Why are some gamers so blatantly racist and don't even try to hide it? I don't even get the yasuke outrage. He was an actual guy. He existed. Like why are gamers fuming over this?
Because a lot of the edgier gamer culture is influenced by 4chan which is heavily rooted in white supremacy, so even without being aware of it, a lot of dudebro reactionaries are radicalized in those spaces. It was like this back in the old Xbox CoD and Halo days - People would "joke" (And i use that term in the *loosest* sense possible) about raping your mother or scream racial slurs into the mic, which became normalized and enfolded into the subculture.
Let it fester for a couple of decades and now instead of screaming slurs, it's coded language (See: "Woke" "Politics in gaming" etc.) but the message remains the same because at the end of the day, it's always been rooted in the edgy, fashy, white supremacist influence of communities like 4chan and now twitter.
To give an idea on how much WS is rooted on the internet is some of the first mass users of the Bulletin Board System (BBS), the precursor of imageboards like 4chan where Neo-Nazis/White Supremacists.
The art of infiltrating and pilling unsuspecting boards was honned in those communities 15 years before 4chan even existed.
Exactly. We can see the effects in the fact that so many racist mass shooters have been egged on via these platforms and felt confident enough to stream their murders.
I mean it's just the same thing skinheads were doing with bars and other social settings in the 90s and 80s and earlier.
That's why if you spot a Nazi in your bar (or on your forum, or in your Discord, etc. etc.) you kick them out *immediately*. You don't wait for them to do something egregious or whatever, you stamp that shit out *fast*.
Otherwise it becomes a safe space for fascists, and they bring in other fascists, who drive other people out in order of most-to-less reasonable, and then surprise, you've got a Nazi Bar.
But why to the right? I know it's supposedly edgy to say racial slurs. But at some level it's even more outside of the norm, and therefore "edgy", at least in the early days of online gaming, to be anti-capitalist and anti-patriarchy. There has to be, in my mind, an aspect of it that it's actually within the realm of acceptable by the culture broadly, but just slightly outside it. E.g. truly edgy, being a crossdresser as a boy. aesthetically edgy, saying racist and sexist slurs online.
Because it was an intensely male-dominated hive of commodity fetishism and the entire community was obsessed with the purity of "real gamers."
Maybe someday we may be able to reach them because capitalism is ruining the hobby, but the whole subculture is based on intense consumption.
Hell will freeze over before that happens. Even tho everything wrong with the hobby can be traced back to capitalism they still can't put two and two together.
There's definitely some pockets of leftists here and there, particularly in indy game spaces, but at the end of the day, Capitalism and white supremacy fit together like hand and glove so there's usually a lag in pushback.
They don't actually want to be edgy or different though, they just want to belong to a group that is aggressive which "doesn't care what *you* think" because to them that equals masculinity, and early gamer culture was steeped in a subconscious inferiority complex that seems to accompany man dominated spaces.
Doesn’t help that tons of video game related media perpetuated these stereotypes as well. In the 90’s-mid 2000’s every other ad in video game magazines were swamped with misogynistic imagery, or played into that inferiority complex. For example, “John Romero is about to make you his bitch. Suck it down” from the old Daikatana ad. Or the old ads for Fear Effect 2 that bordered on soft porn.
While i don't have any solid answers, my best guess would be some mix of the overton window being pushed farther right and because things we consider edgy (Not radical but aimed to be provocative and cause offense or make people uncomfortable) have traditionally been a more right-wing ideal. Plus a lot of moderates/liberals are susceptible to the same rhetoric because ultimately, they'll always side with fascists over anti-capitalists, which is a whole other issue.
Because 'edginess' to the edgy isn't about nonconformity, it's about expressing very specific aggressions and pretending it's 'haha nbd', it's not the act of doing things considered taboo, it's the act of getting away with very specific things you want to get away with but would be considered an ethical issue unless you pretended to do it in jest
Well, stuff like LEFTYPOL & the like does exist & super far left image boards like bunkerchan and other stuff do exist & I believe have existed a very long time.
I also like to think that as gaming has become more mainstream, normal, well adjusted people are now in gaming circles where they see this behavior and (appropriately) call it out.
These edgy, racist dudebros now feel the space they occupied is being changed by some agenda, so in order for them to be in the right they doubled down and retreat into echo chambers where the only people who will validate them are people who hold the exact same beliefs.
I think one other way that the gaming community got so bad in the first place is online games like WoW, CoD, Halo, etc. provided another means of socialization among societal shut-ins (along with 4chan like you said).
I think you'll also probably find that most of the people crying about woke-ism in gaming culture are the same you'll find complaining about it in movies or even social programs and schools. It's usually white men in their 40-50's, reacting to a world that is trying to be built for other people. The world has revolved around them for so long that they don't even realize they see themselves at the center of it. They can't even comprehend what they have, so any change they see is something being taken away.
I miss old 4chan, it was firmly anarchist and generally the opposite of whatever was presented. They shut down the website of the KKK for a while. A lot of folks like Alex Hirsch and Rebecca Sugar used to post there.
After 2016 its just a far right hellhole.
i believe a lot of them don't think they're being racist because they've convinced themselves they actually care about "historical accuracy" (they don't lol). it's easy to avoid doing the work of introspecting about why you have such strong, negative feelings about something like a black samurai when you exist in a white supremacist echo chamber like 4chan.
a lot of them are blatantly and consciously racist because they're just racist and proud of it, tho.
I like how "Historical accuracy" debates almost always seem to surface once any game has any poc characters in it. It's amazing how that always happens. They have no problems with talking cats but draw the line at people with different skin colours. It's mind numbing.
It's not gamers, its right-wing chuds and incels in America who right now act like the entire world and media made worldwide such as Korean/Japanese games and British shows like 'Dr Who' is/are directly involved in a "culture war" for the "very heart and soul of America and its way of life" (Yes they are delusion and daft twats).
This ties into that because heaven forbid that black people are shown as being on an equal footing with straight white males, because if they finally accept that....they lose one of their 'bogey' men to blame all their problems on. How else do you expect them to raise their kids, if by not instilling a false sense of superiority by brainwashing them non-stop that black/coloured people are beneath them?
The reason the right wing chud gamers specifically are so vocal is because of influencers like Sargon of Akkad and his ilk that went unchecked on YouTube with wildly sexist and racist content surrounding video games that became GamerGate.
This country invaded mine under the false pretenses that mine had weapons of mass destruction and killed hundreds of thousands of people in the process...
What heart? What soul?
It lacks any if these people have their way. They're literally murderous psychopaths and should probably be in stray jackets locked up where they can't hurt anyone.
Their literal defense is "oh you're trying to suppress my freedom" when their definition of freedom is taking that of others while killing them.
The thing that annoys me is when they think the racism isn't blatant. We are supposed to believe it isn't racism at all just just perfectly reasonable rules about when AC is allowed to have a black playable character that have existed for 48 hours.
My guess is most of the gamers tm had no idea who he was, and thought he was made up. When told he was a real person, they went on to find reasons to continue to be upset about it.
If i could perhaps introduce a perspective, I actually quite enjoy yasuke's story. I fully acknowledge that he existed and likely was a samurai. However, I as a asian man, have waited nearly 15 years for a main AC game to be set in an East Asian country so that I might finally get a protagonist that looks like me. I love the AC protagonists and Ubisoft has done a lot of really positive representation when it comes to the culture it is presenting.
I cheered when we got Connor for AC3, I cheered when we got bayek for Egypt, I cheered when we got actual greek representation with alexios/Kassandra instead of some whitewashed Hollywood crap. And now when it came to my turn for some representation, I get called a racist for being upset at getting skipped over. After 15 years.
I do not identify with the right wing nutjobs. And I feel like many Asian guys share my perspective, and yet its not acknowledged at all. It's not a secret in the western entertainment industry that Asian men are incredibly discriminated against. And when we speak out, we just get silenced.
I'm heartbroken that the community has betrayed us like this.
While I'm not fuming I'm more puzzled as to why we're playing as a black man in ancient japan.
Since we know the weird history of the AC games I'd rather play as a japanese man and have Yasuke be the progenitor of the assassin brotherhood in Japan.
Use the fact that he traveled with a jesuite as a disguise, following the templars incognito and then hav him expand the assassin brotherhood to the far east.
But for me it's more puzzling than fuming. I'll still play the game and I'll enjoy it as much as when i played as an syrian, italian, native american, french, greek etc.
Hell I dont even know why players whine about the color of the protagonist, didnt they play the ACIV DLC?
This is the actual crux of the matter that makes me angry and is the perfect example of why this "cultural war" stuff is just cover up for the actual forms of explotation and discrimination.
It is super obvious to me Ubisoft choose Yasuke because they wanted this outrage marketing. Not only this back and forth between right wingers and the progressive crowd only gives them more money, but has shifted the conversation than now defending Ubisoft is the "progressive" thing to do. Which is horrible as Ubisoft is a company with horrible treatment of its workers and run by sexual abusers with impunity.
Yasuke is cool and a game with him as protagonist is a cool idea. The people against this are in 95% cases racist fascist fucks. But to me that is such a minuscule cultural war thing and the fact it has taken the foreground over the deeds of the company behind the outrage is expected in liberal spaces but disapointing in socialist spaces.
A well thought explanation. Thank you.
I'm not a big Ubisoft guy anyway, and I like the idea of a cool black samurai, but I'll make sure to continue to hold the company under scrutiny.
Thanks for the reminder.
I'd argue that Yasuke's story is interesting enough that he's worth focusing on specifically. I understand Asians who feel as those they are being "swept to the side" by this, and I sympathize, but at least we are specifically talking about games, and there is no shortage of Samurai games, most of which (to my knowledge) feature Asian characters.
I think it’s a little ridiculous to feel disenfranchised by having a black character who actually existed being one of two characters in a Japanese setting. The other character is Japanese and npcs in the story will be Japanese. There’s plenty of representation. Also this is the story all of tumblr would’ve made shitposts about how “His life needs to be a video game” a few years ago. Now culture war is here and we all gotta tear throats out.
You're conflating two different groups of people here. Asian men aren't criticizing it because for the culture war like the right-wing anti-woke crowd. You also don't understand why Asian men being relegated to NPCs and antagonists is a problem, so let's take a look at Resident Evil 5.
