Raya and the Last Dragon / YMMV

Adorkable: Sisu's eagerness to help and insatiable curiosity about the human world makes her come across as adorable, and a large amount of the film's early comic relief is her learning about how things work in the world after 500 years of being asleep.
Alternate Aesop Interpretation:
- While the story aesop is about the need to trust people, due to how the conflict started and became worse due to being too trusting, an alternative take could be that sometimes trust needs to be given freely, sometimes trust must be earned.
- You need to trust the right people, and learn if they can be trusted. Trust at first meetings can help bridge a gap but don't trust too blindly at such instances. The ones you can trust are the ones who will offer you something as well, showing that they in turn can be trusted; Raya is able to progress in her journey and gain allies because they help her out as well. And in turn, the legitimate trust you have in someone can inspire trust in others, because you've demonstrated it can be a worthwhile quality.
Alternative Character Interpretation:
- With all the gem fragments in her possession, Namaari is about to leave the collapsed sub-level but stumbles and looks back at the petrified forms of Raya, Boun, Noi and Tong which causes her to change her mind. Did she stay to repay the trust Raya and her friends put in her by reassembling the gem fragments to try and make amends for everything? Or did looking at the statues make her realize that she had nothing to escape to? Her mother was petrified, her city had fallen, there was no more water in the world and the Druun were everywhere; as such, with nothing left to lose, she reassembles the Dragon Gem as the only viable option she has left.
- Noi, the con-baby: Her character section presumes she was Raised by Wolves and took to stealing after her family was petrified. However, it's entirely possible that she was raised as a kind of Tyke-Bomb who was trained to work with her family's pet Ongis to steal for them. Given what we know of Talon and that she couldn't have been separated from her mother for too long given her age, she may have just adapted her training to survive.
Anvilicious: The film is very blunt about its theme of The Power of Trust, and attempting to make a drinking game out of how often they say it will send you to the hospital.
Awesome Animation: The striking computer animation on display throughout the film is clear evidence as to how far Walt Disney Animation has come in using CGI since their first foray back in 2005 with Chicken Little. It's all the more impressive since a lot of the work had to be done at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Awesome Music: The trailer uses "Start a Riot" by BEGINNERS and Night Panda, setting the mood for one of Disney Animation's most action-oriented projects to date.
Base-Breaking Character:
- Noi. There are those who feel her antics with the Ongis help provide some much needed levity in one of the Disney Animated Canon's darker films. Others feel the concept of a "con-baby" and the intelligence and physical coordination she exhibits as a toddler is just too stupid and ludicrous to be taken seriously.
- Sisu. There are those who find her to be a fun character with a sweet personality and an open heart, while others find her "just trust" attitude incredibly annoying and at times Too Dumb to Live given that she never seems to learn from her mistakes that sometimes trust does have to be earned and can't always be freely given.
- Namaari. One part of the fanbase considers her an interesting Anti-Villain and a Jerkass Woobie who does a lot of misguided actions for sympathetic reasons and has a compelling and very emotionally-charged Les Yay relationship with Raya. The other part despises her, viewing her as unfairly Easily Forgiven given that the self-interested actions she engages in dwarfs whatever sympathetic motivations she might've had beforehand, or that her motivations aren't sympathetic at all despite what the story presents them as. It doesn't help that, while she may feel privately guilty, she never apologizes or admits wrongdoing and even her "redemptive" act of restoring the gem at the end can be seen as being in her own self-interest and requires no moral reflection.
Broken Aesop: Chief Benja believes that one should not withhold trust from someone just because they are from another tribe, another land and this call to trust is a noble one and hard to argue with. Sisu also believes similarly, reasoning that the world was so broken because people won't learn to trust each other. However, this is very different from withholding trust from someone who has deliberately and intentionally betrayed you. This caused Raya to shut down completely and not trust anyone, but her experiences in the story encouraged her to open up again, including to Namaari, who unfortunately, betrayed that trust a second time. Ultimately when dealing with betrayal, one side should not be expected to do all the heavy lifting and always be the first to give forth trust especially when the side that betrayed you never openly acknowledges the hurt they caused.
Catharsis Factor: The other chiefs suffering Karma Houdini Warranty comes off as this. The Tail Chieftainess is killed by her own booby traps and paranoia, while the Chiefs of Spine and Talon got turned to stone by the Druun. Virana also finds out that her own people are starving and that Namaari is seen as a permanent figure of dishonor.
