Culture wars over Assassin’s Creed: Shadows

Written by: Aarthi Ramnath, Raghav Bikhchandani & Yash Budhwar

Culture wars over Assassin’s Creed: Shadows

The context: The latest installment of the wildly popular action-adventure franchise Assassin’s Creed dropped last week. Assassin’s Creed: Shadows is set in feudal Japan during the late Sengoku period (16th century)—in a vast, immersive world inspired by real world locations.

Players have the choice of two protagonists: Fujibayashi Naoe, a female shinobi or ninja, and Yasuke, a Black samurai. The game also features same-sex romance options. With over a million players on launch day and an 81% Metacritic score, it was off to a roaring start—but soon found itself caught in the middle of trans-global culture wars.

Culture war #1: Yasuke triggered the usual backlash from right-wing critics, who were upset with maker Ubisoft’s “woke” diversity agenda—because, well, he’s Black. His biggest hater: Elon Musk, who tweeted, “DEI kills art.” Turns out the ‘inauthentic’ samurai is rooted in historical fact. Records show that there was an IRL Yasuke who was elevated to samurai status by the warlord Oda Nobunaga.

The interesting bit: Most of the criticism came from Western audiences—not Japanese players:

“It was people in the West who were upset with seeing Yasuke as a samurai,” [video game industry translator Kazuma Hashimoto] said, explaining that many of the negative online comments written in Japanese appeared to have been roughly translated from English.

Culture war #2: The dust had barely settled on the Assassin’s Creed brouhaha, when the Watazumi Shrine on Tsushima Island burst into the headlines. It supposedly inspired the Scarlet Rock Shrine in the 2020 Ghost of Tsushima video game. The shrine was vandalised by foreigners—what its caretakers called a “grave and unforgivable act of disrespect.” The details are vague but the priests have now banned all tourists.

Where the culture wars meet: The growing concerns around shrines fed into the backlash against Assassin's Creed: Shadows—because it allowed players to destroy in-game temples and artifacts. This in turn became fodder for more outrage and fear in Japan.

But, but, but: Some compare the fuss over the in-game shrines to overblown fears that violent games like Grand Theft Auto encourage real-life crime. And maybe the problem is not the game but tourists, in general—many of whom behave egregiously. Example: Logan Paul filming a dead body in Aokigahara Forest. The other grouse: An installment of the very same franchise allowed players to beat up the Pope. So why are the Japanese such snowflakes?

The fallout: Ubisoft has responded by making tables and shelving in shrines “indestructible,” and reducing “non-essential portrayals of bloodshed in shrines and temples.”

Reading list: GamesRadar via MSN offers more on the shrine vandalism controversy. New York Times is the best for the battle over Yasuke. For a spicy take on video games and irl violence, check out this piece from The Gamer.

‘Disappearing’ foreign students: A scary abduction at Tufts University

Things are getting really, really weird on US campuses. Unnamed masked people—calling themselves police—are abducting foreign students in broad daylight. Here’s what happened to Turkish citizen Rumeysa Ozturk—who has a valid student visa as a doctoral student at Tufts:

Rumeysa Ozturk, 30, had just left her home in Somerville on Tuesday night when she was stopped, lawyer Mahsa Khanbabai said in a petition filed in Boston federal court. Video obtained by The Associated Press appears to show six people, their faces covered, taking away Ozturk’s phone as she yells and is handcuffed. “We’re the police,” members of the group are heard saying in the video. A man is heard asking, “Why are you hiding your faces?”

According to the New York Times, these were Homeland Security agents. You can see the sequence of events captured by a resident’s surveillance camera:

Point to note: She has already been taken out of Massachusetts to the blood-red state of Louisiana—where judges are far more ‘sympathetic’.

Even scarier: No one knows what’s happened to Ozturk. Her lawyer has not been able to contact her. No one knows why she has been arrested. Her school had no prior notice—and has not been told why her visa has now been yanked. No charges have been filed. All we have is a statement—allegations made without any prima facie evidence that could be presented in court:

DHS and (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) investigations found Ozturk engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization that relishes the killing of Americans. A visa is a privilege, not a right. Glorifying and supporting terrorists who kill Americans is grounds for visa issuance to be terminated. This is commonsense security.

