Interview with Blue Eye Samurai Creators Amber Noizumi and Michael Green

Warning, Today's episode contains kind of contains spoilers for Blue Eyed Samurai. Hello, my name is Jason Exceptio and I'm Rosy Night, and welcome back to x Ray Vision of podcast where we dive deep to your favorite shows, movies, comics and pop culture. Coming to you from my Heart podcast, where we're bringing you two episodes week every Tuesday and Thursday.

In today's episode.

In the previously on, we're talking about that stunningly impressive Alien Romulus box office in space. Everyone can hear you make money apparently because it's making money. We're talking Archie comics and a new superhero take that they're bringing out, and the controversy and slowly unfolded revelations around X Men ninety seven show runner Bodomeo. And in a wonderful interview, Jason will be chatting to the Blue Eye Samurai create as Amba Nazumi and Michael Green Up next.

Previously on, First Up on News. Alien Romulus box office numbers are in Oh baby, folks, it is a hit. Forty one and a half million domestically, sixty six point seven million internationally, a total of one hundred and eight million plus globally. Wows Part of the secret sauce, of course, is does the movie open in China. It opened in China twenty five point seven million in China, and folks, big hit Alien Romulus.

This is just unbelievable.

Smash it full overseas debut on twentieth Century Studios. Slash Disney's Alien Romulus is forty seven percent ahead of A Quiet Place Day one Hello, which I feel like everyone was like, this is.

A good hit.

Also seventeen percent above the controversial but now kind of in hindsight, loved Prometheus in like for like markets, So I'm just saying movie is great. Enjoyed the movie, love to see the good box office numbers. I also have to say, sure, it is also a Disney movie, so you know, but Disney kind of went low on the

Yes, you know, but I like to see it. It's like we said, you can always bet on horror.

Yes you can.

That's what we're finding at the box office, and we're gonna be talking about a lot more horror as we get into spooky season.

Next up, Archie Comics, the home to the Archie line of comics, but also back in the day, way way way back, a line of superhero comics and a variety of other comic book stories, is getting back into the superheroes with Rarioru miniseries. That quote blends a metaitextual examination of Archie comics history with superheroes and the Golden Age of comics with a new story of Archie himself coming into Powers Unknown and becoming the world's mightiest hero. First release is November twentieth.

Rosie series is called Archie Is Mister Justice. I feel like the titles a little bit longer.

Yes, I think Mister Justice could have been cool, but I'm sure that might be part of the metatextual nature of it. And what I do like about this is all the conversation around it is essentially Archie is like a good guy. And Mike Norton, who's going to be the artist on the first issue, he basically said that is really what this is about, Like, what is it like to be an incorruptible soul in like a corrupt world, Like, what will we see Archie get into.

I'm interested. I'm a lover of the.

Weird Riverdale esque, you know, the horror Archie style stuff, so this is very interesting to me.

They've definitely been trying a lot of stuff out.

There was recently an Archie one shot that was like a take on basically Fist of the North Stop but with Archie, and Yeah, they've been really getting out that with some of these things. They did a horror anthology called Pop's Chocolate Shop. So I think this is gonna be interesting and definitely could be kind of like what we saw pre Rivedell where that was kind of a Boom and Archie comics. So we'll have to check it out.

And finally, former X Men ninety seven showrunner bo DeMeo has surfaced. Last week, he posted that he had lost his season two credits, which he had worked on season two, because of a gay Pride post. It kind of like very very team illustration of himself that he posted to social media, and he said that that's the reason that Disney took his season two credit, but in that post, he did not grapple with why he was let go

If he didn't, if he didn't.

Tweet about it and hear he is posting about it, causing Disney to fire back. Just a sad situational.

Definitely a sad situation.

I'm feeling for the people who were impacted by this worked on the show. I also feel for the cost and crew because I feel like because of the nature of whatever agreement Disney made with BO, it kind of stayed on the radar, so he's been doing a lot of events with them.

It kind of looked like they were backing him.

Like Disney did make some weird choices here, like Barad Winderborm came out and said what good work BO had done to make it look like it wasn't there wasn't kind of any issues between the two of them after he left. But yeah, it's it's not ideal. You hate to see it, and it makes sense now why they bought in new writers for season two to kind of

I'm not a legal person, but it felt a lot.

It doesn't feel Yeah, it doesn't feel like a statement a lawyer would make.

