IT WAS THE LESBIAN SUBTEXT FOR ME DAMM I CRIED 4 TIMES LOVE THIS MOVIE SM

Poor people in Asia: I’ve had nothing but plain rice with a pinch of salt for days Poor people in Raya: I’ve only had stew with veg and meat for days

1:43 "raya's dad who adheres to the beloved trope of..." me: DILF? "wise leader/father" me: oh

imagine making a southeast asian disney princess but not providing disney plus to southeast asia

I was so sad about the dragon designs! It literally has the facial design of the girls from frozen.... Give me cool dragons! Not these baby-eyed looking ones.

for me as a southeast asian living in southeast asia, i think the biggest miss for raya besides the casting was how generic and western the story felt and a lot southeast asian countries don’t even get disney+

“I stan Jesus” sounds like something a youth pastor trying to be hip would say

i kinda feel it was a lost opportunity to have a mixing pot of cultures they could have just given one southeast asian culture to each part of kumaandra

i look forward to that time every week when mina calls me a beautiful dove

As a SE Asian girl it was disappointing to me to not see a complete representation of my culture being displayed. I watched this movie with my mom and we both got very confused about why they would mix such different elements. I as an Indonesian girl would have liked to see garments from my country in a complete outfit rather than bits and pieces with that of completely different meaning. I think giving each land in Kumandra an association with clothing like they did with architecture would have been more satisfying.

That photo of someone wearing áo dài with no pants is the most cursed thing I’ve ever seen 💀💀

I lost it at "it's a Durian, Karen."

A lot of Pacific Islanders felt the same way when Moana came out. Instead of choosing one culture, Disney tried to make a new amalgamation of Pacific Island cultures which made it hard for some Islanders to relate to Moana and her culture. I'm not surprised Disney made the same choice here.

THANK YOU. Finally an Asian content creator that is WILLING to talk about the racism WITH IN the asian culture and not just here to pretend like oh well that was in the past or its not that bad. Tired of seeing east asians keeping their heads down on topics like this, acting like they don't benefit or part take from these disparities and colorism.

i grew up here in the philippines and your video just hit home how much colonialism WRECKED my country's history and how different we are compared to other SEA countries

i love daniel dae kim and gemma chan, i thought they were great in their roles, but i completely agree, disney should have casted more southeast asian actors in this movie :/

Was the question “stew or rice?” weird to anyone else? it makes no sense at all bc you eat stew WITH rice. Rice on its own is not a dish.

I think the reason why Avatar was able to work the mish-mosh of different Asian cultures is because there were clear distinctions between each Nation, hence I felt that there was more "respect" with the cultures that they re-interpreted. However, with Raya I feel that there was not much respect to the individual cultures of the countries of South East Asia, because it feels like Disney essentially said "Well, lets mix it up cause why not" when in fact, there is a diversity in the history and culture of each SEA country. For me I feel that Disney could have used more ways to differentiate each region rather than just using color, and really played on the history of each country. The problem for me with Raya is that it poses as an appreciation for SEA without actually going into the beauty of the countries' individuality. Though I would like to say that I haven't watched the movie (Disney doesn't even distribute Disney+ to SEA lol), and this is all from my first impression.

As a person whose first lenguage is kot english, i spent so much time wondering why South East Asians felt the need to write "sea" in all caps, like were they really that proud of their culture being related to the SEA and just now i realized its actually an acronym and not refering to the actual sea. The reviews make much more sense now, i feel so dumb.

i just...mina deserves a mcfreaking medal for *always* putting in effort to pronounce names of outfits, cultures, etc.

I have dead ass heard a youth pastor say “that’s a big Christian mood.” And yes, it was weird and kinda amusing.

I’m Laotian and I felt so happy watching this, I saw so many aspect of my culture represented in this movie and it warmed my soul. Laos is a small country so a lot of people aren’t familiar.

