Featured image: Samurai crew from left to right: Christian Thornton (Former Chief Marketing Officer), Immanuel Gracia (CEO & Creator,) Alex Moore (Lead Writer) and Phill Jones (Chief Operating Officer)
Spanning 19 episodes, the lengthy “Dragon Ball Z” battle between Goku and Frieza is one of the longest in anime history. Immanuel Gracia watched every single episode, falling deeper in love with the Japanese medium each time.
“It started for me with ‘Dragon Ball Z,’” he says. “I just thought it was so crazy that it wrapped me up in a way that I could relate to it.”
Prior to the pandemic, Puerto Rican-born Gracia worked in music, managing artists while making his own. Once the music slowed down due to COVID-19, Gracia, who now lives in Greensboro, quickly sought another means of artistic expression. Enter “Samurai: The Legendary Ronin,” an anime series that explores political- and social-justice issues through the eyes of Yoshihiro, an Afro-Asian ronin with a heart full of rage. It revolves around the oppression of his people by Emperor Okuda and others whose goal is to destroy essential farmlands so he can rule over those communities, a metaphor for gentrification. The first episode is loosely based on the death of Ahmaud Arbery, an unarmed Black man out for a jog who was pursued by three white men in a truck, one of whom shot and killed Arbery in February 2020.
“The reason this show started is because of that Ahmaud Arbery video,” Gracia says. “If you watch the first scene in the show, you’ll be like, That’s familiar. Two off-duty officers? That’s familiar.”
Gracia searched social media and his inner circle for writers, artists and animators to work on the show and join Golden Dynasty Entertainment, the independent animation studio through which the series will be released. Instagram is where he saw the work of 18-year-old Neev Asken, an animator from Los Angeles. After exchanging ideas with Gracia, Asken became the first to join the project, causing GDE to reach nationwide status. Gracia then contacted Pasquale Dorsi, a freelance animator and illustrator from New Jersey to act as art director and influence character design. Rather than draw characters himself, Dorsi manages the team of artists, making sure they’re sticking to the image Gracia, known to the GDE team as “Lou,” desires.
“Lou had a specific vision in mind, but he gave me creative control to take what he wanted and just flesh it out,” Dorsi says.
Gracia says he took inspiration from “Batman: The Animated Series” and “Dragon Ball Z” for the art style of “Samurai,” with Dorsi putting his own touch on the process. He chose to make the characters more realistic than using traditional anime style which typically feature exaggerated facial expressions and wide eyes. The characters of “Samurai: The Legendary Ronin” look similar to “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” yet Yoshihiro’s dreadlocks exude the individuality of Gracia’s vision and GDE’s art style.
website, Facebook page, YouTube Channel and KickStarter campaign.
Join the First Amendment Society, a membership that goes directly to funding TCB‘s newsroom.
We believe that reporting can save the world.
The TCB First Amendment Society recognizes the vital role of a free, unfettered press with a bundling of local experiences designed to build community, and unique engagements with our newsroom that will help you understand, and shape, local journalism’s critical role in uplifting the people in our cities.
All revenue goes directly into the newsroom as reporters’ salaries and freelance commissions.
maybe next they can tackle trans rights issues. Seems Immanuel Gracia needs some sensitivity training in that area judging by his facebook jokes