I was at an arcade with my friends yesterday, and we played Time Crisis 5. The gameplay was awesome, crazy good for a shooter, but the story was a shoddily-constructed Jenga game of a mess clearly used to give the smallest modicum of importance to what you’re doing (which is pressing pedals, holding down the trigger, and moving the gun around). In my playthrough, this was made even better by my pal Mason skipping cutscenes every so often due to a faulty gun. So we never got to see the full story, despite completing the campaign. That's how Yasuke is. It feels like an accidental side-button push, skipping essential cutscenes along the way of an already-contrived journey.
Yasuke is primarily a plot-driven show, and that’s ultimately what drives it down the rocky road of quality. On one hand, you have the man’s past, serving as a retainer under Nobunaga Oda; on the other hand, an alternate history where super-powered beings and mechanical golems are embedded into the (ironically primal) feudal Japan. It’s like a reverse Nobunagun, and who asked for a reverse Nobunagun?! Seriously, I just wanna talk. This weird fusion of poppy future gadgets and legitimate history prompts questions like, “How come the general populace aren’t riding on Sonic Rider-esque hoverboards by this point? They clearly have the technology.” “Why aren’t thousands of people using magicians to further societal development a la Avatar: The Last Airbender?” and “When’s Yasuke gonna go Super Saiyan II?”
Sengoku-period Japan is no place for sci-fi.
The most beautiful part of the show, the ending sequence (backed by Flying Lotus’ crowning track ‘Between Memories’), is a tribute to the historical life of the real Yasuke. It goes so far to show him sumo wrestling with fellow retainer Toyotomi Hidetsugu, an obvious homage to the 1605 drawing ‘Sumo Yurakuzu Byobu’, as well as holding on a detailed frame of Yasuke dressed in upper-class Portuguese clothing (a nod to a 1590s Suzuri-bako piece). Again, to beat an old drum, a laser-focused, no-bullshit show on the authentic Yasuke himself would’ve been incredible. But ultimately, Yasuke’s primary focus is not to accurately retell his story, it’s to entertain the audience. And even in that, it’s half-assed.
There are moments like episode two’s “The Old Way” which cements a serious mood in trying to communicate class and racial struggle, but then quickly undermines itself by introducing a group of wisecracking bounty hunters. Yasuke does this a lot, introducing great concepts, but never stretching them out any further. It’s like the Dubble Bubble bubblegum piece you get during Halloween: Appealing at first taste, then it instantly wears out. You’re left chewing on something just to chew. Watching for the sake of watching. But is it at least appealing in that sense?
No. Especially because this is the same studio which pulled off Jujutsu Kaisen. Sure, the fights looked 'cool'. But I wasn’t invested in a single element of that 'cool'. I had no intrinsic reason to care about anything the blood splotches on the snow-covered ground wanted me to. The fights were cool in The God Of High School, and that show is the definition of failure. Being the audience for a moving medium means you can’t separate plot, characters, sound, and animation without losing part of that original emotion. Executing that structure feels robotic. You have to take all of it in as a whole, because no element exists without the other. Without sound, you can’t feel the exhaustion in Yasuke’s voice, or the childlike glee Saki prances around the show with. Without Flying Lotus’ music, you can’t feel the raw clash every time our samurai raises his fists or his sword. Without the visuals, you can’t see the director’s intended vision for the series, for better and for worse. If you must separate sections into categories of this nature, it has to describe how all these relate to each other and tie together. In considering this whole, Yasuke feels weightless.
“Whatever you do, do it well,” said Walt Disney, “Do it so well that when people see you do it, they will want to come back and see you do it again, and they will want to bring others and show them how well you do what you do.” I don’t want to see more of Yasuke. I don’t want to see more of this stiff, uninspired animation which serves no purpose. I don’t want ten-seconds-long, easily 'gif'-abble segments to be shared around the web and through promotional material. I don’t want a bastardisation of what was sold to me as a historical piece.
The biggest insult a piece can receive is mediocrity. If it’s extremely good or extremely poor, either way it's excessive. It’ll still be remembered.
But Yasuke will be forgotten.
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