Keep shading Disney and their performance level representation

I love awkwafina so much but I agree, when I heard she was the voice of the dragon, it rubbed me in the wrong way that the actress wasn't gonna be from Southeast Asia culture

Sisu probably developed her siblings powers as a way to say that you are not just powerful alone, but from the strength from family, there is always something to learn from your family members that can make you stronger, and this is resonate with Southeast Asian culture because family is important.

THANK YOU MINA! being a Cambodian everyone looks over us and assumes our culture with Thai. No hate we just get looked over for everything. Our true origins all lost when during the Khmer Rouge. So thank you so much for your detailed research. It was heavily inspired by Cambodia and I’m so thankful for that. I’m so happy Disney finally made a princess for us South East Asian girls ❤️

I work in animation. Any details that they didn't include aren't because it's "harder to animate" when dealing with CG (that only applies to 2D animation, where everything is hand drawn). In CG they just build the model, so them not including the dragon heads was just a design choice by whoever had say over that costume. In 2D, yeah, definitely small details like that are harder to animate like you mention in your Anastasia video! But...yeah....it was probably a head designer/modeler or executive's decision to get rid of the double dragon head which is weird because I think it would've looked better. Love the amount of research you put into your videos!

I’ve heard people saying sisu strongly resembles the Filipino Bakunawa, a water dragon! The iconography is super similar especially with the moon/dragon crystal orb. Side note, Disney cast an unknown Filipina actress as Raya before firing her for kelly Marie Tran

Your line about the oldest cambodian garment only being from the 1850s made me sad cause I'm imagining all the super detailed clothes that are just lost to history

I can sympathise with the anger of Southeast Asians over casting East Asians in the roles from their culture. I always get angry when a Polish or Eastern European is played by an American or British person. They're all white, so what's the difference, right? Besides the fact that Eastern Europe has completely different history (e.g. no colonialism, in fact most of it was controlled by other empires: Ottomans, Austrians, Russians and Germans/Prussians, who all treated Slavs as second class citizens, even Russians were prejudiced against other Slavs) and very different culture from Western Europeans/Americans. And when I hear Americans speaking with perfect American accents or butcher Slavic names or words... ugh

10:03 I too also HATE when people on etsy or depop don't wear the ao dai properly, or call the ao dai a cheongsam/qipao... like really? First of all you didn't do you're research properly, secondly that's just disrespectful, thirdly THEY LOOK DIFFERENT, different material, cut, design, etc smh. I've also come across sellers who call cheongsam/qipao as kimono 🤦‍♀️ or have their models pose like this 🙏 or have chopsticks in their hair or space buns UGH

I found the rice scene interesting and historically accurate. Lots of parts in Southeast Asia and East Asia suffered and some continue to suffer from rice shortage more often than you would think. Sometimes it is because all the rice is being taken by a wealthier area or the price drops so low that farms need to sell more of their stock in order to make enough money to survive. Also factor in different weather conditions of droughts and floods causing rice production to plummet. Seeing that she hadn’t had it in a while, I’m guessing maybe a year or more which is understandable if they were suffering from a bad year or two of rice farming vs never having had it.

Disney: We wanted to represent Southeast Asia. Also Disney: We don't offer Disney+ services in Southeast Asia region.

i been waiting for this 1 🗣🔊🔊

my favorite part of this movie is definitely how gay namaari and raya are.

I almost died when you said "I sTaN jEaSuS"

Highkey that dragon looks like it should be in a Dr. Suess movie

i knew the southeast asian references would be here but i still thought it was so cool for someone to say "cambodia" so many times in a row! because the country that i've lived in for a good portion in my life isn't as recognized as their neighbors thailand or vietnam, and i just wanna say it's a beautiful country with amazing people and a super long and interesting history, so i hope people will like cambodian culture and appreciate it the same way they do with the surrounding nations :)

I know plenty of Christians who would say they stan Jesus lmao

I was disappointed with the dragon’s facial appearances. There was a lot of potential to have ethereal looking dragons, instead we got those... disturbing eyes.

Mina’s dedication to extensive research and yet flowing, natural delivery truly makes her and artist in her own right.

