Amazon MGM Like a Dragon: Like a Dragon Take on the arduous task of capturing a loved one from RGG Studios yakuza video game series and turned it into a well-known television show. this yakuza The game is as much a study of bizarre secondary characters and unlikely encounters as it is a narrative-driven crime story. While side quests and random chats with NPCs on the street might create memorable gameplay experiences, they hardly make for compelling television. Amazon made a smart choice, loosely adapting to the first yakuza The game rather commits to a complete retelling, but the show’s strong potential is lost in muddy storytelling and shallow character development.
The introduction to the first episode is strange: a stylish sequence you’d expect from a heist comedy kicks off the show, starring Kazuma Kiryu (Ryoma Takeuchi) and his friends Yumi (Yumi Kawai) and Akira Nishikiyama (Kaku Kento) and Jinshan’s sister Miho (Hino Nakayama) staged a bold theft. They succeed in their mission, experiencing some bumps along the way, and things get very bad when they return to their home, the Sunflower Orphanage. It turns out the money belongs to the Dojima family, one of the most dangerous yakuza families in the area.
The story is set up as if it is about these orphans and the struggles they face. The stolen money is supposed to help them escape Himawari and their stern adoptive father Kazama, but the rest of the episode is a long and superficial series of events where the four kids join the gang. Apparently the worst thing Kazama did in Himawari was make up the rules, while Kiryu did all of this supposedly just to join the gang. The first episode doesn’t stop to explore why Kiryu wants to join the gang, or why the other kids want to leave Himawari, neither topic comes up again. It’s a bit confusing, and that’s largely thanks to Kiryu himself.
Kiryu’s characterization is one of the more confusing in the series compared to the RGG games, which showcase Kiryu’s personality by putting him in uncomfortable situations and challenging his worldview in encounters outside of the main story. . Amazon never gave Kiryu a chance to develop, and he desperately needed this chance. His character is a rebellious young man who wants to fight, a dream that came about after he met Kamurocho’s top prizefighter Maedojima Ryuu just once, and it became his entire character. Even putting aside the source material, this isn’t the material to create an interesting character, which made his turn in 2005 feel tense and unbelievable. Although Like a Dragon: Like a Dragon Consciously trying to tell a different story than RGG, which it expects the audience to be familiar with yakuza games to fill in the gaps in the show’s narrative. You don’t have to see Kiryu’s love for his adopted family, you just know it’s there – unless you never played the first one yakuzayou really don’t know.
Between the shifts in perspective and time period, no subplot is given enough time to feel fully realized. The fact that the long-running feud between Kiryu, Nishiki, and Goro Majima takes up a good portion of the third episode, while a subplot about property crime that spans two episodes and goes nowhere doesn’t help matters.
To be fair, the show is pretty funny at times, and its fight choreography is excellent. Like a Dragon: Like a Dragon May be fumbling yakuzaThe storytelling and thematic development are poor, but it perfectly captures the chaotic energy of the battles, the ridiculous set pieces, and the absurd, over-the-top violence. There’s a shootout at the pageant, where Majima is repeatedly hit on the head with a concrete block and then walks away with aplomb, while Kiryu abandons the formal rules of fighting and employs underhanded tactics, doing something almost straight out of the pageant. Cruel moves borrowed from the game. yakuza The combat system’s signature heat action. He grinds his face into a stone wall, lifts grown men over his shoulders and throws them to the ground, accidentally knocking a lowly Grunt’s head into a fitting room mirror without even looking at him .
Still, considering how infrequently these battles happen, it’s hard not to wish Amazon put their energy into stronger character and plot development. Unlike RGG Studio’s games, Like a Dragon: Like a Dragon Determined to sidestep any sort of commentary on social injustice or the possibility of high-level corruption, its story feels sanitized as a result, even as it frequently erupts in shocking violence.
The closest to the point is in the second episode, where Yumiho starts working at the hostess club. There is a particularly touching scene where Miho holds her favorite stuffed toy and tells Yumi that she wants to make enough money to see the world, start a family, and die as a grandmother. The next day, she – a child – drinks too much to please a client and passes out. Their new “family” forces children and young women to perform for wealthy old men, all in an effort to make money to pay rent on a shabby apartment while dreams of a better life slowly fade away. Still, this is the most self-reflexive part of the first half of the series, and it never attempts to weave these themes into the story yakuza Games can.
The burden of driving the first half of the series forward falls on the characters and their relationships, and Like a Dragon: Like a Dragon Just not built for it. The first episode spent too much time dragging out the drama of Himawari’s child joining the Dojima family and not enough time building the emotional foundation the story needed. The relationships between Kiryu, Nishiki, Yumi, and Miho are almost non-existent despite being central to the show’s narrative, robbing the show’s most important moments of the emotional weight they deserve.
