Like a Dragon: Yakuza

I didn't want a 1:1 adaptation of Yakuza, but I certainly didn't want *this*. It butchers half the characters with their characterization, and makes you hate characters that you probably shouldn't hate. Maybe I'd be more forgiving if they didn't give it the same name as the game series and just said it was "inspired by," but no instead we got...whatever the hell this is. An incoherent mess that roughly follows the plot of the first game. Theres...there's just so much that was disappointing about this show. The one thing I LIKED and still do is that actor who played Majima did a stellar job and the total of 10 minutes he was actually in the show was super fun.

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.

To be honest, if they had approached this like Judgment-setting it in the same universe but with new characters and a new story-I wouldn't dislike this series nearly as much. The cast for this show was very promising, all actors were prolific actors, the Director directed 100 yen Love and Naked Director.

The main issue is that they took characters from the original game, dumbed down their motives, and completely missed the mark. During an interview the director confessed that he wanted to create something more than the game, he ask everyone in the cast to not play the game beforehand. He wanted to make something that is favorable by audience that are not familiar with the game. Hence the second title "beyond the game"

It's clear that they don't grasp the depth and complexity of the Yakuza game, and because of that, they've created something that is shallow compare to the source material, yet they seem to believe they've somehow surpassed the source material.

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.

As an avid fan and player of the Yakuza games, I was surprised and a little cautiously optimistic when I saw this announced and being done by the creator of the game series. It has potential I will say that much. Although the casting leaves much to be desired. The role of Kiryu being played by a skinny little dude didn't fly for me and he just did not look the part. I also did not appreciate them glazing over Goro Majima's story arc in the span of 1/4 of an episode if that. Yakuza 0 is to date my all time favorite Yakuza game simply because of how fleshed out Majima's story arc is and what he had to go thru, his rise and ultimate fall within his clan was one of the best storylines in the entire franchise and yet it was just slapped together in a couple of scenes in the show for what I'm assuming is time constraints. But I digress. It is just one of the shows many issues. Another big one is in its pacing. The show time jumps between 2 eras, 1995 and 2005, respectively, yet for the life of me feels harder to follow at times than listening to a Scotsman talk after downing a keg of whiskey. What I did enjoy were some of the fight scenes and brawls when it felt a little bit like the Yakuza games in tandem with an interesting final episode when the culprit behind the attacks is revealed. Like I said there's potential here somewhere buried beneath its poor casting, pacing and execution. Also, who knows if this will even get renewed for a season two as it doesn't seem to be fairly well received I've noticed and I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks so. I do not think I'll be returning if there is a second season since it has way too many issues than praises. In the end perhaps the Yakuza series is best left in video game form, where you play as beefy Japanese gangster studs who happen to occasionally infiltrate underground man baby dens who's fetishes are to dress up as babies and get coddled by women. Now that's what this show adaptation is truly missing. Overall, I can't recommend this one as much as I wish I could as it is yet another miss for the long list of video game to movie/TV show adaptations. The good ones are just few and far between. Just play the games instead.