There have been six mainline Yakuza games—Yakuza, Yakuza 2, Yakuza 3, Yakuza 63, Yakuza 5, Yakuza 6—a handful of spin-off games— Ryū ga Gotoku Kenzan!
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Last year, Yakuza Zero and Yakuza Kiwami gave us the beginning of Kiryu's story, which puts every aspect of Yakuza 6 (intended to be its end) into sharper relief.
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The Yakuza only hang out with the Yakuza, while the cartel kids keep to themselves.
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If you're not playing Yakuza 22 right now, why aren't you playing Yakuza 03 right now?
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Based on this translation it seems Yakuza Kiwami 2 uses the same engine as Yakuza 6.
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It'd be neat to see more of Yakuza 0 before Yakuza 6 shows up in March.
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For the uninitiated, the series follows Kiryu Kazuma, a Yakuza turned ex-Yakuza turned Yakuza (and then ex-Yakuza again), from his early 20s all the way through his late 40s, introducing you to his friends and enemies, and then slowly taking away most of the characters you hold dear.
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For fans of the Yakuza series, Judgment has a very similar DNA, although instead of taking the reins of characters who are Yakuza and ex-Yakuza, you are more on the outside of the criminal world looking in.
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Yakuza 63: The Song of Life picks up where Yakuza 5 left off (albeit after a helpful recap for newer players).
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It's something that producer Kazuki Hosokawa, who directed both Yakuza 5 and the prequel Yakuza 0, has been thinking about since 2012.
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Fans looking forward to Yakuza Kiwami's release next week will be heartened to know that Yakuza Kiwami 2 is apparently already on the way.
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If the Yakuza want to use tattoos to show the public that they're in a gang, they will simply wear visible tattoos and say they are Yakuza.
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In the early 1990s, when Fukushima first started making fake fingers for the ex-yakuza, social support for former yakuza members wishing to reform did not exist.
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Yakuza seems to be finally having a long awaited moment outside of Japan with Yakuza 0, and it's a really good time to get on the bandwagon.
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This engine was built for the PS4, unlike the engine used for Yakuza 0 and Yakuza Kiwami, which both came out in Japan for the PS3 and PS4.
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"It's difficult for people to rehabilitate after you've left the yakuza," actor Kenta Noguchi, who used to a henchman to a yakuza boss and biker gang leader said.
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Sega's already committed to releasing its full-on Yakuza remake this summer, Yakuza 6 is set for early 2018, and the company's considering remakes of the other games.
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Related: A Yakuza War Is Brewing in Japan — And the Police Are Taking Sides One of the reasons the breakup occurred was that members in the 100-year-old Yamaguchi-gumi decided it was time to shed some of the old yakuza ways, according to yakuza expert and Tokyo-based VICE contributor Jake Adelstein.
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Zero may still be the best jumping-on point anyone Yakuza-curious could hope for, but Yakuza 6 is filled with backstory and information that puts every relationship and callback into context.
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Toshihiro Nagoshi, the chief creative officer at Sega who also created the long-running Yakuza series, says that he doesn't look to the West when it comes time to make a new Yakuza.
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When lower-ranking members break the strict yakuza honor code and are deemed punishable by a higher-ranking yakuza, they will sever their left finger with a knife just above the top joint.
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The West even has a new Yakuza game to play.
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Just that the Yakuza are digging a really huge hole.
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There's a strong, noticeable emphasis on money in Yakuza 0.
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Side note: longtime Yakuza designer Toshihiro Nagoshi is the creative force behind this, and if you've played any Yakuza, Binary Domain's more eccentric touches—for better and worse—suddenly make a lot more sense.
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The yakuza is in disarray after a major theft, and not only is Kiryu's love interest missing, his childhood friend has morphed into a power-hungry criminal, steadily rising up the ranks of the yakuza.
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Treasury targeted Yakuza affiliate Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi, three of its key executive members — Kunio Inoue, Osamu Teraoka and Takashi Ikeda — and its core clan, the Yamaken-gumi, which split off from a larger Yakuza entity.
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As someone who also picked up Yakuza 0 as my first Yakuza game just a few months ago, I feel a very similar passion for the franchise, and I am SO THANKFUL this account exists.
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Yakuza 0 acted as strange sort of bookend—it's both a prequel to Kiwami and the original Yakuza, but a clear peak to a style of storytelling that the team's been honing for several games.
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And it's not like Yakuza pioneered this sort of thing, either.
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Salvadoran gangsters get extravagant tattoos; Japanese yakuza cut off a fingertip.
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On paper, Yakuza 6 falls a little short in this regard.
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The yakuza often run sexual massage parlors staffed by underage girls.
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The yakuza, Japan's notorious organized crime syndicates, are on the decline.
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But where's the common ground between the Yakuza and the Cartels?
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On the surface, it can seem repetitive — go here, collect this, go there, fight some yakuza along the way — but the Yakuza games have a pleasingly old-school rhythm to them, and Kiwami is no exception.
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The Yakuza games also aren't afraid to get weird and occasionally silly.
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Structurally, Kiwami isn't a really a change at all from Yakuza 0.
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Yakuza Kiwami is a second chance to see where it all started.
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Yakuza is a series that revels in its throughlines, parallels, and iterations.
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Project Judge also shares the Yakuza series' penchant for quirky, tangential minigames.
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The people in Japan thought it was a tribute to Yakuza films.
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Later, the Yakuza appropriated tattoos and began using them to mark themselves.
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Yakuza 0 doesn't gloss over the prurient entertainments of the time, either.
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Horiyoshi III: Yakuza always want the best; everything must be first class.
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"The smarter yakuza have been 'clean skins' for years now," said Adelstein.
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Other laws clamped down on companies that knowingly worked with the yakuza.
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Judgement is a PS4 game set in the Yakuza universe—an open world series where players step into the stylish shoes of a yakuza gangster to fight rivals, play mini-games, and hang out on the streets of Japan.
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The Yakuza games are well-known for their unique blend of silly and serious; one moment you're in the midst of a dramatic fight between warring yakuza families, the next you're accidentally winning a live chicken in a contest.
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The highlights coming in February include Yakuza 0 and Tom Clancy's The Division.
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Yakuza 0 does a lot of things that modern games shy away from.
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Series like Persona, Yakuza, and others have had breakout success in recent years.
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And they bring me back around to why I enjoy Yakuza in general.
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The Yakuza series has always been something of an enigma outside of Japan.
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They hear a gun in the lobby, and Elektra believes it's the Yakuza.
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But the ex-yakuza member had booked himself a consultation within the hour.
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Usually the yakuza self-amputate their pinkies, but sometimes they ask for assistance.
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Yakuza Kiwami gave us a fresh look at the first chapter in a sprawling saga of crime families, political dealings and double crossings, paying close attention to the cinematography and storytelling of the original Yakuza while adding new stories alongside it.
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It's rare for a game to be able to oscillate so wildly between humorous weirdness and gritty story sequences as well as the Yakuza series does, but Yakuza 0 pulls it off better than any game in the series previously.
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Yet the Yakuza still kill far, far fewer people with guns than American gangs.
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Yakuza 6: The Song of Life is available April 17th on the PlayStation 4.
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Rather than explicitly ban the Yakuza, it was easier to reject anyone with tattoos.
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Episode 8Man, the Yakuza are really determined that no one mess with their hole.
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Despite severe societal prejudice against the yakuza, she had no qualms in treating them.
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I'm here to tell you it's not a good reason to avoid Yakuza 0.
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And tons of beat-em-up street combat, because it is a Yakuza game.
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But seemingly mundane legal changes beginning in the early 1990s have undercut the yakuza.
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The new trailer for the Western release of Yakuza Kiwami—the remake of the original Yakuza of 2005—shines a light on the (not always) lethal (but always incredibly bruising) fighting prowess of the game's hero, and cult video gaming favorite, Kazuma Kiryu.
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I haven't finished it so far, I don't want to give too much away, but the premise is that his brother killed the nephew of a Yakuza boss and he framed it as though the nephew was murdered by another Yakuza family.