"all i had growing up was mulan, and she was from a totally different culture." as another se asian girl: 100%

Me having no idea about the history behind garments: YES MINA, YOU’RE ABSOLUTELY RIGHT, SERVE ME THE KNOWLEDGE

omg I literally couldn't stop laughing at the end when all the dragons came back... like it's just my little pony... why...

I have a headcannon that Raya's outfit has different peices from the different lands since shed been travelling for 6 years so she would have grown out of her clothes. Like the boots are from Spine, the cape is from fang, the hat is from talon, the shirt is either from fang or tail, and the pants are from spine or tail

I was really disappointed by the how lazy the plot of the movie was. Also, I think what they should’ve of done instead of mashing up our cultures together would have been to make each tribe inspired by a region in south East Asia. I think character designs could have been more consistent then. Also I really don’t like the way they designed Sisu.

Being called a neopets and then specifically a fairy draik has been the biggest compliment omg I'm so impressed by the level of research! I'm not knowledgeable on SEA culture/garments so this was really nice

"melting pot of... asian-ism..." that's a new sentence

The comment about the Durian fruit made me laugh so hard hahaha

Wet rice cultivation is extremely labor-intensive. In some historical periods across Asia, rice would be a luxury. Poor people would eat the easier to grow millet or barley. In East Asia (I don't know about SE Asia) a lot of farmers grew rice but couldn't afford to eat it themselves because rice was also used as currency and would be how they paid their taxes.

FINALLY A DISNEY MOVIE FEATURING HMONG CULTURE/CLOTHING! TYYY MINAA FOR MENTIONING IT 🥺♥️

It’s honestly INSULTING to have a movie try and mix all the different cultures of SEA into one movie bcs SEA is such a big region and having even the idea that they could take whichever elements they liked and put it together is so disrespectful to EVERY one of our communities. I’ve seen Malay and Filipino people fight over which culture Raya’s sword is from and it’s so unfair that we’re all fighting for representation. Just bcs it’s South East Asian, doesn’t mean it’s the right representation for all of us individually.

Mina: "Is like saying I stan Jesus. It's really weird." Me: * hides in Spanish*

Raya's dad calls her dewdrop. Namaari's mom calls her morning mist. Dew appears because of mist. VEEERRRY INTERESTING.

//SPOILER i'm pretty sure namaari was lying when she told raya they didn't have much resources in fang lol. she wanted to gain her trust so the army could steal the orb 😂

The problem I had with Raya was that the dialogue was too modern same thing with frozen and Moana. I know that they want the kids to feel that these characters are relatable then why set it in a classical setting in the first place. Overall I did like the movie but didn't like this bit. Btw I love the research you have done for this video.

I’m Cambodian American and this video truly taught me so much about my own culture. Seeing all the images brings back the culturally significant things that I grew up seeing and you explaining it clarified what I didn’t know. I’ve rarely ever been taught about the history that existed before the Khmer Rouge and this video just made it more special to me

I'm South East Asian and I like the movie, as far as a Disney Princess goes she have the spot for the most Badass along side with Mulan

Please say kah-my instead of Ker-mer, in academia they seem to say the latter, but Kah-my is how Cambodians say it :)

