On March 5, Raya and the Last Dragon made history as Disney’s first film to be inspired by Southeast Asian culture. Hailed as a huge moment for Southeast Asian representation in animated cinema, Raya follows Disney’s continual efforts to culturally diversify their storytelling in the likes of Mulan, Pocahontas, and Moana. But while Raya seems like a huge step in the right direction, it is not without its shortcomings, leading many — especially Southeast Asians like myself — to feel like more could have been done.

Make no mistake, seeing myself and my culture represented in a Disney movie is exciting. It was clear that Disney and the filmmakers behind Raya were eager to get things right especially in terms of how the movie looked. With how difficult it is to balance style and realism in animation, imagine the thrill (and relief) when I saw that the characters actually looked like Southeast Asians. Not caricatures of Southeast Asians. Not a Westernized version of Southeast Asians. They looked like us — in animated form. In addition to the characters, the design of the locations, clothing, and objects featured was also heavily inspired by Southeast Asian aesthetics, no doubt a result of painstaking research by the filmmakers to find visibly recognizable elements that many Southeast Asian cultures have in common.

However, the lumping together of Southeast Asian cultures has drawn the ire of critics, given how diverse the Southeast Asian region is within itself. For instance, there may be a lot of similarities between the cultures of the Philippines, Indonesia, and Vietnam, but it’s highly likely that each of these cultures more strongly identify with what is unique to them rather than what they have in common. This is a consequence of Southeast Asia being a largely archipelagic region — in fact, even within countries, the culture on one island can vastly differ from another. By treating Southeast Asia as a cultural monolith, one Filipino Twitter user wrote, Raya “represents no one in particular”.

Since Raya was never meant to portray real-life Southeast Asia, only be inspired by it, the conflation of Southeast Asian cultures isn’t as big of a problem as another issue: the casting. While Kelly Marie Tran, who does a spectacular job in the film voicing the titular Raya, is a Vietnamese American, much of the cast is not actually of Southeast Asian descent. Yes, Raya has a majority Asian cast, but most of them are more specifically East Asian, such as Chinese American actress Awkwafina, who voices Sisu the dragon, and Korean American actor Daniel Dae Kim, who voices Raya’s father Chief Benja. Arguably, the actors themselves (who all provide great performances) aren’t to blame — it is already hard enough to find roles as an Asian in Hollywood — but this casting fiasco is enough for many Southeast Asians to doubt Disney’s sincerity in representing us.

There is admittedly some absurdity in discussing the issue of representation in voice acting. After all, unlike live-action performances, why should animated movies concern themselves with what their actors look like? In the world of voice acting, a woman can play a teenage boy, a Latino can play a white man’s role, and a person can play a chicken. Well… in an ideal world, that would be. But, as mentioned before, whether it’s live-action or animation, Asians already have trouble finding good roles in Hollywood — Southeast Asians doubly so. If we don’t have a place in the one film that was supposed to represent us, where do we belong?

Finally, the last straw for many Southeast Asian audiences regarding Raya is the fact that, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was unable to be released in theaters worldwide, which already puts it at a disadvantage compared to many of Disney’s prior hits. Through no fault of its own, Raya may never be as popular as Moana or Frozen. Instead, the film was available to most audiences through streaming on Disney+, the only way to reach wide audiences under the circumstances. The irony in this, of course, is that when Raya was released, Disney+ was not yet available in all but two Southeast Asian countries.

In short, Raya was a great film inspired by Southeast Asian culture, but it seemingly was not told by Southeast Asian voices for Southeast Asian audiences. No doubt, it is still a step in the right direction, for there will still be countless children across the region who will watch Raya (when Disney+ is finally offered in their countries) and see themselves in the characters and the story in ways they could never have in other Disney movies. But if many of us see it is just another Disney movie with only a half-assed attempt at meaningful representation, Disney only has itself to blame.