If wasted potential had a physical form, this would be it. The content of this story is so large that it has the potential of creating multiple seasons, 24 episodes could just be a prologue like in Vinland saga, instead, everything is squashed into just six episodes. Multiple things go unexplained, character deaths are rushed and incredibly forced, while any betrayals have practically no meaning to us -the audience- as you've only just become accustomed to their names, let alone seeing any type of characterisation, back story or inter-character relationships to make you care.

As it's based on a true story there was no need to bring in so many fantasy elements and bad sci-fi CGI, which only ruins the tone. This series is at its best when it stays historical and focuses on the characters, but so little of this is present we can barely enjoy what's there in the first place. The added historically inaccurate elements i.e. mechs, magic and a devil Daimyo, show a lack of focus that does nothing but ruin the flow and theme of the show, and is almost insulting both to the story that should've been told and the man great enough to become the first black samurai in history. Especially when such a large emphasis is placed on a girl(Saki) whom we don't even know, the show is supposed to be about Yasuke but instead, we have a completely fictional character- as opposed to the historically real one - essentially become the main character and receive no character development, she doesn't even have a personality to speak of apart from vaguely being "good", responding to situations and events in a completely unrealistic way yet still remaining childish, which never changes due to her lack of development.

Nothing about her feels real and the only way to develop any type of attachment to her is if you try and leech off the fact that Yasuke becomes emotionally attached to her. Overall it's practically soul-crushingly disappointing and makes me feel emptier afterwards as if someone I HAD been immensely attached to was killed off that's what this feels like, that the entire narrative was just killed off. Normally I would've gone back and analysed this show, deconstructing in far more detail why I think this show is awful. But this show is one of the few things I've watched that makes me genuinely angry, so I'm afraid you'll have to settle for this emotionally driven review with - what I believe to be - good points. After all, an anime about the first black samurai in history is something ripe with notability, content to be spun and woven into a narrative fitting of the events it's trying to convey. Instead we have this awful mess of technology and imagination ruining the historical events.