I watched the behind the scenes about the animation of Blue Eye Samurai and spoilers If you care but the fact some of you are pissed off the creators state Mizu is a woman over and over again is dumb. At this point, some ppl are so strangely sexist you do not think women are complex characters you can relate to or would never put revenge or being in disguise for safety (and ease of travel ) above conformity or femininity.
Mizu's mother told her two things: don't leave the house or they will kill us and don't let them know you're a girl because they're looking for a girl and will kill you. Mizu disobeys one of these and her hut gets set on fire with her mother in there. It's not hard to imagine why she'd continue dressing up as a boy for safety. If you really think a girl or woman would never dress up as a man to avoid being hunted down and killed, something is wrong with your brain. Women and girls famously don't like being brutally murdered.
That woman and child weren't allowed in the city to sell their goods and avoid starving because no male chaperone. How is Mizu supposed to get revenge if she needs a male chaperone to travel?
Some are denying central themes (because Mizu is relatable) like: the narrow paths women have- being a wife or an ' improper woman' ( working in a brothel ) to the point not even a princess was in control. Akemi is working within the confines of being a wife and we'll see how that goes. Disappointment doesn't mean bad writing because you don't think women would ever do that ( they do ) or God forbid you relate to someone different from you. She would have never ended up with Akemi because they're on very divergent paths. They were never going to scissor 😔 shame because it might fix her lol
Ideas get popular online and you're meant to treat pet theories like holy scripture. If you think the experiences of Mizu is too cool to be explored in a woman, first of all wooow!!, 2nd you're ignoring the story and it's a you problem.
(If you don’t want this added to your post, I can delete it and make my own but I liked what you said and had to get this off my chest)
THIS. LITERALLY THIS.
Like, I think it’s really great that Mizu’s relationship with her gender resonates with so many people. It’s totally valid to make headcanons about it but some of y’all aren’t just doing that. Some of y’all are out here like or outright saying that you’re owed and entitled to Mizu not being a woman, or that she can’t possibly be a woman, because you can’t fathom women having complicated feelings about their gender, especially under a patriarchy, especially in a society where the ideal form of femininity is not inclusive to them because of their race (and economic class).
The creators of the show have made it clear as day that Mizu is a woman and that the overall story is an expression of the experiences of Asian women (mixed and not mixed) and how the intersectionality of their race and gender have affected their lives or the lives of those they’re close to who fall under those identities today by exploring those themes in the Edo period. It also gets into other things like disability which I haven’t seen talked about here a lot.
So for some of y’all to say that the literal creators of the show merely view Mizu as a woman, or that gender isn’t central to the story’s themes (it is as well as race) so Mizu’s gender is canonically up for interpretation or (as a backhanded way of not really addressing the issue) saying that it’s ok to headcanon Mizu as a woman when she, again, canonically is… like it’s just ridiculous.
You realize you’re misgendering Mizu by doing all of that and confining her to an identity that benefits you like her mom/not mom did? And I really don’t want to hear to indefensible argument that these are just stories and you can play around with the characters like dolls because people make these stories with intent and put their own experiences into them which some of you are denying, in order to make this about you, because you can’t seem to relate to a woman of color or find her complex, nuanced and interesting the way she is. You realize you’re just doing misogyny and racism with extra steps? You realize you’re just repackaging those things in a different way? And I have a feeling that, predictably, most if not all the people doing this or acting like this is just silly “discourse” where people can’t respect each other’s headcanons are white queers because some of you guys will do this thing where you can't relate to a poc especially a woc without somehow making it about you and disguise it as "stating the obvious" that they're this identity or should be in this ship or saying we should let everyone just have fun even when poc call you out on it.
Also, not for nothing, but so far I haven’t seen anyone talk about how Mizu not wanting to be a boy but having to be could relate to the experience of intersex people who are forced to live as a gender they don’t identify with. Except I know why, because that would still make her a woman (and technically not queer) and some of you can’t fathom relating to that. I’ve also only seen a few people, as of right now, talk about how Taigen’s growing attachment to Mizu, who he still thinks is a man at this point, suggests that he’s bi or pan because I know some people, even in the queer community, don’t care about bi and pan people.