The show develops a slightly stronger sense of coherence starting with episode four, though it doesn’t entirely escape the problems of the first half. Like the first episode, it starts with a robbery, but on a much bigger and more dangerous scale. Yumi’s sister Aiko (Misato Morita) and her work partner intercepted a truck transporting 10 billion yen for the Omi Alliance in an attempt to provoke a war between gangs. Why the region’s largest and most efficient gang transported so much money in a van with minimal escort is anyone’s guess.
Towards the end of episode four, Amazon’s entire reimagining of RGG games hinges on this moment. Miho collapsed, her fragile kidneys finally couldn’t handle any more abuse, and Nishiki collapsed completely. What makes this moment even more surprising is that so far, we haven’t seen Nishiki interact with his sister in any way. He and Miho never speak, and the only time they are physically together is in a flashback when they first arrive at the Himawari Orphanage together.
Sudden, Like a Dragon: Like a Dragon We are expected to believe in the deep relationship between the two brothers, a relationship so important to Nishiki that this trauma threatens to shatter his sense of self. It’s to Kento Kaku’s credit that he sells these scenes so well despite having so little to work with, but they all feel hollow regardless.
The problem is it’s all a conspiracy. Dojima forced Kiryu into the ring, rigged the betting odds, and profited when he ultimately lost the match, using Miho’s condition as leverage. Regardless, Miho was unlikely to survive the transplant because her heart had been weakened by the prolonged dialysis. Nishiki then learns that his kidney is a match for Miho, but Dojima instructs the doctor not to say so.
It’s a shockingly brutal scene, which is slightly undercut by the little interaction we’ve seen between the family and the Himawari children so far. Yumi and Miho had the most reason to hate the yakuza and their exploitation, but Miho’s death was the catalyst to awaken people. brocade Want to defeat the entire Dongcheng clan. He brutally murders the repairman who lied about performing a transplant on Miho, and shoots Dojima’s leader in retaliation. Kiryu takes responsibility and is imprisoned, and Nishiki finds his status in the family rising. Jin’s newfound distaste for gangsters is understandable. However, the show wants you to believe that this stems from months of abuse and that Miho’s death was the final act that pushed him over the edge, but that doesn’t work.
That said, Amazon decided to re-contextualize Nishiki’s personal downfall and professional rise, taking the story in a stronger direction than what we saw in the first story yakuza game. In the game, the head of the Dojima family attempts to attack Yumi. Nishiki kills him, and Kiryu takes the responsibility to save his best friend from prison. Yumi loses her memory, and when she regains it, she begins a destructive relationship with a corrupt politician who vaguely reminds her of Kiryu, but ultimately dies trying to save Kiryu. The casual use of sexual assault as a plot point is disgusting and misogynistic to say the least, but anchoring Yumi’s entire personality in her love for Kiryu removes any sense of her individuality, which in turn does a disservice to her Another kind of damage was done. She is not alone. She is just an object and a love interest. Like a Dragon: Like a Dragon This setup is completely ditched and the emotional tension is refocused on the bond between four friends, and then three.
As it turns out, Nishiki’s motivations go beyond being frustrated that Yumi loves Kiryu instead of him, meaning he’s not just an angry non-celibate, but it turns out that everything bad that happens is actually Kiryu’s fault, As his friend said. His desire to join the gang forces Yumi, Nishiki and Miho into a nightmare from which they can never escape. On paper, the character dynamics look stronger and more interesting than in the original yakuza game, which makes Like a Dragon: Like a Dragondecision no The relationships between the characters develop even more inexplicably. The script could have used the time spent on the property subplot – which goes nowhere after the third episode – to show the tensions of brotherhood and rivalry between Kiryu and Nishiki, emphasizing Kiryu’s selfishness even more To express Jin’s inferiority complex.
The end of the series is a particularly interesting point. After Nishiki is revealed to be the Shinjuku Devil, who murdered dozens of Tojo clan members, Kiryu confronts him in a worthy battle. yakuza In the game’s most over-the-top encounter, the gangs wage war on the streets of Kamurocho – and after a macho episode, Yumi is the one to end the conflict. Yumi handed over Omi Alliance funds, rescued Aiko to safety after her sister was seriously injured, and helped Kiryu after his fight with Nishiki. Ultimately, one woman’s determination, rage, love for her sister, respect for her dead friend, and the extraordinary aim of a pistol make possible the dream of a better world—not Kiryu’s dream of fists and glory.
Unfortunately Like a Dragon: Like a Dragon It was a matter of structure as well as writing that I finally decided to try to develop this main idea. Six episodes, each about 45-50 minutes long, are nowhere near enough to develop six main characters and four different plots. When half of its episodes focus on throwaway subplots rather than character development, the disconnect between the show’s expectations and how you actually feel is inevitable. Still, the finale created a potentially powerful set-up for season two, and if the final scene is any example, it was inevitable. maybe like yakuza The game itself, the second one would be better.
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