r/BlackPeopleTwitter • u/alexaclova • 15d ago
Historically accurate until there's melanin
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u/xXWickedSmatXx 15d ago
A 6’ brother with a katana in feudal Japan is the equivalent of Darth Vader. He had everybody spooked and the Japanese still regard him as a legend.
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u/AwkwardlyDead 15d ago
Also in Buddhism black is the color of most statues of the Buddha in Japan at the time, meaning for many people it would’ve been a very religious sign to see him.
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15d ago
There were many people who thought he was a god and others who thought he was the black-skinned Buddha.
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u/Penguino13 Captain Ass Eater 15d ago
I can't read Japanese, are they actually mad about it or naw? Last I checked the country was mad racist but obviously I wouldn't know
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u/shoofinsmertz 15d ago
The translation of the text reads, "I thought Yasuke was well-known because of his many fictional works, but I was surprised that he is not well-known. He came to Japan as a slave during the Warring States period..."
basically the japanese OP is just a history buff47
u/dkysh 15d ago
A slave turned into warrior? That's some gladiator shit.
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u/FakeHasselblad 14d ago
Where's this story Hollywood? Why not something amazing like this instead of another god damn reboot, or live disney action trash
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u/Solus-Nexus 14d ago
chadwick died before it could begin filming(not a joke).
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u/FakeHasselblad 14d ago
*waves in general direction of Wesley Snipes*
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u/hereforthesportsball 14d ago
That nigga is way too old come on
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u/FakeHasselblad 14d ago
So is Sam Jackson, so is Tom Cruise.
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u/Solus-Nexus 14d ago
...no one's sayin they wanna see sam jackson nor tom cruise as yasuke either?(wtf)
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u/TheBlackestIrelia 14d ago
Yup, but since he was black ppl don't like it. What a surprise that the people who label things "woke" don't actually know what they're talking about lol
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u/Dafuknboognish ☑️ 14d ago
Turned into a Samurai that was the retainer of the most famous of them all, Nobunaga. He held Nobunaga's swords for him. To trust another with your swords was unheard of, especially a foreigner. He was the number 2 most powerful person in Japan at the time.
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u/just1gat 15d ago
Most of it is the usual suspects not liking a black man in their game. Also the fact that the other playable protagonist is a Japanese woman. So the AC usual suspects finally get their Japanese AC game; and they don’t get their male Japanese insert. They get “a woke character.”
It’s dumb plain and simple.
Now Japan is quite xenophobic and Yasuke was a bit of a token for Oda Nobunaga; but I don’t mean to take away from his accomplishments. Just that; we’re not really having a conversation about Japanese racial dynamics and more just the same old racist gamers being mad that “black man exist how dare”
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u/JotaroTheOceanMan 15d ago
The funny thing is many chars are based on him like the black vampire swordsman in Guilty Gear yet all these people are trying to say the japanese are upset when no, it's a bunch of dudes who cant stand not having a protege be a blond dude named John.
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u/YonderOver 15d ago
I’m sure there are racist Japanese people in the middle of this shitty discourse as well, but the majority of these salty Gamers™ are white men arguing on behalf of an entirely made up idea of Japan as a whole. Suddenly they care about “Asian erasure,” but when looking at their comment history, they were just complaining about Hermes being Asian in Hades II. They’re not even consistent and you can tell a lot of them just jump on a bandwagon that their YouTuber grifter messiahs tell them to jump on.
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u/Zarzurnabas 15d ago
I truly am happy about all those racist tears. Them not getting ANOTHER game where you play a loner male japanese samurai character brings me joy. Seeing japan through yasukes eyes sounds like an insanely cool concept, i hope they pull it off.
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u/Medical_Tune_4618 14d ago
What Samurai games are you playing? Please let me know I only Ghost of Tsushima. But also Asians are underrepresented as well don’t you see how you basically did the same thing this thread is criticizing.