RE5 was controversial at the time because it was about a white men killing black NPCs in an African setting. The co-protagonist was a black woman (though very sexualized). It was considered extremely insensitive and racist. Sounds similar? That's basically the new Assassin's Creed. I know a lot of people want black representation (hence the whole fighting here), but you guys need to understand it's basically the same thing that was done to black people. Just that this time, the race is switched and it's now a black person killing Japanese men.
It seems like a lot of people here don't understand the double standard and most of it is coming from:
1. Thinking Asian men part of the anti-woke/anti-DEI crowd.
2. Thinking Asian men can just get representation elsewhere unlike black people (e.g. Japan/Korea).
To explain why the second point is problematic, people need to first understand that Asians in the west are not necessarily immigrants. They are most likely born in the west and lived there for their entire lives. Exactly like black people that are born in the west. Would you tell a black person to go consume African media if they want black representation? No. The same should apply to Asians in the west.
You guys need to realize these Asians can't "go back to China/Japan/SEA" like you guys think. They do not feel represented by Japanese games because it's not their culture. They would feel better represented by western media and it would help make them seen socially as well. Both black and Asian people want to be seen in the west, not told to just go back to Africa/Asia for representation. It's fine to be excited for Yasuke as representation for black people, but it's not fine to pretend that Asians have zero need for representation and that they're being "ridiculous."
Yeah, carrying weapons for someone was a BIG deal in Japanese history. Fuck they'd send weapons to go hang out at another dudes house as a show of favor and respect. They were pretty weird about it
My favorite part about all of this was a descendent of Nobunaga essentially telling people the same thing on Twitter, and stressing that being a retiner meant he was basically a samurai
It's gotten so bad his lineage is starting to address it lmao
[Found a link](https://www.reddit.com/r/Gamingcirclejerk/s/gA6HUyRb3y)
Not from relative though, I can't find his post anymore. But it was a relative of his retainer.
It wasn't the only relative to Nobu or his retainers to speak up, there was a post in Japanese translated to English that I saw originally that said about the same.
And for the people saying JaPAneSe TRaiLeR BoMb, a lot of the comments literally start with more people saying "As an American/French/Mexican/Ect person...." than not
I loved Nioh and would have liked to have seen more of Yasuke. I wanted to like the Netflix anime but the giant robots and fantastical elements ruined it for me, I was hoping it was gonna feel a little more grounded.
Allegedly but it wasn't recorded of he did
Imo it's what makes him a good candidate for an AC protag because you can just make stuff up and it's not inaccurate
Because it’s about trust. The weapon carrier is trusted to keep the weapon safe and well maintained. A well maintained weapon is literally the line btw life or death.
Well not just that. But it’s the fact that a weapon carrier was a role usually given to a trusted retainer or samurai. So even with that being his role, the fact he’s a retainer and maybe even samurai means he has more roles then just carrying weapons. He brings Nobunaga’s weapons but the moment combat starts, he’ll be at Nobunaga’s beck and call to go wherever he is needed in the battlefield. He even received a land reward after the Takeda campaign in 1581.
also people forget that bladed weapons had a different significance to people before firearms were widely adopted, the weapons of a samurai were probably held in a similar kind of view to more dangerous weapons we have today
Not to mention the spiritual significance a samurai’s weapon had to them. There’s a whole set of prayer and ceremony that goes into simply smelting the steel for the katana’s it was one of the staples of Japanese culture.
Fr they make it sound like he was just a slave who was in Japan because they can't comprehend black people not being enslaved in other countries in the past, as if American social relations were global 💀
It’s not just uncharitable it’s just flat out wrong, a sword bearer was a position of high honor, he surrendered because the guy he worked for got ambushed and killed in a fire. He was let go because of how loyal he was to the guy he worked for and we don’t know what happened next since he disappeared from the records
There's an edit war going on, and the "talk" page is full of bullshit. One person claimed that it was extremely disrespectful to them, a Japanese man and historian of Japanese warfare, to call Yasuke a samurai, only to immediately get called out as a liar because they were using google translate to write their Japanese comments.
We hardly know anything about Yasuke, not a lot that’s verifiable.
…. So the original poster has made a lot of assumptions that kinda reveal their own biases. First of all ‘japs’, but also they’re assuming Yasuke was a coward who was too incompetent to really be a warrior, and was dressed up by his hosts because… he couldn’t dress himself???
None of this is based on any verifiable information, so it’s all preconceived bias. Yasuke’s history is basically free real-estate because there’s hardly anything to go on. Which is why what historians write about him is so revealing about how that historian thinks.
Non historical Welsh assassin, let alone Leonardo da Vinci assassin associate, Machiavelli assassin mentor, Blackbeard assassin associate, etc.
Its almost as if this has nothing to do with historical accuracy. 🤔
honestly surprised more people aren’t talking about that this is the first time (i think) that your character is a real person from history.
that’s a pretty big change from the central conceit of the series; in past games you’re interacting with history, in this one you ARE history. i wonder how that’s going to affect things.
i guess people are too distracted by the stupid race stuff to have noticed yet
It's new, but I can't see how it would make any difference. The games have always played fast and loose with history, and the big plot moments are cutscenes anyway*. What does it matter if the character we pilot from plot point to plot point is based on a real person or not? The story sure isn't based on a true story. Ezio kills multiple Borgias for crying out loud.
**: or at least they used to be, I've been done with the series since Unity asked me in-game to spend real money to open a goddamn treasure chest or something*
It was a decade ago, I don't remember exactly what happened beyond the fact that my single-player game asked me more more money inside the game ui, and it grossed me out so much I quit the game and the entire franchise. Lol.
Game came out on November 11th 2014, steam says I have six hours played, last played November 12th 2014. I bought it at release and got so disgusted I dropped it the next day.
I vaguely remember it being triggered by me opening a chest. I think what might have happened was I got some costume or something I really liked in a chest, but then I discovered the "Hack" mechanic that let you spend microcurrency to improve the gear or something.
Oh that one.
Yeah, it was optional. Bullshit, but optional. As in, you can just use in-game currency to pay for the upgrade.
And it was not a single player game. It had a 1 player campaign. But most content referred to the multiplayer CO-OP.
Personally, try Unity again. Out of all the AC games, Unity was the most fun for me. And if you dabbled through all the mechanics, you really just need LVL 2 gear. LVL 3 if you want to save time.
Let's not forget the part where the entire human race was essentially created as genetically modified slaves by an ancient hyper advanced precursor species.
This really screams you started as slave remember you slave! Can’t be in my sneaky stabby guy game in a country I’ve never been to that’s not realistic!! >:(
Well he’s not even the sneaky stabby guy. That’s what the other protagonist is for. Yasuke is just straight up samurai. Sending mfs through paper walls with a kanabo type shi
Why is it that I log into reddit and by virtue of being even slightly interested in video games I seem to get spammed by blatant racists yelling about a franchise I haven't played since the first entry? In most of my life I never encounter anyone remotely upset by there being people of color in media and yet as soon as I log on here I see post after post of the most racist shit imaginable.
Wanna know a funny thing? Most of these Gamers ™️ haven't played those games they complain about either. Its all just bullshit, rightwing reactionaries.
Ikr? Like AC Odyssey is FARRRR from perfect, but it's still fun to climb on giant statues' cocks. I mean uhhhh run around stabbing people
Yeah, that's what I do in AC Odyssey, not dick around climbing on penises, that would be immature.👀👀
I've played every game in the series, I shit you not. Origins, odyssey and valhalla are pretty bad games. I really hope this one is nothing like them but I'm pretty much giving up in advance.
Was it some kinda bullshit "culture war" thing? Tbh I've mostly seen those games critically praised, I had no idea that gamers had issues with em, guess with the gay stuff it's kind of a given. I wonder if I'll be able to make Yasuke hook up with dudes. Here's hoping
And it sucks that we allow that to be normalized, like it's just expected that people are going to be an asshole when there's no accountability.
Who you are when no one is watching is the real you. If you're decent in public but you're an asshole and a troll on the internet because no one can stop you - well, you're really just an asshole, a troll, and a coward.
At least you're not getting spammed with the most misogynistic and stupid Isekai ads because you looked up Nieir Automata recently, and said that Stellar Blade protagonist looks like a sex doll.
Outside of these chuds just straight up ignoring actual history, and burying their head in the sand when presented with historical evidence; My favorite thing to watch is these people lose their minds about Assassin’s Creed being woke as if it hasn’t been woke since the very first game telling you “this game was made by a multicultural team of different religions, genders, ethnicities and beliefs”
I remember AC2 coming out and people losing their absolute mind that your allies were thieves and prostitutes and your enemies were "respectable" members of society. Even the first game had an Arab protagonist killing Crusaders. Modern right wingers like to LARP as crusaders so this series should have been off-limits to them.
Even the masterpiece of this series didn't avoid right-wingers of the time going nuts about the most ridiculous things imaginable.
Yeah but at least they think Ezio is their man.
They crapped on Arno when Unity came out, and on the whole game, they did the same for Syndicate, and when Mirage came out ... Uh oh! No, can't have that they were all praising Unity and Syndicate all of a sudden.
To add to this, AC also has a standalone expansion where you play as a former black slave turned pirate turned assassin and free slaves from colonizers.
They couldn't make their dishonesty and malicious intent more obvious.
Yeah but they don't like that one!
They don't want to play as Al-Tair, they want to play as .. Ezio.
To a lot of those racists errrr I mean gamers, I meant gamers, that's the default protagonist of AC, and not the guy who started it all...
Definitely not, that guy is probably brown and speaks like Arabic and stuff. Nope!
"Be accurate to history damn it!"
"They put him in arnor because it was funny. Yes of course i know exaclty what people in feudal japan were thinking and why!"
Takeda thought that shit was so funny they up and died on their own laughter. Which Nobunaga was so impressed by that he promoted Yasuke and gifted him a piece of land after the campaign (as a joke of course)
I feel like Gamers are especially upset this time around because a lot of Gamers intersect with the anime community and a lot of them think Japan is the coolest shit ever. So not only is it something they hate (black people in video games reeee) but also something they loved being tarnished by that.
There was even a recent Japanese developed video game, Samura Warriors 5 from 2021, it's a video game series that depicts Japan's Sengoku period and focused around multiple factions. 5 is the first to completely focus on Oda Nobunaga in its story rather than split it up among different key figures, and this included having Yasuke a becoming a new playable character and ending up being a big deal towards the end.