Why did your livechat start a jesus fandom😭

I’m half Filipina and the point you made about the lack of Southeast Asian representation is accurate. I am *really* embarrassed & ashamed to admit that at one point in my life, I felt more of a “connection” or “sense of longing” to be apart of a different culture partly because of Hollywood media. I grew up with Mulan, Pucca, and anime to name some Asian oriented content I was exposed to for a very long time (hold onto this info). My parents, Black father & Filipina mother, divorced when I was in 3rd grade. I lived with my mom for a few years before moving in with my dad’s relatives, whom I still currently live with to this day. Although I’ve spent several years always from my mom, my pride in my Asian identity never wavered.....But the thing was.....I “forgot” about it. My early childhood was primarily spent being influenced being Filipino culture (and a teeny tiny bit of Japanese culture which was weird because nobody in my immediate family is Japanese so like yeah?). Fast forward to living with black relatives, I kinda dropped the little bit I learned/was able to even vaguely remember about my Filipino heritage because in my mind at the time, it wasn’t practical to try and learn a language that nobody else ever used at school, malls, the grocery store, etc. I was the only Asian person I knew within a 10 mile radius so trying bring up Asian related things didn’t really make sense. Yes, I know how that sounds, but I was in middle school and I viewed things from a pragmatic standpoint and NOT because I was ashamed of being biracial (that has never been an issue with me). When I got to high school, I started getting into anime and my tensions between my mom and I died down a bit. Anime is primarily associated with Japanese culture....I love anime....I am Asian......and I realized just how lacking I was in my Asian half. So, for some reason, I went looking for “internal validation” of my Asian identity in a world that didn’t center around my own culture. Now, I never once thought I was Japanese or viewed their culture as “superior” to everyone else’s (I may have been going through an identity crisis but I never went off the deep end). I seriously thought watching anime would make me feel more connected to my Asian roots! It’s stupid but I legitimately believed that! I was stanning over Crazy Rich Asians (and I still do~), despite the characters being Chinese people living in Southeast Asia. If I watched a pieces of media that introduced an Asian character, I was all over them even though they were usually either of Chinese, Japanese, or Korean descent. And in weird way, despite me BEING of Southeast Asian decent, constantly seeing only certain types of Asian people fulfill tv/movie roles made me think negatively about my own culture. I briefly believed that Filipinos, Thais, Indonesians, and other cultural groups were not interesting because we scarcely received roles that explored us as people and simply acknowledged our existence in general. I hated that feeling. I couldn’t believe that for a moment, I allowed myself to entertain the idea of an “us vs them” mentality. I knew it was bad to think like this but I didn’t just how badly it already affected me. As of now, I am trying to rebuild a connection with my mom and do detailed research about Filipino culture (as far as I’m aware there aren’t many media outtakes on Southeast Asians, everything is usually East Asian centered). Southeast Asians *need* a stronger presence in mainstream entertainment. We are no better or lesser than anybody else in this planet. We have a right to be seen and be allowed to have our own established identities. My mentality has changed a lot in recent years for the better. I can thoroughly appreciate similar yet vastly different cultures without it resorting to toxic comparisons. It’s not easy and it mmmmm will be a long road ahead, but a movie like Raya and the Last Dragon, despite its multitude of missed opportunities/inaccuracies/problems in general, is a good start. I apologize for this long rant but this video brought out whole a lot of emotions and thoughts from me. I have now, and am still learning, the importance of keeping a culture alive in my heart.

Hi! Can you talk about the outfits of the protagonist in a Korean drama called "it's ok to not be ok" it's on Netflix. All of her outfits are from professional designers. You should watched!

Raya is a movie I'm reallyyy happy to exists as a southeast asian even though I personally wasn't into it. Obviously it could do better in representation in both casting and culture the but you kind of just had to accept it as a SEA inspired fantasy world rather than actual SEA lol. I really want Disney to make another SEA movie though that does take place in the real world.

regarding the "we're poor. we don't have rice" situation. I can only speak for myself but my dad who grew up post-war-Vietnam-poor says that rice was quite a valuable and scarce resource. if you watch any North Korean refugee videos, they also say that they would not have rice to eat, so yeah Raya was actually spot on.

In the University of the Philippines, graduates wear a "sablay" during grad rights which looks like the Sabai. The tradition is starting to influence other universities and colleges here, in lieu of the toga which is very hot and inappropriate for the climate. Sablay does mean drape in Tagalog when refering to cloth.

raya's dad explains why people paid so much to see the movie before anyone else 😳😳

AND I'M SEATED 🇵🇭

My mother told me, that in the Philippines Corn is a cheaper substitute for the more expensive rice. Hence stew might be a thing but rice is not. Source: Shes filippina, most of our Family still lives there.