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Yasu and Julie are in the middle of a big drug deal for a yakuza group, but one of the yakuza, Kase (Shôta Sometani) has drawn corrupt cop Otomo (Nao Ohmori) into an plan to steal and resell the drugs, and frame Monica.
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Yakuza 7 — or to be precise, Ryu ga Gotoku 7, which means "Like a Dragon 7," which will drop the "7" and go by Yakuza: Like a Dragon in the West for some reason — made its public debut today at Tokyo Game Show.
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A wild story unfolds involving multiple yakuza families, cops, lawyers, and a medical research hospital.
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In Japan, tattoos are associated with the Japanese mafia, commonly referred to as the yakuza.
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Sandwiched in between is Yakuza Kiwami, a remake of the original available today on PS4.
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In fact, in some ways, Kiwami actually feels like a step back from Yakuza 0.
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With this frame of mind, now is an amazing time to be getting into Yakuza.
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Yakuza 0's rendition of 1980s Japan is like an arcade disguised as a city.
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Yakuza 0 takes place in 0, and is spread out across two locations and characters.
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Toshihiro Nagoshi's team behind the Yakuza series at Sega has announced its next major work.
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Last year's wonderful Yakuza 0 introduced a lot of people outside Japan to the series.
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In Yakuza 6, parenting isn't quite so tightly woven into the fabric of the experience.
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While there, he learns about the mysteries of "drift" racing and takes on the Yakuza.
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For another, there's some worrisome news about the next title from the developers behind Yakuza.
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Most of them were teenagers when they joined the Japanese mafia, known as the yakuza.
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I don't think they get their tattoos with their allegiance to the Yakuza in mind.
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The area is home to the Yamaguchi gumi—the largest yakuza organization in the country.
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The Yakuza games have always essentially been JRPGs, and now the connection is even clearer.
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"One of the traditional roles of the yakuza was to serve as fixers," said Milhaupt.
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Sega will be hoping to capitalize on that positive reception to make the series a bigger name outside of Japan; this summer will see the launch of a remake of the first Yakuza from 2005, which will be followed by Yakuza 6 sometime next year.
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Yet despite a domestic fall in their numbers, internationally, the yakuza continue to fascinate observers, with gangster films such as "Kill Bill" by US director Quentin Tarantino, "Outrage" by Japanese director Takeshi Kitano and video game series like "Yakuza" contributing to their cult appeal.
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The show's second season is sticking to its strengths with new, bloodthirsty characters, a plot involving the trial of the century, and the yakuza (or a group that says it's the yakuza), Irish gangsters, and violent bikers itching for a gorgeous fight scene or three.
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This January's Yakuza 0 finds something of a sweet spot between the grave and the giggly.
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The same goes with Team Soho working on The Getaway, and Sega on its Yakuza series.
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Everybody expects Yakuza 0 to be a pulpy action game with slick beat-'em-up mechanics.
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Most Japanese have little enthusiasm for casinos, which they associate with gambling addiction and yakuza gangsters.
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When the Yakuza series made its Western debut, it did so with a big marketing splash.
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If you got your start with the series through Yakuza 0, Kiwami will feel very familiar.
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It can take some getting used to, but eventually Yakuza 0 settles into a pleasing rhythm.
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Bend the rules too far for foreigners and the yakuza may complain about discrimination, he frets.
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Players who are familiar with the series will be pretty accustomed to how Yakuza 6 plays.
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But seeing some of the woodenness in Yakuza 6 has made me re-evaluate that position.
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It can take some getting used to, but eventually Yakuza 22 settles into a pleasing rhythm.
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But it's also tempting to revisit some of the games I mentioned earlier, like Yakuza 0.
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Here, Elektra has come back into Matt Murdock's life, bringing news that the yakuza have returned.
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Today, police estimate there are around 50,000 yakuza -- down dramatically from just a few years ago.
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Kohh references yakuza movies But that's not the only thing different about Kohh's take on trap.
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They were actually two separate worlds for myself until I started playing with Yakuza in 2000.
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The playing cards were even used by some notorious gangs, including the crime syndicate the Yakuza.
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Yakuza brought us a similar return to the origin of urban myth and the criminal underworld.
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Compared to other open-world adventures, the explorable districts of the Yakuza games are rather small.
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Growing up, little kids will read about the Yakuza and think that they are bad people.
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Everyone left their homes, and it was the Yakuza that insured that no one was burglarized.
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But it doesn't always mean that these ex-yakuza will permanently shake a life of crime.
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Playing Judgment made me regret never playing any of the Yakuza games for the past decade.
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"How is a yakuza like a cue ball?" he says, while beating information out of one.
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It's changes in social expectations in how government should operate, and reduced tolerance of the yakuza.
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The Woman Who Makes Prosthetic Pinkies for Ex-Yakuza Members (by Emiko Jozuka) Members of the Japanese mafia, or yakuza, undergo a ritualistic form of self-amputation to atone for mistakes: When they break the rules, they chop off a piece of the little finger to atone.
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Sega's Yakuza 0 opens with Kazama Kiryu walking down neon-lit Tokyo streets, dragging on a cigarette.
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Critics said it would exacerbate problem gambling and attract "anti-social forces", a euphemism for yakuza gangs.
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Even yakuza gangsters, once a potent criminal force, have been weakened by tougher laws and old age.
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But instead each of Yakuza 0's disparate parts work together to create a surprisingly cohesive experience.
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But Yakuza 6 and this week's God of War take this idea a step further than most.
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Thai authorities say Shirai admitted to being a yakuza member but denied being involved in the murder.
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In an effort to exclude yakuza members from society, visible tattoos are forbidden in most public places.
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The National Police Agency (NPA) even lists the business addresses of some yakuza organizations on their website.
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Optional quests, too, mix elements of the era with that distinct Yakuza brand of side-story strangeness.
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The syndicate has been known to collaborate with Japan's Yakuza and motorcycle gangs like the Hells Angels.
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The syndicate, dubbed "Sam Gor," even collaborates with Japan's Yakuza and motorcycle gangs like the Hells Angels.
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And Ren Osugi, 66, a veteran Japanese actor famed for his roles in Takeshi Kitano's yakuza films.
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Their mission pairs them with an eccentric yakuza boss (Kitano) who leads them deep into the underworld.
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In the early 1990s, Japan passed a law that allowed police to label yakuza as violent organizations.
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The law criminalized their activities, allowed the police to hold yakuza bosses responsible for their underlings' actions.
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Battle Royale and Death Note star Tatsuya Fujiwara has a major role, but the most notable part is a small-time elderly mob boss played by yakuza movie legend "Beat" Takeshi Kitano, whose turn is laced with pathos and woven through the heart of Yakuza 6's narrative.
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It's true that in Japan, a large percentage of firearm homicides are related to the Yakuza crime syndicates.
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After all, like GTA, Sega's Yakuza is an open-world action game series with a focus on crime.
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I read for 20 minutes; I'm finished with the yakuza and now I'm reading Nell Freudenberger's The Newlyweds.
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In addition to these new elements, another thing longtime Yakuza players will notice is a change in tone.
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One room shows Daido Moriyama's pioneering pictures of Tokyo's seedier zones, all tattoos, yakuza gangsters and nightclub performers.
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He says if the yakuza lose influence, street crime could surge in Tokyo, considered the world's safest city.
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Take the money and run, but a vat-grown Yakuza assassin is probably going to get you eventually.
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Twenty years ago, at the height of the Japanese economic boom, yakuza syndicates across Japan were more active.
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Word spread of Fukushima's talents, and she soon found herself making prosthetic parts for others, including the yakuza.
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Throughout her career, Fukushima has dealt with irate yakuza who have thrashed around her practice and threatened her.
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There's your ex-yakuza friend Masaharu Kaito, who is unbelievably strong and loyal and loves his flashy orange shirt.
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Nioh, Yakuza 23, Gravity Rush 20163, Horizon Zero Dawn, and Nier Automata have already landed to largely positive reviews.
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Despite eventually turning into a franchise with multiple sequels, the Yakuza games largely remained a niche outside of Japan.
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It's never been the most technically accomplished of series, but Yakuza 173 is still a big visual leap forward.
