tonicboy

Yasuke was a real historical figure, an African who served Nobunaga Oda. Very little is known about him, but the idea of a black African serving as a samurai in feudal Japan has always been intriguing. Exploring the true story of this mysterious figure would already have been compelling, so it was incredibly disappointing to see the story jump the shark into a land of Samurai mecha, aliens with supernatural powers and battles in feudal Japan involving lasers.

I'm sorry if I technically gave spoilers here, but these are things they revealed in the trailer anyway. Why even bother to base this on a historical figure if you're going to go the full-on fantasy and sci-fi route?

If the show had other redeeming qualities, I could forgive this bizarre directorial direction and just go with it, but the voice acting is terrible - delivered in a stiff, wooden monotone by most actors - and the character development is seriously lacking, replaced by bored old tropes rehashed. The animation isn't terrible but neither is it very good, maybe something along the lines of Legend of Korra quality, but you can tell the production quality doesn't rival a true Japanese studio.

I had high hopes for a show that promised to delve into a back alley of history and tell an interesting tale but what I got was corny and poorly produced.

I love Pacific Rim, with all its flaws. So, I was particularly excited to hear that they were turning it into a Netflix Original Anime, especially given the great job that Netflix did with Castlevania, Ultraman and other anime.

I grew up on American cartoons, and I do love them, but I absolutely fell in love with Japanese anime in my tweens because I felt that the Japanese never saw anime as strictly a medium for children. They weren't afraid of telling stories for older audiences and tackling mature topics and emotions.

Evangelion is possibly the best example of this, being a tale of robots and aliens on the surface but ultimately a much more sophisticated story about depression, isolation and the human struggle - on an intensely personal scale.

Well, Pacific Rim: The Black is exactly like Evangelion... if you took out every single ounce of sophistication and dumbed it down for 14-15 year old kids. Its lineage descends much more from the US after-school cartoon programming like Transformers and GI Joe than Japanese anime like Evangelion or even the surprisingly sophisticated yet still action-oriented Gundam series.

The thing about "dumbing down" programming for teens is that... you don't actually ned to dumb it down at all. Teenagers are far more worldly than most people give them credit for and yet it's the American philosophy that you have to simplify things for them to make it easier to appeal to them. The crazy thing about Evangelion, is that it's also actually targeted at teens. And yet it sees no need to dumb down a single thing.

I wanted to make this a spoiler-free review so I can't actually cite specific examples, but PR: Black abounds with trite storylines and details that constantly elicit face palms. While the acting is perfectly fine, the characters are shallow and predictable. Only in the very last episode did they give a faint hint of something more interesting to come, but I don't know if it's enough to make me come back for season 2.