The upcoming Like a Dragon: Yakuza series appears to closely follow the premise of the original 2005 video game, which included a 10-year prison stretch for Kiryu after an incident that involved taking the fall for the murder of his one-time mentor.
Those dual timelines – 1995 and 2005 – will feature in the Prime Video series and, now, Kiryu actor Ryoma Takeuchi has outlined how the lead will evolve over the course of a decade.
"Everything harkens back to the two timelines," Takeuchi told 12DOVE at San Diego Comic-Con (via translators). "Everything is in contrast between 1995 and 2005. There’s a hothead, messy kid in 1995 and a grown cold, cool, masculine character in 2005."
That change even extends to Kiryu’s fighting style, as Takeuchi explains: "Even the character’s fighting style is completely different. We made a clear differentiation between how Kazama [Kiryu] fights in 1995 and how he fights in 2005. Everything just has this major contrast between the two timelines."
If it’s anything like our playthroughs of the series on consoles, we expect Kiryu to be spamming Tiger Drop until everything stops moving by the series’ end.
But that’s not something the actors – who didn’t touch the games in preparation for their roles – would be too familiar with.
"I know these games - everybody in the world knows these games,” Takeuchi told us in the same interview. "But I haven't played them. I'd like to try them but they had to stop me because they wanted to - for the character in the script - explore from scratch. That's why I decided not to play."
The first three episodes of Like a Dragon: Yakuza will premiere on Prime Video on October 24, with new episodes following weekly.