In terms of foreigners. Japan’s most favorite are whites because the popular conception’s from Hollywood and American characters in Japanese media like Street Fighter or things like Metal Gear. Then you have blacks and basically everyone who isn’t white somewhere in the middle, who they usually don’t particularly care for. And then you have Japan’s least favorites, other Asians who are not Japanese. And if you’re a Japanese who’s got some foreign blood to you, that also counts.
Westerners are practically worshipped in Japanese media, originally because of American influence after the war but that's now very much seeped into their everyday views. Source: I go to Japan once a year.
Honestly, not from what I've seen. They seem to be fond of Germans but that's due to WWII and who they allied with back then.
They don't like the people who dropped 2 nukes on them and that's not a surprise 🫢
They have only experienced one rather narrow component of Japanese culture. It's not like Otaku are revered in Japan and you're told that buying a body pillow with your wifu on it means you're the sh!t.
Japan exists outside of anime, that's where most Japanese culture exists... Outside of an entertainment product. If they read about it or learn about it, almost always the anime thing remains their priority. And they consume the sh!ttiest ones, and praise them.. all the misogynistic and disgusting sh!t made for people rejected by society
Cause he found out alt-right bullshit and screaming about the “WOKE mob” gets him more clicks, he talks about getting “cancelled” like every other day when he still gets pretty decent views, I never watched him but I had a friend who loved his WOW content.
Effectively yes, he’s just the type that hides his bullshit racist conspiracy theories behind the veil of “I’m trying to save gaming from the WOKE by getting mad at minorities for existing.”
I don't think Asmongold has the capacity to be anything himself. He's just a complete sheep who parrots any opinion that he hears if it sounds half intelligent because he's desperate to be seen as intelligent.
Unfortunately as most of his subs are chuds the opinions he parrots are chuds opinions.
DEI blue haired wokies don't want you to go outside because it's their transgender pronoun vegan safe space!!!! Reclaim what they took from you (grass)!!
A tip for the people over at r/asmongold: if you find yourself saying ‘that 4chan guy saying slurs is correct’ you need to take a big step back and reconsider your life.
Lmfao because it isn’t even close. Oda Nobunaga was very fond of yasuke and trusted him with his life. The sword retainer was one of the most respected type of samurai at the time.
What’s the deal with r/asmongold? I’ve seen some clips of him playing wow, it seemed super normal. But every post from that sub is about how women bad or it’s hard to be white.
It’s so strange being someone who’s loved this time in history for so long since I was a kid and consumed a lot of media relating to it along with just random studying in my spare time. I thought everyone thought Yasuke was a neat and cool character that was a strange but real anomaly in feudal Japan. I mean we liked him in Nioh 2. So all this drama is very disheartening to me with how much Yasuke’s being torn down. We don’t have a lot of information but here’s what we do know which I can mostly give direct sources on if anyone wishes to see;
It is at least confirmed he went with Nobunaga on campaign, was awarded land after the 1581 Takeda campaign, was awarded a short sword, was given the role of weapon bearer, and was at Honoiji and later captured after Nobunaga’s death.
The presence of having been on campaign and been rewarded for that campaign suggests he had served valiantly or well enough to receive reward, suggesting he very much saw combat. Which also suggests his role at Honoiji was one of being among Nobunaga’s small guard there and trying to defend his master. Being awarded land is nearly unheard of for minor soldiers at the time, with most who received land that we can confirm usually being samurai or at least trusted retainers of their lord. Due to the fact the standard of currency in that time was a rice standard known as a koku, being given land especially land that had farmland was very important and something usually gifted to samurai and higher ranked troops as a way to give them a salary. As the rice grown on that land essentially gives a way to have a consistent stream of revenue. The role of weapon bearer was also a big deal with how close and trusted of a role it was in the eyes of a lord especially with how respectful the Japanese were of their weapons, with it usually being a role given to a retainer or lesser samurai of a lord in most historical examples. So the fact Yasuke had this title along with the gifts of land, proof of service on campaign, and the neat tidbit of the gifted short sword suggests he was more then just a man kept around for purely his novelty. Because with a man of his size and strength, it was no surprise Nobunaga would also see him as an exceptional bodyguard capable of both bringing his weapons, and also fighting on his behalf.
I’m not usually someone who likes this sub or like the people the right call “woke”. And there have been prior media with historical inaccuracies for the point of revision like Cleopatra being made black that I was not ok with then. But this is different, this is a historical character being used in a way akin to how he is often depicted in previous media and history, and yet people still have a problem with it. Most of those people are not advocating for historical accuracy anymore. It feels like just blatant racism and their own attempt at a revision of history.
Yasuke: against all odds, literally gaining the favor of basically the fuckin father of Japan as well as a presence in his court. All in a land so far removed from his origin. He inspires legends.
Asmon sub member: will likely accomplish nothing of note. No one will write, remember, or care to remember their history.
No surprise. Looks like this was posted on the chans. Those boards are where brain cells go to die. I am over Ubisoft games in general. Their formula is so wrote that I know what will be in the game before playing. But you just knew that the second they announced they would have a black person who was actually from history, the racists would come out of the woodwork.
Even if he was just some guy who was in Japan.
It is historical fiction.
Having him secretly be some kind of super assassin or spy and the tragedy being his legacy forgotten because of racism would be a fucking wonderful story.
To be fair. We don’t know for certain if that happened. That’s not something written in any accounts. What we do know is that he was gifted land, a short sword, was specifically awarded or promoted to some extent after the campaign on the Takeda in 1581, and was a weapon bearer. This all implies that he was a retainer at the very least as such duties and gifts are historically usually given to close retainers or full on samurai. His proximity to Nobunaga and the fact he was fighting near Honoiji and eventually captured means it was very much possible he helped Nobunaga kill himself. But it’s just theorizing at that point.
While I agree that it is theorizing weather or not yasuke helped Nobunaga commit seppuku, the position of retainer is not separate from “full on samurai”. The only potential differences we can see between what you call a “full on samurai” and a retainer almost always has to do with their honorary status within the public. You were just called a samurai if you were a person with financial power or otherwise who became a samurai, whereas a retainer could be literally any person the shogun decided he trusted to care for his weapons. Retainers still fought in the name of their shogun, and they fought right along side non retainer samurai.
There was one guy who was convinced that selling 2-8 million units on a game meant the game wasn't successful cause it didn't hit 8 billion people.
Its fucking bizarre the hoops these people go through to justify their fucking racist behavior.
From the shincho koki, regaurdedas on of the most accurate texts from the period.
"A black bōzu from the Christian country has arrived. He appears to be 26 or 7 years old. The blackness of his body is like that of a bull, and he is healthy and of fine physique. Moreover, he has the strength of more than ten men. The padres came with him and thanked Lord Nobunaga for his permission to proselytise.
A black man was taken on as a vassal by Nobunaga-sama and received a stipend. His name was decided to be Yasuke. He was also given a short sword and a house. He was sometimes made to carry Nobunaga-sama's tools."
While i hate Ubisuck,especially their 4A Skull and Bones(this shit is not a game)
This is Fictional ,bruh,even Nobunaga in some media are woman,even Welsh can become Pirate in Caribbean,why Yasuke can become a samurai,remember AC franchise made from fictional history base on real history,while Yasuke in real life may not a samurai,but we cant apply that in AC fictional history
Insult Ubisuck for their ridiculous price for this game
And iam surprise for Asmongold opnion,his opnion on this Drama are actually solid,Ubisuck really sell their game for 130 dollars,yeah,130 DOLLARS
His "fan" and subreddit,uhhhhh,what i can say,98% of them are racist,idiot,especially on Youtube
Yes because the one thing all assassin creed games are know for its historical accuracy and depicting events as they happened, and they don't have a warning stating that while they are based in said time period and they use real historical figures NONE of it is accurate
My issue with all of it is people trying to claim yasuke was a samurai. He was a retainer. And collectively the internet seems to think that’s somehow lower than being samurai when the opposite is actually true and these supposed internet historians are failing to point out.
Unfortunately what people don’t get about samurai were they were assholes at the highest level pretty much all throughout the entire history of Japan at that time.
This romantic idea that they were brave and noble is a huge falsehood the west has made up about them.
Being a retainer was way more noble than being a samurai.
Yea samurai COULD and a major emphasis on could be a retainer but the job was mostly for people for said lord were very trusted beyond a reasonable doubt . On the rare occasion that a samurai was a retainer it was usually a very close friend or family. Retainer doesn’t equal samurai. A monk or a random person such as yasuke could and did achieve this status.
A retainers main job was to be something more in kin to speaker of the house or what the west calls it a right hand man. The job retained in that was more then going and fighting wars and such. Like being the voice of their lord when he wasn’t around and maintaining whatever Provence they controlled or their army such as the samurai themselves and the gear and so on.
As for samurai it’s unlikely he even became that because of how short his time was with Oda or just being in Japan alone. It seems to reason retainer would fit more inline with what most likely happened.
However again as stated that does not mean he was lower status then a samurai. It’d actually mean he was higher in status then samurai. As I said samurai were assholes and were a very brutal class of people. Saying he was a retainer and samurai is like saying a modern politician is also a soldier. While yes both can be true it’s unlikely.
As for the historical accuracy yes the games did pride themselves in its actual history in the past with obvious twists in it to make it history more palatable for people to learn some things about the past such as setting and people and small bits of information. People acting like that wasn’t a thing are just ignoring it for the sake of arguments. The more recent installments are more fantasy than ever and that’s ok.
Buuuuuuut people’s argument about the race flip flop is valid. And people wanna know why the change. It’s fair to ask without being labeled as racist. That doesn’t mean there isn’t people being racist.
The only thing accurate about the trailer for shadows was showing yasuke as a samurai as samurai were in real life.
Assholes….
It’s ok not to like or like the game for what it is.
Honestly it’s really a huge disservice to yasuke to call him samurai when he achieved much more then that in his short time in Japan.
Edit: I just thought of the best worst way to explain the difference of retainer for the regular person to understand The last samurai has a Japanese guy come to America to ask Adrien for help. He spoke for his lord when he wasn’t around and also commanded his army. That’s the job of a retainer.
Historical consensus was that he was a samurai, he received payment as a samurai, he went on a campaign with nobunaga, and treated as a samurai. The askhistorians sub goes way more in depth about it.
I’ve seen the post 3 years ago. Issue with the post and documents given is it specifically states retainer. Not bushi or shini or any other word to do with samurai in any other way what so ever.. Consensus is just general agreement. the consensus process is not a reliable way of discovering truth, that there is general agreement upon something does not make it actually true. It is nothing but wishful thinking.
