Yasuke is going to be treated the exact same way. Because of America’s education on xenophobia and ethnocentrism, we know that Afro Samurai’s appeal is that he is a Black man in Japan, which is considered not a normal thing by the majority who view Japan as a homogenous culture. It was just really nice to see that happen, and I consider that as an entry into a space of things that we don’t normally see.
So when you have a project like Afro Samurai that comes out … it was awesome. It’s just not really our lane yet compared to our contemporary peers of lighter pigment in the industry.
African Americans, in particular, haven’t had a great track record of being showrunners for animated TV shows. It’s natural, y’know? It’s basically like, we are conditioned to a certain type of content that we see. Two people today have already mentioned the parallels between the two today.
How do you feel about the series existing in conversation with Afro Samurai ? But Yasuke strikes a very different tone in its approach to a similar subject matter. Polygon spoke with Thomas ahead of the Yasuke’s season 1 premiere on April 29 to talk about how his collaboration with Takeshi Koike came about, comparisons made between the series and 2007’s Afro Samurai, and the historical research and narrative care that went into the design and backstory of the series’ cast of characters.Īnime fans will make comparisons between Yasuke and Fuminori Kizaki’s 2007 series Afro Samurai. But when a young girl from his village begins to suffer from a mysterious ailment, Yasuke is charged with safeguarding her to a doctor, all while being hunted by mysterious foreign mercenaries who believe the child’s condition hides a formidable, untapped power. Several years after the violent end of Nobunaga’s reign, Yasuke abandons the sword and assumes a new life as a reclusive ferryman. Yasuke is a sci-fi fantasy take on the life of its eponymous protagonist, an African servant brought to Japan by Jesuit traders who would later serve under Oda Nobunaga as a samurai. His latest series Yasuke, a second collaboration with Netflix, is a star-studded production, produced by the venerable Japanese animation house MAPPA, co-produced by musician Flying Lotus (who serves as the series’ composer), character designs courtesy of Redline director Takeshi Koike, and voice cast led by Judas and the Black Messiah star LaKeith Stanfield. He finally achieved his goal of directing in 2019 with the premiere of Cannon Busters, a fantasy action series first funded on Kickstarter in 2014 before being acquired by Netflix. In 2009, the animator relocated to Seoul, South Korea, working on such shows as The Legend of Korra and Black Dynamite, the latter of which he served as a creative producer and supervising director. But despite relative success, Thomas yearned for more. Growing up in the South Bronx, Thomas started out as a comic artist and storyboarder before moving to North Carolina, and scoring a gig as the character supervisor on Aaron McGruder’s The Boondocks. Like Yasuke, LeSean is a man of considerable talents who found success and purpose in a land half a world apart from his home country. The works explore the hackneyed conventions and personal nuances found in these inexpensive, increasingly anachronistic artifacts.The story of Yasuke, the African immigrant who became the first foreign-born warrior to achieve the status of a samurai, and the story of LeSean Thomas, the creator, producer, and director of the Netflix-produced anime Yasuke, bear a resemblance when viewed side-by-side. As he understands it, this process is akin to textile weaving. He alternately undermines and emphasizes the photographs' nostalgic qualities by tearing, scanning, and rearranging them.
In the body of work he produced for the Octopus Initiative, he mined his archive of found photographs for those with stereotypical sentimental characteristics. He appropriates these images to create collages, installations, and sculptures.
Discarded photographs are his primary source material. He has also served as a Photo Facilitator for the Berkeley, California-based group Working Assumptions.Īs an artist, Perez often explores ephemera from daily life. Perez is part of M12, an award-winning interdisciplinary group of artists that explores the aesthetics of rural cultures and landscapes. He also completed a residency at the Denver Children’s Museum in January of 2018, where he created a collaborative artwork for the museum’s permanent collection. He was a resident artist at RedLine Contemporary Art Center from 2014 to 2016. Perez received his BFA in 2014 from the University of Colorado, Boulder and currently resides in Denver.