Uh oh the new AC character is woke : gamingcirclejerk

[-] Juice64@lemmy.world 102 points 3 months ago

Suddenly Americans are acting like they care about Asian representation

[-] Theprogressivist@lemmy.world 51 points 3 months ago

They don't. The ones making the biggest fuss about bs like this are the ones that don't even play video games.

[-] jontree255@lemmy.world 35 points 3 months ago

historical accuracy == let me be racist

[-] ech@lemm.ee 7 points 3 months ago

Racists aren't exclusive to the US.

[+] Wogi@lemmy.world -28 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Ok I don't have a horse in this race and didn't know who either of these people were until I saw this meme, and spent some time googling.

As far as I can tell Anjin is based on William Adams, an English navigator, they literally just call him "Mr pilot" he doesn't have a Japanese name. And Yosuke is supposedly just a Japanese guy. So like, while I don't care, it does seem like there's some room for misrepresentation.

Anyway, I'm probably wrong, wogi out

[-] Sanctus@lemmy.world 52 points 3 months ago

Yasuke was literally an African retainer in 16th century Japan.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasuke, don't know how hard you googled but it was the first hit on DDG.

[-] oehm@midwest.social 47 points 3 months ago

Surprised this is the first they’re hearing of Yasuke. There was a fairly popular anime recently with an awesome soundtrack by flying lotus.

[-] jontree255@lemmy.world 15 points 3 months ago

I had not heard of him till the anime. The soundtrack goes hard. I couldn’t do the show but I’m not big on anime.

[-] oehm@midwest.social 1 points 3 months ago

Same, I didn’t watch it but love the soundtrack.

[-] Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago

Was it popular? I was hyped when it was announced, but when the trailer showed magic, giant robots, and a very Saturday morning color palette, my interested died. I was hoping for a much more grounded show for what was going Yasuke's first big depiction. Something along the lines of the Sword of a Stranger aesthetic would have been perfect.

[-] qooqie@lemmy.world 18 points 3 months ago

Where are people upset about this? I haven’t seen anything

[-] fadedmaster@sh.itjust.works 8 points 3 months ago

Neither have I. It might be the crowds I'm around or that its drowned out by all the people warning that its going to be a shit game at launch and not to preorder. Haha.

[-] _Sprite@lemmy.world 6 points 3 months ago

[-] YungOnions@sh.itjust.works 4 points 3 months ago

YouTube comments section.

[-] oatscoop@midwest.social 2 points 2 months ago

The usual cesspits where one can find neckbeards and bigots: reddit, twitter, etc.

[-] Linkerbaan@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

OP has successfully baited some in already

[-] Philharmonic3@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago

Honestly I think it'd be better if we just ignored the ignorant rather than amplifying their voices. Ignore them unless you are defending someone from being harmed.

[-] MacDangus@lemmy.world -1 points 2 months ago

Literally no one is complaining about this

[+] MonkderDritte@feddit.de -12 points 3 months ago

[deleted]

[-] pyre@lemmy.world 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

what are you asking

[-] MonkderDritte@feddit.de 2 points 2 months ago

Nevermind. I stay corrected.

[-] surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago

https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=did+black+people+exist+in+feudal+Japan

[+] halvar@lemm.ee -27 points 3 months ago

Look I don't know much about the context, aside from some game adding a black samurai or something, but I can tell you I would be just as pissed with a white one.

[-] EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone 46 points 3 months ago

Fun fact, these are both real people from ancient Japanese history (and pretty famous ones at that), but you can guess which one the "gamers" are upset about.

Some more details because these two are really cool and interesting:

The white guy is a British navigator from a Dutch voyage to find a new route to India to steal control of the spice trade from the Spanish and Portugese, whose ship ended up in Japan after almost being destroyed in a storm. His name was William Adams, but the Japanese couldn't pronounce it and called him Anjin-san instead (literally Mr. Pilot). He was made a samurai and given land for his help in a war of succession, as well as his aid in founding the Dutch/British trading relationship in Japan. He lived out the rest of his life in Japan and his house can still be found today as a historical site.

The black guy, whose history is a lot less clear, was named Yasuke. He was most likely a slave originally from Africa, but there are no real records beyond that he was brought to Japan by the Jesuits, who were the sole foreigners allowed into Japan at the time. He was presented to a famous lord by the name of Oda Nobunaga (one of the most famous people in Japanese history), who was so taken with the man that he took him into his service as a retainer and samurai and gave him the name Yasuke. Yasuke served Nobunaga up to and during the betrayal that led to Nobunaga's death, after which Yasuke disappeared from historical records.

[-] jontree255@lemmy.world 12 points 3 months ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasuke

The character is based on Yasuke (a real person) and he’s a playable character in the new Assassins Creed set in feudal Japan.

Could they have made the character a Japanese man? Sure. That is a valid complaint. I think Yasuke is also fine considering his story.

[-] Sylvartas@lemmy.world 11 points 3 months ago

Wait, people are losing their shit over the historical accuracy of Assassin's Creed ? Did they miss the part where the entire franchise revolves around some DNA magic, or the "apples of Eden" stuff ? Or whoever Borgia pope with literal magical powers we fought in AC2 ?

AC has always been about (somewhat loose) historical accuracy of the setting, ie, places, buildings, culture, etc. They take tons of liberties with characters and "realism"

[-] Uruanna@lemmy.world 9 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

... It's a valid complaint to ask that a historical African man be represented as a Japanese man? How?

Do you mean they should have used literally any other historical figure or even a fictional character, as long as it was a Japanese person? There's a second playable character who is Japanese.

[-] Leg@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago

But she's also woke. We can't have that.

[-] BluesF@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

I don't think there's any shortage of Japanese samurai protagonists in games. From a representation standpoint I don't think there's any issue... And Yasuke is an interesting character that's worth exploring. There's enough mystery to his story that he fits perfectly into an Assassin's Creed game imo.

[-] TimewornTraveler@lemm.ee 10 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

You never heard of the black samurai? it was a real thing, pretty cool bit of history, read some of those links!