‘The number of people who have the skillset required was one’: Netflix’s new star-studded samurai series piles praise and pressure on its director

In what’s proven to be quite the coincidence, you wait forever to see an original and violently blood-soaked animated samurai series to debut on Netflix, only to end up with two at once after the star-studded Blue Eye Samurai and the Takashi Miike-backed video game adaptation Onimusha settled on release dates just 24 hours apart.

The latter will be second out of the gate on Nov. 3, and it might just fare better among subscribers based entirely on the raft of well-known names gathered together for the ensemble voice cast. Maya Erskine will bring hero Mizu to life, with George Takei, Masi Oka, Randall Park, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, and Academy Award winner Kenneth Branagh also on board.

That’s without even mentioning Logan and Blade Runner 2049 writer Michael Green’s status as creator and showrunner, or Marvel Cinematic Universe storyboarding veteran and fast-rising animation savant Jane Wu at the forefront of the creative process as director. In a Vanity Fair profile, Green couldn’t speak highly enough of the mastermind behind Blue Eye Samurai‘s sumptuous visuals.

“Jane Wu was made in a lab to direct this show. There’s literally no one else who has the martial arts background, the attention to detail, the care for wardrobe, and was a comic book and genre fan. The number of people who have the skillset required to make this show a reality as a director was one. We did not have an animation background. Now we do, but it’s only because we remember things she taught us.”

With the highest praise comes an equal amount of pressure, but based on the sum of its parts, things are looking good for Blue Eye Samurai to score rave reviews and bumper viewership figures when it lands on Netflix just a few weeks from now.