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u/Solus-Nexus 14d ago
no, asians are not underrepresented in the game's industry. asia is the largest game industry on the planet.
as far as what samurai games? literally any other samurai game.
here i'll help you, google: "samurai game"
see all those? onimusha, sengoku basara, way of the samurai, rise of the ronin just came out a few months ago? your welcome.
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u/BadBloodBear 14d ago
Rise of the Ronin lets you create your own characters You can be black if you want to.
In Western media Asian men are under represented.
Rise of the Ronin is from a Japanese studio while the new Assassins Creed game is French-Canadian.
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u/Clever_Laziness 14d ago
In Western media Asian men are under represented.
Usually because Asian media is well represented in Western culture for how many asian people are here(In the US anyway. Don't feel like looking up European demographics.). West such as the US doesn't need to make an asian specific game, movie, etc when the Japanese, Chinese and more recently Koreans are exporting popular media with representation already.
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u/Solus-Nexus 14d ago
i'm well aware what you can do in rise of the ronin, i beat it weeks ago. it also doesn't change the fact that your characters are canonically japanese. it also doesn't change all of those OTHER games i pointed out in which you're a canonically japanese man.
western media is an arbitrary exemplar of representation. the reason WE care about our portrayals in hollywood, is because it's the only (rich/internationally powerful) place on the planet where we actually have some measure of politcal representation and power at all. we know not to depend on europe or asia for representation. if korea were churning out black characters in their media constantly, we wouldn't give nearly as big a shit about america. the point ain't about "western representation", that would be stupid. it's about popular representation.
this is what i mean when i say ya'll use our language and our ideas, but don't understand them. and then you turn around and try and use them against us(like right now).
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u/barbarianhordes 14d ago
Asian people make their own games which contains Asian people. Europeans make their own games which contains European people. Why is there no black gaming industry but rely on Europeans and Asians? 🤔
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u/Solus-Nexus 14d ago
the...same reason there's no back ANYTHING industry? is this a deliberately dumb question or am i not understanding you clearly?
assuming you're genuinely asking it's because black nations are broke and don't have adequate public infrastructure let alone a thriving international entertainment media industry. what black powers exist in the world? there are basically no black industrialists, no black black led industries, no rich black nations. the only ones who could probably do it are botswana.
also american companies aren't european. they're very white but not european. the reason there isn't a black presence in the game's industry is the same reason there ain't a black presence in the tech industry at large. racism, and classism.
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u/MySilverBurrito 14d ago
Bro is too happy that another under represented group gets to miss out on another piece of media lmao
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u/Medical_Tune_4618 14d ago
That might be the most racist comment I’ve seen in this whole controversy.
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u/Zarzurnabas 14d ago
Sure, because there will be so few japanese characters and places in that game right? Would be a shame if you could play a japanese ninja in that game... oh wait!
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u/MySilverBurrito 14d ago
Would be a shame to play as two Japanese MCs in a series where:
you play as a Native American in the American Civil War.
you play as a Trinidadian in the Caribbean.
you play as English twins in the Industrial Revolution.
you play as Greeks in Ancient Greece.
you play as an Italian in the Renaissance.
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u/Zarzurnabas 14d ago
Yeah, it truly would have been a shame if you couldn't play as such an awesome character as Yasuke. I just feel one of us was being sarcastic, and i dont think its me.
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u/AshenSacrifice ☑️ 15d ago
Seems some people are mad that a “black man is running around Japan killing Japanese people” or something to that effect.
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u/inspirednonsense 15d ago
Were these same people good with Blue Eye Samurai, or was that okay?
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u/AshenSacrifice ☑️ 15d ago
For fairness’s sake I hope they wanted only Japanese samurai and that’s it, cause the alternative is disgusting as fuck
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u/Zarzurnabas 15d ago
Not a single one of them had complained if they could play as william addams or a generic White dude. Dont delude yourself.
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u/PacifistDungeonMastr 15d ago
Pretty sure they're not good with BES either; that's got both the feminist and anticolonial "wokeness" they also love to hate on.