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But while I'd still recommend playing 0 first, Yakuza 6 works better on its own merits than I'd expected.
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That makes now an ideal time for Yakuza 6, the first game in the series built for modern hardware.
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For over a Yukako Fukushima has been helping ex-yakuza rehabilitate from self-amputations performed as punishment for mistakes.
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But, abused by a mother involved with the yakuza and bullied as a kid, he fell into gang life.
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Ishii's tactic, in these situations, is to apply a temporary tattoo to his neck and dress like a yakuza.
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A few weeks back, I told everyone they should be playing Yakuza 22017 for a simple reason: it's awesome.
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Then, a copy of Nioh (also awesome) showed up, which meant I put Yakuza 43 (still awesome) on hold.
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After that I fled a Yakuza death squad and FedEx'd myself to London, reading Moby Dick along the way.
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He's an Irezumi tattooist based in Yokohama, and he's also the favored tattooist of the Yakuza—the Japanese mafia.
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Sega spent a bunch of money signing up major Hollywood talent—Michael Madsen, Eliza Dushku, Mark Hamill—voice the characters, and released bombastic trailers like this one: Though I'm into sweet yakuza dudes fighting one another and ships blowing up, it betrays the heart of Yakuza games and sells the experience short.
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If you resent games walling the player off or insisting on where they go next, you will hate Yakuza 0.
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Given Kiryu's outsized reputation as the toughest yakuza around, Majima wants nothing more than a great fight against the best.
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It doesn't feel right to describe O-Ren Ishii, the yakuza boss played by Lucy Liu in Kill Bill: Vol.
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Drugmakers probably rely on UWSA's connections with organised-crime groups abroad, like China's triads, Japan's yakuza and Australia's motorbike gangs.
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For the kind of story Yakuza 6 wants to tell, bare facts scattered on a timeline just wouldn't be enough.
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Beyond the obvious improvements to fidelity, the new Yakuza engine allows for a more fluid take on the series's action.
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Yakuza 0 is the most accessible of a whole line of weird, wacky, and moody Japanese mafia dramas from Sega.
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Police said he had confessed to being part of the Yamaguchi-gumi gang within Japan's Yakuza, but not to murder.
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Matt goes after Stan, the Roxxon accountant, who reveals that the Yakuza are holding his son hostage at a warehouse.
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Through the course of Yakuza 20, you'll take control of both Kiryu Kazuma and another frequent recurring character, Goro Majima.
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Mac, who desperately wants to be seen as a formidable martial artist, envisions himself fighting a crew of Yakuza thieves.
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The way tattoo culture is connected to the Yakuza and the crime world has a lot to do with journalism.
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Does the Yakuza feel that these scenes from Japanese mythology express who they really are, outside of propaganda-fueled stereotypes?
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The next major entry in the Yakuza series has been revealed in Japan, and Sega is seriously shaking things up.
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Katana (Tatsu Yamashiro) Katana (Tatsu Yamashiro) took up crime-fighting and vigilantism after her husband was murdered by the Yakuza.
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In the 1990s, the North's cash-poor government began manufacturing meth for export to the Chinese triads and Japanese yakuza.
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There are crooked cops, tenacious lawyers, and a handful of deadly yakuza, all of whom play key roles in the story.
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Part of what makes the Yakuza games so great is how they manage to seamlessly oscillate between a range of emotions.
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The Yakuza series is sort of like a much stranger, goofier take of open-world action titles like Grand Theft Auto.
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It's his way with people, and in Yakuza 6, it's specifically the ease with which he handles caring for a baby.
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Like the Yakuza games, the degree of verisimilitude is something that the developers will have assumed that most players will appreciate.
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The main storyline is also a little shorter than previous games; I finished Yakuza 6 in a relatively brisk 25 hours.
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At times, the structure of a Yakuza game, which involves a lot of beating up thugs, can make for weird moments.
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While Judgment is generally darker and more serious than Yakuza, it can still get a bit weird and silly at times.
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Last year, the Yakuza series wrapped up with its sixth and final entry, which bid farewell to lovable hero Kazuma Kiryu.
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Yakuza 0 is a game where a quest to prove your innocence can be derailed by a night out for karaoke.
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Authorities say Shirai fled Japan for Bangkok in 2005 while being investigated for the 2003 murder of a rival Yakuza member.
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Episode 6The Yakuza show up at Elektra's apartment, having pieced together that she's responsible for putting a bug in their servers.
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Matt and Elektra find themselves immediately surrounded by Yakuza, and she gets her stomach sliced pretty badly in the ensuing fracas.
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There's the Yakuza series staple of karaoke at bars, too, complete with the dot-matrix LEDs machines of the era featured.
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Usually one of Fukushima's fingers costs 180,20143 yen ($1490), but she provides ex-yakuza in difficult financial situations with a discount.
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So she reduced the price of the prosthetic fingers, letting her yakuza clientele pay in monthly installments once they secured jobs.
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In 2012, one in five Japanese companies succumbed to yakuza extortion schemes, according to a study by the National Police Agency.
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Even today, tattoos and especially extensively inked arms and bodies are the hallmarks of Japan's yakuza — members of its organized-crime community.
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This is ostensibly what the Yakuza games are about — powerful personal dramas mixed with the seedy underworld of Japan's organized crime families.
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It started with the wonderful prequel Yakuza 0, which was then followed by a remake of the first game in the series.
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He shows off his missing pinkie, which was cut off with a chisel in a yakuza ritual of atonement for the transgression.
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Police said the attention of Japanese authorities was drawn after pictures of Yakuza tattoos covering Shirai's back went viral on social media.
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Police have also said they would investigate other suspected Yakuza gangsters in Thailand even if they did not have an arrest warrant.
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In the West, when we think of Japanese men in full-body suits, the first thing we think of is the Yakuza.
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Most ex-yakuza will need their pinkies firstly for job interviews as they are likely to have their hands on their laps.
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The first was Toshihiro Nagoshi, a flamboyant designer who would later go on to develop the Super Monkey Ball and Yakuza series.
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The serious, very hardcore Yakuza storyline mixed with silly side quests and fun mini games somehow managed to feel cohesive and smooth.
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Gravity Rush 2, Resident Evil 23 and Yakuza 0 represented the big three, I suppose, and I've at least started all of them.
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In Yakuza 6, you're signed up for a service called Troublr (lol) which gives you notifications anytime something fishy is happening around Kamurocho.
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According to your peers and authority figures, you're an unruly terror with a record of assault, one step from a Yakuza series crossover.
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Things take an even darker turn when an old Yakuza boss is let out of jail, complicating matters for the terminally-ill Matsunaga.
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Yakuza 0's story—broken up by back-alley fights with thugs—is one of the best in any action game ever made.
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Yakuza 0 continues that trend, but brings the series back to the '80s in a fictionalized take on the seedy underbelly of Tokyo.
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Skirting back and forth across the border between where violence is and isn't a valid solution, Yakuza 6 delivers this message extremely well.
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At the outset of the game, a series of yakuza have been murdered in a grisly fashion, and Yagami is investigating what happened.
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By the time he was 32, he had been excommunicated by the yakuza after spending about 8 of 10 years as an inmate.
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Jake Adelstein, an author and journalist in Tokyo who has written extensively about the yakuza, says the Japanese mafia keeps thugs in check.
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He laughs, admitting that he and the other actors are playing up yakuza stereotypes, before handing a pair of statement earrings to Mika.
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It all ends with a shootout between the Philadelphia gang and the Yakuza, who end up shooting Uncle Phil (Kenan Thompson) to death.
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But Yakuza 0 has a unique task beyond just authenticity of its setting: it also has to be authentic to the time period.
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You know, like talking about how I was able to help a dominatrix find the will to punish her clients in Yakuza 0.
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Mnemonic courier, Johnny (Ryan Gosling) has 48 hours to deliver sensitive information to some dudes in Beijing while being chased by Yakuza thugs.
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Even so, you may find yourself wondering more than once why the hell the Yakuza are in Hell's Kitchen in the first place.
