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🐝👒 my skz fic: @under-and-over-the-moon | this blog is mostly for feral reblogs | 20s | minors DNI

[phantom-shell]

Mizu, in every single episode, without fail:

[dragonfruityyy]

god mizu is gonna have a shit time in stank ass london, lets hope our girl dont catch no Europe disease

[phantom-shell]

Mizu when they get to London and looking for a specific white man becomes so much more difficult:

[aye-of-newt]

he's wearing this when he rolls up to the final boss fight to annihilate fowler’s pasty ginger ass and win full custody of mizu

[moki-dokie]

kay so on my 5th rewatch and something i wanna point out that is such a brilliant acting choice: kenneth branagh's very specific speaking cadence for fowler.

fowler's cadence threw me off so hard the first watch i could barely even tell he was irish. my gf thought he might be from around glasgow. neither of us could pin it down. it is NOT the cadence of a native english speaker, no matter the accent. the words flow strangely into each other like there's no natural punctuation in his sentence structure. even the lilt is kinda different from what you hear in the irish accents today.

so i got to thinking: maybe this is how the japanese hear him? he's fluent, yes, but his cadence is off. he's not a native speaker. it's just slightly off. that could still be a possibility but no, i don't think that's it.

and then i remembered: ireland was still speaking gaeilge in this time period. so i looked up some recordings of native speakers of it from the 1800s, before it got heavily anglicised. and wouldn't you know it, the cadence is pretty damn similar. the lilt is almost identical.

i think fowler grew up speaking gaeilge. and i think the cadence of his native language follows him into his japanese. if so, that's some next-level meta and brillance from kenneth. I'm actually really excited to hear fowler speak around other native english speakers, excited to see if it changes at all. i wonder if he'll mask it, make it more british to better blend in. i wonder if we'll get an obvious difference when he speaks to mizu vs. speaking with other english speakers.

i could be wrong about it too but that seems like an acting choice kenneth would do tbh. either way it's intriguing as fuck fowler is such a cool and terrifying villain. as much as i think mizu should have slit his throat on the boat and tossed him overboard, i'm happy we'll get more of him and his weird lovely scary voice.

[aye-of-newt]

[juliasrednicki]

The release date for our show is coming up very soon! I feel so lucky to have had the chance to be a character designer for a year and a half on Blue Eye Samurai at Netflix as part of our wonderful character team along with super-talented fellow designers @sasakisketches  @abigail_larson and @rocketboiart , led by the incomparable  @briankesinger  as our amazing lead character designer! I’m so grateful to Brian for bringing me on to the show! I haven’t been on here for a long time, but I really want to share just a few of the beautiful images from the trailers, including some characters I worked on. It’s just a tiny taste so far! The whole show looks incredible thanks to the vision and fearless leadership of our Supervising Director @janewushu and our showrunners/absolutely phenomenal writers @ambernoiz and Michael Green, not to mention the entire crew of ridiculously talented artists and production teams who made it happen (shoutout to our wonderful character design coordinator, @mizuhime07 !) I learned so much from all of them and I can’t wait for everyone to see the finished epic on November 3rd! (Note that the show is definitely for adults, not for younger viewers!)

[bee-in-my-bonnet]

More Blue Eye Samurai Theories

because I can't stop (adding a cut for spoilers)

what if, upon her return from London, Mizu starts something with Akemi? Taigen is elsewhere (now that he is no longer engaged to Akemi) and in his absence something blooms between Mizu and Akemi

And Taigen finds out later (hopefully in some shocking way, for the sake of ~drama~) in one fell swoop that (a) his ex-fiancee is banging his sword buddy/sworn fated frenemy and that (b) Mizu is actually a woman

His little dramatic, ego drenched brain would EXPLODE

[juliasrednicki]

I’m so glad so many people have been enjoying Blue Eye Samurai! I feel so lucky to have been a part of this amazing project as a character designer. I started this drawing just for fun way back when I was on the show, and I finished it up for the release day of the show 2 weeks ago! I love drawing these characters so much. So proud of our whole team!

