If fate has cruelly robbed us of the chance to see the late Chadwick Boseman play the African samurai known in history’s annals as Yasuke, then hearing Lakeith Stanfield give him a voice and a mood makes for a good consolation prize. Granted, the Boseman film, in stasis after his passing, sounded more factually inclined on paper, telling of how Yasuke went from serving Italian Jesuit Alessandro Valignano to serving Japanese Daimyo Oda Nobunaga. By contrast, LeSean Thomas’ anime version of the story brushes over the basics after opening on a war fought in feudal Japan between clashing armies of samurai, wizards, and mechas; later, he introduces a Russian werebear and a psychotic Catholic priest. History’s for the books and glossy Hollywood biopics.
Netflix’s “Yasuke” is a marvel of invention, plus shrewd casting. It’s quietly respectful of who Yasuke was and how he rose to samurai status, an achievement that would be nigh-impossible for lowborn members of Japan’s old caste system and thus a Herculean feat for a foreign servant; Thomas’ curiosity with his subject doesn’t equate with crude apathy. He cares. But he has a passionate preoccupation with the genre, and a wild imagination, and frankly what documentation there is about Yasuke’s life and times is so anemic that filling in the blanks with epic adventures feels almost like a sacred trust: If the historians can’t draw the full scope of the man, then Thomas might as well fill in the blanks. Who’s to say the armies of the Sengoku period didn’t do battle with giant robots and spellcraft?
Okay sure, historians might argue against the events seen in the animated series. Still, a tale as wide open as Yasuke’s leaves plenty of space for embellishment, supposition, and unbound fantasy borrowing trappings from anime as an aesthetic and culture unto itself. Here, Yasuke is the executioner of Nobunaga (Takehiro Hira), not his treacherous general, Mitsuhide (Noshir Dalal), who the record shows assassinated Nobunaga at the Honnō-ji Incident in 1582. Mitsuhide isn’t a better man in the show, mind you; he’s a nationalist xenophobe and big ol’ misogynist who sees Nobunaga’s embrace of Yasuke and the woman warrior Natsumaru (Ming-Na Wen) as a betrayal of the “old way,” coded language for “the way that kept men like me in power and everyone else in their place.”
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The discrimination Mitsuhide pours on Yasuke isn’t the only discrimination our hero faces, but he’s undoubtedly the most prominent bigot in the show’s narrative. Everyone sees Yasuke, referred to by all as “Yassan,” as an outsider, with the exceptions of Ichiro (Ian Chen), Yasuke’s fanboy; Saki (Maya Tanida), a quiet young girl harboring magic powers; and Ichika (Gwendoline Yeo), Saki’s mother, who approaches Yasuke with a job: Chaperone her and Saki to a doctor far from their small village so Saki can get the medical treatment she needs. It actually isn’t “treatment” Ichika seeks for Saki, though the show necessarily takes a couple of episodes before explaining the journey’s true purpose.
The road isn’t easy, of course; what would a quest be if it went smoothly? Yasuke, Saki, and Ichika are intercepted at the end of the premiere, “Ronin,” by a band of mercenaries comprising robot Haruto (Darren Criss), shapeshifter Nikita (Julie Marcus), assassin Ishikawa (Dia Frampton), and mystic Achoja (William Christopher Stephens), in the employ of Abraham (Dan Donohue), a holy lunatic and the first of “Yasuke’s” many big bads. It’s easy for movies and shows to give themselves a “too many villains” complex by piling one heavy on top of another, creating a Russian doll of nefarity wherein the last and most significant of them turns out to be the one nestled at the center.
In six chapters, “Yasuke” balances its rogues gallery with not only precision but substance. Each of its antagonists matters. They facilitate the plot’s motivations and fill in the margins of Thomas’ worldbuilding. As a tertiary bonus, they’re a lot of fun to watch, too, but the series’ best visuals tend to be its most surreal: Flowers blooming from the neck of a freshly decapitated body, for instance, which feels like a note straight out from the mind of Thomas’ collaborator, Steve Ellison, better known to all as rapper-director Flying Lotus, whose 2017 film “Kuso” is the most nauseating experimental cinema you’ve ever, or perhaps never, seen. Given Ellison’s involvement, it’s a wonder “Yasuke’s” imagery doesn’t go to more profane places. But whatever influence he has on the series in a producorial capacity, Thomas maintains firm control of his style and incorporates beautiful delirium only as needed.
The other key component of “Yasuke,” naturally, is Stanfield oozing laconic cool with every word he speaks and with every second of silence. Matching an actor’s speech so perfectly to an animated character isn’t easy, or else everyone would do it. Yasuke himself is exactly the kind of character on paper Stanfield could play in the flesh, soft-spoken, enigmatic, inward-focused, and altogether captivating to watch even when he’s not in motion. The effort the series puts into wringing as much expression from each frame is impressive, but equally noteworthy is the gravity the voice cast manage to give the animation, Stanfield in particular; the effect is such that every time Yasuke furrows his brow or squints his eyes, we can practically see Stanfield on the other side of the recording booth making the exact same gesture. Man and character are simpatico.
That bonded vitality defines “Yasuke” through Stanfield and through Thomas’ storytelling. It’s not every day that a work described as “epic” actually lives up to the word; one could make the case for “Yasuke” as a genuinely epic piece of contemporary genre television, a show that’s violent, vicious, haunting, beautiful, and touching all at once. For every slash of a sword and every blood geyser, there’s a beat of aching human vulnerability and longing to match it. Maybe that’s just Thomas’ way of respecting the real-life figure he’s drawn inspiration from. Should this be the only portrait of Yasuke pop culture gives us, it’s a telling worthy of his legend. [A]
“Yasuke” arrives on Netflix on April 29.