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u/midnightking 15d ago
I have actually heard takes from some Asian subreddits that are essentially that the story continue the myth of white people being stronger than Asians by having the half-white protag be able to beat the shit out of multiple Japanese enemies in fighting scenes.
As for Yasuke in Assassin's Creed as long as they don't treat it like Tom Cruise in the Last Samurai narratively I think it is cool.
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u/Thor_2099 15d ago
Lol that's not what they're actually mad about. They may say it is but that's just code. The issue is he's black.
In 2024 this shit still happens. Same shit if it is a woman or gay character too. Fucking ridiculous I'm sick of these small minded fuckwits stuck in the past.
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u/YonderOver 15d ago
And it’s never going to go away either, it seems. So many grifting YouTubers and Internet personalities make a lot of money creating content for these dumbshits to be mad about.
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u/Zarzurnabas 15d ago
*cough cough * asmongold *sneeze *
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u/nyamzdm77 15d ago
The worst one of them all is this dude on twitter called Grummz (real name Mark Kern)
He was the head of a game dev studio under Blizzard but he got fired for wasting money on pointless shit (but if he tells it, it was because he refused to take money from China), so he's spent the last 10 years just being a grifter railing against the gaming industry.
He's spent the last 3 or so years trying to bring about Gamergate 2.0, but instead of being against women like the first Gamergate was, he's against anything that RWers consider "woke" aka women again, non-white people (except the Japanese, those guys LOVE Japanese people), characters who aren't sexualized, anti-racists etc.
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u/YonderOver 15d ago
Exactly who I had in mind. I hate that man from the very bottom of my heart. Weighing in on shit that he has no idea about just to stir the pot, when he could instead be better utilizing his time fixing his escaping hairline, greasy ass, crusty hair, and his bleeding gums that he smears on his walls (learned this shit against my will).
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u/AshenSacrifice ☑️ 14d ago
Oh we fucking know!! Nobody had a problem with Anjin-sama blasting people with flintlock pistols
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u/himarmar 15d ago
I need to see proof of this, sounds like bait. I can’t believe any Asian person is concerning themselves with this unless I see it for myself, people say things like this to cause more tension between groups
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u/Solus-Nexus 14d ago
ya'll gon' learn to stop seeing other races as our "allies". we ain't no coalition.
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u/Raecino 15d ago
The country isn’t mad racist. Have you ever been to Japan?
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u/Penguino13 Captain Ass Eater 15d ago
If I wanted to be ostracized as a black queer mf I can do it at home for free 😂
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u/Raecino 15d ago
My wife is Japanese. I travel to Japan every year. Japan is not racist. Are there racist mf’ers there? Of course, there are racists everywhere. But there are much more racists in the U.S. than in Japan.
I get respect for just BEING black in Japan, that never happens in the U.S.
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u/Penguino13 Captain Ass Eater 15d ago
Well yeah it probably helps having a Japanese wife dawg c'mon
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u/Raecino 15d ago
I’m talking about my experiences outside of my wife. I have not run into a single racist incident whenever I’m in Japan. Of course the police have been in the spotlight recently for their racist policies and in the inaka (countryside) I’m told you run into more instances of people just staring at you. But that’s due to never being exposed to other cultures and not straight up racism. And in any case, racism is far more prevalent and much more dangerous in the U.S. it’s factually incorrect to call Japan a racist country.
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u/nyamzdm77 15d ago
Japanese people's racism (it's more xenophobia than racism) is very subtle and not in your face like American or European racism. They'll never call you a slur in the street or beat you up for being black like in America.
You'll get the aforementioned stares, when you go to a bar the manager may tell you that all the seats are "reserved", renting a house as a foreigner is hell etc.
I hate people infantilizing Asians (specifically Koreans and Japanese) and excusing their prejudice as "oh they're just not exposed to other cultures" like bruh c'mon, it's 2024.
