Yasuke

I was pretty excited to watch this show, especially after the intro scene with a Demon army, superpowers, mechanicals soldiers and good fights.

Then, I lost interest after 3 episodes. The story id really bland, uninteresting and predictable. You have nice character design and potential great character developpement, but eventually, it's just to show off and tick cases.

That's not the first "international" anime-like series from Netflix and they're all very disappointing. But I guess Netflix is more interested in mass producing easily watched-easily forgotten series, rather than quality and long-term series.

This is a pretty MOR anime, but the soundtrack is incredible. I watched about two minutes in English and was relieved to be able to switch to Japanese. For some reason, every anime just sounds much much better in Japanese and so I found it easier to parse the deliberate anachronisms and tried-and-true anime tropes. I did find the lead character quite likeable. I definitely consumed the album soundtrack a number of times on Spotify before watching. Perhaps that led me to like the film more, as the music connected me first, then the visuals and story. Now I'm going to watch Princess Mononoke.

Yasuke is one of the most intriguing historical figures that I can think of and as a black African man who lives a fascinating life as a noble samurai warrior under the shogunate of Oda Nobunaga. His story can be easily turned into a fantastic historical anime series and in 2021, we finally got one under the hands of studio MAPPA and I cannot stretch enough how god-awful this piece of mess is. To keep the review short, I just gotta say this anime contains about 5% of the actual story about Yasuke and the rest was your usual anime extravaganza that makes little to no sense other than to let people know that it was in fact "AN ANIME SERIES". I don't want to talk about race politics when it comes to entertainment media cause I believe that anyone can make any kind of story about any people that they want if they got a good story to tell and sadly despite how much back talents behind the anime, they still don't believe Yasuke can stand on it own two feet as a historical piece of series without shoehorned in a bunch of old and tired anime tropes that plague the medium right now. One positive thing that I can say about this one is it look and feel like something Yoshiaki Kawajiri would make back in the late 80s and that is also the reason why I don't drop this series right after episode 1.

'Yasuke' may have disappointed some viewers as they thought it was going to be more grounded in reality, with the main character - Yasuke being a realistic portrayal of his real world counterpart. Instead the show takes a rather different route incorporating heavy magical elements.

I'll admit that the lore of the world is pretty basic and not fleshed out at all which leads to a little bit of deus ex machina on top of Saki being kind of boring. Other than this however I found the show to be extremely enjoyable. There's nothing inherently wrong with tropey anime stuff as long as you're not expecting something entirely groundbreaking and serious. Not every anime needs to be Evangelion, guys.

Some of these reviews complain about the 'forced agenda' of the show but I really don't see it. Yasuke really was very highly regarded by most people of his time with no stigma towards black people existing other than the fact that they were foreign. Oda Nobunaga was famously interested in other cultures so it's not too far fetched to say that if he's lived longer Japan may have become a more accepting place. Secondly, homosexuality was accepted in bushido (the general warrior philosophy of the time). Having a gay character is also nowhere near the reach people have described it to be

It virtually goes without saying that the music and animation are absolutely top tier. 'Yasuke', in my opinion is delightfully fun and binge-able. Very much worth a watch. Just don't expect a masterwork or anything.

Netflix made sure to inform everbody that Grammy Award Winning producer Flying Lotus executive produced this series, and provided its entire OST.

Yet when the show released it took minutes to realize something is wrong.

Some of the shots, including stills, look beautiful, yet the animations are stiff and lifeless The english voice acting is not very enjoyable, gladly I could switch to German which is better in my opinion.

The trailers painted this as a grand epic with incredible Lo Fi beats, akin to cult classic Afro Samurai, great action and an interesting supernatural touch.

But the series itself goes nowhere. Episodes end at random, the pacing is not great and the production quality is all over the place.

I wanted to make this review to call Netflix out on this.

They went out of their way to advertise this with the FlyLo OST. Yet the trailer music isn't even in the series, nor on the album. They put all of the best action and shots in the trailers.

I expected to at least get some enjoyment from anime fights with a good soundtrack from this, sadly it doesn't provide anything of the above.

Stay clear of Yasuke. Just play the album on Spotify and watch something worth your time.