So I'm sure this is not the last we've heard of this.

That's right. Well, coming up next, we're stepping out of their lock and talking to Blue Eyed Samurai creators Amber Noi Zuomi and Michael Green. We're so delighted to welcome Amber Noi Zuomi and Michael Green, the co creators of Blue Eyed Samurai on Netflix. Welcome to the show, and thank you so much for joining.

Us, Thank you for having me, Thank you.

Let's start with the latest news first. So season two expected not until twenty twenty six. I am of the opinion that good things are worth waiting for, and that excellent things, which truly, truly, truly Bloyd Samurai is so good, so excellent, excellent things are really worth waiting for. Explain to our audience, who I'm sure are ravenous for the new season. Why making something as good as this takes time?

Sort of like ordering the souflet. It says on the menu, Yeah, to take forty minutes, So if you want it, order it early. Yeah. But right now we're on schedule. Because there was some some uh, there was different information going up. We can confirm November twenty twenty six is when we are on the Netflix schedule.

We're we are on track to deliver it then. And I mean, look, we could you know, we could do really rinkaging animation and get it phone these scripts in get it, get it yeah, in six months.

But you know, these things take time.

We have our artists who diligently, you know, research everything to make it, you know, really come to life. And you know, we're we're trying our best to write scripts that are worthy of our audience.

And you know, but you know, the whole show, it really just goes back to how we made it in the first place. That teak nature to this show. We you know, our animation studio is Blue Spirit. They're wonderful, they are talented, and it's outside the sort of run and gun smash it out as quickly as you can. And there are plenty of shows that are amazing. I'm not denigrating to anyone's pipeline, but we chose something that just takes a bit more time. So first season was

To the.

You've spoken about in previous interviews. The genesis of the idea of this, this kind of long gest stating project that has become Blue Eid. Samurai is wondering if you could expound on that for our audience. This is inspired by your multi racial daughter, and then how do you get from there to the show that we've all watched.

That's that's a good question.

I mean, yeah, I mean it started out as actually the icky feelings that I had about my views of my daughter who looked more white than Asian, and being like, ooh, she's got blue ass, it's so pretty. She's got you know, blondish hair, and being excited and why am I excited

Where you want to be more of this or more that.

And yeah, I mean, look, we turned that into a care character who really just loathes this part of her, and you know, we're hoping to, you know, really complicate those emotions where I don't want to give anything away. But maybe she you know, starts to embrace parts of her that she wouldn't have before and embraces new people in her life when she's able to accept some things about herself, which I think is a journey for all of us.

Yeah, I think I was workshopping this feeling I had about the show with the production team. I think one of the things I really it hits me so hard about the show is that that's to your point, you know, as an Asian in media and entertainment, I think one of the things that can feel wearying is like the whole conversation around diversity. It feels like sometimes like you're

How do you.

Balance How did you balance all of that stuff, that the themes, the things you want to say, and also just create a great engaging story that I feel like anybody could watch and feel like, wow, that was awesome.

I mean, I think with our story, it just you know, it was just something that had been as you called it, gest dating for so long that we weren't trying to check any boxes or fulfill an assignment, and you know, that's no, that's no shade to any other show out there, who of course pasts somebody diverse. Diversity is wonderful all the way around. But this, this just is a story about a mixed race person.

We're not shoehorning in any themes.

And it takes place in Japan, so all of the culture is innate to the story.

So all story flowed from a character in a predicament.

It's an intention.

So that was just you know, someone wants revenge of a certain type in a certain place, and she looks like this, So everything just flowed from there. And I won't say the storytelling was easy, but it was natural. We always knew if something wasn't right very quickly, so I don't think we went down many wrong roads. It was always about how to get things right and then just conversation. We kept layering it, you know, like we had it tenth draft. Wasn't good enough for us by

Yeah, I mean, and I think we just we need more stories out there where the main character is a person of color, and sometimes people try to put in a character just to check the box and it feels forced or it can feel forced sometimes, so you know, just more stories about different kinds of people.

Let's talk about the cast, because I think one of the cast is so stacked and amazing, and I think one of the indications that y'all did get it right with your script was, you know, I've read various interviews from the cast where they're asking, oh, yeah, what was the casting process like, and you're like, well, we sent it out and people just said yes immediately, so what was You don't.

