Spoilers for a couple character deaths / reveals in Yakuza 1 / Kiwami and Yakuza 3.
Growing up in the UK, you get exposed to a lot of different soap-operas. Coronation Street, Hollyoaks, Eastenders, all of these are as well known to British audiences as they are made-up sounding to international ones. No matter how hard I try though, I have just never understood the appeal of them. Whenever I see a trailer for a soap-opera making reference to characters seemingly coming back from the dead, love triangles, assassination attempts and other maddeningly complicated storylines, I divert my attention away from them fairly quickly. For me, they’ve always seemed overblown, over-acted and overly outlandish in their story-telling. Or at least, that's what I thought before I got into the Yakuza series…
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| (Image property of 如く Ryū ga Gotoku Studios and Sega) |
A quick primer for those of you that might not know Yakuza, the games, called 如く Ryū ga Gotoku in Japan and now re-named to Like a Dragon in the west, follow the adventures of Kazuma Kiryu, a member of the Japanese crime organisation the Yakuza. The series’ timeline follows Kiryu and his various associates from the glitz and glamour of the 80s ‘bubble economy’ all the way through to the present day. While the series journeys across various locations, it is primarily set around Kamurocho, a fictionalised version of Tokyo’s Kabukichō red-light district. While the thrust of each game in the series varies, most centre around some kind of plot to take over the Tojo Clan (Kiryu’s branch of the Yakuza) through a mixture of espionage, real estate, assassinations and shirtless punch-ups.
That summary is very much an overview at best and if you have played one of the games, it probably fails to do justice to what the series is actually about and where its appeal lies. Yakuza has made a name for itself over the last two decades or so by juxtaposing strong character moments, like two sworn-brothers having to fight to the death, with scenes of humour and true madness, such as Goro Majima putting on increasingly elaborate costumes as an excuse to get Kiryu to fight him. The series repeatedly has shown that it can and will shift gears rapidly to keep its players engaged.
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| (Image property of 如く Ryū ga Gotoku Studios and Sega) |
As you can imagine from this peek behind the curtain, Yakuza has been criticised many a time for its understanding of tone. After all, the convolution of its conspiracy-ridden plotlines does make for a tough balance alongside wacky sub-stories and karaoke minigames. However, for me, when I sit down to play a Yakuza game, that’s part of the point. I like the elaborate detective stories and the weird but wonderful humour provides a welcome reprieve from serious men meeting in dreary offices and moments of brutal violence. While the moments themselves might be inconsistent, they never feel like it because the characters themselves are strong enough that it doesn't undermine the universe that the writers have created. In other words, Yakuza’s appeal is its inconsistency and the well-realised characters that enable it. But it was when I was pondering this that it suddenly hit me. This is why people like soap-operas.
At first this thought seemed ridiculous. How could a series about Japanese crime families told through a different medium have anything in common with western soap-operas? However, as I contemplated, it began to make more and more sense. At this point, almost 20 years after its first entry, Yakuza is a soap opera. For evidence of this, look to examples like Kiryu’s father figure, Shintaro Kazama seemingly returning from the dead not once but twice from Yakuza 1 to 3! Alternatively, you can look to the heel-turn that Kiryu's sworn brother, Nishikiyama, takes between Yakuza 0 and 1, leading to a shirtless climactic battle between them intercut with scenes of long-lost happiness.
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| (Image property of 如く Ryū ga Gotoku Studios and Sega) |
From an outsiders’ perspective, like the one I have when viewing soap-operas, these moments are ridiculous or melodramatic but when you’re absorbed into the games’ world, the idea of bullets missing all vital organs or someone having a twin brother with almost the exact same skillset don’t seem that outlandish. The characters themselves help carry you through the experience.
No matter what happens, Kiryu is always stubborn and principled, Majima is always weird, Daigo is always kind-hearted but in need of assistance and Haruka is always wholesome as hell. These characters provide a foundation upon which the plotlines can be built and as long as they respond to their ridiculous circumstances consistently, there is no reason for the player to feel taken out of the experience.
Once this idea clicked with me, that Yakuza works because the player cares about the characters and because those characters react consistently to their ever-changing surroundings, I understood how people get into soap-operas. Despite their framerates looking like you’re in the room with the actors, they aren’t made to be realistic. They are made to have characters that you like and can relate to who you want to see succeed. The drama then comes from challenging these characters and putting them in new situations that make the audience re-evaluate what they know about them. It is those characters that carry you through and help you to follow the plot regardless of the twists, turns and, at times, full-on backflips that it takes you through.
This is one of the reasons why I love videogames as an artform because not only do they open our eyes to information and stories from other cultures, like that of Ryū ga Gotoku Studios, but also, by presenting familiar tropes through a new medium, they give us a new perspective on things that we may not have given a chance to before. It just goes to show that games can not only change our perspectives but also expand our horizons and help us to understand one another and our interests just that little bit more.
Yakuza and related characters are the property of 如く Ryū ga Gotoku Studios and Sega and are used here for the purposes of criticism and review.
(Image property of 如く Ryū ga Gotoku Studios and Sega)