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REVIEW: Yasuke


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Mr Boobo



Joined: 25 Nov 2002
Posts: 10
PostPosted: Thu Apr 29, 2021 11:55 am Reply with quote
You guys should do a story on how LeSean Thomas essentially stole $150K+ from his kickstarter backers for his last Netflix project. Until that is put right I don't think I want to support someone who has done that kind of damage to the community (over 2.2K people).
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Brook09



Joined: 10 Jan 2021
Posts: 81
PostPosted: Thu Apr 29, 2021 12:02 pm Reply with quote
Mr Boobo wrote:
You guys should do a story on how LeSean Thomas essentially stole $150K+ from his kickstarter backers for his last Netflix project. Until that is put right I don't think I want to support someone who has done that kind of damage to the community (over 2.2K people).


Wow did he really? You got any source for that.

If it's truth I hope ann will put out an article abt it, also I'll probably won't support yasuke if LeSean really stole 150k funds.
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Ajc228



Joined: 29 Dec 2015
Posts: 264
PostPosted: Thu Apr 29, 2021 12:36 pm Reply with quote
I wanted to like Yasuke but the serious tone mixed with the more fantastical elements like mech and she-wolves was jarring. Samurai Champloo and to a lesser extent Afro Samurai work because there is a level of verisimilitude to the world. Even if there are robots and monsters in Afro Samurai, there is no pretension of historical storytelling-it is wildly melodramatic and over the top. Unlike Yasuke which wants to be both historical and fantastic and ends up doing neither particularly well. I’m not saying it can’t be both but all the disparate elements don’t really come together.
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SpacemanHardy



Joined: 03 Jan 2012
Posts: 2509
PostPosted: Thu Apr 29, 2021 12:56 pm Reply with quote
Mr Boobo wrote:
You guys should do a story on how LeSean Thomas essentially stole $150K+ from his kickstarter backers for his last Netflix project. Until that is put right I don't think I want to support someone who has done that kind of damage to the community (over 2.2K people).


This. As one of the backers of said Kickstarter, I've been very hesitant to give LeSean any support until it gets rectified.
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KPK10



Joined: 14 Aug 2019
Posts: 18
PostPosted: Thu Apr 29, 2021 1:42 pm Reply with quote
SpacemanHardy wrote:
Mr Boobo wrote:
You guys should do a story on how LeSean Thomas essentially stole $150K+ from his kickstarter backers for his last Netflix project. Until that is put right I don't think I want to support someone who has done that kind of damage to the community (over 2.2K people).


This. As one of the backers of said Kickstarter, I've been very hesitant to give LeSean any support until it gets rectified.


What did he do?
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Ryuji-Dono



Joined: 26 Apr 2018
Posts: 1207
PostPosted: Thu Apr 29, 2021 1:43 pm Reply with quote
^

Basically, he made some kickstarter rewards like most do, but when it reached the goal...he didn't give his backers the rewards he wanted.
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Hal14



Joined: 01 Apr 2018
Posts: 651
Location: Heart of africa
PostPosted: Thu Apr 29, 2021 2:06 pm Reply with quote
I'm honestly not sure if this is the same or worse than Abraham Lincoln: Vamp hunter, a movie I enjoyed as a popcorn flick and nothing else. Yasuke looks better and I prefer the main character and his arc but that's about it. For all its flaws, Abe Lincoln gets a lot of basic things right that Yasuke didn't.
First, Abe does a better job at combining the fantastical elements with the historical elements. More than that, however, it establishes the rules of vampires. Because of this, we understand the motivations of the villains and when a hunter manages to kill a vampire there is a sense of accomplishment beyond just the spectacle. In Yasuke, we get nothing. The two elements don't blend. They even clash a little: Yasuke's past does not resemble the present or even the final battle where spoiler[Nobunaga] died. Plus, it feels artificial when he's treated as an outsider because of his skin, but the talking robot and werebear are apparently okay? If the setting were better developed I would call that intentionally ironic, but it's not.
Second, the progression of time and distance are just... bad. GOT S7&8 levels of bad. Once a character goes off-screen they suddenly reappear wherever the plot needs them next. The most jarring example of this is the reappearance of the spoiler[mercenaries] in the last episodes. And speaking of the spoiler[mercs],... I can barely do that because we know next to nothing about them. If we knew the setting better I could make some guesses but we don't. And so Werebears spoiler[sacrifice] rings hollow and unearned. Benin sorcerer was interesting though, but again: no development.
Overall, I would give this an A for animation but C- for the story: Yasuke and his arc are interesting but bogged down by an "everything plus the kitchen sink" setting with forgettable characters. The fights look good and are well animated but only the sword fights have any weight to them, the rest are visual noise.
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SpacemanHardy



Joined: 03 Jan 2012
Posts: 2509
PostPosted: Thu Apr 29, 2021 2:12 pm Reply with quote
KPK10 wrote:
What did he do?