Always get that lucky, but I was remembering that, like George d Kay was our first yes.

I think we're like really like.

Okay, like okay, that was you know, we thought that would be a one like that, and people were you know, they they read it and they liked it.

It was COVID, so there's some people.

You know, people had time to read it if if they weren't going crazy in their own homes. It was a remote show that people could work on.

But I mean at the time, there hadn't been many adult animated shows like this, and we we were worried people be like, what they want us to do?

A cartoon? Like I'm not doing a cartoon.

But I think I think the pandemic allowed people to just be like, all right, I'll try anything.

I just want to work.

And it was it was so much because like you know, they they kind of did it on spec I mean obviously they were they were higher, but like creatively, we would be telling them what it would be, but we had nothing to point to. And then you know, maybe a few months down the line after they'd recorded, we're like, hey, here's a picture of your character, and they're like, oh, it's going to look like this, and then we'd show that.

You know, they'd come back for the rare bit of adr.

And you know, they would see like scenes and they'd be like what you know, and it was really touching, like the reactions we got. I mean, speaking of George k one of the nicest things anyone said early on when he was doing some medir he saw it and he said, you need to get this out sooner. People need, you know, we need this kind of thing out there. And we said, George, we are drawing it as fast as we fucking can.

We are the.

Animators in Montreal and in France are you know, blistering their fingers?

I think there can be for people who aren't steeped in animation, there can be kind of like a preconceived notion about what animation is. It's for kids. Did you need to overcome that at all?

I think we're still trying to overcome that. I think people do.

I think the audio, I mean the audience, I mean the audience has a definitely has a preconceived idea of you know, adult animation is comedy, right like The Symptoms and Big Mouth Family Guy, which are great shows. But or there's anime, and anime is for a specific type of person. So we wanted we wanted to show somebody, you know, show people that, I mean, animation is just storytelling, and you know there's.

Some of it out there, like Undone on Amazon, wonderful show half an Hour took a lot of people by surprise, like, wow, this is a grown up show happens to be animated because it fell so neatly and with its themes. And then you have a show like Invincible, which is super fun but definitely feels more like what people expect from adult animation, saying with Harlee and Ivy and now Kiteman all.

Great shows we enjoy.

Yeah, you know when we kept saying, but like our emotions are grounded, our storytelling is grounded, and you know, it was a lot of like people kind of getting it intellectually or kind of going okay, But performance wise, when when we were working with the actors, it was a very it's very I mean, records were fun and easy,

Like one of my best friends said, this is really good like.

You you really like, yeah, you know, you're finally doing cartoons like you always want to, and you know, and it's great that a lot of audience members were surprisedly, I didn't know animation could do this, But it's more fun when people are like, finally more animation like we.

Were hoping for.

The show has so many unexpected turns, and I think one of my favorite ones is the relationship between that Meets You and Tigan, which starts out as antagonistic and then develops into something that I think I've never really seen before, which is, you know, there's still foils who are working together. What was it like developing that storyline. It's so fun because it's respected again.

They grudgingly start to respect each you know, game game the Yeah.

I mean I think we're still we're still definitely exploring it.

But yeah.

That was always our intention, was that Mitsu only understood one thing, and that was revenge and sword play. And so even as much as she hated Tigan's guts, he gets that, like they have they have this shared hyper focus of you know, swordsmanships, and so he's he's the closest she has to somebody who gets her.

I mean when he draws up a contract. Yes, and it was it was wonderful.

Yeah, he's he's trying to make it formal because at the time you could have formal like okay, we're going to do all right, And they put him up as a placard in the center of town like this was a public, formalized thing you could do, and mesas like, you know, fuck that. If you want to, if you want to kill someone, you just take a knife and you kill him. Why why being so fancy? And he's

Yeah, because it's like.

It would have been you know, it would have been nicer. But like there's a there's an innate sense of honor.

This is clearly such a deeply researched piece of work. What was that process like And how do you not get lost in the rear It.

Is very easy to get lost in the research.

It's it was fun research. I have a few I don't have a rule about it. You just as a writer, you have to at some point say I am done researching now, or I will never And I talked to you, you know, young writers all the time who are like, you know, and I'm still reading this and this. I'm like, you're done, put the book down, do your work, because someone's already written the book that you're reading, Like.

You know, I don't know. It was it was a lot of fun. We got to read books.