[bee-in-my-bonnet]

Someone made such a good choice casting Darren Barnet as Taigen. His voice gives just he right amount of Zuko/Dante Basco given the similarities

[star-h0pper]

taigen is sooooo funny. bitchiest man i've ever seen. he fucked and ran. he's obsessed with honor. he's the only one allowed to kill his rival. he makes silly little sarcastic jokes. he endured torture because his rival "deserved better" than being killed by the men torturing him. he got a boner from homoerotic wrestling. he's pathetic and i adore him.

[bee-in-my-bonnet]

Thoughts on Taigen and Mizu's Last Convo

More theories/thoughts on Blue Eye Samurai/Taigen/Mizu because that is all my brain can hold right now, Also ~SPOILERS~

I wonder if in the final scene we see between Taigen and Mizu, they are each having a completely different conversation.

Perhaps when Taigen says "It's your fight, it's my fight", he means "It's my fight because we are friends/potential lovers/idk anymore but you're important to me" but Mizu reads it as "It's my fight because I need to make sure you don't die, so I can kill you." When Taigen says "We're not finished" he means "Our story isn't finished, because now you are a part of my life and I am having a hard timing imagining it without you, but I'm not finished figuring out *what* this is exactly". But Mizu reads it as "You still have to duel me."

This is maybe why Mizu sounds sad/exasperated when she says "I know". Because (a) it's another thing for her to deal with and (b) a reminder that her desire for him doesn't hold weight, and that he she can't get rid of him, but also can't have him in the way she truly wants. And, (3) she knows she would beat him and kill him, but she doesn't WANT to. She wants him alive, and in her life.

So, on the low, they want the same thing. But the communication is way off.

[bee-in-my-bonnet]

Thoughts on Taigen's switch from wanting greatness to happiness

Random theory/thoughts on Blue Eye Samurai/Taigen/Mizu because it's taken over my brain. Also ~SPOILERS~

I thought it was kind of odd that Taigen went from being obsessed w/ regaining his honor/seemingly marrying Akemi (imo) mostly for the status to suddenly being like "I just want to be happy and have a small happy life". Like all his actions up to that point seem to point to him wanting to be *great* not *happy* (see him insisting to Ringo that *he* is great, and being pissed off hat he doesn't get the respect he deserves)

Maybe his mindset switch is just exhaustion from all the violence, but that doesn't seem very him since he is, after all, a samurai. Maybe instead it's his quiet admission that he will refuse to actually partake in the duel/attempt to kill Mizu. If the only way for him to regain his status is to kill Mizu, and he cannot bring himself to do that, he has to give up on being *great*. Happiness, perhaps, is the next best option (also, an obvious way to maybe subconsciously still get the most out of his relationship with Akemi, since it fits with the moment). I also like the concept of the bridge representing that switch in his mindset - in the castle, with Mizu, he is still dedicated to greatness. By crossing the bridge and leaving Mizu behind, he is also leaving his desire for greatness behind.

I wonder if too, a small happy life seems more palatable after his time with Mizu in their hometown. I doubt he's thought it through to this extent, but it felt almost like a little slice of life/shadow of what a small, happy life with Mizu could be. Bringing her breakfast (*the* move for any MLs) and getting straddled by her by the fire (and clearly liking it) perhaps put a new concept in his head of what he truly wants. He spent so much time assuming he would hate a small life because of his own experience with his father, but maybe he starts thinking...but wait, this is actually where I want to be.

In the moment he pushes it aside and projects this newfound desire (of a person, and the concept of a life) on Akemi ("I guess I miss Akemi") because that's an easy way for him to process a TON of new emotions (desire for who he thinks a man, doubts about his entire life path, a reframing of his entire ego)

very curious to see what goes down in S2 👀

[moki-dokie]

sorry not sorry to everyone who follows me for good omens, obx, or just funny shit. blue eye samurai has me in a fucking vice grip i'm never shutting up about it until s2 gets confirmed. i've had it playing on loop non stop. i will singlehandedly give it the numbers it needs. the weaboo that has been slumbering inside me since i was a teenager has been reawakened. bes is my whole ass personality now.