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"The role of the yakuza in society is being reduced," said Curtis Milhaupt, director of Columbia Law School's Center for Japanese Legal Studies.
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Maybe I won't even have a GOTY 2018 list because I'm ready to go back and play every single Yakuza game in existence.
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I pretty much obsessed over Yakuza for the entire end of 2017, and still think about these wonderful games at least once a day.
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He still maintained his lawyer connections, though, and with his connections to the Matsugane yakuza family, he's found steady work as a private detective.
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One of the main attractions of Yakuza 0, like the games it serves as a prequel to, is the opportunity to linger with Kiryu.
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I also tested it with Yakuza 0, which, surprisingly, served up the worst performance, even though it's the least demanding title that I tested.
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And it'd be cool to put a thumb on exactly why that's the case here, through deeper digging into just what makes Yakuza tick.
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When you spend hours beating up goons in Yakuza 0, stopping for some sushi and a chat with the chef is a welcome respite.
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One of the recurring elements of Kiwami is Majima, an eccentric yakuza leader whose taste in fashion leans towards eye patches and animal prints.
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Fans of the Yakuza video game series can't purchase the latest game in the gangster-genre franchise thanks to a real-life drug bust.
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At the outset you'll control Kiryu, a low-ranking yakuza in Tokyo, who early on finds himself framed for a murder he didn't commit.
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And because Yakuza 0 is a prequel, you can enjoy the story without having to worry about having played any of the other games.
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Outside of exploration and combat, which you'll be doing a lot of, Yakuza 0 also features a large number of minigames and side activities.
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While the story is generally great, it does retain one of the less-appealing aspects of the Yakuza series: it is exceedingly male-centric.
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With this in mind, Hosokawa says that the team had a clear goal of making sure this didn't feel like yet another Yakuza game.
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Our review by Andrew Webster describes the game's old-school structure: Yakuza 23 does a lot of things that modern games shy away from.
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In fact, the tradition is said to have originated among imprisoned members of the yakuza, one pearl for each year they spend in jail.
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In Japan tattoos have long been stigmatized for their association with organized crime gangs, the Yakuza, who pledge their allegiance with full-body markings.
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On that note, the skills upgrade tree is nice and simple—which I appreciate after the rather more jumbled one found in Yakuza 0.
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Yakuza 20 is, chronologically, the first game in Sega's long-running open-world series, though it's the latest to be released in the West.
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It might allow him to disguise his past—and help shield against Japanese society's prejudiced view of ex-yakuza members in search of redemption.
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When Fukushima first started making prosthetics for people, she didn't expect to see a steady increase in members of the yakuza seeking her services.
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It's one of the reasons I've avoided the Yakuza games, even as clips of dudes fighting tigers gave me pause over my life choices.
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Yakuza has always been good at the extras; Sub-stories are worth experiencing, mini-games are rewarding and fun, and karaoke is a MUST-DO.
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Sega recast one of the characters in 2009's Yakuza 4 after he was caught with cocaine, completely replacing him in a subsequent re-release.
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In the midst of this sprawling yakuza epic are a copious number of side stories that add a much more lighthearted vibe to the experience.
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"Family" in Yakuza is not just about giving strong characters external vulnerabilities—things to protect, to snarl over, to scold for their own damn good.
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Yakuza 6 is the first mainline entry in the series to have been built from the ground up for the PlayStation 4, and it shows.
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These moments can seem silly — which, to be fair, is part of the appeal of the Yakuza series — but they're balanced by more serious ones.
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Yakuza 6 has a lot of other things to say about fatherhood in particular, but it's these interactive moments that have really stuck with me.
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If you've ever played a Yakuza game — and there have been a lot of them of late — the basic framework of Judgment will feel familiar.
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Judgment, which launches next week on the PS4, is similar to Yakuza in a lot of ways, but it's also a hard-boiled detective story.
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The creator let me know they've played 0-3 and have started on Yakuza 4, which is great news for us yakuzasoftbot fans out there.
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And I say that coming off playing Yakuza 0 and Horizon Zero Dawn, which in their own ways sizzle and fizz across the TV screen.
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More dangerously, yakuza with ties to nationalist organizations would act as muscle, putting down public protests and silencing activists, never hesitating to stoop to murder.
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While Yakuza 0 isn't the perfect virtual recreation of 1980s Japan I crave, its devotion to the overall feel of the time period is admirable.
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I met an enforcer for the yakuza, which is the Japanese mafia, and he was telling me how he was chopping up bodies of dealers.
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Judgment centers around Takayuki Yagami, a private detective and former lawyer who winds up investigating a series of murders with possible ties to the Yakuza.
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Until Dawn Fans of the Sega's long-running Yakuza game series probably don't need to be lectured on the merits of its detective spinoff Judgement.
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In 2012, former yakuza boss Tadamasa Goto paid $1.4 million to settle a lawsuit brought by the family members of one of his henchmen's victims.
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The game was developed by the same team behind the Yakuza series, which has a cult following in the West but hasn't gathered a huge audience.
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If you haven't played a Yakuza game before, you might be picturing something along the lines of Grand Theft Auto, only set in modern-day Japan.
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For girls in working class schools who were bullied by real sukeban, they were a source of fear and distaste, similar to how Japanese view yakuza.
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While the excellent Yakuza 6 featured megastar actor Beat Takeshi in a key role, Sega has managed to one-up its star power this time around.
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The combat and general movement through the city is extremely reminiscent of Yakuza, but it looks like there's a lot more variety in the core gameplay.
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"Today's designation is part of the Treasury Department's collective efforts to target the Yakuza," said John Smith, acting director of Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control.
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"Yakuza put pearls in their dicks to make sex better for their partners," she said, explaining that it's intended to provide more vaginal or anal stimulation.
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The fish in question is the ravishing Asian arowana, "the most expensive tropical fish in the world," treasured by effete connoisseurs and yakuza crime lords alike.
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Though the police and yakuza are supposed to be enemies, here they found common cause over their mutual loyalty to monied interests threatened by labor organization.
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Genuinely great ensemble casts are a rarity in video games—Oxenfree, Persona 4 and the Yakuza series come immediately to mind, but not a lot follows.
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In 1993, a government survey found that 45 percent of yakuza members had severed digits, with at least 15 percent having gone through the act twice.
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If infractions accrue, the yakuza in question will continue down the joints of the left finger, gradually moving onto the little finger on the right hand.
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Unlike other open world games, Yakuza 0 doesn't instantly mark everything of interest on the map Instead, players are tasked with organically stumbling into side quests.
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"This is fucking wild!" a wounded yakuza member bellows to no one in particular, deep into the heart of Takashi Miike's latest action-thriller, First Love.
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Finished meth was typically sent across the northern border into China, or handed off at sea to criminal organizations like Chinese triads or the Japanese yakuza.
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Saya and the rest of that crew belong to the different factions — the Yakuza, the Mexican Cartels, the LA Gangsters — that run the school's social scene.
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Kiryu, the main protagonist of Sega's long-running Yakuza series, exudes an embittered, stoic swagger, like a young Clint Eastwood with tattoos streaming down his shoulder blades.
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I also have Yakuza 2 and 5 kicking about at home, and even picked up the zombie-slaughtering spin-off Dead Souls because why not, I guess.
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Meanwhile, the agencies are involved in investigating the last remaining yakuza clan, who become entangled with the League of Villains in a last-ditch attempt to survive.
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Earlier this year saw the launch of the excellent prequel Yakuza 0, a perfect starting point for those who had missed out on the quirky crime drama.
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This is as much a part of what makes the series unique and affecting as its bombastic fights and winding intrigues, and Yakuza 6 only doubles down.
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And excusing Yakuza 6's minigames (more on those later), the series' familiar combination of exploration and combat carries you from one plot beat to the next.
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Thankfully, Sega didn't lean on cheap fan service to wrap up Kiryu's story, and in many ways, Yakuza 6's tight, focused nature works in its favor.
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About midway through Yakuza 6, longtime series hero Kazuma Kiryu takes a trip from his bustling home city of Tokyo to Onomichi, a quiet neighborhood in Hiroshima.
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So much of the game, from the combat to the location to even the in-game menus, feels exactly like it does in the main Yakuza games.