Ozturk’s likely crime: She was one of four authors of an op-ed in the college newspaper—which criticised the university response to pro-Palestine demands made by the student union. Ozturk did not participate in protests—but her name in the byline immediately made her a target for rightwing groups:

But after the piece was published, her name, photo and work history were featured by Canary Mission, a website that says it documents people who “promote hatred of the U.S.A., Israel and Jews on North American college campuses.” The op-ed was the only cited example of “anti-Israel activism” by Ozturk.

The big picture: The quote that sums up the state of affairs for anyone planning to go stateside:

“There is no distinction between undocumented immigrants, documented immigrants, green cards,” said Nazzaro, a retired college administrator from Winchester, Massachusetts. “It’s going to be the citizens next, if you’re the wrong color, wear a hijab.”

Or co-write an op-ed in the college newspaper. That’s all it takes now—to be ‘disappeared’ Pinochet-style—in a democracy that claims to be the bastion of free speech. We Indians should feel right at home.

Reading list: The Associated Press has the most details. New York Times has a good related report on the ‘Trump Slump’ in foreign travellers to the United States.

South Korea’s adoption agencies put profits over people

The context: South Korea is known as the world’s biggest ‘baby exporter’. The country has sent more than 200,000 children overseas for adoption since the 1950s—mostly to America and Europe. The reason: The Second World War and the end of the Korean War in 1953 had devastated the country:

In the aftermath of the Korean war, South Korea was one of the poorest countries in the world and few families were keen on adopting children. South Korea's government then began a transnational adoption programme handled by private agencies, which were given significant powers through special adoption laws.

What happened now: Many of these adoptees—sent overseas between 1964 and 1999—are accusing agencies of coercion and deception—including forcibly separating them from their mothers. Their allegations were confirmed by a Truth and Reconciliation Commission—which revealed its findings from the first 100 of 367 such complaints:

The commission found evidence of fabricated records, including “deliberate identity substitution” and false reports that the children being adopted had been abandoned by their birth parents. Often there was lack of proper parental consent for adoption, the commission said.

More damningly: The system incentivised this tragic trade in babies:

Part of the problem was that adoptions were almost entirely run by private agencies relying on donations, without government oversight.. “When adoption agencies depend on donations from adoptive parents, they are pressured to continue sending children abroad to sustain their operations. This structure increases the risk of illegal adoptions,” [said Commissioner Lee Sang-hoon].

The fallout: South Korea has tightened its adoption laws—which put the government in control of the process. The Commission also recommends the “government offer an official apology, conduct a comprehensive survey of adoptees’ citizenship status and come up with remedies for victims.” CNN and New York Times have more on these findings. Read BBC News for interview snippets from one adoptee whose case was investigated by the Commission.

Here’s foie gras that skips the force-feeding

WTF is ‘foie gras’? The phrase means ‘fat liver’ in French—and the prohibitively expensive pâté is made of the fattened liver of a duck or a goose. The catch: The traditional process of ‘fattening’ up the liver is just plain torture:

To fatten up the liver that’s used to create foie gras, farmers force-feed the fowl more grain than their bodies need. The excess food is stored as fat in the animal’s liver, which balloons in size.

The French call it ‘gavage’—and it has long been condemned by animal rights activists.

Point to note: In 2014, India became the first country to ban both the production and import of foie gras. Among the ‘offending’ restaurants at the time: Indian Accent—which served a foie gras galawati kebab.

What happened now: A team of German physicists have found a way to produce the delicacy in a lab. To be clear, this is not lab-grown meat. Birds will still be killed—just without the torture bit. The trick was to mix the fat with the liver—exactly the way it happens in a duck’s small intestine:

The duck or goose digests all that extra food using, among other things, enzymes called lipases that act like pairs of molecular scissors… When the team treated the duck fat with lipases, mixed it with normal liver, and then studied it with X-ray scattering and other techniques, the result was remarkably similar to foie gras.

Never forget: In the midst of all the fuss over foie gras, Vox offers this needed reminder:

Billions of animals raised for food are treated abysmally. They are, to name just a few standard industry practices, caged, mutilated without pain relief, and intensively bred to the point that they live in chronic pain and even struggle to stand up before being slaughtered, often painfully. Every year, humans kill 80 billion land animals — 10 times more than there are people on Earth — and an even larger, poorly tracked number of fish.