Common Knowledge: That Namaari killed Sisu, and then the story tries to place equal blame on Namaari and Raya. In truth, Raya did have a part, it was just for a different reason than the film presented. The film presented that it was because Raya didn't trust Sisu's judgement. The real part she had in it was choosing the wrong reaction to the threat Namaari was presenting, in that trying to disarm Namaari of her crossbow with her whip sword only ensured that she ended up accidentally firing.
Crossover Ship: There are several fans who ship Sisu with Long, another dragon from a 2021 animated film.
Don't Shoot the Message: While the moral about the Power of Trust, and how only cooperation between people can lead to harmony, is all good and well, a number of viewers thought the execution left something to be desired, given that it requires the main character to put unerring faith in a person who already betrayed, antagonized, and hurt her for selfish reasons for years, and even set off the near-apocalypse that wiped out all of Raya's people. Raya is given no reason to forgive Namaari, aside from the fact the narrative actively forced them to reconcile, and following this sort of blind, unconditional forgiveness can be very dangerous in reality. Indeed, Sisu's naivety in trusting everyone she meets at face value very nearly gets her killed more than once.
Fanfic Fuel:
- Both Benja and Virana's spouses are never seen nor mentioned at all in the film. What could’ve happened to them?
- Why didn't the Dragons come back after the first time the Dragon Gem was used? There appears to be no difference between happened the first and second time.
- If everything was all supposedly sunshine and rainbows, why did the Druun appear anyway 500 years ago?
Foe Yay Shipping: After the Official Trailer was released, fans were very quick to ship Raya with Namaari, despite them spending the entire trailer either fighting or staring daggers at each other. Even more so when the movie revealed they got along well when they first met and Namaari pulls a Heel–Face Turn in the climax, making it prime material for "friends to enemies to lovers" shippers, especially since just like Elsa and Moana, Raya does not have a canon love interest. Raya's actress Kelly Marie Tran has also stated that she views the character as LGBT, and enthusiastically acknowledges the Foe Romance Subtext between Raya and Namaari. It helps the two constantly partake in Casual Danger Dialogue and use Terms of Endangerment for one another such as "Dep la" which is likely derived from đẹp, meaning "Beautiful" in Vietnamese. The novelization says it means "Best Friend" in Kumandra.
Hilarious in Hindsight:
- Later in the same year, Awkwafina would play the one regular person who's in a battle involving dragons.
- Walking Wake, the paradox version of Suicune, resembles Sisu from this movie.
- Awkwafina would go on to voice Zhen in Kung Fu Panda 4 and accompany the Dragon Warrior Po on his journey to Juniper City. At the end of the film, it is revealed that Po has chosen Zhen as the new Dragon Warrior.
Inferred Holocaust: The Druun are gone and everyone is back again, even the dragons! Except the people who died of starvation (e.g. the Tail chief), the people whose statues broke (though it's never revealed if a petrified human can be broken), the orphans that couldn't survive on their own (children that weren't as lucky as Boun and Little Noi the con baby), etc.
Informed Wrongness: The film breaks its Aesop of "trust and forgiveness" over protagonist Raya's head. She is repeatedly told that she needs to be more trusting, which blatantly ignores the fact that trusting someone she barely knew helped send the world into its current state in the first place^note. After Raya's party confronts Namaari, she pulls a crossbow on them and demands Sisu and the gem fragments (betraying Raya's trust again). Raya is called out for not trusting Sisu to handle the situation after Namaari shoots and kills Sisu. But Raya (and the audience) could see Namaari's finger tightening on the trigger. It was perfectly reasonable for Raya to see this and react, especially given Namaari's previous actions.
Just Here for Godzilla: Kelly Marie Tran being announced as the voice of Raya quickly gained interest from her supporters in the Star Wars fandom.
LGBT Fanbase: Thanks to the Foe Yay Shipping between Raya and Namaari, with Kelly Marie Tran stating she believes Raya is LGBT, the movie has a following among such an audience.
Memetic Mutation:
- Comparing Sisu's design to Elsa, Sulley, and Bibble. Some have even gone as far as to state that due to Unintentional Uncanny Valley (see below example), Sisu is effectively Elsa's fursona.
- Namaari's haircut, being a half-shaved undercut, has been widely compared to a Karen, with her unpleasant attitude furthering the Karen comparisons.
Moe: Raya as a child definitely qualifies for being extremely adorable and earnest. It’s Downplayed for adult Raya however, who compared to other Disney Princesses gets much more serious and world-weary, though she does still have her quirky moments every now and then.