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Hisao Yanai, a one-armed, chain-smoking, retired yakuza boss, stands alone behind the bar at Ippei, the restaurant he owns in the Japanese town of Naraha.
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I was a fan of the Jean-Pierre Meliville movies, of Hong Kong stuff, of the [Japanese] Yakuza films and the Fernando Di Leo Italian Mafia movies.
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It seems then, that much like Yakuza 0, Pokémon Sun and Moon reaches back in spirit, if not in actual chronology, to a more financially comforting time.
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While the actors have mostly left their previous lives behind, Kuramoto said they've retained the more positive aspects of the yakuza and fed them into Takakura-gumi.
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This January, the PlayStation 4 has a few interesting (Western) releases lined up: Gravity Rush 2, Yakuza 0, and that Kingdom Hearts remaster with the nonsensical name.
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As much as I adore Yakuza 0's recreation of 1980s Japan, there's one major element of the era that the game drops the ball on: fashion.
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Over the years, Fukushima has celebrated the successes of those who have managed to cut their ties with the yakuza, and felt saddened when things fall apart.
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However, Jaeger betrayed Kovacs multiple times to keep him under his thumb (see: the time Jaeger allowed Kovacs' little sister Reileen to be sold to the Yakuza).
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I didn't entirely follow the plot here, but the newest movie from Takashi Miike looks like a very fun and very ridiculous twist on a yakuza film.
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Today's demo wasn't anywhere near enough time to evaluate the depth of the system, but I'm optimistic that it'll be a fun new twist on Yakuza combat.
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Last year, a schism within the Yamaguchi-gumi gang, Japan's largest yakuza organization, resulted in a faction splitting off to form the rival Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi gang.
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Then THUMP explains the new restrictions on LED rave gloves and Motherboard travels to Japan to meet a scientist creating prosthetic pinkies for ex-yakuza gang members.
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Up until that point, the only two things I knew about the Yakuza were that the name derived from the unluckiest hand you can be dealt when playing the Japanese card game of Oicho-Kabu (Ya-ku-za literally means "eight-nine-three") and that tattoos are so synonymous with the Yakuza that literally anyone with any conspicuous ink can be denied admittance to a public baths or onsen in Japan.
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When you're exploring the city you'll come across enemies — there are plenty of drunk thugs and angry yakuza out on the streets — in what are essentially random battles.
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The Yakuza series is unapologetically obsessed with the idea of family, whether bound by blood, circumstance, or oath, and that's not just a matter of conceptual lip-service.
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It's a good story well told, and although longtime Yakuza fans might be disappointed with the relatively small number of returning characters, the new cast is uniformly excellent.
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Kiryu's own abilities have been cut back, too: there's just one fighting style this time around, down from the four seen in Yakuza 0 and other recent entries.
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Just last month, though, we were given one of the greatest digital gifts of the year, a Twitter account called yakuzasoftbot that posts screencaps of the Yakuza characters.
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Discussed: Marvel's Spider-Man, PC gaming, Detroit:Become Human, Horizon: Zero Dawn, Yakuza, The Witcher 3, Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Bad Company 2, Red Faction 2, Dead Cells.
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With the Yakuza very much still active, it made sense (in hindsight) not to bring up the mob in an area known to be frequented by the mob.
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The extra step of making elaborate, dramatic, and joyously ridiculous music video accompaniments adds another layer of giddy fun to one of the Yakuza series' most endearing distractions.
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Ryu ga Gotoku 7, which will likely be called Yakuza 7 in the West, has a new main character, a new setting, and a totally new combat system.
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Yuto tells Kenzo the inevitable bloody punishment he will find in Japan and it ends with Shin Endo slitting Yuto's throat in front of the leading Yakuza bosses.
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The Yakuza boss swore to himself years earlier that Eiko would never marry a gangster after her mother was murdered in a botched attempt to assassinate Fukuhara himself.
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But Abe's grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi — who was imprisoned by the Allied powers as a war crimes suspect before becoming prime minister — was known for being pals with yakuza.
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My early 2018 plan was to make my way through Yakuza 63-5 before diving into 6, but I got a preview code early and could not stay away.
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Despite the fact that it's being released on the PlayStation 4 in 2017, Yakuza 0 often feels — and occasionally looks — like a game from more than a decade ago.
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As I said, Yakuza Kiwami is far from a plain remaster, and much of that is in revamped or completely redone systems as well as brand new story content.
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Many yakuza mobsters spend hundreds of hours under an inky gun having their entire bodies painted, as a sign of gang membership and to show they can endure pain.
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Although Yakuza 6's plot contains as many dizzying twists as much of the rest of the series, it's largely self-contained and doesn't rely on much prior knowledge.
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But God of War and Yakuza 6 might be the two best examples I've ever seen of integrating the idea of being a parent into a typical blockbuster game.
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Recently, my girlfriend told me about a sexual experience she'd had long ago with a Yakuza—a member of a number of transnational organized crime syndicates originating in Japan.
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In January, hot on the heels of Resident Evil 7, Yakuza 0, and Gravity Rush 43, I declared what a great time it was for fans of Japanese games.
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Society showed little compassion toward the predicament of recent yakuza drop outs, and Fukushima was initially investigated by local police forces who thought she was colluding with criminal organizations.
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Things improved for her when the Anti-Bouryokudan Law took affect in March 1992, and the Osaka police established an ex-yakuza support council (ridatsu shien) in December 1992.
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As hotels and bars stock up on alcohol, some hot-spring resorts have been prodded to relax their rules on tattoos, which in Japan are associated with yakuza mobsters.
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The gritty crime epic featured a celebrity-filled voice cast — including the ingenious casting of Mark Hamill as the wild yakuza Majima — and a deluge of print and TV ads.
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It was greeted with rave reviews, while next year will see the impressive-looking Yakuza 6 debut, the first game in the series built exclusively with the PS4 in mind.
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Yakuza 0 is a game where one minute you're beating up gangsters with a steel pipe, and the next you're belting out Japanese power ballads in a swank karaoke club.
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At the same time, also similar to the yakuza, they were admired for having their own code of ethics and for the value they placed on loyalty to the gang.
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Along with experience categories and a series of new ways to invest your points, Yakuza 6 changes things up just enough, but still doesn't stray too far from the standard.
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First Sega released Yakuza 217, a prequel that served as the perfect entry point to the series and followed it with a modern PS24 remake of the original PS2 game.
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There are austere restaurants with cyborg geisha, street scenes bathed in neon kanji characters, and yakuza movie stalwart "Beat" Takeshi Kitano playing a soldier who only speaks Japanese to Johansson.
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During their heyday in the 1960s, the yakuza operated internationally and had as many as 184,091 members belonging to 5,216 groups in 1963, according to the Japan's Ministry of Justice.
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From 2010 to 2011, a series of regulations made it harder for gangsters to survive as it became illegal to recruit yakuza, pay them off, or share profits with them.
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So he left behind the tip of his pinkie, which his friend helped slice off, to atone for a broken promise and a chance of life away from the yakuza.
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The yakuza have also reportedly cornered the sensitive market on nuclear industry workers and are suspected of having infiltrated Japan's Olympic committee ahead of the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.
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There is no doubt that games like Sleeping Dogs and SEGA's Yakuza series display a varied array of Asian characters, but the heroes are trained martial artists, triad members, tough guys.
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I'm not exactly new to the series—I've played chunks of the PS20 original, as well as Yakuza 2180 and 4, although (for shame) I've not actually finished any of them.
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Having recently reviewed Yakuza Kiwami I'd say that the new material is easily the strongest reason to play, so I'm deeply curious about what could be in store for Kiwami 2.
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Like Yakuza, Project Judge is a gritty real-world drama set in present-day Japan, but flips the stakes altogether by casting the player character as a former lawyer turned detective.
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Throw in the fact that Kiryu is a former yakuza who can't seem to get away from the world of organized crime, and you have a recipe for an atypical parent.
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You'll also get into a lot of fistfights; just like Kiryu before him, Yagami is constantly accosted by low-level thugs and disgruntled yakuza, and Judgment doesn't skimp on the combat.
