Netflix Yasuke Review

Ahoy Captain Cats here and today we are going to review a new anime from Netflix from LeSean Thomas and this new series is called Yasuke.

The series is named after the real-life African samurai Yasuka who did serve under Oda Nobunaga, other than that the series is nothing like you think it was going to be. While the animation and art style is wonderful due to Studio MAPPA, everything else doesn’t click. The main storyline is ok, not the greatest I have seen but ok. They tried to add bits and pieces of sci-fi, mecha, and I could be wrong here but I also think Warhammer 40K in terms of the last two episodes.

The voice acting was also ok at best here, which I was surprised by due to the main lead being voiced by Oscar-Nominated Actor LaKeith Stanfield. The rest of the cast did an ok job as well, at times it made me want to switch to other languages and see how they did and to my surprise, they did better. The music was a hit and miss here as well, and that what shocked me the most due to who was doing the music, Flying Lotus. I’m a fan of his music work and such, but here it wasn’t on display, there were a few great tracks on here, especially the outro theme “Between Memories,” but other times especially in the fight scenes the music didn’t fit in at all.

While I understand they were trying to do something different, but with only six episodes and not enough time to flush out backstory and character development, Yasuke is a one-and-done watch. Yasuke wasn’t trying to be like Samurai Champloo and Afro Samurai, but I would recommend you watch Samurai Champloo and Afro Samurai and you would get a good idea of Yasuke was trying to be but on its own terms.