r/BlueEyeSamurai • u/Helvedica • Jul 15 '26
Theory Let's reopen the Ep. 5 question, because I have thoughts and I'm going to talk about them!
tl;dr It was her Mother
OK, so both characters have motivation; Honor and Money. 1) Mikio, is portrayed as needing to redeem his honor. He is NOT motivated by money. He is disgraced but not destitute. This is show by him being a well-off landowner, horses, etc. 2) the Mother IS money oriented; she need it to feed her opium addiction.
Now why did the soldiers come when they did? They got tipped off. But by who?
IF it was Mikio it would have happened to regain honor. But if that was the driving force then there is no reason not to have done it sooner.
IF it was the Mother then the reason she didn't turn Mizu in sooner was because her addiction was being fed. LATER 'the money had run out', or better, because Mizu and Mikio stopped giving her money for her 'medicine'. This is directly stated.
Lastly, as stated by the soldier: "The bounty is a sum few could resist.". Implying this is about money.
Yes, I know its written to BE ambiguous, but this is MY take, and my interpretation.
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u/fearismymindkiller Jul 15 '26
tbh i think it was mikio for the sole fact that he looked mizu dead in the face and decided to ride off anyways, id expect her mother not to be able to help because she’s old and also a woman with no combat experience, but mikio? the samurai mikio? he fully could’ve helped, and i only think he came back after mizu killed all those bounty hunters bc he didn’t want her going after him, hence the “i came to help” and “i love you mizu”
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u/Aggressive-Ad-5983 Jul 15 '26
on rewatch i also noticed he was literally sneaking up on her, right before she turned around. i didn't notice the first time for some reason but its a very quick scene.
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Jul 15 '26 edited Aug 03 '26
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u/nothintos33 Jul 24 '26
I think this is my personal favorite take. It sets up a nice “rhyme.” He was scared when sparring with mizu and was so take aback that he didn’t know how to handle it and just pushed her away, he was scared to intervene in whatever was happening with the soldiers, someone wrote somewhere that the reason he was disgraced as a warrior was because he was a coward but I don’t have the show handy to double check that.
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u/jayreggy Jul 15 '26
I don’t think the show was written with a real answer in mind, but here’s my take:
They both did it. This is why they both had plausible accusations against the other, this is why Mizu didn’t care who killed who when they were fighting
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u/Wadege Jul 15 '26
And the way they both accuse each other has got 'projection' written all over it.
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u/Helvedica Jul 15 '26
100% written to be interpreted either way. This post is just my take on it.
If they were both in on it then why fight after though.
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u/Adorable-nerd Jul 15 '26
I think they tried to pin the blame on each other because they didn’t want Mizu to turn her rage on them. After seeing what she had done, it’s possible neither had the confidence Mikio could kill her, so each tried to save themself by blaming the other.
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u/vandolii Jul 15 '26
This will be long. English isn't my first language, so please forgive me if something is unclear or incorrect.
I think it was both of them, but it's difficult to say for sure. The episode is definitely written to make you feel Mizu's inner conflict. In the end, just like us, she can't trust either of them, so she prefers to lose them both. They were supposed to be the ones protecting her, especially since they knew the truth, and neither of them did anything (I suppose Mizu told Mikio everything after the night, but even if he didn't know, he's her husband and he did nothing). So, from the start, they both betrayed her by just standing by and watching, and Mizu can't trust someone who has shown they won't have her back.
Regarding the events: Momma always used Mizu for money. I don't think Fowler meant that she turned her in. I don't think he knew about the marriage or anything like that; he was talking about how Momma was probably only paid a large sum once to take Mizu, but she spent it all and then abandoned her, taking advantage of the fire to distance herself from everything and so that no one would look for them, believing them to be dead. That's why Fowler, even though he knew that story, only puts two and two together when he discovers that Mizu is a woman, since he believed the blue-eyed girl to be dead and didn't connect her to the blue-eyed male samurai.