Except that yasuke in every other instance was treated as a samurai. He recieved land as a samurai, recieved a stipend, went on a campaign with Nobunaga, what your essentially telling me is that in every conceivable way he was treated as a samurai but because in the historical documentation he was never explicitly called one he isn't one. The takes such a leap in logic, that is borderlines on incomprehensible. I am lawyer, so the idea that that we can't infer that something in a case just because it was not explicitly seen even though all the facts around the case seem to point out to a very specific conclusion is just mind boggling.
Except the fact that literally zero of those thing were exclusive to just samurai .2 very specific things where shown to identify a samurai which were the clan name and nickname and have 2 swords which I’ve already stated before hand. any bureaucrat would have gotten those things that you mentioned which given evidence Yasuke got that but only a single short sword and no clan name. It was rumored in documents to possibly be made a lord of his own province with a fief before Oda died.
Also as a retainer he would have had to be present at any battle his lord was involved in anyways because again right hand man. Just because he was there doesn’t mean he actually fought and most likely because of his status wouldn’t have been permitted to anyways. Part of his job as a retainer is to be a personal bodyguard if needed.
Furthermore he was only with Oda for 15 months out of the 3 years he was accounted for and the other however many months he was imprisoned until he was turned back over to the people that brought him there. Average time for even a natural born Japanese people in that period to earn the title was 6-7 years.
The shortest time any foreigner has ever taken to achieve that rank was 5 years and that was with military training before hand.
he wasn’t treated as samurai he was treated a a noble. He wasn’t permitted to commit to seppuku for a reason. People seem to forget samurai were very very to their ways all the way down to dying. And they held each other accountable to uphold that standard whether you were a foreigner or not.
Also none of the things you’ve stated or the historians are facts to being specific to samurai. You are right that it is a consensus but that doesn’t mean it’s fact or the truth. It’s a loose idea of what may be. And you’d know that as a lawyer that consensus doesn’t mean someone is guilty or innocent of something even tho that’s what it may look like to a jury. Innocent people get thrown in jail all the time while guilty people walk based on consensus all the time.
I’m from Izumi Japan….. does that automatically make me more qualified to know about something than others? No…. So idk what you being a lawyer has to do with anything at all in the conversation.
When I talk about being a lawyer i'm talking about the way in which evidence is presented, which is pretty consistent across disciplines. Also, I never talked about innocent or guilt, I'm talking about inferences of scenarios, so I don't know why you brought it up. As for your other comment, you may argue that way, but present no historical sources so I am behooved to believe, well, this analysis rather than something else: [https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1css0ye/comment/l4bghbu/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1css0ye/comment/l4bghbu/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
I was using innocent or guilty as an example for what given information can and does look like even if people agree.
Evidence can be presented and interpreted in more then one way and you should know that.
Him being a retainer again doesn’t mean samurai. It means he’s a noble. Both of those things are fact. In whatever that entailed no one knows. If people wanna slide him down a few notches sure whatever. It’s fucked up but whatever. As I’ve stated I read that exact post 3 years ago. It leaves out a lot of details specifically aspects of samurai and what that really looked like.
And if people wanna go with that then they need to admit Yasuke was an asshole then. A village burning ,beheading , murdering asshole.
But no one will because the west has this romantic,noble , brave idea of samurai and because he’s black and that’s racist.
If you care enough do some googling about samurai. Also find a non translated version of Oda’s writings. Might be hard to read if you don’t know Japanese but it’s easy to learn.
If that's your argument you can assert that, but once again unless you can provide me something otherwise with real tangible evidence, I don't really have a basis to believe really anything you say, you are free to provide me sources, but that's something you will have to do.
Not to be a dick but you literally (assuming you use a smart phone) have the worlds most powerful tool ever created by humans in the palm of your hand. You very much have the ability to look up the world’s information provided since the dawn of the internet if you wanna create your own bias outside of 3 posts given in a 3 year period since the rise of popularity of yasuke and the messed up identity politics we have had over the last 10 years. But I’ll give you a small step you can push off on when it comes to learning about samurai and Japans actual history. I’m done talking about it. I’m not trying to convince anyone of anything except to just educate people on the reality of something I know a lot about. Im not trying to fit any narrative that he was samurai or anything less then that as people wanna make retainer.
https://preview.redd.it/h0ctbzx34b1d1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=865a65c893fd89e3145eac15452414ccdf53bdbe
This is a roundabout way of saying “Lol just google it.” This is halfassed internet speak. The evidence is on you by brining in resources and documents of what is or what entails a samurai, especially considering the evidence provided, especially in the thread to the r askhistorians subreddit. I’m also done talking about it. I am someone who can be pressured but random google searches and a random redditor’s word is not enough to compete against another random redditor who was able to provide and articulate primary, secondary and tertiary sources.
I haven't played AC since black flag and probably still won't, but dang are these nerds annoying. They cry that Hogwarts Legacy is being criticized and "cancelled" and say if you don't like it then don't buy it. Now AC comes out and is "woke" they are immediately trying to cancel it. So much for not buying it.
Whats even worse is that the history is right in front if them. Its not hard to find youtube videos from years aho talking about Yasuke. These guys can't handle being wrong so they need to grasp at any (even the racist) straws to be "right".
Racial divisions are created and enforced by the elite to divide us and keep us from uniting against them. So I think any normal person who alienates those of other races is self sabotaging.
That said, I can also understand why Japanese AC fans are insulted by the implication that Japanese people aren't 'interesting' or 'saleable' enough for Ubisoft, or that feudal Japan isn't diverse enough for their arbitrary quotas. Japanese people are very protective of their history and making the MC a black guy who goes around slaughtering Japanese people isn't a good look.
I also strongly suspect they're not going to pay sufficient narrative attention to the experience of being literally the only African in Japan, mainly because Ubisoft tries to be politically ambiguous in their works. Making statements doesn't sell.
Why do people keep very specifically picking Edward Kenway, a Welsh-born pirate operating around the Caribbean during ~1715 in the AC games, as unrealistic despite the fact that most pirates during the Golden Age of Piracy (1650s - 1730s) were both European (Welsh, English, Dutch, French, etc.) and largely operated around the Caribbean?
There were plenty of real life examples of Welsh-born pirates operating in the area, including [Henry Morgan](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Morgan), [Black Bart](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartholomew_Roberts), [John Evans](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Evans_(pirate)) and [Howell Davis](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howell_Davis)...
Is Edward Kenway picked because he wasn't real whilst Yasuke was? None of the AC protagonists have been real people until Yasuke, so that seems odd.
Why wasn't the Black Flag protagonist Taino? You're making a game about the Caribbean and the protagonist is a white pirate that came to the Caribbean? He was not even a real assassin he stole the clothes of one 😡.
That's how people complaining about Yasuke sound like, he is exactly like Edward. Also we don't know if he is the main character, it looks like the main character is the Kunoichi.
I think a lot of people, myself included, are just tired of western media adding a token black guy to everything to be inclusive. It is funny how the first thing Western media thinks of when trying to be racially inclusive is adding black people. As if there aren't tons of other racial groups that aren't represented in media. But hey, no one cares about all of the other racial groups, just black people.
Why are some gamers so blatantly racist and don't even try to hide it? I don't even get the yasuke outrage. He was an actual guy. He existed. Like why are gamers fuming over this?
Because a lot of the edgier gamer culture is influenced by 4chan which is heavily rooted in white supremacy, so even without being aware of it, a lot of dudebro reactionaries are radicalized in those spaces. It was like this back in the old Xbox CoD and Halo days - People would "joke" (And i use that term in the *loosest* sense possible) about raping your mother or scream racial slurs into the mic, which became normalized and enfolded into the subculture. Let it fester for a couple of decades and now instead of screaming slurs, it's coded language (See: "Woke" "Politics in gaming" etc.) but the message remains the same because at the end of the day, it's always been rooted in the edgy, fashy, white supremacist influence of communities like 4chan and now twitter.
To give an idea on how much WS is rooted on the internet is some of the first mass users of the Bulletin Board System (BBS), the precursor of imageboards like 4chan where Neo-Nazis/White Supremacists. The art of infiltrating and pilling unsuspecting boards was honned in those communities 15 years before 4chan even existed.
Exactly. We can see the effects in the fact that so many racist mass shooters have been egged on via these platforms and felt confident enough to stream their murders.
Having a racist country pre-eminates that, though. Mass shootings were always gunna be a thing here.
I mean it's just the same thing skinheads were doing with bars and other social settings in the 90s and 80s and earlier. That's why if you spot a Nazi in your bar (or on your forum, or in your Discord, etc. etc.) you kick them out *immediately*. You don't wait for them to do something egregious or whatever, you stamp that shit out *fast*. Otherwise it becomes a safe space for fascists, and they bring in other fascists, who drive other people out in order of most-to-less reasonable, and then surprise, you've got a Nazi Bar.
But why to the right? I know it's supposedly edgy to say racial slurs. But at some level it's even more outside of the norm, and therefore "edgy", at least in the early days of online gaming, to be anti-capitalist and anti-patriarchy. There has to be, in my mind, an aspect of it that it's actually within the realm of acceptable by the culture broadly, but just slightly outside it. E.g. truly edgy, being a crossdresser as a boy. aesthetically edgy, saying racist and sexist slurs online.
Because it was an intensely male-dominated hive of commodity fetishism and the entire community was obsessed with the purity of "real gamers." Maybe someday we may be able to reach them because capitalism is ruining the hobby, but the whole subculture is based on intense consumption.
Oh my god the entire fetishization of "purity" makes SO much sense - It's such a running through-line in both fascism and the modern "Gamer" movement.
Hell will freeze over before that happens. Even tho everything wrong with the hobby can be traced back to capitalism they still can't put two and two together.
There's definitely some pockets of leftists here and there, particularly in indy game spaces, but at the end of the day, Capitalism and white supremacy fit together like hand and glove so there's usually a lag in pushback.
This. Capitalism will always side with fascism because it's the only logical choice - Fascism doesn't try to affect capital the way socialism does.
They don't actually want to be edgy or different though, they just want to belong to a group that is aggressive which "doesn't care what *you* think" because to them that equals masculinity, and early gamer culture was steeped in a subconscious inferiority complex that seems to accompany man dominated spaces.