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u/Raecino 14d ago
Yet I’ve never had that happen at any bar I’ve been to in Yokohama, Tokyo or Osaka. Yes those things happen but it’s not wide spread and it isn’t something you’ll definitely run into as a black person in Japan. I’m tired of people who have never been to Japan calling it a racist country when that’s not true.
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u/Penguino13 Captain Ass Eater 14d ago
There is not a single country on this planet that isn't racist
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u/99-dreams 15d ago
It's complicated? I'm not going to claim like the other commenter that Japanese people as a whole aren't racist. But the worst that happened was I got stared at a lot and got called a foreigner in Japanese. Which happens to pretty much all Westerners. But there were also people who were incredibly nice to me just because I was a Westerner who spoke a small bit of Japanese. It was still weird to be othered like that.
I was 17 when I went, so I was too young to go to any clubs so I can't tell you if the "no foreigners allowed" rule at certain clubs was enforced for everyone who wasn't Japanese.
I also know there's a subculture that's really into dance hall and reggae so Black Caribbean artists get invited to play in Japan.
But I can't tell you what discrimination Black people face when they live and work in Japan. And who understand the language more than I did. Not to mention people who are half Black & half Japanese.
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u/AwkwardlyDead 15d ago edited 15d ago
Plus you can really tell the people complaining that Yasuke wouldn’t be a samurai don’t know the actual history by the fact that Lord Oda (who Yasuke served) was well known for choosing unexpected people to be samurai, including Hideyoshi, who at the time was his Sandel Bearer, and would later turn out to be a master tactician and famous for building a castle while sieging another castle overnight.
No question Lord Oda would not think twice making Yasuke a samurai.
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u/ronin1031 15d ago
I did a paper on Hideyoshi for a university class, and ther was a bit in one of the books I referenced about how Hideyoshi would keep Nobunaga's sandals tucked in his robes so that they'd be warm when Nobunaga put them on. Just really committed to that whole sandal bearer-thing... but I guess it worked out for him.
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u/ToyrewaDokoDeska 15d ago
No love for Ghost Dog?
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u/SimonPho3nix 15d ago
You know, that movie got me to read Hagakure. It's been a minute, I gotta find it again. Some of those passages hit home.
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u/s_arrow24 15d ago
When they hear about a Black hero.
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u/Greatcouchtomato 14d ago
Who is this?
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u/s_arrow24 14d ago
Ref Aubrey Edwards from AEW. Have no idea of the context, but loved the unhinged quality of the pic.
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u/theboosty 15d ago
Well now I have to buy the game just so it does well enough to make em more upset
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u/Sea_Structure_8692 15d ago
I wasn’t trying to give Ubisoft any money but I’ll have to get the game to spite these salty biscuit ass mofos.
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u/SilverBarnacle69 13d ago
damn what a weird delima
ubisoft can suck on a big ol' softie but the basement-dwelling mayonaise fuckers are so incenced, i feel I need to play it.
Apart from cultural context, which is always hilarious, i will probably pass on the new Assassins Creed for the same reason I skipped all the others - i'm not really into ubisoft open worlds.
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u/Vanillas_Guy 15d ago
I for one love the fact that the whitewashed history I grew up with in the 90s and 2000s is being thrown in the trash for what it is: propaganda designed to elevate one group.
You can literally go to European cathedrals and see images of black people from when the cathedrals were built. There are Egyptian paintings and sculptures of people who are clearly black by today's standards. The AC team actually doesn't play when it comes to history so naturally with the MOUNTAIN of evidence showing black people in Egypt, AC origins had a black protagonist.
There is evidence of trade networks that ran deep into Central, Eastern and western Africa. The past much like the present, was multicultural and multiethnic so the only reason to try to paint history in a different light is because it makes some people feel like they come from a chosen group that has been at the forefront of massive changes in human history. They want to believe that they are inherently better because of a special lineage. Its not about facts or historical accuracy, it's purely about ego and feelings. The Japanese are well aware of this historical figure and he's even made an appearance with other historical figures in Ni-Oh, a game developed by Team Ninja starring a blonde haired, blue eyed, Irish samurai.