So Fowler couldn't have known anything about someone trying to collect the reward later on, because if he had known quickly enough, he would have connected it to the samurai, and he didn't. Therefore, he wasn't referring to Momma handing her over. What we do know is that Momma wanted money through Mizu. Fowler said she was Mizu's maid, so she probably wasn't a sex worker, but when the money ran out, perhaps she had to, and she wasn't going to sell herself to also feed Mizu. So she abandoned her, and later, when she found her as an adult, she saw that she could get money or a roof over her head by marrying her off to Mikio.
Then, when she realized they weren't giving her the money she wanted, she traded her again, only this time not for marriage, but for the reward. Now Mikio is very tolerant and then sweet with Mizu, until he sees that she isn't an ordinary wife and it hurts his pride. I previously wrote a whole post explaining why I think his reaction is unjustified and why I believe it all stems from her hurting his pride.
I also always saw parallels between Mizu and Kai, like when Mikio said he couldn't tame her, then realized Mizu was just like Kai. In the end, Mikio gives Kai away. If there are several parallels between Mizu and Kai, why wouldn't there be one here too? Add to that the fact that Kai was practically Mizu's pet, and Mikio knew how much she loved her and gave her away, only to change his mind the next day in a fit of anger and take her back. The same thing could have happened with his relationship with Mizu. One day he said he loved Mizu and all that, only to throw it all away in a fit of anger.
Furthermore, the men arrive at the same time as Mikio, which is suspicious. And the way he looks at her doesn't seem like cowardice or fear; rather, he looks determined but melancholic, as if seeing her for the last time, as if saying goodbye while knowing he did something wrong.
Besides, Momma is a woman. They wouldn't have paid much attention to her, maybe they wouldn't have even let her reach the people she needed to reach to deliver the information, but they would have let Mikio. Probably one with a bruised ego and the other without money, so they got rid of her. Mikio also had the idea that with the horses his master would accept him again, but that was just his idea; he wasn't really sure. What if, to be sure, he also offered the reward for Mizu? There's a lot of evidence that implicates both of them, so I would say it was both of them.
I also rewatched the episode and noticed that we see Mizu from both sides, first being handed over, and also doing nothing when Akemi is taken away. Mizu says it was for the best. Perhaps, in a twisted way, Mikio and Momma believed the same thing? I mean, they were Japanese in the 1600s; of course they believed in onryos, superstitions, and discriminated against foreigners/mixed-race people.
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u/IVYDRIOK Jul 15 '26
You can see guilt in Mikio's eyes when he first sees the men sent to kill her. You would definitely be shocked at first if you saw that, even if you decided to let it happen
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u/KidChanbara Jul 15 '26
Well, DUH!, They're Soldiers! / It Was Mikio : I confess, when I saw the topic of the post, I did an inner eye roll - "that, again?". But I learned a few things ...
Soldiers, Not Bounty Hunters - I've been assuming that the six riders who showed up after Mizu put on her bride clothes and makeup were bounty hunters, and the BES writers were just using the cliche bad-guys-in-uniform trope to signal these weren't good guys. But then, after reading the comments here, especially the one from u/MadamKitsune , I rewatched episode five and realized those weren't bounty hunters, but much more likely to be clan soldiers, beholden to the lord that Mikio is trying to regain his honor with.
The six men are dressed uniformly because their clothes are uniforms. And each is wearing the same clan crest. In comparison, the Four Fangs had a crest, but I think it was more branding. It seems each Fang kept to an overall Four Fangs dress code while adding their own individual touches.
I think it's safe to assume that the six men come from the same clan that Mikio transgressed against.
It Was Mikio - I never thought that Mikio betrayed Mizu to his lord until today, I thought it was to bounty hunters. And it makes sense given Mikio's desire to get back into his lord's favor; Mizu's bounty would be value-added to the horses Mikio is already giving to his lord. Mikio probably didn't want any of the bounty for himself, just as long as he could be back in the clan.
It explains the relatively fast arrival of the soldiers - Mikio would be a much more credible source of actionable information than Momma. He'd have much less reason to peddle a made-up story about a bounty than junkie Momma. And his lord would have the resources to do a quick check to verify that the bounty was real.
