Yasuke

YASUKE －ヤスケ－

5.7(49,957)

MAL Score

Ranked #12360

Popularity #2576

Action
Fantasy
Adult Cast
Gore
Historical
Samurai

Episodes: 6
Duration: 29 min per ep
Aired: Apr 29, 2021
Status: Finished Airing

Synopsis

In a version of feudal Japan where magic and mechs exist alongside war and tradition, a threatened village becomes the center of converging forces: a mysterious child, rival daimyo locked in conflict, and a ronin whose name was never widely known.

Yasuke follows the story of the first African samurai, unfolding amid brutal battles and supernatural danger as he’s drawn back into violence to protect what matters.

Otaku Consensus

Yasuke is a high-concept, low-runtime swing whose strongest material is its Nobunaga-era flashback thread and MAPPA's bloody sword choreography, with LeSean Thomas's direction giving the adult-cast samurai scenes more weight than the pulpy fantasy machinery around them. The verdict across MAL, AniList, and user reviews is lukewarm rather than dismissive: viewers frequently praise the cast, music, character designs, and fight staging, while criticizing the six-episode format for making the historical adaptation feel underfed. The most common complaint is not simply that robots and magic exist, but that those elements crowd out the real-life Yasuke material many viewers came to see.

Why You Should Watch

Watch Yasuke if you want a compact, violent alt-history samurai piece that is more interested in impact than patience. It is built for viewers who enjoy swordplay, gore, and adult-cast fantasy without committing to a long shonen run, and its six-episode structure makes it easy to finish in one sitting. The appeal sits closer to Afro Samurai's stylized Black-samurai iconography and Ninja Scroll's anything-goes genre pulp than to the grounded historical texture of Vinland Saga or the polished escalation of Demon Slayer. The draw is MAPPA action, Takeshi Koike character design, and a strange collision of war, magic, mechs, and body horror; the tradeoff is that the historical core often feels like the better show fighting for space inside a fantasy spectacle.

Key Characters

S
Saki(VA: Kiko Takizawa)
Saki is the character most tied to the series' supernatural identity, functioning as the point where its orphan, magic, and war-story elements collide.
Y
Yasuke(VA: Jun Soejima)
Yasuke is most compelling when the series treats him as a weary adult survivor rather than a mythic mascot, especially in the flashback material fans often cite as the show's strongest thread.

What Makes It Stand Out

1
MAPPA produced Yasuke as a short six-episode series, which gives the action a binge-friendly pace but also fuels the most repeated criticism: major historical, military, and fantasy ideas are forced to compete for limited screen time.
2
The character designs come from Takeshi Koike, with Kenichi Shima credited for sub-character design, giving the cast a sharper designer pedigree than many short streaming originals receive.
3
AniList's tag profile makes the show's genre collision measurable: Swordplay at 90%, Samurai at 88%, Anachronism at 86%, Magic at 78%, CGI at 75%, Robots at 66%, and Gore at 65%.
4
The series' reputation is heavily split between its historical flashbacks and its present-tense fantasy material, with user reviews repeatedly noting stronger investment in the former than in the mechs-and-magic side of the production.
5
Its reception numbers reflect a cult-curiosity rather than consensus hit: MAL lists it at 5.74 from 49,895 votes, while AniList places it at 56/100 with 247 favorites.

Fun Facts & Trivia

Fun fact 1: LeSean Thomas is credited with both the original plan and direction, making Yasuke an original anime project rather than a straightforward manga or light-novel adaptation.
Fun fact 2: The worldbuilding side of the production had dedicated senior roles: Minoru Nishida is credited for both art design and world design, while Junichi Higashi served as art director.
Fun fact 3: The visual pipeline credits include Azusa Sasaki for color design, Hyo-Gyu Park as director of photography, and Mutsumi Takemiya for editing, highlighting how many specialized departments shaped the show's dense fantasy-action presentation.
Fun fact 4: Many negative viewer reactions focus specifically on the presence of robots and magic in a series associated with a historical figure, a backlash reflected directly in user reviews and Reddit-style discussion snippets.
Fun fact 5: Despite the mixed score profile, web reception often singles out the music, voice cast, and bloody action scenes as the reasons the series remains easy to recommend as a three-hour binge.