Yakuza Seems All Over The Place

Amazon’s live-action adaptation of Sega’s hit Like a Dragon series has finally landed, and the show is already making waves. Titled Like a Dragon: Yakuza, the gritty crime drama follows the series’ longtime protagonist Kazuma Kiryu across two timelines: one as a teenage orphan in 1995, and the other as a hardened yakuza after ten years in jail in 2005. The adaptation is borrowing quite liberally from the beloved series, remixing numerous elements of the first game and its prequel, Yakuza 0, but controversially, it’s also charting its own path, and the move isn’t quite to everyone’s liking.

In one big change from the source material, Amazon’s adaptation appears to be mostly a straightforward and gritty drama. The Like a Dragon games are well known for their soapy melodrama, convoluted plots, humongous casts, and cinematic direction, but they also have a well-established penchant for irreverence. The streets of Kamurocho, where the games mostly take place, are filled with weirdos, like Mr. Libido, who gyrates and thrusts in a manic and sexual frenzy in casual conversation. There’s a yakuza family in the games composed of grown men in diapers who clearly have some oedipal complex. The next game in the series casts one of its best characters, Goro Majima, as a amnesiac pirate, and Kiryu could (and maybe should) leave behind the criminal underworld for a career in the arts, because that man fucks up a karaoke night like no one else.

And yet, Like a Dragon: Yakuza features no diaper-wearing yakuza, nor are there any heart-wrenching renditions of “Baka Mitai,” and that is sure to disappoint a lot of people. This new show seems to cast aside many of these flourishes and embellishments, which the untrained eye might consider the fat of the Like a Dragon games. However, you’re far more likely to find fans who call these distractions and detours the very soul of the franchise, and I’m inclined to agree.

The cast and crew behind Like a Dragon: Yakuza aren’t without reverence for the source material though. Interviews with the actors have provided insight into the production, revealing that developing Kiryu’s combat prowess in a logical way was a huge factor in the lead actor’s preparation. Ryōma Takeuchi, who plays Kiryu in the show, has gone on the record saying that Kiryu’s fighting style differs between the different eras covered in the series and is meant to be consistent with his growth and outlook on life, and his performance seems to be one of the more universally agreed upon highlights of the adaptation. There has also seemingly been an emphasis on Kamurocho itself, and capturing the way that the red-light district (based on the real-world Kabukicho) evolves over time similarly to how it does in the games, which span the decades between the late 80s and the present day. One spinoff even takes place in the mid-1800s, but that’s a conversation for another day.

Outside of the strength of its primary cast, though, Like a Dragon: Yakuza seems like a bit of a murky adaptation. Some reviews accuse it of oversimplifying storylines in order to fit them into a too-short six-episode season. With the action of two huge games being blended into just a handful of hours, it appears that some beloved characters have been minimized. The action choreography doesn’t seem to always leap off the screen, and the show appears to provide very little time and space for the audience to wrap their heads around the complicated structure of Japanese organized crime, which involves a lot of “families,” patriarchs, captains, and more that I’m still learning.

All in all, critics are divided, with some feeling that it’s another outstanding game adaptation in a year that’s already given us Fallout and that its concessions to realism still allow for enough of the surreal spark of the games to shine through, while others find it to be a creative misfire, lacking everything that makes the games so memorable. Here’s what some critics are saying about Amazon’s Like a Dragon: Yakuza.

The performances by Kiryu (Ryoma Takeuchi), Nishiki (Kento Kaku), and Yumi (Yumi Kawai) are a strong-as-steel foundation for this show to build on, with each giving deeply emotional performances that have real complexity and layers — especially considering we’re essentially seeing two versions of these characters with two time periods. Takeuchi’s Kiryu especially is a tremendous highlight, a daydreaming boy turned into a stoic warrior who nonetheless has a heart of gold that’s never been chipped away. But past that, the rest of the cast also gives stellar performances that make this world feel grounded, from the far too-tired-for-this-stuff Detective Date (Subaru Shibutani) to the deliciously cold and uncaring Dojima (Masaya Kato), head of the Tojo’s Dojima Family.

Like a Dragon’s other biggest strength is that it’s unapologetically authentic. The show is unafraid to use Japanese terms and yakuza jargon, and the set design and costuming in particular are a fascinating glimpse at 1995 and 2005 Japan. The floral shirts and Punch Perm haircuts make Like a Dragon feel like a period piece just as much as a drama, exploring the life and inner workings of the yakuza and the seedy city of Kamurocho. It’s also beautifully shot, making fantastic use of space and angle to heighten the character’s emotions.

But at the same time, this show is taking inspiration from the video games, blending in a sense of surrealism and ridiculousness. There’s just a little edge of unreality to Like a Dragon that gives it extra flavor — from the Fight Club-esque underground combat arena to a secret mass surveillance room run by a police-officer-turned-yakuza. It’s that mix of the familiar and the unknown that makes Kamurocho such a compelling setting; it’s grounded and realistic but with a hint of the unknown.

On some level, I’ll admit it: I am biased and went into this TV series with preconceived notions due to my extensive time with these wonderful, dumbass videogames. I was bummed out that the wacky sense of humor was entirely absent from this telling, even if that strangeness would have been challenging to pull off outside of a game where there are more natural ways to create barriers between different modes of storytelling.

But even accounting for this, Prime Video’s Like a Dragon: Yakuza falls short of its own aims. There are some inspired flashes here and there, and you can see the scaffolding that could have formed a moving, decade-spanning tale of tragedy and revenge. But because the series is so eager to jump from scene to scene, it becomes difficult to care about any individual member of this large cast, robbing these turns of dramatic heft. It all ends up feeling like the show borrows a bunch of surface-level aspects from the games, like names and plot points, but fails to convey the deeper reasons why these characters and their storylines worked, all while it also comes up short of taking things in a new direction. Bad videogame adaptations aren’t exactly unique, but I was hoping for more from the Dragon of Dojima.

The original game’s plot is reduced down to a rote tale of theft and revenge – I’ll save spoiling the specifics, but it’s both an unsatisfying setup and conclusion. And in shifting up the events of Yakuza 0 to 1995 from 1988, there’s now no commentary on the absurdity of bubble-era Tokyo real-estate economics. It’s actually strange how much money is now flowing around at a time, when in real-world Japan, it categorically wasn’t.

That’s not to say the world of Yakuza isn’t rendered well in other ways. The detailed set of Kamurochō is delightful. The show is most enjoyable when you take in all the additional details of its worldbuilding – I especially enjoy the cinema showing posters of period-accurate film listings (even acknowledging the huge splash Forrest Gump made in Japan after it was released there in 1995). The final scenes here throw a ridiculous amount of the show’s budget on extras, and it makes the place feel genuinely alive and breathing

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Without the Like A Dragon name attached, this series would get very little attention. There’s so little that’s very Yakuza in tone, and it’s so limited in inspiration from the games that there’s hardly much you’ll recognize from them. There’s great character work from some of the cast – particularly Kento Kaku as Nishikiyama – but sadly nothing very interesting for them to do.

Video game adaptations shouldn’t be constrained with coloring inside the lines so fans can get their reference fix. They should, as Like a Dragon: Yakuza does, feel free to explore different avenues of a game’s mythos, even if that means leaving the series’ wackier elements on the cutting room floor and fully commit to telling a mob story.

Despite its shortcomings, Like a Dragon: Yakuza not only puts a bold foot forward, making yet another worthwhile video game adaptation in the wake of Amazon’s Fallout series, but it also retains the game’s gripping drama and shades of its humor while teeing up what could be an enthralling second season.