 Asian American News Network Next Shark has just released their top seven Asian Trail Blazers of 2023, but who got left off the list? Let's talk about it. Yeah, these were seven people that Next Shark felt like were hyper relevant pioneers in music, sports and entertainment. Andrew, some people are gonna say, well, those things aren't the only things that matter in the world. However, I think that like really big political things they're difficult to talk about because they're so multi layered and really like visceral straw, raw street, ruthless things. That's almost like too hard to talk about too. So we're talking about entertainment. Yeah, these are people who inspired others, broke through in the industry, just got some press. Anyways guys, please hit that like button, check out other episodes of the Hot Pop Boys. I got a hot take at the end of this video of someone who got left off this list. And I think a lot of people are gonna disagree with me, but I'm just trying to be unbiased here. Anyways, let's go into the list. Hey, you know what else was Trail Blazing in 2023? Smala Sauce is a trail blazing finishing oil out of a squeeze bottle. Got the little mala buzz, check it out. Number one, Ki-Huei Kwan, one of the best supporting actor for Asian guys or Asian people a bunch of times, SAG Awards, Oscars. Avalon, Avalon, Avalon, you're now on to the multiverse and you have to keep going. All right, so like I said, shout out to Ki-Huei Kwan. You know, went to Alhambra High School, 6-2-6. Ki-Huei is from 6-2-6. I think he speaks Chiljawi, speaks Vietnamese, he speaks Mandarin. Like he's like, it's a dope story. I will say this, some people, and I've heard this privately, even from some very high level people, they thought Ki-Huei, he didn't bring up the fact that the industry shut him out for 20, 30 years as much. Like once they gave him the award, they like, everybody tried to pretend like he was there the whole time. You know what I mean? Everybody was like, Brandon Fraser was like, we're still here, Ki. We're still here after all these years. And Ki-Huei was like, yeah, but you guys actually kicked me out for three decades. Yeah, I mean, yeah, but I guess, I guess optically, but I think that him just winning so many awards and giving that performance, you know, whether you think that he should have won that many awards or just won one or two awards, regardless, I mean, it is a groundbreaking movie, whether or not you loved it or not, everything everywhere all at once is groundbreaking. So number two on the list. I'm saying for this, and I said this in my previous video, I'll take the tokenism. I don't know how much it plays into it, but I'll take it, but I don't even care about that entire structure anyway, but it's progress is proper. David's taking the tokenism. If it's tokenism, but it's positive, we'll take it. Listen, man, you gotta think about things in 4D. Moving on, number two, and we've got Bianca Bustamante, the one of the only female Asian or Filipino F1 drivers. Yeah, so shout out to her, super marketable. I believe her dad was a race car driver as well from the Philippines, born and raised there, now splits time between the Philippines and San Diego. She's the first female to sign with F1 McLaren team. So that's a pretty big deal. I mean, shout out to her. What do you think about F1 and sailing getting so big in 2023? F1 got really big partially because of that Netflix series. Sailing, I feel like is less accessible for people, but there's some rich people sports that people are just gonna try to make more popular. You mean like golf? There's like urban streetwear golf brands now. Yeah, it's really funny because NASCAR has a brand that it's only for like blue collar, Midwestern white people, but then F1 is like all of a sudden rich international racing. But that is because F1 is more for the people who spend time on the Autobahn. And then moving on. F1 is not for the Hicks, that's what they would say. I'm not saying, nothing against NASCAR. Moving on to number three, Alexander Shohei Otani signed a $700 million contract. Shohei. And then the Dodgers were not done. What did you go do? They signed Yoshinobu, who has not even pitched in an MLB game, but he's pitched internationally in FIBA and for the Japan team. Yeah, the international. Right, so they signed him to the largest contract player ever that did not play in the MLB yet. Right. Dude, Dodgers got some heavy hitters on their team. Japanese guys, and guess what? I am getting a Shohei Otani jersey. I'm getting one. I'm buying one. I'm buying a Dodgers jersey. I'm not even a Dodgers fan. I'm gonna get a Shohei jersey. Listen, I think in the next five years to seven years, the Dodgers will win a championship. However, a lot of people are underestimating how many business deals will be facilitated between Tokyo and Los Angeles because of this. And when you guys are talking about business deals, we're talking about exporting computer chips or other things like that that are like really, really big business that could come out of this. Like, to levels that your average sports fan may not even be able to understand how. I mean, not to also just mention that Shohei is arguably the greatest baseball player of all time and think about it now with him and Yoshinobu in LA. Basically, any Japanese CEO can take a meeting there like they're gonna get so many. Anyways, it's just gonna be real. And they defer 97% of the salary. They're doing all these stuff. Anyway, moving on number four, and David Ono, he is a Hapa newscaster. I believe his mom was Japanese. His dad's white. He does look like Clark Kent, but more Asian, but just because he was reporting on the unreported. Right. He was mostly covering the Lahaina fires over in August that happened in Hawaii. That was big. Yeah, Lahaina fires. Moving on to number five, Michelle Yoh. Won the Oscar. Not surprised that Michelle Yoh is on this list. She did kind of break through this year, like in a major way. So she's pretty much in everything nowadays. So shout out to her. It's funny that her movie was everything everywhere, all at once. And now she is literally in every movie everywhere, all at once. She's in every Asian movie. Well, like. Nah, she's in like a lot of movies, period. A lot of voice acting too. It's