In fact, Vox has an excellent series on factory farming in general. New York Times (login required) and Science Daily have more on the foie gras study.

what caught our eye

business & tech

Apple Music subscribers can now mix their own sets with DJ, a new feature that lets them build and blend tracks directly from the streaming catalog.
Napster, once the face of music piracy, has been sold for $207 million to Infinite Reality, which plans to turn it into a social-first music platform.
Earth AI has discovered promising critical mineral deposits in Australia using AI algorithms, uncovering riches in areas long ignored by traditional miners.
The US Air Force is gearing up to test shipping cargo via SpaceX rockets, aiming to move supplies across the globe at lightning speed.
People who already feel lonely tend to feel even lonelier after heavy AI chatbot use, according to new MIT and OpenAI research.
Apple has been barred from Google's antitrust trial, jeopardising its $20 billion search deal as judges ruled it waited too long to get involved.
BluSmart's CEO and top execs have quit amid restructuring, as the company eyes profitability in 6-8 quarters despite fleet shakeups.
Indira IVF scrapped its Rs 3,500 crore (Rs 35 billion) IPO plans after SEBI flagged a Bollywood film allegedly promoting the fertility chain.
No more fear of “DExit‘—Delaware just passed a bill restructuring its corporate code that prevents companies like Meta from moving its HQ to Texas or Nevada.
In 2023, UMG, Concord and ABKCO filed a copyright lawsuit against Anthropic’s chatbot Claude. Now, Anthropic has charted a win in an early round of the lawsuit.

sports & entertainment

A writer who goes by the name of ‘Howard Spiel’ offers two bombshell blogs on the state of Bollywood.

‘The First Rule of Moifightclub’: how film producer Somen Mishra has spearheaded faux progressivism and a new kind of nepotistic hiring in Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions.
‘Crouching Tiger Baby, Hidden Bubble’: a takedown of recent releases by Tiger Baby—the production company run by Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti
Please note: both blog posts have since been deleted—and are preserved on archival links that may require multiple refreshes.

Amy Pascal and David Heyman—of ‘Spider-Man’ and ‘Harry Potter’ fame—will team up to produce the next James Bond film, for Amazon.
George Clooney is done-zo with acting in romance films! The reason: he’s way too old at 63, and doesn’t want to compete with Gen Z leading men.
The UK’s submission to this year’s Oscars—’Santosh’—has been blocked from release in India by the censor board. Apparently, its unflinching portrayal of Indian cops’ misogyny, anti-Muslim bigotry and violence was too much to handle.
Associated Press has a must-read on the ordeal that the co-director of Palestinian documentary ‘No Other Land’—Hamdan Ballal faced earlier this week—from being attacked by Israeli settlers to being arrested by the IDF.
Aamir Khan Productions rolled out Aamir Khan Talkies, a YouTube channel packed with exclusive behind-the-scenes footage, filmmaking insights, and untold stories from its films.
While nationalist films like Chhaava and Sky Force dominate Indian box offices, they barely make a dent abroad. Mint offers a reason: Overseas audiences want masala entertainers not political propaganda—contrary to the stereotype of the NRI.
Football fans, get hyped—Lionel Messi’s Argentina will play a friendly match in India in October.
Another night, another one-sided IPL match—this time, Kolkata Knight Riders chased down a target of 152—with 15 balls to spare—against the Rajasthan Royals in Guwahati.

health & environment

Some voices are simply more memorable than others, regardless of who the listener is, according to a new study.
An annual threat assessment report by US intelligence agencies has named India and China as ‘state actors’ directly enabling drug trafficking.
The world’s cancer database faces the classic case of racism—less than 2% of human genomes analysed so far have been those of Africans, despite the continent representing 17% of the world’s population.

meanwhile, in the world

An update on the Trump administration’s ‘accidental’ inclusion of The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg in a Signal war room group chat—the publication has released a transcript of text messages from the chat saying: “The administration has downplayed the importance of the text messages inadvertently sent to The Atlantic’s editor in chief.”
FYI: last month, the Pentagon had sent out a warning against using Signal, citing threats from Russian hackers.
Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has revealed that the Trump administration has proposed a new critical minerals deal that goes far beyond last month’s proposal.
Russia says it downed a pair of Ukrainian drones flying over the Black Sea on Tuesday night—despite the US brokering an agreement between the countries to pause attacks over the region.
Speaking of Russia: Airbus chairman warns there are “strong indications” that Russia is preparing to attack on NATO’s eastern flank—taking advantage of the growing weakness in the US–Europe alliance.
Europe is talking tough on defense spending, but leaders are struggling to replace the US’ role in funding Ukraine and their own security.
Thousands of Gazans marched through the ruins of northern Gaza, staging rare protests against Hamas and demanding an end to the 17-month war with Israel.
Financial Times (splainer gift link) profiles Gaza’s ‘money menders’, who mend tattered bills and rusted coins by hand amid a currency shortage.
Trump hit auto imports with a 25% tariff, eyeing $100 billion in tax revenue—jolting global supply chains. Note: he is bullying India to drop tariffs on US autos—including Tesla.
Veep JD Vance will join his wife Usha on an upcoming official trip to Greenland—which has been downsized from a long cultural trip to just a visit of a US space base.
Government forces in Sudan reclaimed the capital Khartoum after two years in.a bloody civil war that has claimed 150,000 lives. For context, see this Big Story.
An expert on eighteenth century French furniture is standing trial for allegedly duping customers into buying chairs with fake royal pedigree.
A United Airlines flight bound for Shanghai was forced to U-turn to San Francisco… because the pilot forgot his passport!
Hooray for Irish-English—’spice bag’, ‘class’ and six other loan words from the dialect have been added to the Oxford English Dictionary.