Moral Event Horizon: Dang Hu (the Talon chieftain) initially comes off as a Cool Old Lady and Reasonable Authority Figure... till she threatens to leave Sisu (disguised as a human) at the mercy of the Druun unless she tells her where the gem shards are. Unlike Virana and Namaari (who seek redemption), Dang Hu is motivated by greed. Sisu would have died if Raya and co. didn't come to her aid immediately.
Narm: "Dep La" (intended to mean "beauty" or "strange beauty" in Vietnamese) is used in a neutral tone. As Vietnamese is a tonal language, this results in some enunciations of the phrase ending up as the Vietnamese term for "screaming sandals".
One True Pairing: There are very few people that don't ship Raya and Namaari. It helps that neither one have a canonical love interest.
Preemptive Shipping: Following the very first trailer, a lot of fans shipped Raya and Namaari, despite them being presented as enemies. This continued after the film released and added a load of Les Yay to their dynamic, with them easily being the most popular in the fandom.
Questionable Casting:
- The casting has earned some criticism for mostly comprising East Asian actors rather than Southeast Asian actors despite billing the movie as Southeast Asian-inspired, as the two regions have very little overlap and Disney could have used the film to cast lesser-known Southeast Asian actors who receive little representation in Hollywood. It would turn out that some Southeast Asian actors involved in the film only serve as unidentifiable background voices, further rubbing salt in the wound.
- The recasting of Cassie Steele to Kelly Marie Tran as Raya. While Tran was a well-liked casting choice due to Just Here for Godzilla and being a major face for Southeast Asian representation in Hollywood, the reason for the recast according to co-director Osnat Shurer was that it was necessitated by "a change in Raya's story". As the casting for other characters was later revealed, it would turn out that Steele would have been the only main Filipino actor involved in the project, especially jarring given Filipino-Americans make up a large demographic in the States and that having a Filipina-Canadian voice actress would be a closer connection to Raya's Malaysian-Indonesian influence.
Ron the Death Eater: Some viewers tend to ignore the nuances of Namaari's character — that she harbors repressed guilt for being a catalyst for the Druun's return and the world slowly ending — and believe her to be the back-stabbing bitch most people think she was In-Universe. This is mostly because she is at the center of the film's Broken Aesop (having willfully broken Raya's trust twice) and that even if she did contribute to the Druun's defeat, the film ends with her getting off relatively well considering everything that happened was her fault. One thing viewers don't seem to notice is that Sisu was actually right about Namaari, as a prior scene showed that Namaari's first instinct was to help Raya to heal the world, it's just that they didn't get to her before her mother's pragmatism infected her. In addition, while as a child she was gleefully betraying Raya, she was clearly not happy doing the same thing as a young woman.
- While the last part is true, Namaari clearly took pleasure in hunting Raya down. But Namaari didn't want a better world. She wanted a better world for FANG. And only for FANG. She stole the gem for FANG. she betrayed Raya again for FANG. Namaari says it herself, they needed the gem to expand FANG territory.
Rooting for the Empire: The Druun are given no personalities, and Sisu reveals they are the physical embodiments of human discord. In short, they exist to basically make humanity suffer the consequences of their selfishness. While Benja didn't deserve being turned to stone, and he uses his last act to toss his daughter to safety, the other chiefs caused the situation by fighting for the Dragon Gem. Thus, some viewers kind of wanted the Druun to overtake them in the Downer Beginning to avenge Benja and Raya's losses. Laser-Guided Karma then hits the surviving chiefs on learning most of them were turned to stone.
Spiritual Adaptation:
- The Asian-inspired setting, a band of heroes from different cultures, a conflict that was kicked off by the actions of one specific nation, and a cute animal sidekick who is also the hero's main mode of transportation (as well as the wildlife consisting mostly of Mix-and-Match Critters) all make this movie reminiscent of Avatar: The Last Airbender. Young Raya even looks and dresses similarly to Avatar Korra.
- It's also a rather good adaptation of Jade Empire, given the Asian Fantasy Counterpart Culture setting (albeit with Southeast Asia instead of China specifically) and a plot involving water dragons being incapacitated, unleashing supernatural evils on the world.
- The Collectible Card Game Magic: The Gathering had a set of cards, "Khans of Tarkir," which involved five color-coded tribes styled after an anatomical component of a dragon, inspired by Southeast Asian cultures. That said, Tarkir also includes Mongol and Siberian analogues, and most of the components themselves were completely different^note.
