Like A Dragon: Yakuza Is a Criminally Lackluster Adaptation
When approaching an adaptation of a personal favorite, it’s often best to keep an open mind: take deep breaths and accept that every micro-storytelling decision won’t be identical to the source material. It’s possible that these changes are there for a good reason, like to streamline the narrative for a shorter runtime or to account for aesthetic differences between mediums. There could even be a grand design behind these choices that brings things in a compelling new direction.
Given all this, I tried to approach Amazon Prime Video’s adaptation of the long-running Yakuza videogame series with an open mind. Sure, I may have spent hundreds of hours on the streets of the Kamurocho punching goons as longtime protagonist Kiryu Kazuma, but even if this six-episode TV series didn’t perfectly match the gonzo turns of the games, it could find its own path—after all, the franchise was deeply inspired by yakuza films and shows in the first place, so the jump to live action seemed like a natural fit. However, the issue with Like a Dragon: Yakuza is that not only does it fail to live up to the wackiness and pathos of its source material, but perhaps even more importantly, it doesn’t have much merit on its own terms, proving a convoluted crime epic let down by uninteresting characters, anemic action choreography, and a general lack of direction.
For those who’ve never dived into this world of loveable middle-aged ex-gangsters constantly tearing their shirts off to partake in fated duels, the Yakuza games began in 2005 and have slowly gained steam over the years so that each new entry now draws heaps of fanfare and sells millions of copies. The series mostly follows Kiryu Kazuma, an ex-yakuza whose boundless kindness is only matched by his peerless ability to pummel bad guys. He may not be entirely infallible, and things don’t always go his way, but for all intents and purposes, he’s basically a superhero.
As he attempts to protect the people he cares about, he frequently ends up unraveling involved criminal conspiracies centered around his old yakuza family in twisty narratives that center on hot-blooded declarations and heaps of tragedy. On top of this, outside of the grave central narratives, these games are packed with wacky side adventures that are so strange and tonally dissonant from the core experience they need to be experienced to be believed. You wouldn’t think these two halves could co-exist, but they do, and it’s glorious.
The TV series Like a Dragon: Yakuza borrows some of these elements and very loosely draws from the first game in the series but without an ounce of its panache or oddball charm. In this telling, events begin with a cold open as Kiryu Kazuma (Ryoma Takeuchi) orchestrates a heist on a local arcade back in ‘95. His co-conspirators are from the orphanage he grew up in: Nishikiyama (Kento Kaku), his eventual sworn brother, Nishiki’s sister Miho (Hinano Nakayama), and their childhood friend Yumi (Yuumi Kawai). From here, Kiryu’s decisions pull him and his buddies into the deadly world of the yakuza, and for the remainder of the story, we skip back and forth between 1995 and 2005 as this group is sucked into a complicated power struggle between two of the largest crime families in Japan.
At first glance, these plot details don’t seem too different from the source material: we’ve got organized crime, orphanages, and a mystery complicated enough that you’ll probably forget its particulars as quickly as you learned them. But underneath these surface-level similarities, there’s something missing in this rendition: heart.
This lack of heart starts with this depiction of Kiryu Kazuma, a character whose overarching goals in the TV series are spelled out but whose underlying convictions and reasons for striving for these aims feel muddled and confused. After witnessing a legendary underground fighter known as the “Dragon of Dojima,” Kiryu resolves to follow in this man’s footsteps by joining the yakuza and becoming a champion fighter of his own. The issue with this motivation is that aside from a brief flashback, we don’t get much on why he’s so moved by these illicit bouts that he’s willing to give up nearly everything to enter the ring.
His obsession with this goal pulls in the rest of his friends, setting them all down a tragic path, and although this flawed fixation could have been compelling, Kiryu feels incoherent here. Ryoma Takeuchi’s portrayal of the character doesn’t do much to assuage this, particularly when it comes to the cartoonish differences before and after the time skip, which makes it even more challenging to glom on to his arc. In the games, Kiryu’s motivations are intensely straightforward: he wants to become a yakuza because he’s inspired by the father figure who raised him, and the sincerity of his aims makes the ensuing tragedy all the more potent. By contrast, this telling’s attempts at moral ambiguity fall flat because the narrative lacks the nuance to handle this thornier situation.
Again, I don’t want to overly fixate on why this is all so disappointing for someone who’s a fan of the games, where Kiryu is a paragon of virtue who mixes burly cool with undercurrents of tenderness, because the show’s alternative take on the character could have accomplished its own aims. Perhaps, much like Goodfella’s Henry Hill, this Kiryu’s romanticized obsession with organized crime could have led to a compelling downfall. Instead, the script waffles between taking Kiryu in this more selfish direction and his depiction in the games, resulting in an inconsistent, dull figure. It also doesn’t help his arc that he gets far less screen time than you would expect.
Because while he’s ostensibly the main character, the narrative jumps between a clutter of plot points across the past and future concerning its sizable cast of similarly underdeveloped figures. Admittedly, the confusing cavalcade of storylines feels somewhat in line with the games, but the difference is that this blitz lacks any real dramatic clarity as we go back and forth between imminent gang wars, a group of masked killers on the loose, an underground fight club arc, and more, each individual beat lacks weight. The series attempts to weave all these stories together to craft a decade-spanning tragedy, but these efforts don’t coalesce, in large part because it fails to convey the initial camaraderie between Kiryu and his companions that would have made their fall difficult to watch. Instead, almost every character is either less interesting or less likable than their in-game counterpart, often both.
Further adding to this general din of incoherence is the wonky camera work and sometimes jarring editing, which makes the show visually erratic. This is a particularly big problem during the fight scenes, as the majority of these brawls lack impact or convincing choreography. Still, there are admittedly a few highlights when things become larger scale; it’s pretty good whenever they pack the frame with an abundance of mean-mugging, R-rolling, extremely angry yakuza guys, best represented by an over-the-top battle royale during the climax that makes up for scrappy choreography with sheer scope. Additionally, whenever the previously mentioned masked killers make an appearance, they steal the show in some fun, over-the-top slasher segments that highlight their curved knives and edge lord antics. But overall, I can’t help but wish they had just wholesale lifted more of the game’s style; dramatic character intro titles, aggressive camera zooms, and all.
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.
Elijah Gonzalez is an assistant Games and TV Editor for Paste Magazine. In addition to playing and watching the latest on the small screen, he also loves film, creating large lists of media he’ll probably never actually get to, and dreaming of the day he finally gets through all the Like a Dragon games. You can follow him on Twitter @eli_gonzalez11.
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