very crazy. Andrew knows more about movies than me. Moving on, number six, Hayao Miyazaki because he dropped the boy in the hair on. Let's just play this clip of him being very, very deep. I mean, man, Andrew, he's considered one of the last great filmmakers from that older generation. You know what I mean? Because like it, but obviously the Japanese, they're more known for animation. Scorsese was like probably like an older guy that was known in the West for more live action. I'm assuming he's on this list, not because he's a newcomer to the industry, but because he released his last movie, right? Right. The boy in the hair on and it got a US release too. You know what? I have not, I've yet to watch it, but I'm gonna watch it now. I'm definitely gonna watch it. We just saw Godzilla minus one. Dang man, I gotta get a show, Hey Jersey and then I gotta watch Boy in the Heron and then I'm gonna do these things, man. Last but not least, under number seven, they got Jungkook. Yeah, I think, I think he does belong. I mean, his hits and his crossover that he did to the American market, I mean, I heard seven days in the club before. At the club. So you know what I mean? Yeah, it was an Asian club, but still it fits in at the club. And he was doing songs with big American rap artists that were at their peak or their prime of their career, Jack Harlow. Yeah. David, what are some people that are missing on this list that you felt like really broke through in 2023 and they don't have to be Asian American? I thought new jeans should have been on it. New jeans, super shy. You, why, why? Because I heard it in non-Asian settings, H&M, Zara, you can hear it. Obviously that's one of their most heavily English lyric songs, but you can hear it out in public American society. I love Super Shy Man. It's such a perfect K-pop song, man. And I liked that new jeans mixes it with like 90s UK garage. I was like that Craig David vibe was pretty cool. I think Keshi should be on there. Vietnamese singer from Texas. Yes. I think that there's some non-Asian girls putting Keshi in like their favorite music on their hit. He's huge on Spotify. He got Spotify plays. And he's sort of like so dominant in that specific like niche field. It may not be radio music, but it is certainly a huge niche on the internet. Yeah, yeah. You said Simu Leo and Barbie. Yeah, I thought Barbie was a great role for Simu and he killed it. And I think that plus his music album that dropped, I thought it wasn't bad. I enjoy some of those songs. And I think some people are like 50-50 on it. Anyways, I'm just saying Simu wasn't Barbie. He released the music album. I know some people feel whatever about Simu, but I'm saying, I think those are significant because Barbie, the audience for that movie is not mostly male and it's not mostly Asian. Right. You might say Shang-Chi. The audience for that is mostly male, Marvel fans, and then Asian people. Well, I think it was big because Simu's character in Barbie never really mentioned being Asian. Yeah, yeah. And Barbie was a huge hit movie. Barbie was kind of set to be, it was the biggest movie of the summer. So people were like, yo, Barbie could bring people back to the theaters. Whether or not it really did, Barbie was a huge hit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Brandon Lee for being a rising boxer, Michelle Wu, obviously is the mayor of Boston, embattled mayor. Yes, embattled mayor. Here's the thing. Not everybody agrees with Michelle Wu. I'm not saying I agree with everything she's ever said. I'm just saying for being a Boston mayor, she sure is getting a lot of mainstream coverage. She's kind of like the East Coast Gavin Newsom. Right, you're saying where? She's local. Like, typically we don't know who the Boston mayor is. Yeah, why would anybody care? But I see Michelle Wu pop up partially for the things that she's saying that are good and bad. So again, I'm not saying I'm with her policies. I'm just saying she kind of is a trailblazer. No, you're saying that they put her on national news because she probably creates the click-through rate. Yeah, if you guys want me to say, this is my trailblazer that got left off this list. And by the way, I do not agree with everything he says. But when you say the definition of a trailblazer, you gotta say Vivek Ramaswamy. Yo, honestly, straight up, for Asian-Americans, obviously, in Asian-American, we include Daisy people. He should be number one. Now, here's my thing. I know he knows he's Indian and he does come from the Hindu background, but does he consider himself Asian? Would he ever say, yes, I'm Vivek and I'm Asian? I don't know if he'd ever say that phrase, but I'm just saying. Yeah, he calls himself Brown. He's Brown, he's South Asian, he's Asian. He did break through and I'm not, and he's meme-able. You can make fun of him, you can disagree with him, but let me tell you this, you saw his face this year. And you heard about him and you heard what he said and you saw him at the debates or at least highlights of the debates. Yo, it was crazy to see the highlights of the debates and it's Vivek Ramaswamy going at Nikki Haley, who are both Indian. That's interesting. How is that not notable? I don't care if you're a Democrat or Republican, that is notable. It's interesting. All right, anyways, that's my case on why he's a trailblazer. But anyways. I'm sure there was a bunch of other stuff. Like we said, I think that this list heavily focuses on entertainment because entertainment's easy for everybody in the middle class to digest. Things that are hyper high up in the world and some things that are like survivalist and ruthless in the street. Those are difficult to talk about. Guys, and again, I just wanted to stick by what the true meaning of a trailblazer is. I don't think that these trailblazers have to be people that you agree with or that you even like, but they have to have broken the door down and did something significant. And I think everybody here on this list did. Hey, let us know who you think should be on this list. I'm sure there's people from the video game world, you know, the Twitch world, this world, that world that we're not familiar with. Let us know in the comment section below. We encourage the debate. Until next time, we're the Hop Hop Boys. We out. Peace.