- As both of them involved South East Asian culture, it would be seen as a movie adaptation of Indivisible.
They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
- When the final design of Sisu's dragon form was shown to the public, a good number became disappointed with it as she lost the vibrant colored fins that popped out of her overall form.
- Although Kelly Marie Tran received a warm welcome as her replacement, the recasting of Cassie Steele as Raya came as a huge disappointment for Filipino viewers, especially as later casting announcements would reveal she was the only main Filipino actor involved in the film.
- Concept art of Sisu depicting her (and by extension, the dragons) as appearing more like the Naga found throughout South-East mythology that they are based on than they do in the final version further supported opinions that the movie depicts the dragons as too cartoonish and clearly toyetic for a considerably more mature-themed Disney film.
They Copied It, So It Sucks!: Some compare this movie to Avatar: The Last Airbender simply by virtue of it being an Asian-inspired fantasy work. There are some specific similarities, such as the world being divided into multiple nations that once lived in harmony, the wildlife consisting of Mix-and-Match Critters, a magical being who represents the balance between the nations and is the Last of Their Kind, a villain who seeks said magical being but does a Heel–Face Turn, a comic-relief creature resembling a monkey, and a little girl who is secretly a Pint-Sized Powerhouse. Altogether, these traits cause many Avatar fans to consider Raya a second-rate imitation of the series, held back by its adherence to Disney's formula and missing the maturity and nuance that made Avatar so iconic.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: After the prologue, the Heart, Tail, and Spine nations are quickly written out of the rest of the story to make way for their representative characters, leaving screentime only for Fang and Talon.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
- Apparently, an entire language was created for Kumandra (inspired, of course, by the languages of Southeast Asia), but we only actually hear bits and pieces of it throughout the film — characters occasionally use phrases from it, and Raya actually says a prayer in said language when summoning Sisu for the first time. Based on what little we hear, it's a shame that the filmmakers didn't utilize this language to its full potential, as had been the case with Atlantean, Na'vi, and Lapine.
- Most viewers feel that the message about trust would have been more impactful if it focused on Namaari earning said trust, as well as Sisu learning the dangers of being too trusting.
Trailer Joke Decay: Sisu's digestion joke seen in the trailer seems to have turned a lot of people off, though, to be fair, the line itself is not used in the movie proper.
Uncertain Audience:
- The movie is advertised as representation for Southeast Asian cultures made by an American studio, but the way it uses Cultural Chop Suey makes it difficult to discern most of it for people from those cultures. Cultural references are either minimal and/or are extremely specific to a certain cultures or even subcultures (like religious groups or indigenous people). The biggest example is the dragons, who are important in Vietnamese culture as well as Hindus, Buddhists, and Jainists in Southeast Asia, but are meaningless in places like in most of the Philippines^note and Indonesia.
- The OTHER reason that Filipinos don't feel represented in this story is because pre-Catholic Filipino dragons are essentially crocodiles. Crocodiles and snakes often fulfill the mainland dragon's "guardian-spirit" niche in Philippine folklore and mythology, to the point where in old records, the local words for "crocodile" or "serpent/snake" were indeed the words for "dragon," so modern people may have mistaken the mentions of "great serpents/crocodiles" for regular animals.^note
- With cultural differences aside this movie attemps to be dark and serious along the lines of action cartoons such as Avatar: The Last Airbender but also attemps to use traditional Disney tropes and conventions. This unfortunately leads to jarring Tone Shifts and leaves little in the way for potential world building and lore that would otherwise be better suited for a television series on top of a confused moral and thus alienating both demographics.
Unintentional Uncanny Valley: Sisu's face has induced this effect on some people who have viewed the trailer, often comparing it to being Elsa's face stretched out to dragon proportions.
Unintentionally Sympathetic: In the finale Raya is supposed to be just as in the wrong as Namaari for their inability to trust each other resulted in Namaari accidentally killing Sisu. But Namaari started the world ruining conflict by betraying Raya then spent years antagonizing her, then betrayed their attempted trust by bringing a weapon to their alleged parley. Raya's lack of trust that caused Sisu's death amounted to reacting in reflexive self-defense which many saw as 100% valid given Namaari's and others far worse and numerous betrayals. The fact that Namaari tightened the trigger does nothing but support this fact.

YMMV / Raya and the Last Dragon

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