[aye-of-newt]

mizu arriving in london pre literally any form of sanitation:

[sudenlyanime]

Taigen’s love confession NEEDS to come before he finds out Mizu is a woman.

Listen. I have given this a lot of thought and the more I think about it, the more I’m sure. When looking at Mizu and Mikio’s marriage, we can see how Mikio was in to the idea of a strong woman only so far as he was still stronger than her. This is clear when Mikio insists that he wants to “see all of [mizu]” and insists that they spar; Mikio doesn’t unsheath his blade even though Mizu tell him not to hold back. He assumes he is stronger than her and when this is proven false, like the beta bitch he is, he bails.

But with Taigen it’s different. Mizu and Taigen’s relationship has been a power struggle from the start. Taigen wasn’t introduced to Mizu as a woman or a wife. Taigen has always seen Mizu as a swordsman first. And when the hostility between the two starts to cool, it is because of their mutual admiration of the other’s skill. Mizu’s strength and boldness are what win Taigen over in the first place.

We also see a very important juxtapose between when Mizu pins Mikio to the ground and when she pins Taigen to the ground. In the first instance, Mikio pushes Mizu off him and calls her a monster. He feels put off and emasculated by being overpowered. In the Mizu/Taigen scene, however, once Mizu has Taigen pinned, he stares, awestruck, into Mizu’s eyes and gets a raging hard on. Instead of feeling emasculated, Taigen get so aroused that he has a full blown bi awakening.

So we know that Taigen is different to Mikio in that he is attracted to Mizu BECAUSE she can kick his ass, not in spite of it. But Mizu has been burned before. Badly. So if Taigen were to confess his feelings and tell Mizu that her strength is what he adores most about her, she’d be like, “right, sure, heard that one before.” And that’s why Taigen needs to confess his feelings BEFORE he finds out what’s in Mizu’s pants.

In my daydreaming about a Migen love confession, I find myself reminded of this quote. How Mikio was like the exotic bird collector. He only liked the idea of Mizu knowing her way around a sword so long as at the end of the day, he can still put her back into the caged-in roll of the house wife.

Taigen is also guilty of this with Akemi. I sure there is still no small amount of attraction and love between them, but I think Taigen pursues Akemi mostly out of the personal fable he has written about himself; the poor fisherman’s son who raises himself up to be the star of his Dojo and then marries a princess. He might not have wanted to cage Akemi as much as other men would have, but he still sees her as the exotic bird. The prize. And thats why I can’t ship them.

But with Mizu it’s different. Taigen even admits that Mizu is a better fighter than him. He KNOWS he could never cage her and by the end on the first season he strops trying, opting to stand beside her instead of against her (“it’s your fight, so it’s mine” 😭) So when he does confess his feelings, he has to do is as one man to another and make it clear to Mizu that her strength is what he loves most and that he would never want her to be anything less then the superior swordsman she is.

Only then will Mizu have a chance of believing that Taigen wants to be with her, not to subdue her into a wifely role, but to stand beside her in all her greatness. If Taigen’s confession were to come after he finds out she’s a woman, Mizu might just think, “oh, NOW you want to be with me, cause you think just because I’m a woman I’ll eventually submit to you.” Mizu needs to know she is loved AS SHE IS.

Also, I just think it would be HILLARIOUS if Taigen confesses, and Mizu is like, “ well then….. I guess I should let you know…” and then Taigen spends the rest of the episode with his mind fucking BLOWN and complaining that he has spent the last several months coming to terms with the fact that he is attracted to another man only to find out the man he is attracted to is a woman! He goes through a whole bi awakening for nothing!

[sudenlyanime]

Help I can’t stop