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While most prominent Japanese tattooists practice irezumi, traditional tattoos that often cover much of the body and share similarities to those sported by the Yakuza, Sugano has an utterly different style.
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Furthermore, Japan places ex-gangsters who've served their time in jail, been otherwise convicted of mob-related offenses or affliated with the yakuza in any way on probation for five years.
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I realize there's a mostly serious story at the heart of the games, but the absurdist humor and sense of place has, for me, proved the real attraction of Yakuza 0.
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I was so hooked on everything in Judgment that I bought a copy of Yakuza 0, which is made by the same developer (Sega) and a pretty similar style of game.
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Some lyrics on his 2001 album "'Love and Theft'" closely resemble lines from "Confessions of a Yakuza," a 1991 book by Dr. Junichi Saga about the life of a Japanese gangster.
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The Treasury Department currently lists 30 separate sanctions authorities that range from action against transnational criminal organizations like the Yakuza crime gangs to the diamond trade to the global war on terror.
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On top of these, Yakuza 6 has a bunch of upgraded gameplay features and mechanics, but the best stuff so far is seeing Kiryu interact with the people (and technology) of 2016.
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For the third time, a yakuza member has been found dead with his eyes gouged out, and lawyer-turned-private-eye Takayuki Yagami is trying to get to the bottom of it.
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I think I first saw it when I stopped in one of Kamurocho's arcades and played a few games of Space Harrier (Yakuza 0 is set in 1988, so expect contemporary distractions).
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As someone who consumes a lot of crime fiction, from novels to TV shows, I've come to think of the Yakuza franchise much like I would an ongoing series of detective novels.
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It transports the series to glitzy 1980s Tokyo, and splits the story into two halves, letting you play as the grim series icon Kiryu, as well as the wild former yakuza Majima.
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So whenever a great game gets a PC port, I'm excited: when that game is from the excellent Yakuza series, which has always been exclusive to PlayStation platforms, I'm even more thrilled.
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Police data shows arrests among laborers since 2011 have climbed steadily from just one to 210 last year, including a dozen yakuza, or gangsters, police official Katsuhiko Ishida told a prefectural assembly.
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Residents are spooked by rumors that some laborers sport tattoos linked with yakuza, and by reports that a suspect in serial killings arrested in Osaka last year had worked in the area.
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Later, we discuss the defense-oriented brawler Way of the Passive Fist, re-visiting Breath of the Wild and Horizon: Zero Dawn through DLC, the good boys of Yakuza 0, and more.
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That year — 2012 — the United States Treasury Department designated MS-13 as a transnational criminal organization, alongside four criminal syndicates: the Zetas, the Yakuza, the Russian Brothers' Circle and the Italian Camorra.
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For other games, like Yakuza 0, I know that what I mostly wanna do is see the game's story, which I can do by watching a let's play or trawling through YouTube.
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It was the fifth organization to be designated that way, joining some heavy hitters: the Russia-based Brothers' Circle, the Italian Camorra, the Mexican cartel the Zetas, and the Yakuza in Japan.
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My favorite moment with Yakuza 6 (and an early contender for 2018 video game moment of the year), had nothing to do with phones, but everything to do with awkward technology… and porn.
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I know I've been very loud in shouting my praises for the few Yakuza games I've played, and I'm glad to know I'll likely continue doing the same with The Song of Life.
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Yakuza 3, for example, has a Club Sega arcade with the rather fancier-looking shooter Boxcelios in it, a bespoke production but one that aesthetically reflects the period setting of the late 00s.
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Meanwhile, in the tourist-filled Dotonbori area of Osaka, a former yakuza named Majima finds himself as a club owner biding time and hoarding money in an attempt to rejoin the crime syndicate.
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But while the likes of Breath of the Wild, Horizon Zero Dawn, Persona 5, Nier: Automata and Yakuza 20333 are all amazing in their own rights, damn, don't they eat up the hours.
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Before the assassination, Fukuhara and Shin Endo (Katsuya Kobayashi), late Saburo's uncle and the former top Yakuza crime lord, were both supposedly enjoying a lengthy period of peace under a years-old treaty.
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For the Japanese, tattoos have long been associated with members of 'yakuza' crime syndicates, and inked tourists may be met with disapproval and sometimes banned from gyms, bathhouses or traditional hot-spring resorts.
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Many of the characters are oversized stereotypes, like the honor-bound yakuza member who carries a katana and once cut the arm off a member of the triad that's gunning for his crew.
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Kasuga has spent 18 years in prison after taking the fall for a yakuza boss, and after getting betrayed by his former family upon release, his first task is to find a job.
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Aside from demand for the yellow metal, criminals such as the infamous yakuza mafia in Japan were also trying to evade higher consumption taxes that rose to 8 percent from 5 percent in 2014.
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Yakuza 0 and Kiwami made up the majority of my gaming hours over the last few months, and have made me a loyal fan of the franchise with their humor, stories, characters and settings.
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The system is so restrictive that even Japan's criminals, which through the notorious yakuza can be highly ingrained in corrupt government agencies, largely see gun ownership as a liability, as Vox's Zack Beauchamp explained.
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But whether you're calming a crying baby with motion controls or bashing a gangster's head in with a bicycle, Yakuza 6: The Song of Life is a poignant, bloody, and altogether brilliant send-off.
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Then and now, yakuza have a direct hand in the exploitation of these workers, managing the middlemen connecting laborers to work, and also tempting or gouging anyone with a fresh paycheck through gambling operations.
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In recent years, stringent crackdowns on the yakuza—organized criminal gangs who engage in loan sharking, drug and sex trafficking—and a steady decline in their numbers have seen the practice of yubitsume decrease.
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In any case, when Yakuza dropped way back in 2006, the video game industry was still trying to play catch up with Grand Theft Auto 3, prompting everyone to make an open world game.
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And then there are all those games that I didn't finish specifically because they were so long— Persona 5, Yakuza 0, Nioh, Assassin's Creed Origins, and Shadow of War just to name a handful.
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Danika, Austin, Rob, and myself reconvened after Thanksgiving to discuss what everyone played over the brief break, ranging from Battle Chef Brigade to Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp to ZombiU (yes, ZombiU!) to Yakuza 0.
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Set between London and Tokyo, "Giri/Haji" (translated as Duty/Shame) starts with a Japanese detective (Takehiro Hira) who travels to London to search for his missing brother, who's a member of the Yakuza.
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It's all set in a fictional version of Tokyo's Kabukicho red light district, featuring a lawyer-turned-private investigator with a harrowing past who's now confronting a series of mysterious murders targeting yakuza members.
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In those rare hours between coming in through the door and crashing into bed, I wasn't firing up the PS4 to explore more of Kamurocho's family-friendly and rather-less-savoury attractions in Yakuza 0.
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Publisher Sega has pulled Judgment, a Yakuza spinoff, from sale in Japan after 51-year-old actor and musician Pierre Taki—who plays a crime boss in the game—was reportedly busted for cocaine use.
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The showy wealth and extreme violence of criminals hailing from Albania and Kosovo does not mean they belong to a structured organisation with common rituals like Sicily's Cosa Nostra or the yakuza syndicates in Japan.
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The three men and the two Yakuza crime affiliates are blocked from accessing any of their U.S.-based assets, and Americans and American firms are banned from financial transactions with the targeted individuals and entities.
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"If I Die Tonight," the video for which arrived on YouTube last month, uses the imagery of Japan's yakuza movies: steel-gray skies, unglamorous executions, a body tied up in the trunk of a car.
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Elodie Yung slinks into the second season of Marvel's Daredevil (premiering today on Netflix) as Elektra, the mysterious, rich-girl martial artist who enlists Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) to help her take down the Yakuza.
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In 2014, Fukushima was bestowed a Women's Challenge Award from the Japanese government's gender equality bureau for her entrepreneurial drive and her sustained efforts to help ex-yakuza members rehabilitate and reintegrate back into society.
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Lastly, in the same way residents of Little Italy in New York no longer hold mafia dons in high esteem, regular Japanese folks aren't turning to yakuza toughs for help like in the old days.
