Prime Video unveiled its first look at the upcoming live-action Yakuza TV series – or Like A Dragon if you aren’t a filthy traditionalist like me – earlier this month. That little teaser trailer is all we had to go on until the interviews with the series creators and cast at San Diego Comic-Con this past weekend. We even spoke to them ourselves.
The main takeaway is that the show aims to explore the main narrative of the first game, seeing protagonist Kazuma Kiryu framed for murder as he spends a decade in prison. He then emerges into a changed Kamurocho where the people he was close to have changed in big, often heartbreaking ways. All as he finds himself tied up in a city-shaking conspiracy that will bring his past, present, and future allegiances into the spotlight.
Mostly, it’s par for the course. Even without the foundation of Yakuza 0, the first title’s narrative is a hard-hitting tale set amidst a criminal underworld where a disgraced man tries in vain to return to a life that now neglects him at every turn. Kiryu takes on gargantuan new responsibilities, such as caring for a vulnerable young girl and watches as a childhood friend turns into his biggest enemy. It’s all very dramatic and over-the-top, but with enough heart that you take it seriously.
But as any fan will know, Yakuza is, at the best of times, not very serious at all. Recent titles especially have leaned into the absurd with their substories and main narrative alike. Like a Dragon and Infinite Wealth still feature Kazuma Kiryu in some capacity, but mainly focus on new characters, locations, and themes where the criminal underworld is an afterthought.
Substories Aside, Yakuza Has Always Taken Itself Seriously
This is the Yakuza of the modern day, and one we expected the Amazon show to base itself upon, or at the very least make use of original characters instead.
You can summon shellfish from your mobile phone to beat the crap out of enemies dressed up as classic fantasy monsters, all because fresh-faced hero Ichiban Kasuga gives his tragic life meaning by pretending he’s the protagonist of his own classic RPG. Prime Video isn’t trying to tell that kind of story, and we should respect that creative decision. In fact, I’m pretty excited about it. I want to see those PS2 and PS3 games brought to life in a fresh medium in all the exhaustive detail I drew from open world exploration and stupidly long cutscenes as a teenager.
Creatives behind the show have confirmed with TheGamer that it unfortunately won’t feature any wild substories.
Without a video game propping this narrative up where you can freely explore Kamurocho to take on substories, play arcade games, and get in fights every couple of seconds, Yakuza is a relatively tight, tense, and enthralling story that you can follow from beginning to end without catching your breath.
We’ll be watching clan meetings take place in luscious boardrooms as tensions rise before swiftly transitioning to Kazuma and Haruka walking the streets with a stray puppy in tow. There will likely be no downtime, or little reason to embrace Yakuza’s wackier side without messing up the tone, which will be much harder to balance in a live-action show than a 50+ hour game.
Yakuza has made me cry with its serious drama before, because each game possesses stories that take time with character development, poignant themes, and slowly putting the pieces in place so you can extend your disbelief enough to care about gang wars unfolding in Tokyo or elderly gangsters in a lonely seaside town harbouring secrets that could sink a nation. The game manages to pair this with fistfights against great white sharks, and while I doubt the show will embrace the latter, it doesn’t have to in order to be incredible.
It wouldn’t make sense either, at least not in a traditional television format. Imagine if you’d never heard of Yakuza before, much like the mainstream audience this show will hope to pull in, and suddenly your incredibly serious crime drama is interrupted by a cheeky session of Space Harrier at the local arcade, or a Michael Jackson cosplayer ropes you into filming a music video with a director who definitely isn’t Steven Spielberg.
I’m not saying the series can’t make reference to these oddities or acknowledge that they exist and are incredibly important to Yakuza’s core identity, but to offer them the spotlight would be a mistake. At least, it will be until the show establishes itself. We’ll have to wait and see if Amazon can stick the landing first, and if it does, time for that conversation will come.
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Like Follow FollowedLike A Dragon: Infinite Wealth
RPG Systems 5.0/5 8.0/10 OpenCritic Reviews Top Critic Avg: 90/100 Critics Rec: 97% Released January 26, 2024 ESRB M For Mature 17+ Due To Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Sexual Themes, Simulated Gambling, Strong Language Developer(s) Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio Publisher(s) Sega Engine Dragon EngineWHERE TO PLAY
DIGITALLike A Dragon: Infinite Wealth continues the story of Ichiban Kasuga, in the ninth mainline entry in the series formerly known as Yakuza. It will once again feature turn-based combat, and takes our protagonist outside of Japan for the first time.
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