Sega and Prime Video Like a Dragon: Yakuza is anything but a one-to-one adaptation of 2005 Yakuzathe game it is loosely based on. Like Takashi Miike’s 2007 Yakuza: Like a dragon, the other previous attempt at live action Yakuza Previously, the show takes certain key elements from an existing compelling narrative foundation and reinterprets them in its own new image, focusing on certain elements of the source material and discarding others. The most obvious change from the game is the overall darker, more self-serious tone – in contrast to the surreal mix of melodramatic, twisted crime drama and crazy side stories, the show swings the pendulum entirely towards the former. This is a big shift considering how closely these crazy elements are tied to the Like a Dragon brand as a whole. But such a departure raises the inevitable question of adaptation: Does the world of Like a Dragon, the gritty, crime-riddled red-light district of Kamurocho, work without the games’ signature silliness that sometimes illuminates that darkness?
Contrary to widespread misinformation in the fanbase and subsequent outcry, the series’ deviations from the games’ story, tone, and characters are a feature, not a flaw, of the adaptation. Masayoshi Yokoyama, head of Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio, explained in an interview with Polygon about Ryoma Takeuchi’s Kiryu: “It is not an imitation or imitation of the game character.” It is more about embodying his spirit and him as a new character to bring back to life. So there is no comparison. It’s just something completely different – and it’s cool.” When The player Asked specifically about the presence of side stories in the series, Takeuchi, the Amazon Dragon himself, replied: “We don’t have that much in this iteration. I think we’re dealing with the human emotions and the emotional elements of the characters in this iteration. The positive thing is that we are out of the game at the end of the day.”
To be clear, the tone of the narrative itself aligns well with the tone of the actual main plots of the Like a Dragon games. A serial killer who hides his identity and is referred to only by a code name based on the sadistic calling cards of the wounds he leaves on his victims – in this series it’s the Devil of Shinjuku, but I could just as easily be describing the mole Verdict. Within the Yakuza clans are compelling, twisted secrets and plots of betrayal, sacrificing everything for the people you love, and the long-lasting consequences of split-second decisions. This kind of dark melodrama is the lifeblood of the games’ core narratives – what makes this show different is the lack of the levity usually found in side stories, mini-games, and non-playable characters. But the Like a Dragon series, even after its explosion in popularity in recent years, is best known to a wider audience for its moments of surreal humor, such as: Yakuza Kiwami 2is the infamous scene where Kiryu accidentally walks into a Yakuza group dressed in adult diapers.
Image: Prime Video
In the games, such side stories are inserted as breaks from the tense and often heartbreaking main story. You may have just witnessed a minor character you’ve come to love get shot in the chest – but don’t worry, you can ignore the story for a few minutes and giggle as you watch Kiryu kindly trust a very sketchy palm reader and loses thousands of yen. Since the games’ main stories often only last 20 hours, these light-hearted diversions are important to prevent the twisted criminal conspiracies and heavy, heartbreaking conversations from overwhelming the player. That’s not to say that the side stories can’t have their own moments of surprisingly touching sincerity – in Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealththe diaper-clad yakuza, return to grant a dying woman’s final wish of seeing snow in Hawaii (it’s shaved ice) – but their intent is humor first, emotional impact second.
There is almost no such thing on Prime Video Like a dragonand it is for the better. There are certainly reflections of the games’ subtler moments of dry humor – Kiryu exaggerating terrible Japanese to impersonate an ignorant foreigner, a self-proclaimed master thief who uses the alias “Indy” just because he wears a cowboy hat – but they’re scattered around , fleeting and inconspicuous. There is a certain lightness, but nothing is so intense that it takes you out of the story. Being taken out of the flow of the narrative is far more acceptable in a game where you can pause the story at any time and goof around in Kamurocho than in a show where you’re supposed to be immersed in the story throughout its entire running time. It’s a style of humor more akin to the sardonic smile of Takeshi Kitano’s Yakuza features than the absurdity of the games’ side stories; Kitano’s classic from 1993 Sonatina similarly channels occasional small moments of warmth and levity in a gritty yakuza drama and Like a dragon: Yakuza compensates for this just as well.