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The district of Kamurocho in the Yakuza games gives a real sense of exploring the real-life Kabukicho area in Tokyo, even if only a small number of the buildings are based on the real thing.
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And ... a yakuza boss may decide a death sentence is more appropriate if his thug miraculously gets released on bail before going to jail [because accomplice laws could get the boss indicted along with his subordinate].
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And … a yakuza boss may decide a death sentence is more appropriate if his thug miraculously gets released on bail before going to jail [because accomplice laws could get the boss indicted along with his subordinate].
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When Hideaki Ishi found the severed finger of his best friend wrapped in a handkerchief in his office, another victim of the Japanese mafia, the yakuza, he knew it was time to consider a career change.
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It's hard not to crack a smile when you see tough yakuza bros roller-skating with a cadre of extras in a shiny sequined suit or rocking the hair metal look to a hard rock anthem.
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This five-part film series by Kinji Fukasaku, also known as "The Yakuza Papers" (released in the United States in 2004), transformed the crime genre in Japan and influenced filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino and Takashi Miike.
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Adapted from the manga series by Hideo Yamamoto, this savage Japanese horror flick by Takashi Miike follows a yakuza masochist (Tadanobu Asano) who sets out to find the sadistic killer (Nao Omori) who murdered his boss.
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According to Japanese games site Game Watch, which has been reporting on the press conference, the play area will be three times bigger than the district of Kamurocho that featured in every previous mainline Yakuza game.
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To prevent Tokyo from being eclipsed in an all-out Yakuza war, the cop is trying to find his brother and bring him back to Tokyo to face justice while also dealing with his own morality.
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The story starts with Wolverine sadly killing a grizzly bear, then goes on to depict a battle between the superhero and his fiancée's yakuza father—a saga of regret and doubt, not just Technicolor beat-'em-up.
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It even seemed as if the film was suggesting that these implants were like the Yakuza tattoos of the year 2030, a sign you underwent cyberization and perhaps did so under the table and with sketchy parts.
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It also marks the point of intersection between the film's titular inspiration — a frequently intoxicated doctor (Takashi Shimura) who assists the poor and transgressive — and the increasingly ill local Yakuza boss Matsunaga (again played by Toshirô Maifune).
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What begins as a simple quest to learn what happened to her ends up leading him to expose dark secrets in a sleepy Hiroshima town while battling rival yakuza, Korean mafia, and Chinese triads along the way.
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To get its drugs to market, the Sam Gor syndicate works closely with Japan's Yakuza, Thai organized crime, and Australian motorcycle gangs, among other crime groups, according to regional anti-narcotics agents and documents reviewed by Reuters.
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It's still remarkable to me that I haven't poured more hours into games like Yakuza 0 and Nioh, games that would otherwise be in the mix for my top 10 list when the holidays begin to approach.
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Yakuza has always been about hanging out and doing ridiculous things in Japan as much as it's been about taking down crime lords, and I'm always happy to see the tradition get taken to the next level.
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There's loads more to dig into—some of which isn't quite so family-friendly (but is still fairly PG-13, TBH)—but I'm not here to offer a guide to Yakuza 0's many and varied mini-games.
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Built on a brand-new engine and billed as leading man Kazuma Kiryu's exit from the long-running Sega series, Yakuza 26: The Song of Life manages to feel like a reboot and a finale all at once.
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The PS23 has two new exclusive titles in major series that date back to the PlayStation 24 days: God of War, by all accounts a masterpiece, and Yakuza 43, a satisfying final chapter for a much-loved character.
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Think Keanu Reeves playing virtual cat-and-mouse with the yakuza in Johnny Mnemonic, or Michael Douglas pulling off corporate espionage in the world's most grandiose database in the wow-did-that-age-terribly, quasi-erotic thriller Disclosure.
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Sam Gor supplies a bigger, more dispersed drug market and collaborates with a more diverse range of local crime groups than the Latin cartels do, including Japan's Yakuza, Australia's biker gangs and ethnic Chinese gangs across Southeast Asia.
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Goings-on in the world of yakuza gangsters, the night-time wanderings by torchlight of a member of the imperial family, corruption in sumo wrestling and the grisly doings of child murderers: all are staples for the shukanshi.
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But when I look around at the games I haven't spent more time with in 2017— Yakuza 0 and Persona 5, chiefly—all I can do is sigh at my inability to transplant those games to my Switch.
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The woman was Yukako Fukushima, a prosthetics maker, who—aside from making regular prosthetics—has for over a decade made hundreds of fake pinkies for ex-yakuza members wishing to leave gang life behind and find regular jobs.
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Yakuza has a history of putting old video games within its new video games, so finding Space Harrier was no surprise—and Out Run is here, too, which can lead to a neat side story of high-score chasing.
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She and Colleen had great chemistry in their barroom brawl in Luke Cage season 2, and that continues through to Iron Fist, whether they're talking about Colleen's new role in the world or teaming up to kick yakuza ass.
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These days, as well as acting, he runs his own software business and is carving out another side career as a YouTuber, voicing the character of a wheelchair-bound elderly yakuza boss, Shigewo Jhogashima, in an animated online show.
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"He admitted that the victim had been bullied and there might have been plots within the Yakuza subgroups to kill him ... but he has not confessed to murdering the fellow gang leader," said Wirachai Songmetta, Thailand's deputy police chief.
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Tokyo Drift is a yakuza noir, Fast and Furious is a 1970s action thriller, Fast Five is a heist film, Fast & Furious 6 is a mishmash of James Bond and Mission Impossible, and Furious 7 is a superhero team-up movie.
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The first two episodes of the show's 10-episode debut season are devoted to former yakuza enforcer Shun and traumatized bodyguard Lana Pierce (Natalia Tena, known as Osha on Game of Thrones and Nymphadora Tonks in multiple Harry Potter films).
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Fresh from his adventures with Uncle Death and the merry crew at the Tower of Barbs, Senior Reporter Patrick Klepek sat down with Yakuza 0 yesterday for a livestream filled with questionable fashion, neon lights, and one very special achievement.
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The last character in my lineup is, perhaps, the coolest: a Yakuza-like gangster who wields a monstrously powerful pistol that, combined with critical hits, can be strung together to take out an entire group of enemies with a couple shots.
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Its villain is a cartoonishly rancid yakuza gangster who rapes and drugs and kills with delight; at the center of his interaction with Inuyashiki is a woman hostage whose good looks are frequently referenced and contrasted against her schlubby boyfriend's.
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In today's episode of Waypoint Radio, Danika, Austin, Patrick and yours truly discuss Super Bowl antics, Monster Hunter, and the excellent pixellated platformers we're all playing—including Celeste and Dandara, a Metroid-y Soulslike—before shifting over to Yakuza chat.
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During the filming of "Crazy Fighter," one of Kuramoto's actors stops a scene mid-way to advise director Shuuya Yoshimoto on how a group of yakuza would act or stand around a room according to their rank on the social ladder.
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Yakuza 03 gives us a glimpse of what Japan's bubble era economy flush with money and success looks like, from its biggest high-rollers to the people living in the shadows of polite society—primarily, those tied to organized crime.
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Instead, the NPCs in this game look like models pulled straight from the modern-day-set Yakuza games with only minor adjustments, leaving us in a 1980s Japan with a lack of bright-colored clothing and an overabundance of dyed hair.
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But he often returns to the underworld of his native Japan, where clashes between yakuza factions, between law enforcement agents and criminals, or between foreigners and home-grown gangsters all provide rich opportunities for the extreme violence that made him famous.
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But Judgement's strengths are in how realized its world is — you can eavesdrop on businessmen in an outdoor smoking section if you like — and how it uses its detective spin on the Yakuza world to tell a darker, more serious story.
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Hollywood doesn't blink when it comes to making a movie about a white man joining the yakuza, but would never consider the reverse – an Asian in a white gangster movie, except as a prop to be laughed at and knocked off.
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The big men on campus are the children of Mexican cartel leaders, the legacies are the children of other criminal organizations or government officials, the preps are CIA and FBI children, and Condor's Saya is a member of the Yakuza kid faction.
