#sisu

Sisu visible heartbeat

The audacity of these two holding hands AND not get together in the end?? Criminal I tell you,,

"He just refuses to die."

Sisu, 2022.

I like that they tried to build their own world, and it had consistent rules. Water = good, so it's a universal equalizer in everything from real-estate choices to turns-of-phrase no matter where you're from. Plus, the whole world used to be one "body" (shaped like a dragon) and when they divide they're all named after body parts, which sound lame and weird instead of being part of a whole. There are different creatures in each sub-culture, from monkeys to pill bugs to cats.

I like the idea of the cast. I like that they're all different ages, and different walks of life in addition to being from different places. This isn't Avatar: it's not just a gaggle of kids learning to bridge the gap between countries together. The kid is a businessman. The baby is a criminal. The man is a warrior. And Raya is a Princess. But they're all able to relate to each other through loss.

I like the first Act, setting up the story. I like that despite the clunkiness of having two prologues (one where we explain why the dragons are gone and a second where we explain the main character's childhood) they do distill a lot of information that's going to be important later successfully. You get good characterization of Raya pre-betrayal, and good relationship-forging between her and her father, for example.

I really, really, unashamedly, unapologetically like Sisu. I like the way she's written to respond to things. Example: when Raya navigates the ropes, then beckons Sisu to join her, Sisu slithers through super-fast and easy. But then her hat slips down over her eyes and she adjusts it; she doesn't even notice she did something cool. And when Raya geeks out a little in response, THEN Sisu doesn't pull a Maui ("yes it's really me, it's Maui, breathe it in!") she goes, "impressed, huh?" And moves right on into an awkward rhyme about how she's better in the water. And when Raya doesn't think the rhyme is cool, Sisu just kind of shakes it off.

Like, she could constantly be insecure and down on herself because she's aware that she's screwing things up. She says right off the bat, "I'm not like, the best dragon." She doesn't jump when Raya's jumping. She runs on all fours in a human form. She almost gets them blown up by little bugs. She gets Raya's pop-quiz questions wrong. She almost gets them killed by the Talon people. But she doesn't spend the whole time going, "oh I mess everything up." She just shakes it off and tries again.

If you were a bitter and jaded (get it? Jade? The currency in the movie?) teenage girl who used to be more hopeful, and a lot of that hope had to do with a legendary dragon character, and then that dragon character really appeared to help you save your dad—you would want that celebrity-dragon-legend-come-to-life to be like Sisu. She's easy to relate to, she's warm and personable, she immediately wants to help you—"hey, we'll get your Ba back, I got you girl, come on, who's your dragon?"—and she won't let all your baggage drag her down, so if any little piece of you still has hope, she can fan that spark into a flame because she's not giving up on that part of you.

I like that she is trusting, and can't even pick up on when Raya wants her to be sarcastic or antagonistic to Namari in their first meeting. I like that she's just as concerned about Raya's jaded worldview and fixing THAT as she is about fixing the world.

I like that she's blue, like Genie and the Fairy Godmother and The Blue Fairy and Merlin and all the other Disney characters who are supernatural and come to help grow the main character.

I like Sisu's animation. I like that you can feel her size when she's in the water or when a human tackles her. I like that constant-mouthy-toothiness they're always doing with her snout and the way her lips move, even when she's human. I like the faint stripes of blue and pink on her mane. I like her big angular eyes and furriness.

And I really understand and think they worked hard on the theme. The gem is broken but used to be a whole. The continent is broken but used to be a whole. Raya's sword breaks into pieces but remains a whole. Sisu's magic on her own is just strong swimming—but when she adopts the magic of others she is more powerful.

The problem with Raya and the Last Dragon is threefold:

That main theme, "Trust unites us and self-protection divides us: together we're strong but apart we're weak" is fine. But it's built on the premise that if you simply extend trust to others, something good in them will wake up and return the gesture. And that's just...not true. People don't mistrust one another unjustly. People are innately selfish, and they're not always selfish simply because they have past trauma. Sometimes they're just entitled. Doesn't matter. We might be stronger together, but we shouldn't be extending the hand of friendship ONLY because we believe there's good in the person we're extending it to.

2. The writing is bad. With so much effort put into showing, there doesn't need to be that much telling. "Trust" is mentioned twenty times too often. And the characters all tend to sound like one another (with the exception of Sisu and the old man.) They all have slick one-liners. They all use tweenthousands phrases.

3. The characterizations are very misguided. The woman all—all—act like Western white men. Soldiers. They say things in the same cadence and with much the same facial expressions as Marine Jake Sully from the first Avatar movie. Even as children. They swagger. They show off their arm muscles. They even fight like men. And this part I really don't understand—Namari, Raya, and two or three of the background warrior-women all lower their voices an octave like they're making a conscious effort to sound tough. And again—they do that from moment-one. Little-kid Raya, pre-betrayal, talks to Tuk-Tuk like she's the high-school quarterback of his football team. So you can't even spin it and say these women had to shed their femininity because of the tough world they grew up in. And it's not just that. The little kid, Boon, Talks in this sly-one-liner drawl at all times. Everyone is doing the "Law & Order scene stinger ending" every time they finish speaking. Everyone punctuates their lines by dipping their heads forward.

Sisu does start to come off as annoying because all there is to her is the same facet over and over—she's not self-protective so she trusts everyone and wants to help everyone. Over and over. For contrast: Genie is also a magical new-best-friend here to help the main character achieve his goals and learn a lesson. Genie does tell Aladdin he should tell Jasmine the truth. That's the thing Aladdin needs to learn, like how Raya needs to learn to trust self-sacrificially. But there's more to Genie than that. He's not walking around telling everyone the truth--that contrast to Aladdin is not all we see of his character. He also wants to be free from his lamp. He also starts to befriend Aladdin, instead of just thinking of him as his "master." He also wants Aladdin to have what he wants—he's on board with Aladdin remaining with Jasmine.

Everything Sisu does is pretty one-note. And she goes through the same beat in different shapes over and over: "trusts openly, almost gets killed for it, Raya saves her, Raya scolds her, Sisu tries to trust openly again, rinse, repeat." Honestly the most endearing part of the film is when Sisu comes roaring in to save Raya from Namari, because it's the first time we see her aggressively picking a side to the exclusion of another. It's a new facet. But it's over pretty quickly. There should have been more moments like that, or more sides to Sisu in general.

She was! The way she moved her ankles and feet like hooves.

Later she turns her forehead first when Haggard walks toward her.

This was so cool to see the animators consider this character is a UNICORN IN THE SHAPE OF A WOMAN, so she moves her human body like a unicorn!

Great detail work/acting from the animation team! Here's to the "Monster Turned Into a Human Trope"

Ariel from the Little Mermaid tring to figure out legs.

Sisu from Raya and The Last Dragon crawling around all over the place.

Making merch based on concept art versions of characters is honestly such a cool idea.

The 1985 version of Stitch would make an awesome figurine too imo

Other cool ideas I can think of:

The Light Fury designs we should’ve had

All original Sisu designs