I’m a massive Yakuza fan. I wanted Like a Dragon: Yakuza to be good more than anything, but it was a mess.
Like a Dragon: Yakuza (2024) is a strange video game adaptation. Amazon Prime did a great job with the Fallout television series, but they did not do a good job with Like a Dragon: Yakuza (2024). I’ve played through every game, and I am a massive fan, and I did not enjoy it. Of course, this show has Easter eggs and small little nods to the game series, but it is vastly different.
They decided to take the route that the Halo television show creators took, which was not to play the games at all. They took the basic story of the first Yakuza game and turned it into this television series. Some of the events are the same, but not the good parts.
They decided to do the bare minimum so it could resemble the structure of the first video game, but they didn’t do anything better. They decided to take the route of changing most of the major events in the game, which can be OK if it’s done well or done better.
But Like a Dragon: Yakuza (2024) is incredibly average. Most people agree that this is probably one of the most average video game adaptations out there because it’s not terrible, but it’s not good, either.
You have good performances by the actors and actresses in Like a Dragon: Yakuza (2024), but their characters are not well-written. The games have such strong and unique characters. I don’t know how they didn’t model them better after them. Instead, they decided to change some of the character’s key characteristics. Most of the time, if it wasn’t for some of the wardrobes, I wouldn’t be able to tell who was who in the show.
The characters weren’t as unique as they were in the games and didn’t stand out. The story in the game is so thought out and interesting that it could’ve been a slam dunk if they had just decided to adapt most of that into Like a Dragon: Yakuza (2024). But it said they decided to do their own thing, which wasn’t even good. Fallout did a good job of changing and doing its own thing with the story, but at the same time honoring much of the lore there.
In today’s day and age, we are getting better video game adaptations like The Fallout Show and The Last of Us show, but we are still not out of the woods yet. I don’t understand why, when they decide to make adaptations of video games, they decide not to play the games at all. Everyone was furious when that happened with the Halo series, and it tanked because of that. This series will suffer the same fate, seeing as not even the actors in the show were allowed to play the video games. It’s extremely frustrating.
The hype behind Like a Dragon: Yakuza (2024) was insane for Yakuza fans like myself. There was a Yakuza film that was made years ago, but it’s hard to find online due to it not getting a massive worldwide release. But with Amazon Prime putting out a Yakuza show adaptation, it seemed like this was the perfect jumping point for the games to get even larger.
The games have been growing in popularity, especially in the last couple of years, as they have started to be released simultaneously in Japan and America. If Like a Dragon: Yakuza (2024) was a good adaptation, it would’ve helped the series get even larger.
But Like a Dragon: Yakuza (2024) kind of went off without a bang, and it seems a lot of people tried watching it and just gave up after the first episode. It also doesn’t help that it came out around the same time the penguin show is dominating the TV world.
One of the major flaws with Like a Dragon: Yakuza (2024) is that it jumps around in timelines randomly and very sporadically. It’s so hard to keep up with the two timelines. Sometimes, it will just be a scene that’s a couple of minutes long, and then they jump back to the other timeline and then go back to the other timeline. Like a Dragon: Yakuza (2024) would’ve been a lot better if they just stuck to the story being in chronological order. Also, with the flashbacks, there’s an entire game made about the backstory to the first game that was made.
So we have Yakuza, the first game in the series. Later, SEGA published Yakuza 0, a prequel to that first game. It is regarded as one of the best in the series, and they could’ve adapted both Yakuza 0 and the original Yakuza.
You have a whole game going over the backstory of these characters, but they decided to completely disregard that and do their backstory. That is ok, but Yakuza 0 has a whole backstory of these characters, and it is one of the best-written games in the series and is a widely popular game.
If they were to adapt both of them and put them into one show, people would’ve rejoiced; the show would’ve been incredible. But it said they decided to make a backstory that is very average, and it’s nowhere near as good as what the game creators made with Yakuza 0.
It’s hard to even call Like a Dragon: Yakuza (2024) an adaptation at times because they changed so much of the game. A lot of people were saying early on that you could just remove the Yakuza game title, and it could’ve just been its own thing.
I have a feeling that a lot of adaptations are sometimes stories that are not connected to any other story, but then they get the rights to a video game or a book, and then they add that into a previously existing story. So then it turns into a weird story where they have to add in and shoo-in random parts.
So, as a Yakuza fan, I was severely disappointed in the show. It’s shot well and well acted, but the story in the pacing is just very average and extremely forgettable. They had the potential to even just take the majority of the storyline from the yakuza games and turn that into something good. Instead, they took out a lot of the great parts of what made those games so good and made just an average crime drama thriller.
The games are known for having a lot of heart in their story, and unfortunately, Like a Dragon: Yakuza (2024) doesn’t have a lot of that. It’s just another crime drama that you would see any other major network make. They also threw a lot of money at the show because the sets were incredible. It’s a shame, as the story and world weren’t up to par.
I feel really bad for the actors, especially the lead, Ryoma Takeuchi, who played Kiryu. The actor went through a lot of training to get in shape to play this monster of a man. But it all went to waste because no one’s going to remember this show, unfortunately. More than likely, people will remember the film that came out all those years ago because it was a lot closer to the story of the first game. People might like Like a Dragon: Yakuza (2024) as the newness fades away, but I doubt it.
Hopefully, one day, we can get a good adaptation of Yakuza because there are so many games that they can easily pick and choose what they like out of the games and turn into something really good. So stick to the games.