The best contrast for this difference in tone is the ever-changing character of Majima in all three versions of this story. In the original YakuzaMajima is an unpredictable, menacing and (importantly) rare presence, appearing only a handful of times to either kidnap Haruka or bring a knife to a fistfight, all accompanied by his unforgettable, maniacal giggle. But thanks to his popularity throughout the series, Majima’s greatly expanded appearance in the remake, Yakuza Kiwamibecomes a parody of itself. Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio began creating increasingly ridiculous situations for Majima to fight Kiryu – hiding in oversized traffic cones, dressing up in various disguises, and even trying to convince the dragon at one point that he was actually, really a zombie – while joking about how he did It’s not easy to stab Kiryu 13 times in battle. While prurient narrative dissonance is a given in this medium, this is everything KiwamiThe added silliness has the side effect of making his existing appearances seem almost out of character in the original’s story; Why is the funny eye patch guy now holding an innocent woman at knifepoint?
Image: Prime Video
Like a Dragon: YakuzaInstead, the adaptation of “Majima” eschews any pretense of weirdness and focuses on what made Majima so memorable in the first place. In his first action sequence, Majima casually starts a shootout in the crowded theater square, unfazed by the possibility of Kiryu, Nishiki, and other innocent people getting caught in the crossfire as he aims at his target. The brothers are appropriately scared, and the audience should be too; This Majima is someone who will grin over your corpse. While he does have comedic moments in the midst of bloodshed, they are included to illustrate his attitude that even life and death are some kind of joke to him, rather than making fun of the man himself.
The Yakuza series seems difficult to adapt conceptually: translating everything from a series so tied to its successful tonal dissonance between story and gameplay into a non-playable medium seems like a Sisyphean task. In truth, the answer is not to try to highlight everything – just what the adaptation needs for its own story. Takashi Miikes Yakuza: Like a dragon deviated almost entirely from the source material in its story and added a completely unrelated bank robber subplot, reducing Nishiki’s total screen time before the final showdown and making it a bizarre black comedy close to Miike’s other Yakuza films. Nevertheless, Miike chose to keep the games’ sillier elements unchanged; Kiryu visibly uses his fiery supernatural “heat” power during battles, pausing when fighting Nishiki to drink a staminan energy drink and restore his health.
The team behind it Like a Dragon: Yakuza knew that these crazy aspects didn’t fit the story they wanted to tell, and instead stayed closer to the heartfelt core of the original: brotherly betrayal, unbreakable bonds despite hardships, and visceral, believable street fights. The strong emotional resonance and connection between and to the characters that emerged from these important tenets is obviously what the show wanted to bring out of the game, as mentioned by Takeuchi. The whimsy and humor provided by the side content and side stories are undeniably important to the games’ identity, but the Like a Dragon series, regardless of the adaptation or the original, lives and dies by the strength of its story and characters – she smiles at Kiryu’s pranks Kamurocho cannot make the same decision without first forming a strong connection with the dragon.
Despite the changes and additions to the story, the series is clearly a reverent adaptation of the game – it’s just that having a different creative team behind an adaptation inevitably leads to a slightly different vision. There are adjustments for that! It is a testament to how carefully the original is handled Yakuza balances out its tone that these two live-action adaptations still have feel How Yakuza in their own way, although neither comes close to a one-to-one match. Because what makes the Like a Dragon games so special isn’t just the superficial comedy. It is the pain, strength and hope that always lurks right beneath us; The team is clearly aware of this and it shows in their art.
There’s also a clip of Takeuchi taken directly from the games: a karaoke performance of “Baka Mitai,” Kiryu’s most famous song and arguably the most recognizable part of the entire game. It’s wisely not included in the series proper, but releasing it separately still gives some love to the more eccentric side of Like a Dragon without compromising the tone of the series. It also doesn’t hurt that Takeuchi, while no Takaya Kuroda, is a solid singer in his own right.
Like a Dragon: Yakuza Season 1 is now streaming in full on Prime Video.