It makes me so happy to see other minorities getting the representation we deserve, a victory for one is a victory for all. (But I will still be patiently waiting for a south Asian princess that's NOT a hot mess like Aladdin)

hey ph citizen here, and we actually went through a rice shortage when the pandemic started. bc our g0vt. keeps treating our farmers like shit it's ironic when u think abt how we used to be one of the too exporters of rice and now most the rice in the ph is imported :) so yeah it is possible to have a rice shortage in an asian country

Fellow SEA here! I definitely agree with you on the casting part. Personally I understand that you don't have to be the race/ethnicity of a character to voice in animation. But they purposely casted an all asian cast with such ratio between east asian and SEA. I feel like east asian and SEA was seen as the same the same thing, which gives me a slight "all asian is the same" vibe ngl. Absolutely a missed opportunity so SEA actors. Also! great video

I wasn’t very impressed by the movie it was subpar and forgettable. I was disappointed with its macguffin quest plot, one big thing I don’t like about Disney using different cultures is they only respect it as an aesthetic but don’t bother creating a plot that actually reflects culture, instead they take a regular old fashioned white American plot and try to “spice it up” by adding culture, and in my opinion if you could take the culture out of a movie and the movie still works you’ve obviously done something wrong.

I'm from Yogyakarta and the kotang jacket worn by raya is inspired by the Bregada troops, which in the past were real ass soldiers but now are seen more as cultural figures. More specifically, its from the Nyutro division of Bregada.

Mina's videos are so entertaining and informative I've learned a lot by watching them

Your pronunciation of Yogyakarta and Surakarta is so cute 😭😭😭❤️❤️ Anyway for me, someone who born and grew up in southeast Asia, I found this movie somewhat offensive, I know they didn't tend to make this movie offensive but somehow I just feel so. I actually put my bar of expectation too high, what a letdown, I mean who doesn't love Disney. I kinda wondering why people like it. I mean you CANT just put an entire region into one movie and called them the same. Indonesia alone have more than 300 ethnicities, There are 175 estimated languages spoken in the Philippines, Vietnam has 54 ethnic groups living across the country, and don't forget about Singapore, Laos, Brunei, and other countries in Southeast Asia that I didn't mention here. And what's with the differential season in kumandra, Tail has this grand canyon like landscapes, and tail with her snow, that kinda reminds me of Japan, just a big NO.

Me personally, im still happy that we have a Disney princess now. It would be difficult if they only take a culture from one country and say it representing southeast asia because we have a lot of similarities and it will cause conflict instead

I didn't mind the blending of cultures as much because the last few generations of my family had been pushed around escaping the political struggles in east and southeast Asia over the past century. We've lost parts of original culture, but also assimilated and had picked up things from the places we were able to call home for a bit of time. I have a friend with a similar family history who felt a bit attacked and invalidated when someone went off on them talking about how inaccurate it was because the cultures were blended. This experience - the pain of losing the connection to parts of our heritage but the joy of learning about and reconnecting to the origins of the cultural practices we've kept up even if they aren't all from the same place - is valid. I do hope that there could be more opportunities to explore the unique cultures in southeast Asia through something like a spinoff TV series (like there is for Tangled, Hercules, Aladdin, etc) with more time to do so, or future movies focused on more specific locations. A two-hour movie just isn't enough time to do it justice.

when they talk about the lack of rice, i was reminded of japanese colonialism of korea! koreans had to supplement rice with things like chicken feed because all the rice that was farmed on the peninsula was taken by the japanese. the japanese also destroyed several types of rice native to korea and made them extinct (in addition to a bunch of other native korean species of flora and fauna).

being called a beautiful dove is the best part of my week

I think some people forget that Kumandra is a fantasy land. Disney can’t just choose one SEA country to represent because Kumandra doesn’t exist, it’s just supposed to be a SEA inspired place. So they took different inspirations from various SEA countries to create this fantasy land. The representation here was actually pretty good considering how diverse SEA is. (I’m southeast Asian so pls don’t attack me)

yes!!! seeing non-se asians reactions to durian is so irritating 😠 my grandparents are durian farmers so i live in constant envy of them bc i can never access good fresh durian that aren't super exxy where i live 😭

I'm just glad I'm not the only one facepalming at the... unfortunate design choices they had for Namaari and her mom :")) The undercut and the super clean cuts of their clothing just... bothered me so much. I'm Indonesian, and I feel like it really is a missed opportunity, when there's a whole plethora of SEA royal clothing to base their designs off. Especially the elaborate hairstyles and headgears - such a missed opportunity!

