Like A Dragon: Yakuza Review - A Yakuza TV Show With An IP Paintjob

With all of the additional popularity that the game series Like A Dragon, formerly localized as Yakuza, has been getting, it was only a matter of time until someone took a swing at a movie or TV show. With the release of Prime Video's Like A Dragon: Yakuza, will this be an adaptation that garners success like Fallout, or another failed attempt at adapting a video game for a larger audience?

The story of Like A Dragon: Yakuza starts in 1995. A young Kazuma Kiryu, Akira Nishikiyama, Yumi Sawamura, and Yuko Nishikiyama rob the local yakuza; for most of them the plan is to get away from the orphanage they all live in, but for Kiryu, it's a way to show his ability to the Yakuza to make a name for himself as a new Dragon of Dojima.

We also get a look at 2005 where we find Kiryu shadowboxing in prison for a crime that the audience is left in the dark about, Akira is now one of the bosses for the local yakuza, and Yumi is running a club. With Kiryu's release day coming up, an oncoming war between two Yakuza clans over stolen money brings him back to Kamurocho to try to recover what has been lost before it leads to bloodshed.

The six-episode season tells the dueling narratives of Kiryu and his friends' beginnings with the Tojo Clan as well as the mystery of the missing money in the future and Kiryu's search for it.

Underdeveloped Story and Characters

The method of storytelling is ambitious. In the first episode alone we're introduced to dozens of characters, and just as we learn who they are and what they do, we're catapulted through time to try to re-understand where they are in life. As someone with a passing familiarity of the Like A Dragon franchise, it was definitely a challenge to figure out what was going on.

Each storyline had a lot of tell, but it never felt like any character truly got the chance to develop in any meaningful way. Sure, we got to see the difference between rookie Kiryu and the seasoned professional, but there wasn't any payoff.

Unfortunately, this kind of glazing-over development even occurred within each storytelling time period. Kiryu went from being a basic fighter with potential to rising through the ranks with nothing to show for it but brief shadowboxing montages against hose water and drying laundry.

An additional third mystery of the story is just what happened 10 years in the past that led to this schism among the friend group, and why Kiryu was sent to prison. This was the most intriguing aspect of the show, and while I had suspicions, the series of events that led to that climax were not what I was expecting.

Interestingly it's in knowing the whole story and thinking back to individual moments that I feel knowing the ending uplifts the beginning. It's a positive thing that knowing a character's entire arc through the story can help to create a better experience, but a viewer shouldn't be required to watch a show twice to be able to enjoy it.

The character who loses the most from the adaptation is Kamurocho itself. In the games, it's filled with wild characters and unique encounters. However, in Like A Dragon: Yakuza, while it's the main setting for most of the adventure, we never get a chance to really tour it and see what makes it so unique. There's always someone urinating in a corner, or well-dressed people strutting from club to club, but you could substitute it with any location and the story would continue without impact.

Part of this disservice to the characters may have come from the short overall runtime, clocking in a little over four hours, or could have been due to the sheer number of characters that are integral to the plot, a few of which are original to the TV show.

Is Like A Dragon: Yakuza A Faithful Adaptation?

This is the 10 billion yen question. Like A Dragon: Yakuza has framed its whole story around the elevator pitch for the game, it's a story of Kiryu getting wrapped up in a lot of missing money while navigating relationships with those close to him and many who want to kill him.

The plot points along that journey though have some drastic alterations. Who the money is stolen from and who took it has been radically altered, some relationships that were present in the game aren't anywhere to be seen, and characters who were only children now have siblings.

The mysterious Demon of Skinjuku is a wholly new character that gets introduced late into the story as a mystery, and then doesn't get expanded upon in any meaningful way until the end.

A lot of these changes don't feel like they were made to simplify the story for TV, but keep things just as complicated in a different way.

The benefit of this for people who have played Like A Dragon titles, or at least Yakuza 1, is that after the familiar setup, you won't see what's coming. But if this TV show isn't being made to show off the dramatic story of Yakuza, then is it really a Like A Dragon TV show?

Localization Accuracies and Confusion

One puzzling aspect of the show comes from the subtitling of Like A Dragon: Yakuza. There are a number of times when instead of translating text to English, the original Japanese word is maintained.

For many of these words, it makes sense to keep them—using commonly known words like oni instead of demon or sensei instead of teacher and honorifics to understand someone's social position. However, a number of words that aren't translated are less common, leading to additional confusion in what is already a confusing beginning.

Some of these lesser-known terms include ojiki, a term yakuza use to refer to an uncle-like character; gokudo, another term for yakuza; or oyagoroshi, which means killer. As you're attempting to understand what's going on, the need to pause for terms that wouldn't be immediately understood defeats the purpose of the subtitles.

Like A Dragon: Yakuza Review | Final Thoughts

Finishing the season and reviewing my thoughts on it, I believe as a show about yakuza, the organized crime syndicate, it's an enjoyable show. It shows off the journey of an up-and-comer joining at a young age and how those organizations interact with the people and businesses of the world.

The mystery that is posed to the viewer is overall lackluster, but the moments between, especially the action sequences, are normally enough to progress.

As a TV show for Like A Dragon: Yakuza, the game franchise that has continued to gain popularity since its release almost 20 years ago, this adaptation feels like a disservice. With so much alteration going on between the characters and the story, it becomes a general yakuza story with an IP painted over it.

Ultimately, this series likely won't appeal to the die-hard fans of the franchise who will find it difficult to see the game series in it, but those changes also won't make it appeal to a wider audience, leaving it in a strange place of not having a target audience.

If you have the time for an average yakuza adventure, then it's worth checking out, but walk don't run.

Like A Dragon: Yakuza was reviewed with a copy of the complete first season provided by Amazon. All images were sourced from pre-release promotion trailers to ensure spoiler free experience