We always want, you know, watch during COVID, we watched all the movies, you know, we read all the comics, but some academic texts were really essential. Working with researchers and of course our art team uh Are production signer Toby Wilson. These are all people who love getting it right and making it beautiful, so they would just you know, we would put things in there and they would come back and go like, oh, if it isn't this type of candle, could we use this type of brazier that

Call it a lantern and they're like, here are seventeen types of lanterns.

That they had.

So you know, there was a lot of intensity and enthusiasm from our team for like they finally got to do the kind of stuff. I mean, all of them have worked on incredible things, but there was the specific, specific hyper focuses and sub passions all came to bear.

How long did it take to nail down the character designs? That must have been such a fun process.

Oh goodness, I don't remember.

No, no, I mean you remember timeline. It was very much a part of figuring out how to animate the show. So we started with, you know, just design of what they would look like, and we had a wonderful uh character designer at the time was really thinking about it in three D terms, and then we realized, we.

Need to look at this in two D terms. And even though we're going to be doing a three D two D process.

There's some very cool, uh, you know, three D images of early, early, early design.

But when working with our supervising director Jane Wu and her character lead Brian Kessinger, it was it was like taking those and then finding the animatable essence of them until you like find, you know, and we really have these very detailed conversations about how feminine should Mezo look when we first meet her, you know, because how much are we trying to hide the ball? Will the trailer

Yeah, the art style is magnificent. It's so immersive and so fluid, you know, the the from the action scenes to the cooking scenes, everything moves in this really like liquid, wonderfully inspiring style. You know, what was how do you design stuff like that? Like the action scenes I'm thinking in particular, are so stylized and graphic and edible. How long does it take to kind of pin down that?

I mean we've talked about it the action and other interviews.

We haven't talked as much about like the food stuff.

The food stuff is so good.

Starving for so but no, I mean we wrote it into the drafts that there were slow mo close ups of Soba making process, like in the opening episode, and you know, something that had to be cultivated and we all worked at but took getting right and it is one of those things that shakes out very easily, similarly like language shots of walking through nature. I mean, you know there's a shot that we scripted that was animated

And took a soba making class in Japan, so we really had that feeling. Our biggest regret was that we couldn't take our whole team to Japan for a research trip.

But maybe one day, maybe COVID, but yeah, you know, just just we wanted the pace of the show to allow moments of breath, moments of just experiential feeling. And that also came down to, like, you know, the way it's colored, the way the effects come in, little dust motes or little bits of flower floating through the air.

The show comes out and becomes a word of mouth hit, a critical hit, obviously multiple Immy nominations. What's what's that been? Like?

I mean, very very exciting.

I mean it's I feel like we didn't know we were exactly a hit. Like it's kind of a it's not like you get the big numbers like I think, like you used to get these, you know, it's.

Not like you know Wednesday where it's like one trillion people for more.

So I think we would just slowly start to hear from people and like, oh you watch that, and I think people are still discovering it, which was just exciting.

But it's you know, so many people trusted us in making the show and gave their talent and time.

For so long. It's so great to just be able to say, like it was you know that it was worth it.

You know that Netflix trusted us with with resources, with making an original. Uh you know, hopefully it means that they'll now keep betting on originals. So for us, there was a lot of relief of like, after a lot of trust.

To be able to go, okay, you aren't.

That's good, Thank goodness, because you know, on paper the idea is nuts.

Agreed. I think from a from a certain from a certain executive position. Certainly it feels nuts. I will say, you know, as a person who watches too much TV and too many movies, no such thing, no such something something like this that comes, you know, I'd read a couple of trade pieces about it, but that comes it basically out of nowhere and is so good that you can't believe it is. It's really a joy. So congratulations to both you and really what is a magnificent season

I really appreciate talking to you.

On the next episode of X ray Vision, we're diving into reactions to an alien Romulus, including a very special interview with a wo who plays Novarro. That's it for this episode. Thanks for listening. X ray Vision is hosted by Jason kenspcion and Rosie Knight and is a production of iHeart Podcasts. Our executive producers are Joelle Smith and Aaron Kaufman. Our supervising producer is a Boo Zafar. Our producers are Carmen Laurent and Mia Taylor. Our theme song is by Brian Basquez.

Special thanks to Soul Rubin and Chris Lord, Kenny Goodman and Heidi A disco moderata