Coming in March of 2021 is a new Asian Disney princess: the first since 1998 with the release of Mulan. The movie is called Raya and the Last Dragon, featuring Kelly Marie Tran as Raya, a fearless and passionate warrior who has been training to become a Guardian of the Dragon Gem, and Awkwafina as Sisu, a water dragon who can transform into a human and is the last dragon in existence. The setting of the movie will be a place known as Kumandra, which is based off of an array of Southeast Asian countries such as Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Laos.
The production cast is made up of many people of color such as Qui Nguyen and Adele Lim as writers and Carlos López Estrada as one of the directors. This will be the first Disney princess to be of Southeast Asian descent which is wonderful news since new cultures can be learned. The filmmakers and production team even traveled to several countries such as Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines in order to conduct research and gather inspiration for the design of the film.
The release of this film was supposed to be around November 25th 2020; however, due to the pandemic, it was postponed to the 12th of March in 2021. The official teaser trailer for the movie was released in January of 2020, and a new trailer was released a few weeks ago on October 21st. I am personally incredibly excited for this as I definitely have been anticipating more Asian representation in the media for a long time.
