Raya and the Last Dragon, Disney’s latest glittering offering, follows a girl named Raya (Kelly Marie Tran) on her quest to piece together a fractured Dragon Gem in order to save her people from the literally petrifying Droon. Along the way, she encounters Sisu (Awkwafina), the last living dragon, who accompanies her on her journey. With creatures like a giant pill bug named Tuktuk (Alan Tudyk), a nod to the eponymous auto-rickshaws common in southeast Asia, and effervescent sidekicks—including a con artist baby named Noi (Thalia Tran)—the film is rollicking and vivacious, a feast for the eyes. Though the plot wobbles toward the predictable at times, ultimately Raya and the Last Dragon is a rich delight to watch.
Raya is an excellent character. I can picture many children clamoring to dress up as her for Halloween, with her wide hat and high-necked crimson cloak. Still, when we continue to tell stories that are discrete in their ethnic landscape, when there’s an Asian film with an Asian princess for Asian kids, how does it limit the viewer? There’s nothing wrong with a story that takes place in a fictional southeast Asian country. But in a time where Asians and Asian Americans are increasingly the target of racism and othering, I wonder what it does to make a story set in a bounded Asian fantasy world, especially for Asian-American children who live in a heterogenous real-life nation that wields that heterogeneity as a hierarchy. Simply put, does the existence of Raya and the Last Dragon merely amount to one more costume on the rack, bringing the grand total up to—two?
