Discover Top Posts Tagged with #tsuneo iwami

yakuza 6: the song of life (2016)

#yakuza #ryu ga gotoku #yakuza 6 #kazuma kiryu #big lo #iwami tsuneo #iwami heizo #jimmy lo #usami yuta #yakuza 6 the song of life #yakuza 6: the song of life #kiryu kazuma #tsuneo iwami #heizo iwami #yuta usami #yakuzaedit #mads takes screenshots

It's subtle, but Tsuneo Iwami acts exactly as spoiled, selfish and rude as Daigo did during Yakuza 0:

-Both are spoiled brats who have Yakuza fathers (Heizo Iwami and Sohei Dojima) and are more than willing to coast over said father's reputation in order to get what they want, seeing the perks of being a Yakuza, without understanding what that actually entails and as adults, both end up becoming Yakuza leaders (Iwami becomes chairman of the Yomei Alliance, Daigo becomes chairman of the Tojo Clan).

-Iwami never evolves from his self-centered manbaby phase, having murdered his father and betrayed his way to the top and wanting the Yakuza life despite Heizo not wanting him to be introduced to it. Kiryu even refers to Iwami as nothing to him, with Iwami being more than willing to cheat just to gain an advantage over Kiryu, Daigo grows up to become older and wiser, being forced to become a Yakuza leader due to the circumstances pushing him to be one, with Kiryu referring to Daigo as his son and when he fights Kiryu, he does it one on one and without involving cheating.

Iwami can be seen as a dark example of what Daigo could have become if Kiryu didn't interfere and put a stop to his childish behaviour.

#yakuza #kazuma kiryu #daigo dojima #tsuneo iwami

These are some of my favorite screenshots I got while playing Yakuza 6.

#yakuza #ryu ga gotoku #yakuza 6 #kazuma kiryu #kiryu kazuma #tsuyoshi nagumo #majima goro #majima my beloved #saejima taiga #shun akiyama #joon gi han #naoto tagashira #yuta usami #takaaki matsunaga #daijiro saigo #tsuneo iwami #video games #game screenshots #my screenshots

Yakuza 6: “He Means Nothing to Me”

I’ve been thinking about Yakuza 6 a lot lately. I have some issues with it, namely the fact that it feels unfinished and Majima got unfairly shafted in Kiryu’s final game. But most things there I really like. It’s an emotional, focused plot centered solely on Kiryu and his conflicted feelings about the yakuza, and has a solid set of supporting characters who almost all have great, satisfactory character arcs. Yuta, Someya, Nagumo, etc are all really cool and really good.

But an aspect that I don’t see talked about that often is the main antagonist of the game and final boss of the Kiryu Saga; Tsuneo Iwami. And it’s not hard to see why. He’s not a particularly memorable or complex character, and neither is his conspirator Sugai. The only thing that makes him stick out is how slimy and heinous his actions are, and even then it’s not enough to make me really hate him. Not genuinely.

So what is there to say about Tsuneo Iwami? Personally...I think that something about him really works. Kiryu’s sheer disdain and disregard for the man extends all the way into Kiryu’s description when he fights him.

“He means nothing to me.”

The final boss of Kiryu’s story means nothing to him. This really struck me while going through it, and it’s taken me a bit to realize why. And I’ve come to realize that Iwami and Sugai being so forgettable...is kind of the point.

Yakuza is full of charismatic men who rip their shirts off and fight for masculinity, honor, to see who’s strongest, and the like. But the Kuze’s, Ryuji Goda’s, Watase’s, and Nishiki’s of the series are often the exceptions to the rule as men who exemplify or try to exemplify the yakuza’s ideals.

Far, FAR more often...the yakuza are nothing more than garden-variety power-hungry assholes. From the thugs that Kiryu continually fights off every game, to Shibusawa in 0, to Sohei Dojima, to the schemer Takashima in 2, to Katsuragi’s weird-ass in 4, to the man who outright loathes charismatic yakuza Kurosawa in 5...Kiryu’s games are filled with unremarkable assholes granted power by the yakuza and he has to continually fight them off over and over again.

The Ryuji Goda’s and Kuze’s of the world are rare. But people like Iwami have populated the entire series, and Kiryu has taken them down every time. As the yakuza themselves have worsened, those charismatic yakuza have found less and less of a place in a criminal enterprise that at the end of the day is about power and money.

So in the end, another “big rival to Kiryu who wants to prove he’s strongest” doesn’t work. Kiryu’s final boss is a representation of every smug prick he’s had to grind into the dirt to keep him and his family safe, without the veneer of masculinity, honor, or strength to guise it. The yakuza is Kiryu’s curse, and Iwami is representative of just how pervasive that curse is in Japan’s society.

The yakuza as a whole mean nothing to Kiryu. 7 games have whittled him down to the point he wanted nothing to do with it. But even after he leaves, assholes like Iwami will keep on popping up, whether he likes it or not.

Yakuza Series tattoos from the 15th anniversary guidebook

Tsuneo Iwami’s tattoo --- Hakutaku (Bai Ze)

*Original scan size + 2x AI upscaled version*

- Guidebook scans shared by Taro

#yakuza #ryu ga gotoku #rgg #irezumi #yakuza 6 #tsuneo iwami #iwami tsuneo

y5 aizawa, majima, y6 iwami

Flashing that enormous, ornately detailed sword then just fucking dropping it and not using it at all was an absolute baller move

I think there’s a lot you could do with him in any given piece of fanwork, considering how little we’re given about him in game (despite him being such a major boss battle) - the social darwinist view of the yakuza, the inheritance from his father vs. “I don’t give a fuck about that old man” or whatever the line was.

One of like forty people who decides he’s got beef with Kiryu while barely knowing his ass but Aizawa is also the only person in the series with Grand Canyon titties so I’ll forgive him anything

HOT

I’d be really interested in reading some character centric writing about Majima in the period between Yakuza 0 and Yakuza Kiwami; he’s considerably more violent and erratic at the beginning of the latter than he seems at the end of the former and that would be a cool thing to see delved into

The continuous theme of masks and the isolation of performance at work within his character is really potent, despite the surface level wackiness, and the writers definitely had a lot to say with him in the first few games especially.