Amazon’s Like a Dragon works better as a mob drama than a Yakuza adaptation

It was late when I watched the first episode of Amazon Prime Video’s Like a Dragon: Yakuza. I bargained with myself to watch one episode before sleep; three episodes later, I finally went to bed. Let’s get this out of the way: if you’re looking for Like a Dragon to be a faithful representation of the Yakuza video game series, you’re going to be disappointed. But that’s what makes it worth watching. Like a Dragon’s unique approach to storytelling blends two different timelines together, making for a show that works on its own merit, without needing all the trappings of a Yakuza video game. 

Like a Dragon is Amazon’s second bite at the video game adaptation apple after the surprising success of its Fallout show. It stars Ryoma Takeuchi as Kazuma Kiryu, an orphaned youth who joins the Tojo yakuza clan with dreams of earning the title of Dragon of Dojima.

Like a Dragon’s story is loosely based on the events of the first two Yakuza games and is told across two concurrently running timelines in 1995 and 2005. Each of the series’ six episodes jumps between the two time periods, chronicling Kiryu’s rise and fall as a yakuza member, the shattering of his chosen family, and how those pieces are violently smashed back together 10 years later.

What initially shocked me most about Like a Dragon and what most cleanly separates it from its source material is all the violence. I’m aware of the irony: this is a mob show; people tend to get hurt in those. But the Yakuza series has always been deliberate in how it depicts violence. Guns are rare and murder is rarer, but Like a Dragon has both in abundance. The games also depict their fair share of blood, but those are typically in street brawls fought with fists and the occasional traffic cone. There was one murder in the show, of a civilian no less, so shocking in its casual execution that it actually made me queasy.

All the time skipping is the most interesting element of the show and the reason I don’t mind that it bears little resemblance to the games. In 1995, Kiryu was surrounded by the love of his chosen family and the respect of his yakuza brothers. By 2005, all of that had rotted away into distant animosity, and it was fun watching how the show reconciled it all. Rather than simply tell the story chronologically, Like a Dragon intentionally created gaps in understanding with one timeline and then filled them in with the other. In 1995, Kiryu has two father figures: the ex-yakuza who raised him in an orphanage and his clan leader. In 2005, both men are absent, and Kiryu has since been branded as an oyagoroshi — or “father killer.” The back and forth created a thrilling tension, compelling me to work alongside the show to piece the plot together like it was a mystery in addition to its basic gangster plot of revenge and betrayal. And I was pleasantly surprised by the resolution.

Since Like a Dragon’s violence feels antithetical to the spirit of the source material, I’m glad that the show didn’t also try to incorporate the series’ wackier elements. Yakuza is a video game and is therefore not subject to the mundanities of realism. Kiryu fighting grown men in diapers — a regular occurrence in the games — works because you, the player, are in on the joke and are participating in its telling.

But while Yakuza’s heartfelt story of redemption and its aesthetics as a Japanese gangster thriller translated well to TV, its over-the-top goofiness doesn’t. The story can’t bear that level of irreverence because there’s no player driving the action. Cutting from a moment of extreme violence to Kiryu at the Kamurocho batting cages, while a totally authentic representation of the games, would have created a tonal whiplash that would have taken even the most diehard Yakuza fan out of the show. 

But dispensing with comedy in exchange for drama does mean the show gets a bit tedious in its later episodes. Paramount’s Halo series also bears no resemblance to its source material, but it was interesting as hell (and canceled far too soon) because it was willing to use familiar characters in totally new narratives. Like a Dragon adds some new characters and remixes familiar story elements, but it’s basically the same story I’ve experienced before in the games. 

A lot of video game adaptations fail because they seem to operate from the premise that being just like the game is entertainment enough. The story gets twisted to fit all the little details that’ll make a fan sit up and say, “I get that reference,” leading to a boring, annoying mess, like when Doom shoehorned in that nausea-inducing first-person sequence. But Like a Dragon works precisely because it didn’t go for being a straight-up recreation of the games. It probably won’t do for Yakuza what Fallout did for… well, Fallout. But Like a Dragon is made better because it puts being good TV first over being a faithful adaptation.