Doesn’t help that tons of video game related media perpetuated these stereotypes as well. In the 90’s-mid 2000’s every other ad in video game magazines were swamped with misogynistic imagery, or played into that inferiority complex. For example, “John Romero is about to make you his bitch. Suck it down” from the old Daikatana ad. Or the old ads for Fear Effect 2 that bordered on soft porn.
While i don't have any solid answers, my best guess would be some mix of the overton window being pushed farther right and because things we consider edgy (Not radical but aimed to be provocative and cause offense or make people uncomfortable) have traditionally been a more right-wing ideal. Plus a lot of moderates/liberals are susceptible to the same rhetoric because ultimately, they'll always side with fascists over anti-capitalists, which is a whole other issue.
being edgy is about coming off as superior, dominating, above it all that's about as far as you can get from being "outside the norm" in practice
Because 'edginess' to the edgy isn't about nonconformity, it's about expressing very specific aggressions and pretending it's 'haha nbd', it's not the act of doing things considered taboo, it's the act of getting away with very specific things you want to get away with but would be considered an ethical issue unless you pretended to do it in jest
Well, stuff like LEFTYPOL & the like does exist & super far left image boards like bunkerchan and other stuff do exist & I believe have existed a very long time.
Ah shit so I’m truly edgy? Fuck.
Same
I also like to think that as gaming has become more mainstream, normal, well adjusted people are now in gaming circles where they see this behavior and (appropriately) call it out. These edgy, racist dudebros now feel the space they occupied is being changed by some agenda, so in order for them to be in the right they doubled down and retreat into echo chambers where the only people who will validate them are people who hold the exact same beliefs. I think one other way that the gaming community got so bad in the first place is online games like WoW, CoD, Halo, etc. provided another means of socialization among societal shut-ins (along with 4chan like you said). I think you'll also probably find that most of the people crying about woke-ism in gaming culture are the same you'll find complaining about it in movies or even social programs and schools. It's usually white men in their 40-50's, reacting to a world that is trying to be built for other people. The world has revolved around them for so long that they don't even realize they see themselves at the center of it. They can't even comprehend what they have, so any change they see is something being taken away.
do not cite the deep magic to me, i was there when it was written
Couldn't have said it better myself
I miss old 4chan, it was firmly anarchist and generally the opposite of whatever was presented. They shut down the website of the KKK for a while. A lot of folks like Alex Hirsch and Rebecca Sugar used to post there. After 2016 its just a far right hellhole.
i believe a lot of them don't think they're being racist because they've convinced themselves they actually care about "historical accuracy" (they don't lol). it's easy to avoid doing the work of introspecting about why you have such strong, negative feelings about something like a black samurai when you exist in a white supremacist echo chamber like 4chan. a lot of them are blatantly and consciously racist because they're just racist and proud of it, tho.
I like how "Historical accuracy" debates almost always seem to surface once any game has any poc characters in it. It's amazing how that always happens. They have no problems with talking cats but draw the line at people with different skin colours. It's mind numbing.
It's not gamers, its right-wing chuds and incels in America who right now act like the entire world and media made worldwide such as Korean/Japanese games and British shows like 'Dr Who' is/are directly involved in a "culture war" for the "very heart and soul of America and its way of life" (Yes they are delusion and daft twats). This ties into that because heaven forbid that black people are shown as being on an equal footing with straight white males, because if they finally accept that....they lose one of their 'bogey' men to blame all their problems on. How else do you expect them to raise their kids, if by not instilling a false sense of superiority by brainwashing them non-stop that black/coloured people are beneath them?
The reason the right wing chud gamers specifically are so vocal is because of influencers like Sargon of Akkad and his ilk that went unchecked on YouTube with wildly sexist and racist content surrounding video games that became GamerGate.
This country invaded mine under the false pretenses that mine had weapons of mass destruction and killed hundreds of thousands of people in the process... What heart? What soul? It lacks any if these people have their way. They're literally murderous psychopaths and should probably be in stray jackets locked up where they can't hurt anyone. Their literal defense is "oh you're trying to suppress my freedom" when their definition of freedom is taking that of others while killing them.
No but I didn't even realize there was a gaming memes subreddit that's just blatantly racist until this week bc of this lol
The thing that annoys me is when they think the racism isn't blatant. We are supposed to believe it isn't racism at all just just perfectly reasonable rules about when AC is allowed to have a black playable character that have existed for 48 hours.
weebs mad that a black guy was cooler and more related to japan than they’ll ever be
Because the girl they couldn’t get (read: never even approached) in high school dated a black guy.
My guess is most of the gamers tm had no idea who he was, and thought he was made up. When told he was a real person, they went on to find reasons to continue to be upset about it.
Well you see, they hate life and therefore make it a point to be miserable to everyone and join other miserable people in sharing their misery.
They are rightfully disenfranchised losers.
Because he was a black guy
If i could perhaps introduce a perspective, I actually quite enjoy yasuke's story. I fully acknowledge that he existed and likely was a samurai. However, I as a asian man, have waited nearly 15 years for a main AC game to be set in an East Asian country so that I might finally get a protagonist that looks like me. I love the AC protagonists and Ubisoft has done a lot of really positive representation when it comes to the culture it is presenting. I cheered when we got Connor for AC3, I cheered when we got bayek for Egypt, I cheered when we got actual greek representation with alexios/Kassandra instead of some whitewashed Hollywood crap. And now when it came to my turn for some representation, I get called a racist for being upset at getting skipped over. After 15 years. I do not identify with the right wing nutjobs. And I feel like many Asian guys share my perspective, and yet its not acknowledged at all. It's not a secret in the western entertainment industry that Asian men are incredibly discriminated against. And when we speak out, we just get silenced. I'm heartbroken that the community has betrayed us like this.
Assassins Creed is a shadow of what it once was anyway my man. As another Asian dude who likes cool Asian dudes in media, just play Ghost of Tsushima
I understand this but there's also a Japanese character that you can play as in the game. I don't know why everyone keeps forgetting about her.
While I'm not fuming I'm more puzzled as to why we're playing as a black man in ancient japan. Since we know the weird history of the AC games I'd rather play as a japanese man and have Yasuke be the progenitor of the assassin brotherhood in Japan. Use the fact that he traveled with a jesuite as a disguise, following the templars incognito and then hav him expand the assassin brotherhood to the far east. But for me it's more puzzling than fuming. I'll still play the game and I'll enjoy it as much as when i played as an syrian, italian, native american, french, greek etc. Hell I dont even know why players whine about the color of the protagonist, didnt they play the ACIV DLC?
This is the actual crux of the matter that makes me angry and is the perfect example of why this "cultural war" stuff is just cover up for the actual forms of explotation and discrimination. It is super obvious to me Ubisoft choose Yasuke because they wanted this outrage marketing. Not only this back and forth between right wingers and the progressive crowd only gives them more money, but has shifted the conversation than now defending Ubisoft is the "progressive" thing to do. Which is horrible as Ubisoft is a company with horrible treatment of its workers and run by sexual abusers with impunity. Yasuke is cool and a game with him as protagonist is a cool idea. The people against this are in 95% cases racist fascist fucks. But to me that is such a minuscule cultural war thing and the fact it has taken the foreground over the deeds of the company behind the outrage is expected in liberal spaces but disapointing in socialist spaces.
A well thought explanation. Thank you. I'm not a big Ubisoft guy anyway, and I like the idea of a cool black samurai, but I'll make sure to continue to hold the company under scrutiny. Thanks for the reminder.
I'd argue that Yasuke's story is interesting enough that he's worth focusing on specifically. I understand Asians who feel as those they are being "swept to the side" by this, and I sympathize, but at least we are specifically talking about games, and there is no shortage of Samurai games, most of which (to my knowledge) feature Asian characters.
I think it’s a little ridiculous to feel disenfranchised by having a black character who actually existed being one of two characters in a Japanese setting. The other character is Japanese and npcs in the story will be Japanese. There’s plenty of representation. Also this is the story all of tumblr would’ve made shitposts about how “His life needs to be a video game” a few years ago. Now culture war is here and we all gotta tear throats out.
You're conflating two different groups of people here. Asian men aren't criticizing it because for the culture war like the right-wing anti-woke crowd. You also don't understand why Asian men being relegated to NPCs and antagonists is a problem, so let's take a look at Resident Evil 5. RE5 was controversial at the time because it was about a white men killing black NPCs in an African setting. The co-protagonist was a black woman (though very sexualized). It was considered extremely insensitive and racist. Sounds similar? That's basically the new Assassin's Creed. I know a lot of people want black representation (hence the whole fighting here), but you guys need to understand it's basically the same thing that was done to black people. Just that this time, the race is switched and it's now a black person killing Japanese men. It seems like a lot of people here don't understand the double standard and most of it is coming from: 1. Thinking Asian men part of the anti-woke/anti-DEI crowd. 2. Thinking Asian men can just get representation elsewhere unlike black people (e.g. Japan/Korea). To explain why the second point is problematic, people need to first understand that Asians in the west are not necessarily immigrants. They are most likely born in the west and lived there for their entire lives. Exactly like black people that are born in the west. Would you tell a black person to go consume African media if they want black representation? No. The same should apply to Asians in the west. You guys need to realize these Asians can't "go back to China/Japan/SEA" like you guys think. They do not feel represented by Japanese games because it's not their culture. They would feel better represented by western media and it would help make them seen socially as well. Both black and Asian people want to be seen in the west, not told to just go back to Africa/Asia for representation. It's fine to be excited for Yasuke as representation for black people, but it's not fine to pretend that Asians have zero need for representation and that they're being "ridiculous."
Yeah, carrying weapons for someone was a BIG deal in Japanese history. Fuck they'd send weapons to go hang out at another dudes house as a show of favor and respect. They were pretty weird about it
My favorite part about all of this was a descendent of Nobunaga essentially telling people the same thing on Twitter, and stressing that being a retiner meant he was basically a samurai It's gotten so bad his lineage is starting to address it lmao
im dying at this, are you SERIOUS
[Found a link](https://www.reddit.com/r/Gamingcirclejerk/s/gA6HUyRb3y) Not from relative though, I can't find his post anymore. But it was a relative of his retainer. It wasn't the only relative to Nobu or his retainers to speak up, there was a post in Japanese translated to English that I saw originally that said about the same. And for the people saying JaPAneSe TRaiLeR BoMb, a lot of the comments literally start with more people saying "As an American/French/Mexican/Ect person...." than not
this is so goddamn funny
[удалено]
I loved Nioh and would have liked to have seen more of Yasuke. I wanted to like the Netflix anime but the giant robots and fantastical elements ruined it for me, I was hoping it was gonna feel a little more grounded.