Long story short, he started a Kickstarter campaign to produce a pilot for Cannon Busters back in 2014. He offered a lot of different rewards to backers ranging from $5 to several thousand. Almost 6 years later, after the entire show has already aired on Netflix and released on bluray, people are just *now* getting their copies of the PILOT, and no other rewards. No posters, no art books, nothing.

Meanwhile, he's off doing interviews with Forbes, working with Crunchyroll on Children of Ether, and just recently made headlines with Yasuke, all while deleting both his Facebook and Twitter accounts and making his Instagram private. He's only put out two very vague updates to the Kickstarter campaign within the last 5 years. He refuses to update the backers about the status of their rewards and only pops up to take interviews about his latest projects.

In short, he took the money and split.
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chronium



Joined: 25 Apr 2005
Posts: 285
Location: Canada
PostPosted: Thu Apr 29, 2021 3:59 pm Reply with quote
The backers need to organize a class action lawsuit because he's clearly not going to do anything and news articles would really do little.
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cchigu



Joined: 15 Feb 2020
Posts: 250
PostPosted: Fri Apr 30, 2021 12:09 am Reply with quote
Another underwhelming Netflix anime. Sigh. Give us Dorohedoro S2 please.
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Heishi



Joined: 06 Mar 2016
Posts: 1314
PostPosted: Fri Apr 30, 2021 12:54 am Reply with quote
It's a shame that people can't see mecha in other anime genres other than only sci fi.

Like mechas can't be the present and they certainly can't be in the past either.

It's like, you can't take this seriously if mecha is presented in any other time in history.
I do like this show and I feel like it is one of the best Netflix anime.
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NiPah
Subscriber



Joined: 11 Feb 2011
Posts: 205
PostPosted: Fri Apr 30, 2021 4:19 am Reply with quote
Heishi wrote:
It's a shame that people can't see mecha in other anime genres other than only sci fi.

Like mechas can't be the present and they certainly can't be in the past either.

It's like, you can't take this seriously if mecha is presented in any other time in history.
I do like this show and I feel like it is one of the best Netflix anime.


Escaflowne was a huge hit, Evangelion is set in 2015, and while historical mechas are pretty rare present day mecha anime are almost if not more popular then far future anime (but mecha by nature has to be sci-fi).
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Snowcat



Joined: 01 Feb 2021
Posts: 185
PostPosted: Fri Apr 30, 2021 5:14 am Reply with quote
Heishi wrote:
It's a shame that people can't see mecha in other anime genres other than only sci fi.

That's not the problem, here the criticism come from consistency: why do people use swords, arrow or spear when there are mecha with laser beam in front of them. It's obviously bullshit except if warriors had some kind of super power with their weapon (and it's not the case here). It was bad since the intro were they use magic (+ arrows) to destroy some mecha but in fact the arrows doesn't bring anything to the table, a poor attempt to hide the weakness of the setting.
In Escaflowne, mecha destroyed those normal warriors and armies and were fought by other mecha. I am not opposed to the presence of mecha but, in this case, they were an hindrance to the story.
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SHD



Joined: 05 Apr 2015
Posts: 1752
PostPosted: Fri Apr 30, 2021 7:03 am Reply with quote
I haven't watched all of it yet, but the impression I'm getting is that basically the idea was "black samurai but make it Anime!" and so they added all sorts of stuff that Americans who haven't gotten farther in anime than Adult Swim back in the '90s-early '00s think of, when they hear the word "anime": mechs, weird creatures, etc. without any particular concept behind it other than "it has to be there because it's anime!" It really drags the whole thing down for me because it's sacrificing authenticity for... I don't even know what.
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Kicksville



Joined: 20 Nov 2010
Posts: 1168
PostPosted: Fri Apr 30, 2021 7:09 am Reply with quote
This is definitely far above the average Netflix anime quality wise.

(On a side note, yeah, it is a shame about the whole Cannon Busters Kickstarter thing - I hope that works out to a reasonable conclusion for the backers)
Snowcat wrote:
That's not the problem, here the criticism come from consistency: why do people use swords, arrow or spear when there are mecha with laser beam in front of them. It's obviously bullshit except if warriors had some kind of super power with their weapon (and it's not the case here). It was bad since the intro were they use magic (+ arrows) to destroy some mecha but in fact the arrows doesn't bring anything to the table, a poor attempt to hide the weakness of the setting.

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