Who would have thought half the television-watching world would voluntarily undergo what turned out to be a “Japanese For Beginners” course while watching Shogun on FX? Now that our tolerance for subtitled Japanese entertainment is back up at Godzilla and anime levels, it is time to hit the world with Like A Dragon: Yakuza.
Like a Dragon: Yakuza is a six-episode live-action series adaptation of the SEGA game franchise. Depending on where you were in the world it was either called Yakuza or Like A Dragon, hence the title of the show.
The Amazon Prime show is labelled as a gritty and realistic crime-suspense-action series. It is directed by Take Masaharu (100 Yen Love) and Takimoto Kengo (Kamen Teacher). It stars Takeuchi Ryoma as the lead Kazuma Kiryu.
The series will depict the lives of fierce, violent, and passionate gangsters, and the people who live alongside them in the huge entertainment district of KamurochÅ, a fictional district of Tokyo modelled after KabukichÅ, Tokyo’s renowned red-light district.
The series will be split over two periods, 1995 and 2005. It will explore how the life of childhood friends, and the decisions they make while younger, will have repercussions for a fearsome and peerless Yakuza warrior with a strong sense of justice, duty, and humanity.
In reality, the Yakuza are fiercely pro-Japanese ultra-nationalists so it will be interesting to see how this plays out on screen.
Sean Crouch and Nakamura Yugo created the story and screenplay, with a Japanese screenplay penned by Yoshida Yasuhiro and Yamada Kana. The series will be available both in subtitled form and dubbed into thirty languages.
Erik Barmack, Roberto Grande and Joshua Long executive produce the series which premieres onAmazon Prime on October 24th.