Like a Dragon: Yakuza – the films that inspired the long-running video game series and new Amazon adaptation

A man in a grey suit stands beneath the glowing red archway of a bustling street lined with stores, clubs, places to be. The man is stoic yakuza-of-the-people Kiryu Kazuma and the street is red light district Kamurochō, modelled on real-life Kabukichō, Tokyo.

A combo-heavy brawler featuring extensive cutscenes, designed for a mature, domestic audience, SEGA’s 2005 PlayStation 2 videogame Yakuza was a risky gamble that paid off. Kiryu’s adventures in clan peacekeeping and city vigilantism became a flagship series in Japan, then internationally with Yakuza 0, an unexpected sensation when it launched in Western markets in 2017.

Each instalment added further to its ensemble cast portrayed by game and film veterans, its unparalleled array of minigame amusements, and the detailed pockets of real Japanese cities that the player can explore, each rendered with intricate accuracy.

Like a Dragon has now enjoyed 10 mainline entries, 10 spinoffs, and three film and TV adaptations. The latest of these adaptations, part of SEGA’s wider swing at transmedia expansion, is a Japan-made series that’s new to Amazon Video. It’s a logical move for an IP that has always nodded to the domestic silver screen. Here we run down six films that shaped Like a Dragon into a crime saga powerhouse.

Director: Takashi Miike

Takashi Miike’s films are cited by Like a Dragon series creator Toshihiro Nagoshi as a key influence on its creation, and yakuza-eiga Dead or Alive’s frantic kitchen sink approach to city-based violence is perhaps the clearest urtext. Equally, the trilogy’s more sombre moments – explorations of brotherhood and regret that crystallise in Dead or Alive 2: Birds (2000) – echo the emotional interpersonal narratives that the game series became known for.

V-cinema superstars Sho Aikawa and Riki Takeuchi star, who would later appear in Yakuza 5 (2012) and Yakuza 0 (2015) respectively.

Director: Takeshi Kitano

Kiryu retires to the quiet seaside of Okinawa to escape his past in the undersung Yakuza 3 (2009). Its genealogy can be traced back to the arthouse yakuza-eiga of Takeshi Kitano, particularly defining early work Sonatine, with which it shares the fundamentals of its setup.

Kiryu’s ending is happier than that of Sonatine’s tragic gangster Murakawa, but just as Kitano’s suicide motif takes his yakuza figure through a cycle of life and death time and again across his filmography, SEGA’s suited hero has been given a send-off outing in four games so far to date.

Kitano criticised videogame violence while promoting his film Outrage (2010), but later appeared in Yakuza 6: The Song of Life (2016)  as Onomichi’s yakuza patriarch, Toru Hirose.

Director: Takashi Miike

The Takashi Miike connection came full circle in 2007 when the director himself adapted the original game. Miike’s rendition is a retelling, but it adds an original subplot of a young couple caught up in a robbery.

In this, Miike and screenwriter Masashi Sogo understand the heart of this series beautifully. Kiryu may ostensibly be series protagonist, but it’s the Kamurochō district he serves that is the real main character. Couple this with the attention to location-based detail as Kiryu brawls in Poppo Marts and Don Quixote stores, and Miike’s is the most faithful adaptation of the series’ soul.

Toshihiro Nagoshi expanded Kamurochō’s world beyond the yakuza factions and shifted his gaze to the smaller screen in 2018 when he created Judgment, a lawyer-turned-detective procedural that added crime scene investigations and suspect interrogations to the gameplay loop. SMAP idol and actor Takuya Kimura stepped into the leather jacket of protagonist Takayuki Yagami. To Japanese audiences, the casting made perfect sense. Delinquent-turned-prosecutor show Hero was a star vehicle for Kimura, achieving the highest ratings for a domestic television drama in 25 years.

Director: Sion Sono

The videogame series changed genre to RPG in 2020, and its tone shifted towards the tongue-in-cheek and gonzo as new protagonist Ichiban Kasuga hit the streets with his crew of middle-aged heroes to take down the yakuza.

Like a Dragon 7 borrows the underdog template of Sion Sono’s mid-career films. Why Don’t You Play in Hell? is the clearest parallel with its delusions of violence as fantasy, a protagonist with a pipe dream, and warring clans.

Many Sono cast members appear in 7. Shinichi Tsutsumi, Why Don’t You Play in Hell?’s rival yakuza leader, plays the antagonist’s right-hand man; Ken Yasuda (The Virgin Psychics) plays homeless party member Namba; and Eri Kamataki (The Forest of Love) cameos as a romantic interest.

Sono himself appeared on a Like a Dragon livestream in 2017 to promote his own crime blockbuster, Shinjuku Swan II.

Director: Takashi Ishii

Masaharu Take, who directs the Amazon adaptation, got his start as assistant director on Takashi Ishii’s Gonin. The film opens with a checklist of Like a Dragon’s core motifs: a dynamic montage of a disco floor, a batting cage, a formidable yakuza in a suit. Take has come full circle, just as Miike did.

Director: Masaharu Take

There’s visceral physicality to the climactic fight sequence of Take’s breakout hit, punches connecting in sweat-dripping close-up. But 100 Yen Love begins with a videogame, Ichiko’s snack-dirty hands mashing buttons to make her boxer avatar hit, a digital dream soon to become real. Take’s Like a Dragon: Yakuza opens with Kiryu throwing punches to the air in a boxed-in jail cell, his repeat motions recalling the button presses and combos of the games. Synergising action digital and physical, it becomes plain to see why Take was the director for the job.