Ani­mé Yasuke mix­es African his­to­ry with fan­ta­sy thrills

“It won’t come off,” says a Japan­ese man of the skin colour of Yasuke. He’s try­ing to wash the man as a reward after a fight well won, and becomes baf­fled by his com­plex­ion. This sup­pos­ed­ly hap­pened to the real Yasuke, the famous African samu­rai who served under Oda Nobuna­ga in the 16^th cen­tu­ry. The moment is dis­qui­et­ing – one of a num­ber of reminders of Yasuke’s oth­er­ness in this Sen­goku-era setting.

While Nobuna­ga has been the sub­ject of numer­ous leg­ends and fic­tion­al­i­sa­tions, Yasuke’s sto­ry is much less known. Series cre­ator and direc­tor LeSean Thomas saw an oppor­tu­ni­ty to build a new mythos around the man; he imag­ines Yasuke liv­ing as a ronin fol­low­ing his ser­vice to the daimyo, in a sci-fi fan­ta­sy take on Japan’s feu­dal peri­od. His soli­tude is inter­rupt­ed by a call to aid, to pro­tect a young girl with mys­te­ri­ous power.

No mat­ter how much Yasuke assim­i­lates, he’s treat­ed as a for­eign­er – more so than even the shamans and Russ­ian wolf­women tear­ing up the coun­try­side in their hunt for Yasuke’s ward. That’s right – robots, witch­es, mutant priests and more exist in this ancient realm. The eccen­tric­i­ties of the show’s set­ting are designed to illus­trate the absur­di­ty of his con­tin­u­ing ostraci­sa­tion; no one is as sur­prised by a sev­en-foot-tall machine as they are by a samu­rai with black skin.

Appear­ing on the Eng­lish dub, LaKei­th Stan­field is per­haps not quite as suit­ed to a weary growl as he is more nervy, off-kil­ter char­ac­ters, but his take on Yasuke is com­pelling as he changes from the past to present. In this sense the title feels like a mis­nomer, a reimag­in­ing of Yasuke’s life buried by a ​‘cho­sen one’ nar­ra­tive and oth­er fan­ta­sy and sci-fi quirks. Thanks to Thomas’ indul­gences, Yasuke some­times feels like an acces­so­ry to his own sto­ry, the first half of the series in par­tic­u­lar is bur­dened with over­ly com­plex plot­ting, although it finds a good bal­ance lat­er on.

Yasuke is undoubt­ed­ly a hand­some pro­duc­tion though. Co-pro­duced with MAP­PA (the stu­dio behind the delight­ful­ly macabre Doro­he­do­ro and smash hit Jujut­su Kaisen), the art direc­tion is fre­quent­ly lush and the action sat­is­fy­ing­ly fast-paced. That said, some of the bat­tle sequences are bogged down in vague­ly-defined mag­ic pow­ers, far less pleas­ing than one-on-one sword fights. But at its best, as in episode four, Yasuke bal­ances a bloody duel with remem­brance of the warrior’s past and con­stant reminders of his otherness.

The stand­out ele­ment is the Fly­ing Lotus pro­duced sound­track, which includes a lav­ish title track made with Thun­der­cat, a flut­tery, genre-bend­ing embod­i­ment of the clash between past and present that mix­es tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese instru­ments with stac­ca­to drum machines and spaced-out synths.

The show’s fusion of oth­er­world­ly char­ac­ters and hip hop in a feu­dal set­ting is rem­i­nis­cent of Fumi­nori Kizaki’s adap­ta­tion of ​‘Afro Samu­rai’ (cel­e­brat­ed artist Takeshi Koike hav­ing worked on both). Yasuke feels like the dream of some­one who grew up on such sto­ries, fan­ta­sis­ing about their own his­to­ry being played out as leg­end. It’s refresh­ing, con­sid­er­ing the hos­til­i­ty with which ani­mé fan­dom at large treats black viewers.

It’s refresh­ing, con­sid­er­ing the hos­til­i­ty with which ani­mé fan­dom at large treats any calls toward diver­si­ty in sto­ry­telling or ques­tions about race, arbi­trar­i­ly decid­ing that Black peo­ple don’t exist in Japan – some par­tic­u­lar­ly deranged Twit­ter users have com­ment­ed that a show about a black samu­rai was unre­al­is­tic, despite Yasuke being real.

Yasuke is avail­able on Net­flix from 29 April.