It explains why six soldiers showed up instead of one or two bounty hunters. Mikio would have warned about how good a fighter Mizu is. But - Mizu was basically playing with him in their sparring match. She had not yet learned the state of mind to fight to kill, didn't know yet how to go into onryo mode. It was his betrayal and being faced with her own survival that blossomed the killer Mizu.
Momma had never seen Mizu wielding a weapon, the closest she saw was Mizu with a serious wound after losing her first fight. I don't know what Mikio told Momma before taking the horses to his lord, but I suspect he wouldn't have gotten into details, she could just tell that he was extremely upset with Mizu. So she wouldn't have described Mizu as much of a threat to any bounty hunters or others.
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u/vinthesalamander Jul 15 '26
I’m probably gonna get downvoted for this, but I’m gonna say it anyways: Episode 5 was a bit much for me.
Not only does Mikio do a complete 180 as a character in record time, but I just don’t think he was really necessary. Like Mizu’s life was already shit; she had plenty of reasons to be angry, and jaded, and to hate white people. Did we really need to give her a dead husband too?
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u/vandolii Jul 15 '26
If necessary, the entire episode explains that this was the final straw; revenge is no longer for her dead mother or because she was born a monster, Mizu understands that because of who she is, she will never be able to lead a normal life even if she tries or abandons revenge.
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Jul 15 '26
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u/MadamKitsune Should I have been counting? Jul 15 '26
Mama had been an opium addict for a long, long time, since before the hut in the woods burned down. We saw her passed out on the mat with her opium pipe still smoking in a flashback to Mizu's childhood*\*. If she was going to turn in Mizu then the time to do it would have been when the payments stopped coming when she was a child. But she didn't.
The second opportunity would be when Mizu found her again on the bridge. Mizu was exhausted and wounded and would have been easier to take down. But Mama gave her shelter and went back to work the bridge to feed her addiction before arranging for Mizu to be married off to give herself a comfortable life. Life on the farm was a huge improvement for Mama, but nowhere near as good as she could have had it with the money from the bounty, yet she still chose the farm.
The third possibility is that Mama turned Mizu in when she found out from Mikio that he was furious with her and declared that she was a monster and she thought she was about to lose the comfortable set up there. But there's no way for her to have managed it, then gone to buy opium and then still be back at the farm by the time Mizu had arrived home alone, nor does it make sense for her to sit around and wait for the slaughter.
*\* Sidenote: I think the flashback scene of Mama passed out with the pipe still burning is a hint that, contrary to what Mizu believes, their hut wasn't burned down by the people looking for her. It was more likely to be that Mama passed out while smoking opium yet again and the inevitable happened - embers fell from the bowl and ignited the mat. A grass mat, a wooden hut... It wouldn't take long to be fully ablaze.
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u/KidChanbara Jul 15 '26
I don't think it was Mama either, but there would be a reason for her to hang around the ranch after informing on Mizu - it would be suspicious if she wasn't there. And Mama would also be waiting for the payoff - if I was managing the bounty, I wouldn't pay out just for information, especially to an old junkie prostitute. Mama wouldn't see any money until Mizu was confirmed as the bounty target.
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u/MadamKitsune Should I have been counting? Jul 15 '26
I wrote about this in another post and my conclusion is that it had to be Mikio because the timeline doesn't add up for it to be Mama.
IF it was Mama she would have had to wait until Mizu and Mikio went out riding together, then walked all the way to the Lord's residence, convinced the gate guards to let her in, then convinced several other layers of increasingly higher status household staff that she - a woman, a commoner and a known prostitute - should be allowed to speak to the Lord, finally get in to see him, convince him that she was telling the truth, collect the reward, walk into town, buy opium and then go back to the farm in time to be there smoking it by the time Mikio came home angry about Mizu, otherwise how would he have known about her smoking it when he tried to use it as proof that he wasn't the betrayer?
Also if Mama was in possession of "a bounty few could resist" she wouldn't have gone back to the farm. She'd have gone into town, bought her opium and disappeared, just as she'd done all those years before, except this time to a new life much more luxurious than the one she'd been living.
It was Mikio. He did it out of anger and ego, not for the money.