meanwhile, in India

The Supreme Court slammed the Allahabad High Court for its "total lack of sensitivity" and stayed parts of its order that ruled groping a woman’s breast didn’t amount to rape or attempted rape.
India reportedly gave a cold shoulder to Bangladesh’s interim Chief Adviser Mohammed Yunus’ request to visit New Delhi before heading to China, according to his press secretary.
Kunal Kamra slammed T-Series for flagging his stand-up special—you know, the one that mocked Maharashtra Deputy CM Eknath Shinde—on YouTube over copyright claims.
Trump issued an executive order mandating proof of citizenship for voting in US federal elections, citing India and Brazil as examples of stricter voter ID systems.
A US commission has called for sanctions against India’s RAW—the nation’s external intelligence agency—over alleged involvement in Sikh separatist assassination plots, citing worsening conditions for religious minorities.
New York Times has a good read on how India’s booming talent pool is drawing US businesses to set up massive offshore campuses, despite Trump-era tariffs.
A BJP MP has called for a national watchdog to rein in coaching centres after FIITJEE abruptly shut over a dozen centres, leaving students in the lurch.
Better Not Call Saul: Last week, the Bar Council of India warned law firms not to run ads on social media—triggered by DSK Legal’s Insta ad featuring the actor Rahul Bose. Mint has the story.

Six things to see

One: South Korea is facing one of its worst ever wildfires since Friday. The fires have burned 17,000 hectares (42,000 acres) of forest, claimed 24 lives and destroyed buildings—including a 1,000-year-old Gounsa temple in Uiseong. The sad bit: The wildfires are “developing in a way that is exceeding both existing prediction models and earlier expectations.” See a clip of the temple engulfed by fires below. (Al Jazeera)

Two: Instagram is awash in ‘brainrot’ AI and creepypasta AI-generated reels—which are (no surprise) making a ton of money. Nope we’re not talking about AI-generated animal vids. Think content like this:

Dora the Explorer feet mukbang; Peppa the Pig Skibidi toilet explosion; Steph Curry and LeBron James Ahegao Drakedom threesome; LeBron James and Diddy raping Steph Curry in prison; anthropomorphic fried egg strippers; iPhone case made of human skin; any number of sexualized Disney princesses doing anything you can imagine and lots of things you can’t; mermaids making out with fish; demon monster eating a woman’s head; face-swapped AI adult influencers with Down syndrome…

You get the gist. Here’s a slightly less disgusting brainrot video featuring AI generated LeBron James, Andrew Tate, and Mr. Beast. (404 Media, login required)

Three: NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured this stunning image of the ‘cosmic tornado’—which depicts the outflow from a newborn star—Herbig-Haro 49/50 (HH 49/50)—meeting the tip of a distant spiral galaxy. (Gizmodo)

Four: Say hello to the internet's newest sensation: Karis Dadson—a California teenager who shows pigs at livestock competitions. Her real super power: An icy stare that has made her go viral. Her stares are part of the showmanship and have been termed as ‘iconic’ by her fans! Check a clip out below. (New York Times)

Five: A Mohanlal and Shobana pairing? Yes please! Check out the trailer for their newest Malayalam movie ‘Thudarum’. The movie is set to hit the theatres soon. (Indian Express)

Six: Fans of Final Destination, rejoice! The horror franchise is back after 14 years! The reboot—which is the sixth instalment—is titled ‘Final Destination: Bloodlines’ and follows an entire family tree dying one person at a time—to pay for one member’s sins. The movie is slated for May 16. (TheWrap)