Every marginalized person should get more rep, at the same time and not the trickled down version that we see in mainstream media where they go one group at a time. But, and I’m saying all of this as a queer woman of color (who’s been questioning but still identifies a lot with being a woman and as of right now feels genderqueer works best to describe my relationship with gender), some of you need to accept that this includes women of color and people of color in general regardless of whether or not they're also queer because we don’t get the same kind of quality or quantity of rep that white people do period.
Also, we simply don’t know the people who worked on this show. Some of them could be queer for all you know, and they shouldn’t have to out themselves for your validation. Also, it’s not like the show itself has completely ignored the existence of queer people. It even shows how in a restrictive period like Edo, “There was a sense of sexual openness during the period that might defy modern expectations.” Madame Kaji assumes Mizu wants to be with a man at the brothel, Taigen has growing feelings for Mizu while thinking she’s a man, and, to me, Heiji Shindo and Fowler gave off some toxic couple vibes. (Edit:) There's also a literal threesome and discussion of kink in the same episode. And like, that might not feel like enough but there’s so much love, thought, research and nuance put into this show and all the topics and intersecting marginalized identities it does explicitly discuss that to write all that off because it doesn’t cater to some of your specific experiences (when the people who worked on this show don’t even know you or owe it to you) is very individualistic and entitled.
The show has 4 seasons planned, which leaves room for explicit queerness if that’s the creator’s intention, but I really hope they get it regardless because woc and poc in general do not get shows like this every day in western media. It doesn’t matter to me that Mizu and the other characters aren’t the same race as me or explicitly queer because I’m capable of relating to and even finding solidarity in people who aren’t exactly like me. I’ve also had to relate to people different from me in the media as a queer black woman in a white cishet world. I like Mizu for who she is because she’s interesting and well written, not because I feel entitled to her being exactly like what I find relatable.
If we can all understand that gender identity and presentation/expression are a complex thing, especially if we take it a step further and recognize how intersecting identities like race, class, disability and so on further influence that, even if someone just ends up being cis+ as we call them, then you should be able to understand why Mizu, as a woman, is written the way she is in a non-white culture and time period that doesn’t use the western terminology for gender and sexuality that we use today.
Again, because I know if anyone reads this some of you will gloss over half of what I say and make assumptions, I’m not saying that you can’t find Mizu relatable if you're transmac, nb, sapphic, etc. That’s valid and so is having and sharing your own thoughts and headcanons about it. I personally like to headcanon her with some of my identities as a queer person. But some of you are blatantly ignoring the creators’ explicit intent when they wrote the show from their own experiences because you feel entitled to people, who don’t know you or owe it to you, catering to you specifically. And I see a lot of that in some shape or form in a tag that’s just starting to grow, because the show literally just came out last Friday, when there could be more discussions and analyses about the show and all it talks about and executes wonderfully.
OMG yes!!! Thank you @pumpumdemsugah and @doorhine for speaking up about this issue. ♥️
As a biracial + multicultural woman as well, I find it really frustrating how there’s currently more discourse about Mizu’s gender identity in this fandom (when it’s clear as day that Mizu is canonically a woman) than there is race discourse about Mizu’s mixed biracial identity. Being a visible ethnic minority plays a MUCH bigger role in Mizu’s life than their sexual orientation does. And honestly, it’s blatantly obvious in the story that Mizu presents as a man (as many women throughout history) only out of survival. It’s not actually a “metaphor” for something else.
Like yes, it’s great for other marginalized people to resonate with Mizu even if they aren’t biracial or bicultural women of color, but those people need to understand that they are outsiders looking in and that this story isn’t about them. Anyone who thinks that a story about a biracial cis-gender woman of color is too “boring” or not “cool enough” to explore is simply being racist and misogynistic.
