed how many innocents just to get to the guy, and now he's in a cell? I mean I guess she needs him to find the other 2 white men, but why would she believe him at all? Also, they keep hinting that she's going to grow past her motive for revenge and learn to have honor, but it never really goes anywhere...her lust for revenge may have resulted in killing the entire city because of the fire, and we're supposed to keep cheering her on?
Definitely worth watching, but I was expecting a masterpiece from what the critics are saying...what I got was a great looking, but problematic and sloppy Samurai movie.
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