What does Like a Dragon: Yakuza lose when you take away the game’s surreal humor?

Sega and Prime Videos Like a dragon: Yakuza is far from 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 a live-action Yakuza to that end, the show takes certain key elements from an existing compelling narrative foundation and reinterprets them in its own new image, emphasizing certain elements of the source material and discarding others. The most immediately noticeable change from the game is its overall darker, more self-serious tone. In contrast to the game’s surreal mix of melodramatic, twisting crime drama and outrageous zany sub-stories, the show swings the pendulum squarely in the direction of the former. It’s a big turnaround, considering how strongly these crazy elements are tied to the Like a Dragon brand as a whole. But a departure like this raises the inevitable question of adaptation: Does the world of Like a Dragon, the dark, crime-riddled red light district of Kamurocho, work without the games’ trademark silliness to sometimes illuminate that darkness?

Contrary to popular misinformation among the fan base and subsequent outrage, the differences between the show and the games’ story, tone, and characters are a feature, not a bug, of the adaptation. Speaking about Ryoma Takeuchi’s Kiryu in an interview with Polygon, Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio head Masayoshi Yokoyama clarified: “It is not an imitation or imitation of the game character. It embodies the spirit of him more and lets him live as a new character again. So there is no comparison. It’s just something completely different – ​​and it’s cool.” When The gamer When asked specifically about the presence of sub-stories in the show, Amazon’s Dragon himself, Takeuchi, said: “We don’t have that many in this iteration. I think we’re delving into the human emotions and the emotional elements of the characters of this iteration. We leave the match on a positive note at the end of the day.”

To be clear, the tone of the story itself closely matches the tone of the actual main plots of the Like a Dragon games. A serial killer who hides their identity, referred to only by a code name based on the sadistic calling cards of wounds they leave on their victims – it’s the Devil of Shinjuku in this show, but I might as well be describing the Mole in Judgement. There are gripping, twisting mysteries and plots of betrayal within the yakuza clans, sacrificing everything for the ones you love, and the long-lasting consequences of split-second decisions. This kind of dark melodrama is the lifeblood of the games’ core stories. What makes this show feel different is the absence of the levity normally found in sub-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 2‘s infamous scene where Kiryu accidentally walks into a yakuza group dressed in adult diapers.

The games include these types of sub-stories as breaks from the tense and often heartbreaking main story. Maybe you just watched a side character you’ve grown 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 and lose a very sketchy palm reader thousands of yen. Since the games’ main stories often only take 20 hours to complete, these light-hearted diversions are important to keep the twisting criminal conspiracies and heavy, heart-wrenching conversations from overwhelming the player. This isn’t to say that the sub-stories can’t also have their own moments of surprisingly moving sincerity Like a dragon: infinite wealththe diapered yakuza return to grant a dying woman’s last wish: to see snow in Hawaii (it’s shaved ice) – but their intention is humor first and emotional impact second.

There is almost nothing like it in Prime Videos Like a dragonand it is for the better. There are certainly reflections of the more subtle moments of deadpan humor in the games – Kiryu exaggerating terrible Japanese people to imitate an unwitting foreigner, a self-proclaimed master thief who uses the pseudonym ‘Indy’ just because he wears a cowboy hat – but they are scattered, fleeting and subdued. There is levity, but nothing so intense that it takes you out of the story. Being pulled out of the flow of the story is much more acceptable in a game, where you can pause the story and mess around in Kamurocho at any time, than in a show, where you have to be immersed for the entire running time. It’s a kind of humor closer to the sardonic smile of Takeshi Kitano’s yakuza traits than the absurdity of the games’ sub-stories; Kitano’s 1993 classic Sonatine Likewise channels occasional little moments of warmth and levity into a dark yakuza drama, and Like a dragon: Yakuza balances this just as well.

The best contrast for this difference in tone can be found in the ever-changing character of Majima in all three versions of this story. In the original YakuzaMajima is an unpredictable, threatening and (more importantly) rare presence, appearing only a few times to kidnap Haruka or bring a knife to a fistfight, completely attuned to the sound of his unforgettable, deranged cackle. But thanks to his popularity in the series, Majima’s greatly expanded performance 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 that he was really a zombie at one point – and that all while making jokes like he did. Don’t just stab Kiryu 13 times during battle. While ludonarrative dissonance is a given in this medium, so is all Kiwami‘s added silliness has the side effect of making his existing appearances in the story from the original seem almost out of character; why is the funny eye patch man now holding an innocent woman under the knife?

Like a dragon: Yakuza‘s adaptation of Majima instead does away with any semblance of silliness and focuses on what made Majima so memorable to begin with. In his first action scene, Majima rather nonchalantly starts a gunfight in the busy Theater Square, not caring about the possibility of catching Kiryu, Nishiki and other innocent people in the crossfire as he takes aim at his target. The brothers are rightfully terrified, and the audience should be too; this Majima is someone who will grin at your corpse. While he has his moments of comedy amidst bloodshed, they are included to demonstrate his view that even life and death are a joke to him, rather than making a joke of the man himself.

The Yakuza series seems conceptually almost impossible to adapt: ​​bringing everything from a series so tied to the successful tonal dissonance between story and gameplay to a non-playable medium seems like a Sisyphean task. In reality, the answer is not to try to put everything forward – just what the adaptation needs for its own story. Takashi Miikes Yakuza: Like a dragon deviated almost completely from the source material in its story, adding a completely unrelated bank robber subplot, cutting almost all of Nishiki’s screen time leading up to the final confrontation, and turning it into a bizarre black comedy close to Miike’s other yakuza films lay. But Miike still chose to include the crazier elements of the games unchanged; Kiryu visibly uses his fiery, supernatural ‘Heat’ power during battles, pausing while fighting Nishiki to drink a Staminan energy drink and restore his health.

The team behind it Like a dragon: Yakuza knew these crazy aspects didn’t fit the story they wanted to tell, and instead stuck closer to the genuine core of the original: brotherly betrayal, unbreakable bonds despite hardship, and visceral, believable street fights. The powerful emotional resonance and connection between – and with – the characters that arise from these essential principles is clearly what they wanted the show to bring out of the game, as mentioned by Takeuchi. The whimsy and humor provided by the additional content and sub-stories are undeniably important to the game’s identity, but the Like a Dragon series, regardless of adaptation or original, lives and dies by the power of its story and characters – smiling at Kiryu’s jokes. Kamurocho cannot achieve the same without first building a strong bond with the Dragon.

Even with the changes and additions to the story, the show is recognizably a reverent adaptation of the game. It’s just that having a different team of creatives behind an adaptation will inevitably result in a slightly different vision. That’s what adjustments are for! It’s a testament to how meticulous the original is Yakuza balances the tone that both live-action adaptations continue to be feeling like Yakuza in their own way, despite not being close to a one-to-one adjustment. After all, what makes the Like a Dragon games so special isn’t just the comedy on the surface. It’s the pain, the strength and the hope that always lurks just underneath; the team clearly understands this, and it shows in their art.

By the way, there’s still one snippet of Takeuchi that comes straight from the games: a karaoke performance of ‘Baka Mitai’, Kiryu’s most famous song and perhaps the most famous part of the games as a whole. It’s wisely not included in the actual series, but being released separately still shows some love for the more eccentric side of Like a Dragon without damaging the tone of the show. It also doesn’t hurt that Takeuchi, while no Takaya Kuroda, is a solid singer himself.

Like a dragon: Yakuza season 1 is now streaming in full on Prime Video.