Amazon Prime clearly is aware of it’s onto an excellent factor because it mines the seams of video video games for brand spanking new TV collection. Fallout was an astonishing success for the streamer, and you may solely think about what number of conferences should have been held with each possible writer for the previous few months. One winner is Sega, with the announcement of a Yakuza Like a Dragon collection on account of seem this October.
Should you’ve ever tried to piece collectively the historical past and chronology of Sega’s Yakuza video games, you doubtless nonetheless have a headache. Going since 2005’s authentic Yakuza, and most not too long ago releasing its ninth mainline entry, Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth in January, 2024, the franchise additionally sports activities a number of spin-off video games, Japanese-only releases, and the inevitable remakes of older video games to confuse anybody who isn’t paying shut consideration. Oh, and yeah, it switched English-language names during the last 5 years, ditching the Yakuza moniker for Like a Dragon as its official title.
Amazon Prime’s present is to compromise on that, titled Like a Dragon: Yakuza, flipping across the ordering of 2019’s sport title to make sure most confusion. Nevertheless, it’s not the primary live-action TV present based mostly on the sport, that honor going to 2010’s Kurohyō: Ryū ga Gotoku Shinshō based mostly on the PSP spin-off sport, airing solely in Japan. It then had a sequel based mostly on the next PSP launch, Kurohyō 2: Ryū ga Gotoku Ashura hen. You could find all of it on YouTube should you look, and it has some highly effective cleaning soap opera vibes. It’s secure to say Prime’s model will sport a considerably bigger price range.
Filmed in Japan, and in Japanese, Amazon plans to subtitle and dub the present for worldwide audiences. It is going to star Ryoma Takeuchi (Kamen Rider: Drive) as lead character Kazuma Kiryu, with path by Masaharu Take (We Make Antiques) and Kengo Takimoto (Kamen Instructor), in a six-episode present happening in each 1995 and 2005.
The storyline, as described by Selection, shall be “the life, childhood pals and the repercussions of the selections of a fearsome and peerless Yakuza warrior with a powerful sense of justice, obligation, and humanity.”
It seems to have the official seal of approval by the video video games’ author and producer Masayoshi Yokoyama, who has an govt producer credit score on this system. Whereas making it clear that he had no want to rewrite occasions based mostly on video games he’d beforehand made, he appears very pleased with the job carried out by others. “If I have been ever despatched to the previous by some sort of cosmic joke, that is the expertise I’d need to create. If I needed to undergo the wringer anyhow, I’d need to take advantage of partaking variations of Kamurochō and Kazuma Kiryu I may —and this present has all of it.”
Like A Dragon: Yakuza shall be dropped in two three-episode batches, one on October 25, the following on November 1, though there’s no data but on how lengthy every episode shall be.
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