If shows like Fallout and The Last of Us have led people to believe that video game adaptations can receive wide acclaim and be excellent, shows like Like a Dragon: Yakuza bring the whole conversation back to square one: Video game adaptations are terrible. I saw a few minutes of gameplay footage of Yakuza: Like a Dragon on YouTube, and I liked it more than this six-episode adaptation. Wikipedia tells me that this series is a live-action adaptation of the 2005 Yakuza game, as well as its 2016 remake. Never mind. I am sure this series was made because there must be something exciting about the two Yakuza games. But while watching Like a Dragon: Yakuza, you are unable to understand what Sean Crouch and Yugo Nakamura, the creators, found appealing about the video games. The characters are generic, the story is bland - things simply go through the motions. Maybe this is one of those productions where money is the primary motivation. There is already enough chatter around video game adaptations. The studios must have thought this was the perfect time to lure in all the Yakuza fans.
Like a Dragon: Yakuza mainly moves between two timelines - 1995 and 2005. This back-and-forth narrative style is used to make us curious so that we can ask questions like, "What happened between the main characters? Why are they so distant from each other in the present? Who is that masked killer? When will the episode end?" It all begins with a money heist where we are introduced to Yumi (Yuumi Kawai), the lookout, Miho (Hinano Nakayama), the pickpocket, Nishiki (Kento Kaku), the provocateur, and Kazuma (Ryoma Takeuchi), the...driver? Planner? I don't think he gets an official title. He has dreams, however. Kazuma wants to be the Dragon of Dojima. He finds an opportunity to fulfill his desire when he meets the Dojima family patriarch, Sohei Dojima (Masaya Kato). Sohei is, you know, bad. This shouldn't come as a surprise. He initially tells Kazuma to win all the fighting matches and then, later, plans to defeat him in the ring by playing with the emotions of his best friend. This is your typical stock character behavior. No one in Like a Dragon: Yakuza does anything unexpected. This is a pretty straightforward story that's unnecessarily sliced into two pieces.
This approach merely undermines the emotional core of Like a Dragon: Yakuza. We spend most of the time wondering why we should even care about the characters or their situations. The series attempts to shroud itself in mystery by hiding certain things from us. It wants to surprise you through late revelations. It's easy to detect what's the problem here. The reveals are far from shocking or surprising; you can see the twists coming from a mile away. On top of this, too many ingredients spoil this dish. Like a Dragon: Yakuza contains gang war, family drama, criminal politics, confrontation between best friends/brothers, romance, revenge, comedy, and betrayal. It also becomes a serial killer thriller. The series fails to strike a balance between all these elements. It's awkward to find scenes like the one where a character starts peeing to ignore a corpse and that shootout in the vicinity of a beauty competition amidst a mostly gloomy, style-challenged atmosphere because the comedy built into these moments doesn't land.
The show relies solely on its story to captivate the audience. Nothing else is adorned for your viewing pleasure. The performances are all literal. The actors are simply used to present the on-screen events. The fight scenes are impersonally shot - they are not charged with violence. There is blood, and there are many punches, but it feels as if we are watching soft toys colliding with each other. The series doesn't have a clear, precise tone. As a result, everything appears dull. The poorly lit images don't spark your imagination. They don't fill you with awe, and they certainly don't motivate you to think deeply about this world. Like a Dragon: Yakuza will likely offend both the newbies and the old fans. It's not just unsatisfying; it's a chore to watch.
Final Score- [3.5/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times
Note: All 6 episodes are screened for this review