Like a Dragon: Yakuza

It was clear from the trailers that this wasn't going to be in any way related to the plot and characters of the games so I tried to watch it as a yakuza (lower case) series. It still didn't work. A main aspect of any film or TV show is that that the characters need to be engaging. I didn't care for any of them, one way or another.

The timeline jumps are confusing and there are far too many characters to keep track of.

There isn't even much going on or a plot to follow, it's just random scenes, one after another, which isn't helped by the flat characters. Nor is there much insight into Yakuza traditions, culture and procedures and of those there are, some of them are wrong.

Even Tokyo Vice does a much better job of portraying the Yakuza lifestyle.

I was hoping for something similar to the Fallout series which was brilliant: take the background/history/world from the games and tell a new story with it so you don't need to have played the games to understand what's going on. Everything looked like it did in the games.

In LaD:Y, all that atmosphere is missing. There isn't enough of Kamurocho (the real life Kabukicho). It just feels empty, nothing has character.

Having played the games, I found the series very disappointing. In my opinion they did a disservice to the characters. The story is very different from the game storylines. As a result I found it confusing and difficult to follow. The ever going back and forth between time periods didn't help. Despite that, the series does have entertainment value. The acting is decent (and consistent) throughout the series. There is good character development. The cinematography was very good and action sequences flowed nicely. Once in a while the camera angle used or lighting made a scene difficult to follow. From reading reviews of fans of the game, the series was a disappointment. I have to agree, but I still found it entertaining.

If you are a fan of the games, this show isn't for you

simply because there is nothing in the show that made the games special in the first place. For start, they decided to compress 2 whole games that runs for more than 30 hours into 6 episodes which is already a huge red flag. The casting is really odd and none of the characters feel like the characters we grew to love over the years. Majima is well casted but he is sidelined to oblivion. He is just a side background character instead of being a second protagonist like he isn't sharing the same struggle being intertwined in the yakuza business with Kiryu.

And if you are not a fan of the games, this show STILL isnt for you.

The story is all over place and it really fails to engage you into the lore and the politics of the Japanese crime family. Characters are just an empty hollow shell of their former glory alongside new characters that are utterly uninteresting.

Im really proud of the community for not holding a bias and praising the producers for doing less than bare minimum for adapting an already established franchise. I was really excited for this show however I was prepared for the disappointment from a mile away. Its clear there is no passion left in the industry anymore.

I played though yakuza 1 and i expected this show to be a little different from the game but it more like the halo show. The characters aren't how they are. The show is dark it hard to see things in it. The 2007 film was a better adaptation of the game. It was more faithful than this show. Some of the games plot is not here at all. In yakuza 1 kazama is in his late 30s early 40s in the show he like 25 or something it not faithful to the games. I was expecting something better then this but i was disappointed by this show for not being very faithful to the games it feels like the writers didn't play the games.

Even as a big Ryu Ga Gotoku fan, I would've been fine with story changes, after all Yakuza games get really silly with their storylines and sudden plot twists. However, this show makes no sense and it doesn't respect the source material at all. Kiryu is shown to be a polar opposite of what he is in the games, like all other characters including Kazama, Yumi and Nishikiyama. I can understand trying to have the characters grow as the story progresses, but this was terribly executed.

Not only that but the lore changes are completely awful and pull you back from the story. For instance, Kazama being away from the Yakuza, instead of being this behind-the-scenes mastermind? Really?

The sets and the overall costume design are awful too. It simply doesn't look like the characters are in 1995 nor 2005. No visuals nor looks match the iconic first two decades of Japan's Heisei era. For instance, where is Dojima's mustache? Everyone looks like they walked straight from 2024. Tokyo Vice, another Yakuza Crime show that came out in the last few years, has no issues portraying this era with beautiful sets and having people wear correct attires. The set designs don't reflect the epic/grandeur locations of the games, which is a bummer, as this show would've benefited from those opulent locations.

Overall, I am torn that this came out as terrible as it did. I wish the writers took better care of this source material. I am not saying that changes weren't needed, but this is the complete opposite of how the games are, and even ignoring that, this story is simply not good to stand in its two feet. There are a lot of complete remakes, such as Scarface (1983) and Battlestar Galactica (2003), that manage to be their own thing without disrespecting the source material. Here, unlike those, the writers clearly thought they were improving upon the original story, instead of trying to reimagine/ make their own thing. Well, the overall result is as weak as watery grape soda. No, it's not grape juice, this is just water with some grape in it. Awful.