A satirical take on the Last Samurai trope deals a strong hand in this limited series
Media loves its tropes. Can’t get enough of them. Action movies rely on the underdog, or the man with nothing left to lose, the cop who doesn’t play by the book, the character out for revenge because their SO/Brother/Dog/Car had something horrible happen to it. Your sports movie needs to be about a person (or dog) against all odds coming out on top or close enough to on top that you feel good about it. But then there are the OTHER tropes. The bad tropes. The Bigot Tropes.
Published by Dark Horse, written and drawn by Eric Nguyen and co-written with Scott Burman we have a new mini-series to dive into called White Savior. For those that aren’t aware, White Savior is a trope, particularly in movies, where a white character is the person that is able to fix any if not all of the problems a minority or group of minorities is experiencing. Some notable examples in fiction (there are plenty of examples in historical fact-inspired stories that’s a whole different can of worms) are The Great Wall, Avatar, and most notably for this particular story, The Last Samurai. White Savior is essentially an isekai where the main character doesn’t believe the stories of the White Savior of his ancestors that was so bad at saving the village that he got them all killed and died himself, finds himself in that time period and face to face with the overweight, loud, racist, and arrogant man of the legend itself and needs to do something to turn this whole thing around or risk dying himself in the legend he knows all too well. Check out the video from the podcast attached here for more of my thoughts in this interesting satire of tired tropes.
This Review is based on a digital copy provided by the publisher to SideQuesting. It originally appeared on the January 18th, 2023 episode of The SideQuest. Logo, images, & game video courtesy Dark Horse, Eric Nguyen, Scott Burman. The book can be found in stores or online at the Dark Horse store.
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