On this video we are watching and reacting to the trailer of Assassin’s Creed Shadows. This trailer has created a lot of controversy and backlash with people attacking and insulting each other over the protagonist being a Black African man. What is the real history about this? Let’s talk about it.
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Link to the trailer
Many people are getting really upset about this game, particularly in Japan as Japanese gamers are feeling left out when compared to previous Assassin’s Creed games which always features a protagonist from the same are as the setting.
Even though these feeling as absolutely justified, it’s also important to not overswing and reach incorrect conclusions such as some people mentioning that there was never a Black African man in Feudal Japan, which is historically incorrect.
Let’s talk about Yasuke, let’s watch the trailer and see if the way they represented him in this game is in any way coherent with the historical record and most importantly let’s ask the hardest question of all…Was Yasuke a samurai?
#assassinscreedshadows #assassinscreed #ubisoft
37 Comments
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Thank you for just showing the facts and not the political mess about it. I just want to play it to have fun, and not get the backlash for knowing yhe history of this period.
Most accurate part about a black assassin in Japan is how the woke ignore black violence against Asians.
Th chracter looks like an 'African American'. They rend to be brown, often a light brown, because of a significant amount of European genetic influence. Actual Africans are almost actually black in colour, even after living in places like Britain for years.
If it looks cool than do it. If AC was perfectly realistic and historically accurate the games would be utter ass.
Real combat looks boring and clunky as fuck
Hell we wouldn't even have AC the very core of these games is pure and utter fantasy.
You play as an assassin from a hidden order that spans all of human history.
"Gods" exist and left artifacts on earth.
You're experiencing all of this through a VR bed that can read your ancestral memories.
Hell desmond literally becomes a being of pure energy.
These games are fucking nonsense and always have been.
Also why are we pretending yasuke isn't dope as fuck? Just the concept of bros existence is fun.
I do love that in Peter Jackson’s LOTR, they show Aragorn wiping his blade after the orc attack at Amon Hen.
Excellent video, as always, Metatron. 👏🏻👏🏻
Brilliant 👏
Wouldn't the story be more interesting if yasuke started as a lowly slave and gradually climbed his way up to become a samurai?
Thank you for clarifying this I love the AC games because their historical content but they are fictional so as long as I know that there was in fact a black man in feudal Japan
If the historical record says his skin was black like ink, or black as an ox, why did they animate him with a more African-American complexion…? That is the part that really makes it feel like pandering to me. Drives the nail in, so to speak.
I once met a family from Africa whose skin was a deep, deep brown—very nearly black. (It also looked like it glowed with health, it was so striking!) All of the records you read about his looks make it sound like Yasuke had that sort of skin tone, but they illustrated him to look more like modern African-Americans.
A small point, and maybe I’m making too much of it, but combined with Ubisoft diverging from their standard formula (characters being native to the land), it feels odd.
In the end, though, maybe it isn’t pandering. Maybe it’s clever marketing. Look at how much discussion and attention they are getting for this choice. Far more than if they had not chosen Yasuke.
I don't give a good goddamn if Yasuke is real or not. Played an Italian in Italy, played a Greek in Greece, played an Egyptian in Egypt, but in Japan, I'm playing an African….. Garbage. How am I supposed to have social stealth when I'm a massive black dude.
There is a story, likely a true one, in my country, about a man who was going from one village to another in the winter. Wolves attacked him, he killed one with his sword and the others ran off, then he put the sword into the scabbard without wiping it. The blood froze in the scabbard, and when the wolves returned, he was unable to draw his sword, tried to chew through the scabbard with his teeth, but that didn't help either, and the wolves ate both him and his horse. When villagers went to look for him, they reconstructed what had happened from what they found when following the tracks.
if you do decide you need to fight, you would just flee… hahahaha
The reason I'm not buying the game is the culture war. The only reason those characters were chosen is because of their skin color and gender. I will jot support art that comes from such a hollow, pandering, activist lens. I don't care if the history of the story is accurate. I care that these people are just using his history for virtue signaling and a bump to the ESG score.
elevating a near forgotten footnote in history to a legend simply because of his race, without historic evidence beyond his mere existence is a sad insult to a people's culture simply to virtue signal. describing such behavior as anything but deplorable is contemptable…
Why can't they set an Assassin's Creed in Kush?
Yasuke was only in Japan for 3 years.
Seems to me he was a mercenary.