I think the reason that they are referred to as “dragon nerds” instead of it being treated as a religion was so that some parents wouldn’t think that Disney’s trying to manipulate their kids into believing in other deities.

@19:19 As a fellow Hmong, I am very proud that this movie included a minority in it. I was not expecting any minority representation in this film. I thought it was just going to be SEA countries, excluding minorities. Well, I was wrong, and props to Disney for including the minority in it.

I lived in Indonesia and Thailand and even traveled to Singapore and Malaysia and boy was I pissed at the design of the dragons.

I love that this is include alot of Cambodia stuff becoz most of the other video always refer Cambodian stuff as Thai stuff due to it’s similarities . This means that she did her research 💖💖✨

"bUt tHeN eVeRytHinG chAngEd wHen thE faNg nAtiOn atTacKeD" I died ☠️

Thank you so much for the videos. It’s not often to hear about Cambodia’s culture, Cambodia has always been overshadowed by other south east countries.

I actually feel like fang’s leaders having more expensive/modern wear makes sense. I think that if their garments were patterned they would look more traditional, but it’s almost like they had to make an expensive looking garment out of a cheap fabric. It also gives the vibe that they value their appearance and wealth over the people’s, which I guess isn’t exactly true, but still drives home that villain vibe.

I don’t even have to watch this video to know how great it’ll be

Why do I feel attacked wearing a silver ring on the left hand and a gold ring on the right hand.... :D

so well thought out, researched, and put together!! you literally had my attention gripped from beginning to end--so much so that when you were announcing the end of the video i was so sad, i could hear you talk for hours! thank you for your hard work as always, love love love. ♥️

So everyone is talking abt Southeast Asia so in the meantime, pls help us to save Myanmar 🇲🇲 🇲🇲 #savemyanmar

I like the avatar last air-bender-esque kind of world. Obviously it's not an accurate representation but it's also not really meant to be, though of course an accurate one would be good. At the very least it wasn't offensive.

on the religion nerd thing, before covid I joined a group at my local church that was a sorta theology history group that was interested in talking about anthropological discoveries and more recent bible translations, and yeah, even though it was more or less a knitting chat group, they definitely called themselves “theology nerds” they were precious and very welcoming ladies and I miss them bunches

Im glad that this movie is based on southeast asia in general, bcs none of southeast asia countries can claim raya, we just kinda share her bcs i know indonesian and malaysian can be competitive when it comes to culture. Even tho its more to viatnamese/thai culture but as a malaysian, i can definitely see my culture in this especially the food and the scene where they making batik.

My country Cambodia being recognized 🥺 you showing those beautiful temple sculptures. Such a great informative video

Raya and the Last Dragon --- It was inspired by some of prominent figures & folklores throughout Asia - Tun Fatimah from Malaysia, Sang Kelembai... many elements were gathered between the vast regions 🕊️🐉🙏 I'm not familiar much abt folklores from neighboring countries... so maybe local can give some input on it... I'm from Malaysia🇲🇾♥️ I've watched this movie, fascinating! It's special and it was remarkable that they created it from home despite the pandemic halting the whole thing!

It's actually historically accurate that the poor wouldn't have rice, but would eat rougher grains

about the cultural mix thing, I don't think Disney can win with that one, if they just copy and paste from 1 culture they'll be called out for being unoriginal and flat-out culture appropriation, but if they just take inspiration from more of them, they can create a more "original" story that doesn't focus specifically on telling a story about a specific ethnicity or country. The same way Avatar did it, I think it was meant to simply be an imaginary world of fantasy, not a real place, but inspired by many cultures from Asia. Asian media do the same with Western cultures and we don't tend to complain much about it, but each with their own I guess.