Yasuke is ............a pretty weird show that exists. It's not great but ...y'know its not awful. I think my enjoyment of the show played a huge factor in my overall score. Don't get me wrong though, i still have problems with Yasuke.

Story

The story is literally all over the place, And the actual premise of being a story about the historically first "black" samurai sacrifices its grounded historical fiction for crazy ass magic powers and even mecchas because hey, why not add robots in a story that takes place in the 14th century? Because anime, that's why. Also, the final episode is just absolutely wild. Gave me flashbacks to when I was watching GOH, but fortunately, unlike GOH, the story itself is pretty simple and concise, its time jumps are a bit abrupt but not too hard to follow.

Characters

The rest of the problems i do have with the show are the characters, the characters are pretty cliché, the main villians are Sailor Moon levels of cheese. since the anime is only 6 episodes, the pacing is so tight that i didn't really feel that much of the dynamics with Yasuke and the others like the little girl or even the king dude. I think the creators just thought of how interesting a concept of having a black samurai anime protagonist would be and just ran with it. I wanna praise them for that but it doesn't matter what race a character is in fiction if they're badly written. In the case of Yasuke, he's alright. He's the baseline of what to expect from a main character, and to be honest i'd take cliché over isekai protagonist any day. I really wished they explored Yasuke's relationship with the king dude in his flashback. Some of the magic, especially with the little girl, is just nuts and not really explained that well, but after all of the crazy visuals I've seen, I really don't think telling a good story was the creators' main objective.

Alright now that the bad things are out of the way, time for some praise.

-Art and Animation

the art in Yasuke is gorgeous. The character designs by Takeshi Koike are just so detailed and tell alot about each character. I know a good looking design is subjective but ive always been a fan of his so i guess that's just me.The gigantic monster women, the marks on Yasuke's body, the wardrobe, the friking eyeballs. Wow. The background art also is super duper impressive. To be honest its some of the best background art I've seen in a long while. There is just so much detail I was able to catch on my high def tv. And the artistic liberties taken especially in the trippy ass final episode looked like a final boss level out of Sekiro or something.
And the animation. dude....omg...the animation in this show is just insane at times. The fight scenes are super violent and really well choreographed, some of the animation outside the fights were just wow...it almost felt like MAPPA was just flexing on how well they can animate when they don't have an airing schedule. Some of the visuals were just a couple of colors away from an acid trip;gave me hardcore End of Eva vibes. Of course, its ambitious scenes don't match with its actual story, but still it looks really well. If one thing, I kept saying "woah" out loud. I almost felt like a kid at a museum or aquarium going "oohhh and ahhh" at things. Even if you don't plan on watching the show, the anime opening alone should be something to watch when you get the chance. The only time when the animation does faulter is the mecchas that stand out in all of its MAPPA cgi glory.

Music

the music was also really solid. Its the definition of a "vibe". Flying Lotus did a great job combining some contemporary music with some of the more traditional style of eastern music. Actually tbh I cant really judge how well he represent the traditional music because I'm so American, I literally bleed out root beer. But to me it sounded refined and tasteful, serving its purpose ,not being overbearing and making its presence a force at very intense moments.

And since I'm a masochist who loves ya, I actually watched this show dubbed, and uh its pretty strange. I don't get the dubs for netflix shows, they have some good acting talent but its just they're really messy when it comes to scripting and direction. Some of the actors had great voices but the lip flaps for them barely match up, some characters express emotions differently from the actor delivering the lines which can be strange, and I appreciate them using actual kids to voice act but the downside of that is the voice acting for the kids are just not great. Its not their fault to be honest, its whoever directed the voice acting for them.

Enjoyment

Yea as I said before, I had a super fun time with this show, its not perfect overall, but fortunately the story is simple enough to grasp on to, some of the story beats where super rough to follow though, that and its characters are no match for the art ,animation and sound. But I had a lot of fun with this one for sure, its not bad especially for a Netflix anime.Its just another show that has great things about it but its story and characters is what really drags it down. Its a wild bumpy ride that might lead other people ejected off the tracks and dead on the ground but the absolute madness was just a joy to experience so knock yourself out.