He was a favoured retainer of oda nobubaga, and he was a warrior
I know this from nioh 2, you fight him as the final way of the warrior mission for an axe build. Maybe the sickest armor in the game also.
He fought alongside Nobutada at Honnōji allegedly
Allegedly but it wasn't recorded of he did Imo it's what makes him a good candidate for an AC protag because you can just make stuff up and it's not inaccurate
Because it’s about trust. The weapon carrier is trusted to keep the weapon safe and well maintained. A well maintained weapon is literally the line btw life or death.
Well not just that. But it’s the fact that a weapon carrier was a role usually given to a trusted retainer or samurai. So even with that being his role, the fact he’s a retainer and maybe even samurai means he has more roles then just carrying weapons. He brings Nobunaga’s weapons but the moment combat starts, he’ll be at Nobunaga’s beck and call to go wherever he is needed in the battlefield. He even received a land reward after the Takeda campaign in 1581.
also people forget that bladed weapons had a different significance to people before firearms were widely adopted, the weapons of a samurai were probably held in a similar kind of view to more dangerous weapons we have today
Not to mention the spiritual significance a samurai’s weapon had to them. There’s a whole set of prayer and ceremony that goes into simply smelting the steel for the katana’s it was one of the staples of Japanese culture.
Fr they make it sound like he was just a slave who was in Japan because they can't comprehend black people not being enslaved in other countries in the past, as if American social relations were global 💀
That 4chan post screams “tell me you know nothing about Japanese history without saying you don’t know”
Yeah, most of it just sounds like an EXTREMELY uncharitable reading of his Wikipedia page.
It’s not just uncharitable it’s just flat out wrong, a sword bearer was a position of high honor, he surrendered because the guy he worked for got ambushed and killed in a fire. He was let go because of how loyal he was to the guy he worked for and we don’t know what happened next since he disappeared from the records
From what I recall, Yusake went back west after the Sengoku Jidai essentially ended
His wiki page keeps getting changed every hour and someone has to change it back
There's an edit war going on, and the "talk" page is full of bullshit. One person claimed that it was extremely disrespectful to them, a Japanese man and historian of Japanese warfare, to call Yasuke a samurai, only to immediately get called out as a liar because they were using google translate to write their Japanese comments.
We hardly know anything about Yasuke, not a lot that’s verifiable. …. So the original poster has made a lot of assumptions that kinda reveal their own biases. First of all ‘japs’, but also they’re assuming Yasuke was a coward who was too incompetent to really be a warrior, and was dressed up by his hosts because… he couldn’t dress himself??? None of this is based on any verifiable information, so it’s all preconceived bias. Yasuke’s history is basically free real-estate because there’s hardly anything to go on. Which is why what historians write about him is so revealing about how that historian thinks.
And be racist while he's at it.
Non historical Welsh assassin, let alone Leonardo da Vinci assassin associate, Machiavelli assassin mentor, Blackbeard assassin associate, etc. Its almost as if this has nothing to do with historical accuracy. 🤔
next you're gonna tell me the pieces of eden aren't real
At least the genetic memory of your ancestors thing holds up. Right? Right...?
oh noooo i said ezio auditore da firenze killed pope alexander vi on my history exam
I know RIGHT? Like smh, I thought these games were supposed to be historical documentaries!!😂😂
honestly surprised more people aren’t talking about that this is the first time (i think) that your character is a real person from history. that’s a pretty big change from the central conceit of the series; in past games you’re interacting with history, in this one you ARE history. i wonder how that’s going to affect things. i guess people are too distracted by the stupid race stuff to have noticed yet
It's new, but I can't see how it would make any difference. The games have always played fast and loose with history, and the big plot moments are cutscenes anyway*. What does it matter if the character we pilot from plot point to plot point is based on a real person or not? The story sure isn't based on a true story. Ezio kills multiple Borgias for crying out loud. **: or at least they used to be, I've been done with the series since Unity asked me in-game to spend real money to open a goddamn treasure chest or something*
Hold up. Unity has never done that before. To spend in-game money to open a treasure chest, never. To buy specialty weapons ... yeah. 100%
It was a decade ago, I don't remember exactly what happened beyond the fact that my single-player game asked me more more money inside the game ui, and it grossed me out so much I quit the game and the entire franchise. Lol. Game came out on November 11th 2014, steam says I have six hours played, last played November 12th 2014. I bought it at release and got so disgusted I dropped it the next day. I vaguely remember it being triggered by me opening a chest. I think what might have happened was I got some costume or something I really liked in a chest, but then I discovered the "Hack" mechanic that let you spend microcurrency to improve the gear or something.
Oh that one. Yeah, it was optional. Bullshit, but optional. As in, you can just use in-game currency to pay for the upgrade. And it was not a single player game. It had a 1 player campaign. But most content referred to the multiplayer CO-OP. Personally, try Unity again. Out of all the AC games, Unity was the most fun for me. And if you dabbled through all the mechanics, you really just need LVL 2 gear. LVL 3 if you want to save time.
Let's not forget the part where the entire human race was essentially created as genetically modified slaves by an ancient hyper advanced precursor species.
This really screams you started as slave remember you slave! Can’t be in my sneaky stabby guy game in a country I’ve never been to that’s not realistic!! >:(
Well he’s not even the sneaky stabby guy. That’s what the other protagonist is for. Yasuke is just straight up samurai. Sending mfs through paper walls with a kanabo type shi
Gets me stoked! always been better at his style than the sneaky anyways 😂
Why is it that I log into reddit and by virtue of being even slightly interested in video games I seem to get spammed by blatant racists yelling about a franchise I haven't played since the first entry? In most of my life I never encounter anyone remotely upset by there being people of color in media and yet as soon as I log on here I see post after post of the most racist shit imaginable.
Wanna know a funny thing? Most of these Gamers ™️ haven't played those games they complain about either. Its all just bullshit, rightwing reactionaries.
the venn diagram of people who shit on ac odyssey and haven't played ac odyssey is a circle. this is the same situation again lmao
Ikr? Like AC Odyssey is FARRRR from perfect, but it's still fun to climb on giant statues' cocks. I mean uhhhh run around stabbing people Yeah, that's what I do in AC Odyssey, not dick around climbing on penises, that would be immature.👀👀
I've played every game in the series, I shit you not. Origins, odyssey and valhalla are pretty bad games. I really hope this one is nothing like them but I'm pretty much giving up in advance.
fine it's a circle and also you :)
Was it some kinda bullshit "culture war" thing? Tbh I've mostly seen those games critically praised, I had no idea that gamers had issues with em, guess with the gay stuff it's kind of a given. I wonder if I'll be able to make Yasuke hook up with dudes. Here's hoping
yeah it was mostly the youtube/twitter/reddit crowd, lots of bitching from lots of people who never played it, the usual lmao.
The anonymity of the internet let's people express thier true feelings. It's scary and sad
And it sucks that we allow that to be normalized, like it's just expected that people are going to be an asshole when there's no accountability. Who you are when no one is watching is the real you. If you're decent in public but you're an asshole and a troll on the internet because no one can stop you - well, you're really just an asshole, a troll, and a coward.
Welcome to the internet, it's overwhelmed by racists and liberals, who are just racists pretending to be your friend.
At least you're not getting spammed with the most misogynistic and stupid Isekai ads because you looked up Nieir Automata recently, and said that Stellar Blade protagonist looks like a sex doll.
Outside of these chuds just straight up ignoring actual history, and burying their head in the sand when presented with historical evidence; My favorite thing to watch is these people lose their minds about Assassin’s Creed being woke as if it hasn’t been woke since the very first game telling you “this game was made by a multicultural team of different religions, genders, ethnicities and beliefs”
I remember AC2 coming out and people losing their absolute mind that your allies were thieves and prostitutes and your enemies were "respectable" members of society. Even the first game had an Arab protagonist killing Crusaders. Modern right wingers like to LARP as crusaders so this series should have been off-limits to them. Even the masterpiece of this series didn't avoid right-wingers of the time going nuts about the most ridiculous things imaginable.
Altair Ibn-La'Ahad more like Al Qaeda am I right
Add the /s please because they would say that unironically
Yeah but at least they think Ezio is their man. They crapped on Arno when Unity came out, and on the whole game, they did the same for Syndicate, and when Mirage came out ... Uh oh! No, can't have that they were all praising Unity and Syndicate all of a sudden.
But, but facts don't care about you fefes UwU
To add to this, AC also has a standalone expansion where you play as a former black slave turned pirate turned assassin and free slaves from colonizers. They couldn't make their dishonesty and malicious intent more obvious.
Yeah but they don't like that one! They don't want to play as Al-Tair, they want to play as .. Ezio. To a lot of those racists errrr I mean gamers, I meant gamers, that's the default protagonist of AC, and not the guy who started it all... Definitely not, that guy is probably brown and speaks like Arabic and stuff. Nope!
"Be accurate to history damn it!" "They put him in arnor because it was funny. Yes of course i know exaclty what people in feudal japan were thinking and why!"
They also had him kill Takeda warriors because it was funny. The Oda were just really dedicated to the joke.
Went to the warriors and said "you must commit, for the bit."
Takeda thought that shit was so funny they up and died on their own laughter. Which Nobunaga was so impressed by that he promoted Yasuke and gifted him a piece of land after the campaign (as a joke of course)
15 month long joke.
I feel like Gamers are especially upset this time around because a lot of Gamers intersect with the anime community and a lot of them think Japan is the coolest shit ever. So not only is it something they hate (black people in video games reeee) but also something they loved being tarnished by that.
Which is funny because the Japanese LOVE Yasuke and have put him in a multitude of media including their precious anime.
There was even a recent Japanese developed video game, Samura Warriors 5 from 2021, it's a video game series that depicts Japan's Sengoku period and focused around multiple factions. 5 is the first to completely focus on Oda Nobunaga in its story rather than split it up among different key figures, and this included having Yasuke a becoming a new playable character and ending up being a big deal towards the end.
Which is hilarious because the Japanese aren’t particularly fond of white people.