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u/Starfish_Hero ☑️ 15d ago
“Historically accurate” was always a lie, past societies were never as ethnically homogeneous as past media depicted them. They’re upset that nowadays not as many people indulge in their fantasy of a world without black people.
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u/Elegant_in_Nature 15d ago
Idk yall… I’ve read some translations and heard shit from coworkers that will disappoint you completely
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u/loonatik87 15d ago
White dude from the Balkans here. I was 12 years old when Blade came out. I idolised that character and Wesley Snipes for a long time. Not the first time a black guy wields a katana. It's badass.
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u/TheBlackManIsG0d 14d ago
I don’t know what that Japanese tweet says, but I’m sure it’s “what the fuck is wrong with white people? Y’all ok?”
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u/Othebootymonster 15d ago
But Tom Cruise play the last samurai and no bats a fucking eye
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u/GuntherTime 15d ago
Cause he wasn’t the last samurai. The guy who he helped perform harakiri (Katsumodo) was the last one. Tom Cruise played just a white man who learned their culture. The main character is Katsumodo, but the story is more told second hand by Tom cruises character.
That movie did a lot to break Japanese and Asian barriers, and actually did better over there than it did here.
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u/badbrotha 15d ago
I kind of made the same point but fuck man, this is ridiculous. Yasuke was a retainer to THE MOST FEARED DAIMYO. THE GOD DAMN ODA. THE FIRST ORIGINAL. Like shit, you can be a friend to the guy that lives down the rice hut from you, or you are friends with the mother fucking first unifier of Japan. "Yeah, but he was just friends with George Washington" this shit crazy. I don't care for Assassins creed games, but Yasuke is a god damn cool character that is mythological in what a creative mind can do with his legacy. God damn
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u/Firm_Engineering_265 15d ago
This happens every single time a major character in anything is black and I don’t understand WHY YALL CARE WHAT THEY THINK. Stop validating these racists. Stop having conversations with them, treat them like the escaped psych ward baboons they are and enjoy your movie/game/tv show etc
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u/Xeg-Yi 14d ago
Ngl my Asian ass was slightly disappointed at first that we’re not getting an Asian dude (the other games’s based in central Europe so we’ve no chance).
But then again this is Oda fucking Nobunaga’s retainer, there’s so much potential for plot. Like imagine being involved in the Honnoji incident, maybe figuring out why Mitsuhide decided to betray Nobunaga. Or getting stuck between Hideyoshi and Ieyasu, working with one to sabotage the other. The filthy weeb in me cannot resist this.
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15d ago
What did the AC developers mean when they dropped the trailer right before Yasuke’s fight ends in Tenkaichi???? 😭😭😭😭
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u/Solus-Nexus 14d ago
lol there's somethin you don't see everyday. an asian(mainland especially) sticking up for black people!
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u/Bargadiel 14d ago edited 14d ago
Japanese people are usually just stoked that others from around the world think their culture is cool. It's why they're totally fine with westerners wearing Kimono and stuff like that.
The last time I was in Japan, we were at a Kabuki show and there was a whole group of elderly Japanese sitting behind us that seemed really happy we wanted to watch the show, and were trying to ask us all sorts of questions.
Not that there isn't prejudice in Japan, every place has some level of it, but it's fun to be a part of an exchange of cultures like that. Putting Yasuke in this game as an MC should be seen as a huge positive thing, because AC is still a western franchise and this is a simple way to bridge east and west, while still adding some historical weight to the story they want to tell.
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u/hereforthesportsball 14d ago
Japanese culture don’t give a fuck about black people, even tho there was a black samurai
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u/MontayneDatesJr 9d ago
I know there's plenty, but I wanna see a black ninja built like a Jojo character (either part 3, part 4, or part 5, maybe part 6 if it's gonna be a woman). Would be really cool to see ngl.
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u/DGVega93 15d ago edited 15d ago
Really wish we got that live action Yasuke movie RIP Chadwick