He was a paid soldier.
Well like by Nobunaga, but probably didn't have the social status of Samurai.
Thank you brother!
As an Asian myself, I hate that they made a black man as a Samurai when historically he wasn’t a Samurai and what’s worst is that they made him gay.
Fuck this woke leftist crap! Go woke go broke!
I find it impossible to find the original historical documents that refer to this guy.
I'm at the point that it is impossible to trust any "massaged" source.
It's quite frankly maddening. But I guess that's the point.
It could be fun to debunk how many problem we could find in that trailer also.
Like Yasuke was wear a Nobunaga symbol on his chest but Toyotomi synbol on his back.
The tatami is all wrong, shape, struture, size, partern.
Nobunaga is sitting at the Ita no ma (wooden floor) while his crew is sitting at the tatami no ma (Tatami floor), tho considering it is Nobunaga, possible but not likely.
Seijza正座 becomes common at The Edo period, after the game is taking place.
Preying with senkou線香 in front of a jinjya(temple), which is different form a tera(temple).
Sakura, Susuki (pampas grass) and crane comes from differnt sesaon. No way you would find them share the same scene.
Chronicles of Narnia taught me at a very young age to clean my blade. Any adult ought to know this.
So we don't know for sure that he is a Samurai but he is 100% a sword bearer. And the female lead facial is more of Western-Japanese maybe she's half Japanese, let see.
Very luckily I've never played an AC game so I don't care two whits about either side of the fence. Except that racist Conservatives are making asses of themselves and those who actually have something to say (which isn't new) and woke-scold Twitter warriors are making it impossible to say actual criticism of anything.
Thanks for the rundown on this, Metatron, and for a much needed history check.
Could've gone with Hattori Hanzo or Fuma Kotaro, but no, let's check the box and make the black Eddy Gordo looking ancestor fabulous, possibly gay, and say he unified Japan.
– The actual weebs that are currently changing the Wikipedia page.
Yasuke existed.
Yasuke was not a Samurai.
He was a Kosho, an attendant and bodyguard.
Kosho is a Samurai-in-training, much like a squire to a knight, but NOT a full fledged Samurai.
Samurai does NOT simply mean warrior, and therefore anybody who fights is not automatically a Samurai.
Yasuke was kept on a short leash during his service to Nobunaga, he had no free reign to do as he pleases.
Yasuke had so little impact on anything during his years there, that they would have to rewrite history to fit him in with events of the time.
Yasuke should have been an NPC that you interact with and help, NOT pay as. Playable characters should both have been Japanese nobodies, a Samurai and a Shinobi, of the time interacting with the high profile names of the period. Notice how nobody complained about AC Liberation, AC Freedom Cry or Origins, skin colour has nothing to factor into it, but rewriting history with the literal token black guy in the setting rather than the PLETHORA of famous names is blatantly just to mark off a checkbox for DEI and Sweet Baby Inc, and that is a big factor of the hate.
6:38 The part about cleaning the blade before sheathing it is one of the reasons I love all the different animations for it in Ghost of Tsushima.
May your mom rest in peace.
The funniest part is most people who want Yasuke to be a samurai probably doesn't know what a samurai is and does. Yes, by Japanese feodal standard, it is an honorary title, but by modern one it would be terrifying title to have. As an exemple, when the master died, and one of his subject didn't come to honor the dead, it was Samurai duty to hunt him and cut his head off.
Racists are not a minority, maybe the extremist groups like the KKK are a minority but closet racists are everywhere.
One of the most convincing arguments I've seen that point to him not being a samurai, is that he had no surname. AFAIK, all samurais would receive land and a surname from their lords.
I dont get why diversity matters unless its white men and Asian men. This should have been about a Japanese samurai paying homage to their history and culture, not trying to do what wokeists always seem to try and do anymore- make it out that only black people have contributed to every country's culture.
I just remembered a example of Samurai cleaning the blade before, check out BAIKEN in Samurai Shodown 4 victory pose. Maybe theres others too n this game.
sounds like ubisoft is taking just as much creative freedom as they always have
THERE WERE NO BLACK SAMURAI…..retconning history shows the BIAS of the LEFTIST TRASH who want to race and gender swap EVERYTHING in history.
so why are they turning him gay? i didn't read any thing about that. is that historically accurate ?
It’s just ESG browny points let’s face it. Should have just had a Japanese character out of respect for it’s setting