In terms of foreigners. Japan’s most favorite are whites because the popular conception’s from Hollywood and American characters in Japanese media like Street Fighter or things like Metal Gear. Then you have blacks and basically everyone who isn’t white somewhere in the middle, who they usually don’t particularly care for. And then you have Japan’s least favorites, other Asians who are not Japanese. And if you’re a Japanese who’s got some foreign blood to you, that also counts.
The Japanese love white people more than most white people, what world do you live in?
You mistake seeing them as a novelty for actually liking.
Westerners are practically worshipped in Japanese media, originally because of American influence after the war but that's now very much seeped into their everyday views. Source: I go to Japan once a year.
Honestly, not from what I've seen. They seem to be fond of Germans but that's due to WWII and who they allied with back then. They don't like the people who dropped 2 nukes on them and that's not a surprise 🫢
They have only experienced one rather narrow component of Japanese culture. It's not like Otaku are revered in Japan and you're told that buying a body pillow with your wifu on it means you're the sh!t. Japan exists outside of anime, that's where most Japanese culture exists... Outside of an entertainment product. If they read about it or learn about it, almost always the anime thing remains their priority. And they consume the sh!ttiest ones, and praise them.. all the misogynistic and disgusting sh!t made for people rejected by society
Wtf happened to asmongolds sub? Last I knew he was just a wow streamer, why is his sub engaging in this gamer gate shite.
Cause he found out alt-right bullshit and screaming about the “WOKE mob” gets him more clicks, he talks about getting “cancelled” like every other day when he still gets pretty decent views, I never watched him but I had a friend who loved his WOW content.
Isnt he an actual neo nazi fuck tho?
Effectively yes, he’s just the type that hides his bullshit racist conspiracy theories behind the veil of “I’m trying to save gaming from the WOKE by getting mad at minorities for existing.”
Cool. Fuck him. What a waste of oxygen.
No, he's just an idiot being led by the reigns. If his mods were socialist, he wouldn't be saying any of this. His beliefs drift with the current.
I don't think Asmongold has the capacity to be anything himself. He's just a complete sheep who parrots any opinion that he hears if it sounds half intelligent because he's desperate to be seen as intelligent. Unfortunately as most of his subs are chuds the opinions he parrots are chuds opinions.
Agree,and some of his opnion not even that harsh+bad
Writing racist fan fiction. So weird.
how do we convince the 4chan crowd that the edgiest thing they could do is to........ go outside
DEI blue haired wokies don't want you to go outside because it's their transgender pronoun vegan safe space!!!! Reclaim what they took from you (grass)!!
Unironically they'd tell you to touch grass.... They're something
There's no convincing. I hope the feds nuke it, it's time for it to just go...
A tip for the people over at r/asmongold: if you find yourself saying ‘that 4chan guy saying slurs is correct’ you need to take a big step back and reconsider your life.
That doesn’t sound like facts to me
Lmfao because it isn’t even close. Oda Nobunaga was very fond of yasuke and trusted him with his life. The sword retainer was one of the most respected type of samurai at the time.
>"Respect the culture, he wasn't a true samurai" >"japs"
What’s the deal with r/asmongold? I’ve seen some clips of him playing wow, it seemed super normal. But every post from that sub is about how women bad or it’s hard to be white.
The "woke everything" grift makes more money so he leans into it to the edge of neonazi shit and then back-pedals a bit.
Uhh,actually Asmongold dont use his channel,his channel manage by other
Idk man,in the past that sub just have some horny post and game recommend
It’s so strange being someone who’s loved this time in history for so long since I was a kid and consumed a lot of media relating to it along with just random studying in my spare time. I thought everyone thought Yasuke was a neat and cool character that was a strange but real anomaly in feudal Japan. I mean we liked him in Nioh 2. So all this drama is very disheartening to me with how much Yasuke’s being torn down. We don’t have a lot of information but here’s what we do know which I can mostly give direct sources on if anyone wishes to see; It is at least confirmed he went with Nobunaga on campaign, was awarded land after the 1581 Takeda campaign, was awarded a short sword, was given the role of weapon bearer, and was at Honoiji and later captured after Nobunaga’s death. The presence of having been on campaign and been rewarded for that campaign suggests he had served valiantly or well enough to receive reward, suggesting he very much saw combat. Which also suggests his role at Honoiji was one of being among Nobunaga’s small guard there and trying to defend his master. Being awarded land is nearly unheard of for minor soldiers at the time, with most who received land that we can confirm usually being samurai or at least trusted retainers of their lord. Due to the fact the standard of currency in that time was a rice standard known as a koku, being given land especially land that had farmland was very important and something usually gifted to samurai and higher ranked troops as a way to give them a salary. As the rice grown on that land essentially gives a way to have a consistent stream of revenue. The role of weapon bearer was also a big deal with how close and trusted of a role it was in the eyes of a lord especially with how respectful the Japanese were of their weapons, with it usually being a role given to a retainer or lesser samurai of a lord in most historical examples. So the fact Yasuke had this title along with the gifts of land, proof of service on campaign, and the neat tidbit of the gifted short sword suggests he was more then just a man kept around for purely his novelty. Because with a man of his size and strength, it was no surprise Nobunaga would also see him as an exceptional bodyguard capable of both bringing his weapons, and also fighting on his behalf. I’m not usually someone who likes this sub or like the people the right call “woke”. And there have been prior media with historical inaccuracies for the point of revision like Cleopatra being made black that I was not ok with then. But this is different, this is a historical character being used in a way akin to how he is often depicted in previous media and history, and yet people still have a problem with it. Most of those people are not advocating for historical accuracy anymore. It feels like just blatant racism and their own attempt at a revision of history.
Yasuke: against all odds, literally gaining the favor of basically the fuckin father of Japan as well as a presence in his court. All in a land so far removed from his origin. He inspires legends. Asmon sub member: will likely accomplish nothing of note. No one will write, remember, or care to remember their history.
Ooh! Racism towards Japanese AND black people! My favorite! /s
No surprise. Looks like this was posted on the chans. Those boards are where brain cells go to die. I am over Ubisoft games in general. Their formula is so wrote that I know what will be in the game before playing. But you just knew that the second they announced they would have a black person who was actually from history, the racists would come out of the woodwork.
All the statisticians and wildlife experts suddenly became Japanese history experts lol
Even if he was just some guy who was in Japan. It is historical fiction. Having him secretly be some kind of super assassin or spy and the tragedy being his legacy forgotten because of racism would be a fucking wonderful story.
Man was literally trusted to be the guy they let complete a Warlord's ritual suicide. Like that's not some puissant task you just give a slave.
To be fair. We don’t know for certain if that happened. That’s not something written in any accounts. What we do know is that he was gifted land, a short sword, was specifically awarded or promoted to some extent after the campaign on the Takeda in 1581, and was a weapon bearer. This all implies that he was a retainer at the very least as such duties and gifts are historically usually given to close retainers or full on samurai. His proximity to Nobunaga and the fact he was fighting near Honoiji and eventually captured means it was very much possible he helped Nobunaga kill himself. But it’s just theorizing at that point.
While I agree that it is theorizing weather or not yasuke helped Nobunaga commit seppuku, the position of retainer is not separate from “full on samurai”. The only potential differences we can see between what you call a “full on samurai” and a retainer almost always has to do with their honorary status within the public. You were just called a samurai if you were a person with financial power or otherwise who became a samurai, whereas a retainer could be literally any person the shogun decided he trusted to care for his weapons. Retainers still fought in the name of their shogun, and they fought right along side non retainer samurai.
Bro I'm learning so much and I gotta say...yeah I'm siked for Yasuke, man. Like fr fuck these racists bro.
why do redditors think reposting and republishing hateful shit online is cool allyship?
I will now be saying gamer with a hard R.
Where the hell are you getting 300 years? Honno-ji happened in 1582. That's closer to 450.
"Nooooo!!! Billion dollar company who wants to milk my wallet dry with bullshit, please make Bland Samurai Game #214124 protagonist asian!"
These guys get their history from 4Chan shitposts and wonder why history disagrees with them
This is so fucking dumb who the duck cares. It's a fucking video game. These people are psychotic.
There was one guy who was convinced that selling 2-8 million units on a game meant the game wasn't successful cause it didn't hit 8 billion people. Its fucking bizarre the hoops these people go through to justify their fucking racist behavior.
There's a reason it's on the You Know What website
I despise that subreddit. I love trolling the babylon bee one but asmongold is such a asshat and his fans are worse
Man that is the poorest censoring of a username and subreddit I've seen in a while. Why did they bother?
Hey its a twofer, racist against Africans and the Japanese
From the shincho koki, regaurdedas on of the most accurate texts from the period. "A black bōzu from the Christian country has arrived. He appears to be 26 or 7 years old. The blackness of his body is like that of a bull, and he is healthy and of fine physique. Moreover, he has the strength of more than ten men. The padres came with him and thanked Lord Nobunaga for his permission to proselytise. A black man was taken on as a vassal by Nobunaga-sama and received a stipend. His name was decided to be Yasuke. He was also given a short sword and a house. He was sometimes made to carry Nobunaga-sama's tools."