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These are the things Yakuza really excels at; Taking you through a tumultuous, often high-energy and emotional story, and then giving you these one-off lighthearted and hilarious side missions, all while keeping you completely invested in the very good crime boys.
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Judgment plays a lot like a traditional Yakuza game — which means you'll be exploring a large, impressively detailed city and getting into lots of fistfights — but these new interactions give it a different flavor, one very in keeping with the detective vibe.
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While the other Yakuza games have focused on Kiryu's later life, here we see him as a young man in his 21980s who just recently joined the Dojima crime family and is starting his path to become the legendary Dragon of Dojima.
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Directed by the comedian, actor and filmmaker Takeshi Kitano, this crime film that was released in Japan in 1990 follows a dispirited baseball player (Masahiko Ono) who teams up with a friend to get revenge on a local yakuza that attacked his coach.
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Aside from handling other small cases for people around town, he gets pulled into a larger case involving warring Yakuza clans, corrupt police and government officials, and corporate espionage, which all ties into the case that caused him to stop being a lawyer.
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"Under current laws, if a low-level yakuza is caught with a gun and bullets that match, he'll be charged with aggravated possession of firearms and will then face an average seven-year prison term," longtime Japan correspondent Jake Adelstein writes in the Japan Times.
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While the Shitamachi we see in this film sometimes gives the impression of a bustling downtown with a thriving economy, far worse conditions boil beneath Yakuza swagger and tattoos — children with distended bellies, a widespread bout of TB, and individuals living in wretched conditions.
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While the yakuza exercised their own means of justice and brutality, their female counterparts—the sukeban gangs—concealed razor blades and chains beneath their long skirts and sailor shirts, with membership swelling to the tens of thousands at the peak of this subculture's popularity.
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"Under current laws, if a low-level yakuza is caught with a gun and bullets that match, he'll be charged with aggravated possession of firearms and will then face an average seven-year prison term," longtime Japan correspondent Jake Adelstein wrote in the Japan Times.
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That said, all four games have an irritating deference for fan service: Cidney's costume in Final Fantasy XV, the lecherous snapshot mission in Gravity Rush 2, female "pain sponges" in Yakuza 0, and skimpy bikini costumes meant for Future Tone's cast of underage girls.
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But those with missing pinkies are permanently associated with gang life, and in a country where deeply entrenched stigmas around the organization prevail, something as subtle as a detachable fake finger could in some ways help assist fingerless ex-yakuza in reintegrating into society.
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Incidents occur, as randomly assorted as the merchandise: a freak stabbing, a visit to a yakuza mobster with a suit of samurai armor to sell, the death of an Afghan hound, the appearance of a celadon bowl that may or may not be cursed.
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The seven games starring Kazuma Kiryu (including Yakuza 0) would have been be a hard act to follow even without switching to an entirely new style of combat, but my time with Ichiban Kasuga's debut gave me confidence that Sega can stick the landing.
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Yakuza 6: The Song of Life comes out April 17th, 2018, and I can't talk much past chapter four where I'm at right now, but what I can talk about is the fun I had with the things you can do on the side in that game.
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I'll have more to say about my first forays into the Japanese mafia next week, but lemme make this clear: if you've never played a Yakuza game before, stop fretting over whether or not you're going to understand what's going on and play this game immediately.
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Between 2012 and 2015, the total amount confiscated in these showy anti-extortion raids was $34,664.75 — an absurdly tiny sum considering that the United States has designated MS-13 as a global criminal organization on a par with the Zetas of Mexico, or the Yakuza of Japan.
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Others here have written about Yamamoto's yakuza-colored backstory as well as his family's wrestling pedigree and his personal predilection for right hooks, but the short version is that throughout the early to mid-2000s, Yamamoto was a god among men in K-1 and Shooto.
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Pure genre films are the exception, but they're present — Seijun Suzuki's "Kanto Wanderer" (1963) is a B-movie yakuza entertainment, but the small-time scrambling of the gangsters, the nostalgia for a more prosperous and chivalrous era and the harborside Shinagawa setting are all shitamachi signifiers.
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But given that the character delivers the line from the back seat of a wildly spinning vehicle that's being chased by both the yakuza and a triad, and that he's bleeding out while covered from head to toe in meth, it's also a pretty relatable moment.
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A zombie-coal-mining movie called ''Dead Canary'' was followed shortly afterward by ''Kamikaze Love,'' an action comedy about a down-on-his-luck bartender who falls madly in love with a Japanese woman who has been trafficked into the United States to marry a Yakuza boss.
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Given how many amazing games I've left behind in 2017 already—15 hours into Persona 5, my attention shifted to Prey; 10 hours into Nioh, Nier Automata showed up; 8 hours into Yakuza 0, Horizon: Zero Dawn appeared—there's still good reason to leave Dead Cells alone for now.
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Everything else goes pretty much exactly as you'd guess, especially if you've seen and remember the beats of The Last Samurai, right up to an ending that affirms Nick as a truer manifestation of yakuza honor than the resentful rival who's been a lifelong part of the family.
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Yet again, Marvel devotes a whole hallway fight scene to its new hero, but instead of the bruising chaos that came with past Netflix series, Iron Fist gets a stiff sequence, complete with hatchet-wielding Yakuza fighters, where it feels like no one is in any real danger.
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On the show, Condor plays Saya Kuroki, the icy daughter of one of the most powerful families in the Yakuza and a cold-blooded assassin; the character is someone who would not only outlast Lana Condor's 24 hours but who would have no problem killing America's newfound sweetheart.
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Sato and his crew had been filming for less than a month when he was attacked and stabbed by members of a yakuza gang in December 1984, no doubt because the Yama project sought to expose the conditions of Japanese day laborers, particularly in Tokyo's historically impoverished Sanya district.
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Rather than two weeks of the Yasujiro Ozu or Akira Kurosawa canon or a collection of samurai or yakuza favorites, the series is a cross-section of the country's cinema, roaming periods (from Ozu's 1933 "Woman of Tokyo" to Nami Iguchi's 2004 "The Cat Leaves Home") and genres.
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Think of all the movies where Asians are props for white Hollywood actors and actresses: Jared Leto plays Nick Lowell, a former G. I. who joins the yakuza in The Outsider (2018); Scarlett Johansson stars in the role of Major Motoko Kusanagi in Ghost in the Shell (2017).
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To be fair, by the end of February, we'd already played (or were in the middle of playing) Gravity Rush 2, Let It Die, Resident Evil 7, Horizon Zero Dawn, Nioh, Fire Emblem Heroes, Night in the Woods, Yakuza 0, Super Mario Run, and two different Telltale series.
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But confronted with the addition of a first person view mode in Yakuza Kiwami 2, and the evocative photographs of digital Sotenbori from Kiriyu's own "eyes," I realized I'd been overzealous and missed a critical point—a screenshot button is all the shutter release player-photographers really need.
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The new period drama The Outsider, in which Jared Leto plays an American GI who joins the yakuza in post–World War II Japan, received less attention than Isle of Dogs when it premiered on Netflix earlier in March, but is even more entrenched in the idea of the ownable East.
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It's an assertion of supremacy The Outsider makes no move to subvert or diverge from as it fits the yakuza genre around its foreign expat, who's welcomed into an Osaka clan after coming to the aid of a high-ranking member (played by Tadanobu Asano) while they're both behind bars.
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But after a particularly devastating case — in which he successfully defended a man accused of murder, only for that man to go out and kill again not long after the trial — he left the legal life behind, setting up a small detective shop with his buddy and former yakuza member Kaito.
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I wanted to get lost in mazes of neon alleyways; study each holographic giant hulking between buildings; smoke a cigarette in the Yakuza-owned nightclub where each character had some uniquely gruesome cybernetic enhancement; and climb the stairs of the massive, decrepit housing complexes that are frightening in their uniformity.
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A new trailer released today makes it clear that Like a Dragon will feature multiple job classes that grant your characters different abilities, meaning a better title might have been Yakuza 7: Like Final Fantasy V. The "host" class, for example, gives you gaudy attire and attacks involving flowers and champagne.
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