A far-sighted Revolutionist, a visionary Anarchist or-- Nothing at all? Nobunaga in "Yasuke"

Apparently the long-waited movie about the figure of Yasuke, the legendary "black samurai" of Nobunaga, was convoluted in this 6 episodes long ONA series by Netflix. Aired on April 2021, Yasuke (Yasuke -ヤスケ-) was as bad as I expected, with a ridiculous plot that made no sense and a pitiful characters' development. Truly a pity, 'cause it had all the ingredients for an interesting production and technically speaking it was amazing, but, oh, the cringe--!

Ok, the series was written by a certain Thomas LeSean, who's also the director and the producer (and you can tell that something is wrong already, here). The studio taking care of the animation was the famous MAPPA, with Takeshi Koike as character design and Hidetaka Tenjin and Hiroshi Arisawa as mecha-designers.
The voice actors are worth a mention, too: in the English version, Yasuke was popular actor Lakeith Stanfield, while in the Japanese version he's interpreted by Jun Soejima. Nobunaga instead, is interpreted in both versions by Takehiro Hira. As I said, the idea was a bit abused but interesting, using the escamotage of the ucronia to portray the Sengoku era with a futuristic vibe, throwing mecha, ESP powers and whatever the fuck came into the creators' minds to make Yasuke look like some revolutionary creation when it just sucked up quite the wrong way to the Japanese audience and the Black Lives Matter movement... Seriously guys, what the fuck? The first two episodes were pretty good, to be honest, but then it turned into a delirious whirlwind of things that made no sense? The head of the Hojo Clan as-- I don't know, what was that, a witch? An alien from Mazinger Z--? The "Daimyo of Darkness"? Was that supposed to symbolize the decrepit old ways? And you gave it magic powers--? The crazy priest was a grottesque "tribute" to Father Alexander from Hellsing? The unbearable magic kid was Nadia of the Blue Water--?
--And the way you killed off that rip-off of the X-Men (but the black guy)-- I mean, best bear-girl Nikita (another loose, random reference? --Do you know that "Nikita" is a male name?) is screaming for vengeance!!

This said, let's focus on the important things of this post, or the portrait of Nobunaga in Yasuke. Oh, Nobunaga is portrayed as your usual far-sighted guy who's so modern and aggressively so that it's easy to see him as a villain from the perspective of his contemporaries.

The relationship of Yasuke with Nobunaga is pivotal to the story and the development of the protagonist, I liked the alternation from present to flashbacks to show us the past of Yasuke and his relation with Nobu.
His first appearance is at Honnoji, during the infamous rebellion of Mitsuhide: Nobunaga here realized how he was somehow "too arrogant" with his expectations and accepted death willingly, hoping to sedate Mitsuhide's rage and let Ranmaru escape safely.
Yasuke was then forced to be Nobunaga's kaishakunin, a role that would haunt him for years.

Next flashback is the first meeting between Nobunaga and Yasuke.
Nobu was in a city trading with Westerners together with Ranmaru and Mitsuhide and he happened to see the weird sight of black man defeating a samurai bare-handed∼! Fun fact, later one we'll get to know that the samurai was Ota Gyuichi nonetheless!

Amused and intrigued, he approached the mysterious man, then offered to "clean him up", as a way to recognize his valor and "humanity": Perplexity ensued, and the man had the chance to introduce himself: Thus the pavid Giovanni, his former "owner", said that he's a strong-willed guy from "Yao" and from the sound of that word Nobunaga decided to call him "Yasuke".
--Personally I found it HILARIOUS how that "proud man from Yao" instantly accepted this name from pretty much a "nobody". --Of course he recognized this guy popping out of nowhere as a "worthy master", here.
Guys, I want to throw up.

Later on, we're given a bit of knowledge, and we got to know that the Mongols attacked Japan with the mechas, thus the people of Yamato promptly used the technology to their advantage, lol, sure, the myth of "Japanese people take others' inventions and just make them better"-- The artwork is stunning though, and it deserves some screenshots: This little introduction is there to tell us more about Nobu's mindset: he doesn't care about the origin of power, as long as something could grant it, he'd welcome it.

That's probably why he accepted both the onna bugeisha Natsumaru and the strong Yasuke in his ranks: he could see beyond their being a "minority" and appreciate their skills and value as individuals.
One thing is for sure, Nobu doesn't care about the other people's opinions, and he doesn't care if his genuine meritocracy would hurt the "feelings" of his more conservative retainers: the world must change and it must change quickly-- And Nobu is the only one who could "force" such changes into "his" people.

--But are all the people "his"? The guys that opposed him saw his way as vulgar and anarchic-- So, you see, they joined a demon from "the other side" with magic powers who would turn Japan into Halloween Town. That's definitely much better.

Ooooh, c'mon, I got it that the "Daimyo of Darkness" is a metaphor, a symbol of where close-minded attitudes and short-sighted opinions would lead us, but where is the fundamental difference between the attitude of Nobunaga and that of the Daimyo of Darkness? Both longed for power, didn't care about culture and knowledge and just tossed their ambition around. Ultimately, they were both defeated. The whole thing was pretty bad written, but I assume that the difference was in facing the present with a mind leading into the future rather than focusing on the old glories and the "old days" as something to "perpetuate" rather than recognize the "past" as a springboard to approach the next challenges. --Or at least that's what I want to believe.

Going back to our Nobu scenes, Yasuke defeats an Iga general, thus Nobu trows him a banquet: --The infamous skull!

The party is also attended by Nobukatsu, Nobu's failure of a son:
In this occasion, Nobu made his positions even more blatant, suggesting his "illicit" relationship with Ranmaru: --Pretty much a way to make Mitsuhide sigh -again-, but I confess you that-- Sometimes the narration of this series is really weird.
I have the impression that the scriptwriter just wants to give that "outrageous" vibe but in doing so, he's trying too hard, you see?
It all feels-- so "uncomfortable" to watch.

And later on Yasuke met with one of his ex-comrades, Morisuke, who revealed to the audience a bit of his backstory: This was interesting, as it's popular belief that Yasuke after leaving the Jesuits became a ronin.
If anything, Yasuke had a nice approach in showing us the whereabouts of Yasuke after "the war", too bad the whole thing was quite inconsistent. Whenever some issue arise the characters just talked about "honor this and honor that" as if a spell to solve bad writing.
The author decided to take it easy and turned this whole thing into fantasy but-- What's the point of this story? How do we recognize Yasuke as an "hero" as we should--? Just because he lived happily ever after? --That's it?

In the last scene featuring Nobunaga, Yasuke is hypnotized by the Daimyo of Darkness (yes, I'm going to call her like this everytime, you must understand how stupid this sounds) and faced "Nobunaga", suffering by the hands of the usurper: --And I think that this scene better symbolizes the presence of Nobu in this series, a colourful touch for the authors to play with, a fetish that the protagonist must overcome to face his own identity and his own future.
And that's it, there's really no worth in it, unless you are Yasuke.

And that's it for today's animated Nobunaga.
--Looking forward to your impressions and opinions!