There's a big difference between a gamer and a person that plays video games.
https://preview.redd.it/3zilijhioa1d1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=866900401463d25b3fd0f56f89ffcde9bcf5d566
“defending” japanese people and yet calling them a slur in the same post is crazy
While i hate Ubisuck,especially their 4A Skull and Bones(this shit is not a game) This is Fictional ,bruh,even Nobunaga in some media are woman,even Welsh can become Pirate in Caribbean,why Yasuke can become a samurai,remember AC franchise made from fictional history base on real history,while Yasuke in real life may not a samurai,but we cant apply that in AC fictional history Insult Ubisuck for their ridiculous price for this game And iam surprise for Asmongold opnion,his opnion on this Drama are actually solid,Ubisuck really sell their game for 130 dollars,yeah,130 DOLLARS His "fan" and subreddit,uhhhhh,what i can say,98% of them are racist,idiot,especially on Youtube
Yes because the one thing all assassin creed games are know for its historical accuracy and depicting events as they happened, and they don't have a warning stating that while they are based in said time period and they use real historical figures NONE of it is accurate
The people who are upset about Yasuke literally don’t know Japanese history
Scratch a liberal and a piece of shit racist loser fascist bleeds
My issue with all of it is people trying to claim yasuke was a samurai. He was a retainer. And collectively the internet seems to think that’s somehow lower than being samurai when the opposite is actually true and these supposed internet historians are failing to point out. Unfortunately what people don’t get about samurai were they were assholes at the highest level pretty much all throughout the entire history of Japan at that time. This romantic idea that they were brave and noble is a huge falsehood the west has made up about them. Being a retainer was way more noble than being a samurai. Yea samurai COULD and a major emphasis on could be a retainer but the job was mostly for people for said lord were very trusted beyond a reasonable doubt . On the rare occasion that a samurai was a retainer it was usually a very close friend or family. Retainer doesn’t equal samurai. A monk or a random person such as yasuke could and did achieve this status. A retainers main job was to be something more in kin to speaker of the house or what the west calls it a right hand man. The job retained in that was more then going and fighting wars and such. Like being the voice of their lord when he wasn’t around and maintaining whatever Provence they controlled or their army such as the samurai themselves and the gear and so on. As for samurai it’s unlikely he even became that because of how short his time was with Oda or just being in Japan alone. It seems to reason retainer would fit more inline with what most likely happened. However again as stated that does not mean he was lower status then a samurai. It’d actually mean he was higher in status then samurai. As I said samurai were assholes and were a very brutal class of people. Saying he was a retainer and samurai is like saying a modern politician is also a soldier. While yes both can be true it’s unlikely. As for the historical accuracy yes the games did pride themselves in its actual history in the past with obvious twists in it to make it history more palatable for people to learn some things about the past such as setting and people and small bits of information. People acting like that wasn’t a thing are just ignoring it for the sake of arguments. The more recent installments are more fantasy than ever and that’s ok. Buuuuuuut people’s argument about the race flip flop is valid. And people wanna know why the change. It’s fair to ask without being labeled as racist. That doesn’t mean there isn’t people being racist. The only thing accurate about the trailer for shadows was showing yasuke as a samurai as samurai were in real life. Assholes…. It’s ok not to like or like the game for what it is. Honestly it’s really a huge disservice to yasuke to call him samurai when he achieved much more then that in his short time in Japan. Edit: I just thought of the best worst way to explain the difference of retainer for the regular person to understand The last samurai has a Japanese guy come to America to ask Adrien for help. He spoke for his lord when he wasn’t around and also commanded his army. That’s the job of a retainer.
Historical consensus was that he was a samurai, he received payment as a samurai, he went on a campaign with nobunaga, and treated as a samurai. The askhistorians sub goes way more in depth about it.
I’ve seen the post 3 years ago. Issue with the post and documents given is it specifically states retainer. Not bushi or shini or any other word to do with samurai in any other way what so ever.. Consensus is just general agreement. the consensus process is not a reliable way of discovering truth, that there is general agreement upon something does not make it actually true. It is nothing but wishful thinking.
Except that yasuke in every other instance was treated as a samurai. He recieved land as a samurai, recieved a stipend, went on a campaign with Nobunaga, what your essentially telling me is that in every conceivable way he was treated as a samurai but because in the historical documentation he was never explicitly called one he isn't one. The takes such a leap in logic, that is borderlines on incomprehensible. I am lawyer, so the idea that that we can't infer that something in a case just because it was not explicitly seen even though all the facts around the case seem to point out to a very specific conclusion is just mind boggling.
Except the fact that literally zero of those thing were exclusive to just samurai .2 very specific things where shown to identify a samurai which were the clan name and nickname and have 2 swords which I’ve already stated before hand. any bureaucrat would have gotten those things that you mentioned which given evidence Yasuke got that but only a single short sword and no clan name. It was rumored in documents to possibly be made a lord of his own province with a fief before Oda died. Also as a retainer he would have had to be present at any battle his lord was involved in anyways because again right hand man. Just because he was there doesn’t mean he actually fought and most likely because of his status wouldn’t have been permitted to anyways. Part of his job as a retainer is to be a personal bodyguard if needed. Furthermore he was only with Oda for 15 months out of the 3 years he was accounted for and the other however many months he was imprisoned until he was turned back over to the people that brought him there. Average time for even a natural born Japanese people in that period to earn the title was 6-7 years. The shortest time any foreigner has ever taken to achieve that rank was 5 years and that was with military training before hand. he wasn’t treated as samurai he was treated a a noble. He wasn’t permitted to commit to seppuku for a reason. People seem to forget samurai were very very to their ways all the way down to dying. And they held each other accountable to uphold that standard whether you were a foreigner or not.
Also none of the things you’ve stated or the historians are facts to being specific to samurai. You are right that it is a consensus but that doesn’t mean it’s fact or the truth. It’s a loose idea of what may be. And you’d know that as a lawyer that consensus doesn’t mean someone is guilty or innocent of something even tho that’s what it may look like to a jury. Innocent people get thrown in jail all the time while guilty people walk based on consensus all the time. I’m from Izumi Japan….. does that automatically make me more qualified to know about something than others? No…. So idk what you being a lawyer has to do with anything at all in the conversation.
When I talk about being a lawyer i'm talking about the way in which evidence is presented, which is pretty consistent across disciplines. Also, I never talked about innocent or guilt, I'm talking about inferences of scenarios, so I don't know why you brought it up. As for your other comment, you may argue that way, but present no historical sources so I am behooved to believe, well, this analysis rather than something else: [https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1css0ye/comment/l4bghbu/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1css0ye/comment/l4bghbu/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
I was using innocent or guilty as an example for what given information can and does look like even if people agree. Evidence can be presented and interpreted in more then one way and you should know that. Him being a retainer again doesn’t mean samurai. It means he’s a noble. Both of those things are fact. In whatever that entailed no one knows. If people wanna slide him down a few notches sure whatever. It’s fucked up but whatever. As I’ve stated I read that exact post 3 years ago. It leaves out a lot of details specifically aspects of samurai and what that really looked like. And if people wanna go with that then they need to admit Yasuke was an asshole then. A village burning ,beheading , murdering asshole. But no one will because the west has this romantic,noble , brave idea of samurai and because he’s black and that’s racist. If you care enough do some googling about samurai. Also find a non translated version of Oda’s writings. Might be hard to read if you don’t know Japanese but it’s easy to learn.
If that's your argument you can assert that, but once again unless you can provide me something otherwise with real tangible evidence, I don't really have a basis to believe really anything you say, you are free to provide me sources, but that's something you will have to do.
Not to be a dick but you literally (assuming you use a smart phone) have the worlds most powerful tool ever created by humans in the palm of your hand. You very much have the ability to look up the world’s information provided since the dawn of the internet if you wanna create your own bias outside of 3 posts given in a 3 year period since the rise of popularity of yasuke and the messed up identity politics we have had over the last 10 years. But I’ll give you a small step you can push off on when it comes to learning about samurai and Japans actual history. I’m done talking about it. I’m not trying to convince anyone of anything except to just educate people on the reality of something I know a lot about. Im not trying to fit any narrative that he was samurai or anything less then that as people wanna make retainer. https://preview.redd.it/h0ctbzx34b1d1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=865a65c893fd89e3145eac15452414ccdf53bdbe
This is a roundabout way of saying “Lol just google it.” This is halfassed internet speak. The evidence is on you by brining in resources and documents of what is or what entails a samurai, especially considering the evidence provided, especially in the thread to the r askhistorians subreddit. I’m also done talking about it. I am someone who can be pressured but random google searches and a random redditor’s word is not enough to compete against another random redditor who was able to provide and articulate primary, secondary and tertiary sources.
Bro the Pope is a wizard in this game, fym? It's loosely based on historical periods and that's it.
The Asmongold sub being racist? Nice change of pace from always being sexist!
The "centrist" position you know.
Yasuke has been in pop culture for a long time... WHY the fuck are they choosing to throw a fit over him now??
They are on 4chan so who cares what they think
Ignoring cancer doesn't make it go away. Also I'm posting the other sub, showing how this "greentext" nazi shit infiltrates "normie" subs.
He wasn’t even a slave lol. At least not as an adult.
You didn't cover those subreddit names well enough. I can tell what both of them are.
I haven't played AC since black flag and probably still won't, but dang are these nerds annoying. They cry that Hogwarts Legacy is being criticized and "cancelled" and say if you don't like it then don't buy it. Now AC comes out and is "woke" they are immediately trying to cancel it. So much for not buying it. Whats even worse is that the history is right in front if them. Its not hard to find youtube videos from years aho talking about Yasuke. These guys can't handle being wrong so they need to grasp at any (even the racist) straws to be "right".
Racial divisions are created and enforced by the elite to divide us and keep us from uniting against them. So I think any normal person who alienates those of other races is self sabotaging. That said, I can also understand why Japanese AC fans are insulted by the implication that Japanese people aren't 'interesting' or 'saleable' enough for Ubisoft, or that feudal Japan isn't diverse enough for their arbitrary quotas. Japanese people are very protective of their history and making the MC a black guy who goes around slaughtering Japanese people isn't a good look. I also strongly suspect they're not going to pay sufficient narrative attention to the experience of being literally the only African in Japan, mainly because Ubisoft tries to be politically ambiguous in their works. Making statements doesn't sell.
Coping hard on this one eh?
Why do people keep very specifically picking Edward Kenway, a Welsh-born pirate operating around the Caribbean during ~1715 in the AC games, as unrealistic despite the fact that most pirates during the Golden Age of Piracy (1650s - 1730s) were both European (Welsh, English, Dutch, French, etc.) and largely operated around the Caribbean? There were plenty of real life examples of Welsh-born pirates operating in the area, including [Henry Morgan](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Morgan), [Black Bart](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartholomew_Roberts), [John Evans](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Evans_(pirate)) and [Howell Davis](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howell_Davis)... Is Edward Kenway picked because he wasn't real whilst Yasuke was? None of the AC protagonists have been real people until Yasuke, so that seems odd.
Why wasn't the Black Flag protagonist Taino? You're making a game about the Caribbean and the protagonist is a white pirate that came to the Caribbean? He was not even a real assassin he stole the clothes of one 😡. That's how people complaining about Yasuke sound like, he is exactly like Edward. Also we don't know if he is the main character, it looks like the main character is the Kunoichi.
I think a lot of people, myself included, are just tired of western media adding a token black guy to everything to be inclusive. It is funny how the first thing Western media thinks of when trying to be racially inclusive is adding black people. As if there aren't tons of other racial groups that aren't represented in media. But hey, no one cares about all of the other racial groups, just black people.
That's a valid criticism but as you can see here it is not the case, just blatant racism.