Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed Shadows has caused significant uproar in Japan due to creative licenses and historical inaccuracies.The game focuses on the greatly exaggerated depiction of Yasuke, an alleged black samurai from the mid-1500s. Ubisoft turned the vague story of the "black slave" in Japan into a fierce and heroic samurai. As expected, Japanese gamers did not take kindly to the setting of feudal Japan being used for a game inspired by diversity, equity, and inclusion.The game has caused such great offense that Japanese political aides have made comments, and letters have been sent to Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology as well as to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, among others.'Assassin's Creed games are works of fiction inspired by real historical events and figures.'A petition regarding the "lack of historical accuracy and cultural respect" in the game is nearing 100,000 signatures."This game is based on the samurai of Japan, ignoring the fact that the samurai is the upper class," the petition continued. "Ubisoft continues to misunderstand the essence and role of samurai. This is a serious insult to Japanese culture and history and can lead to racism in Asia. We call on Ubisoft to immediately discontinue the launch."Ubisoft initially decreed complaints to be hateful and essentially racist, with CEO Yves Guillemot making remarks in June 2024."I want to make it clear that we, at Ubisoft, condemn these hateful acts in the strongest possible terms," Guillemot said, according to Game Developer. "I encourage the rest of the industry and players to denounce them, too."As YouTuber Shohei Kondo stated, the game's creative director, Jonathan Dumont, originally said the idea behind the black samurai character came from "looking for a character who could be seen by us as a samurai, someone who is not Japanese."Ubisoft's responseAs the backlash has only piled up, Ubisoft finally issued a lengthy statement in a blog post on July 23, 2024.After a brief apology and recognition of the importance of Japanese history, the company essentially excused its ignorance as artistic license but still reserved the right to use the Japanese historical settings as it saw fit."We have put significant effort into ensuring an immersive and respectful representation of Feudal Japan. However, our intention has never been to present any of our Assassin's Creed games, including Assassin's Creed Shadows, as factual representations of history, or historical characters. Instead, we aim to spark curiosity and encourage players to explore and learn more about the historical settings we get inspired by."The studio added that the game was "designed to be an entertaining video game that tells a compelling, historical fiction set in Feudal Japan."Ubisoft attributed its apparent cultural appropriation to being a work of fiction "inspired" by real events:"While we strive for authenticity in everything that we do, Assassin's Creed games are works of fiction inspired by real historical events and figures. From its inception, the series has taken creative license and incorporated fantasy elements to craft engaging and immersive experiences."The studio then essentially admitted the story of Yasuke, as depicted in the game, is fictional."The representation of Yasuke in our game is an illustration of this. ... While Yasuke is depicted as a samurai in Assassin's Creed Shadows, we acknowledge that this is a matter of debate and discussion."This was always the case, despite Ubisoft's attempt to push its game through without complaint.The few seemingly authentic historical documents from the time allude to Yasuke as being a man-at-arms or apprentice and possibly participating in one-armed conflict but was never mentioned as being a samurai. The documents included the African being seen as a spectacle, with locals paying to see him, having never seen a black person before.Yasuke also allegedly had his life spared after being referred to as "an animal [who] knows nothing." "Since he is not Japanese, do not kill him," a document was translated to say.Ubisoft has made 2024 the year of DEI-laden games and become one of the most- — if not the most- — criticized studios.One of its executives pushed for gamers to accept subscription models and get used to not owning their games, while its subsidiary, Massive Entertainment, dove head-first into DEI with Star Wars Outlaws. The game features a masculine female lead character while the studio made heavy pushes about "trans rights" and Pride on its website and social media.It is worth noting that a female main character is included in Assassin's Creed Shadows as well. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

On the final night of the Republican National Convention last week, aging pro wrestler Hulk Hogan took to the podium and performed his signature move of ripping off his tank top. As he revealed the Trump/Vance tank top beneath, he exhorted the crowd, "Let Trumpamania run wild, brother!"Millennials are the last generation to remember the glories of pre-digital life, the paradoxical freedom of having fewer choices. It's no wonder they feel nostalgic for the emo bands they used to love. As with anything in Trump's orbit, liberals and conservatives saw this moment very differently. For "The Daily Show," the appearance of the "washed-up fake wrestler" at the RNC was yet another indication of the irredeemable tackiness of Trump world and its inability to land anyone with the slightest cultural cachet. "I think Trump just locked up the vote of every teenager in 1992," quipped host Jordan Klepper. Conservatives, of course, were in on the joke. The goofy, tongue-in-cheek nostalgia of having the Hulkster prepare the way for Trump's big, post-assassination-attempt comeback was the point. In the meme-sphere, Hogan killed it. Klepper also mocked the performance by Kid Rock, who performed a Trumpified version of his almost 25-year-old hit "American Badass," complete with a chant echoing Trump's call to "fight!" as the Secret Service hustled him off the Butler, Pennsylvania, rally stage. Again, Klepper's jabs didn't really land. Rock certainly wasn't selected with the approval of an outlet like "The Daily Show" in mind. Still it's worth asking: why all the oldies acts? Consider that both WWE and rap-rock peaked at the end of the 20th century, which was also more or less the the peak of the pre-internet, American monoculture. While neither Rock nor Hogan commands the attention he did in his prime, in today's fractured entertainment landscape, hardly anyone does. The wrestler and the redneck are living embodiments of a different, more unifying sort of pop culture, before everything got so politicized. Trump himself used to enjoy this kind of apolitical fame. Most notably with his reality show but also with his many movie and TV cameos before that. Like Trump, both Hogan and Rock exude a kind of cheerful vulgarity, one far removed from today's ideologically driven displays of "LGBT awareness" and the like. Hogan is an especially potent symbol in this regard. He engaged in vice (making a sex tape with his friend and her wife) the old-fashioned way — in private. It was the left-leaning website Gawker that took it public, no doubt emboldened by Hogan's low status among media tastemakers. But then billionaire Peter Thiel took up Hogan's case and used it to put the sneering hipsters out of business. Democrats might laugh at RNC geriatrics rallying around such celebrity dinosaurs, but what would it look like for the GOP to court younger generations, especially at a legacy-media-type event like the party convention? Gen Z has no mass culture; it's broken up into specialized "scenes" that are all online. Millennials are the last generation to remember the glories of pre-digital life, the paradoxical freedom of having fewer choices. It's no wonder they feel nostalgic for the emo bands they used to love. "I'm not supposed to be here tonight," said Trump as he took the stage to accept the nomination. It was a nice bit of serendipity that his opening acts also weren't supposed to be there, in a sense. But like Trump, and the many Trump supporters the culture has done its best to leave behind, they're survivors — relics of a time when shared cultural and commercial incentives brought Americans together.

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