I finished watching the Yakuza Amazon Prime series. I'm really interested in hearing all of your thoughts now that the series is fully out.
for those curious, here is my review:
I wanted to like this series. I am a lover of a corny, well-intended but poorly-made media and clumsy adaptations. But I'm really not a fan. All the positive reviews citing negative reviews being from "angry gamers" fail to take into account the sheer number of people who aren't familiar with the games and still disliked this series, because it manages a feat which should be impossible for something of the yakuza genre: it is really, really fucking boring.
you have so many plot threads and characters introduced rapid-fire in a way that don't let you connect with anyone or anything in a series this short. Interesting moments aren't lingered on at all, with stiff, almost insultingly dull fight choreography and stilted, inauthentic one-on-one character moments. Boring plot threads like a road trip to find someone's sister and the Florist's backstory take up far, far too much screen time. The inclusion of the satanists is as entertaining as the violence in this series gets, and yet anyone familiar with the wider yakuza film genre that forms the foundation of this series' source material and serves as its inspiration just ends up bewildered as to why that's the main connecting thread throughout the whole thing. The camerawork and editing, especially in the final episode's giant brawl, is poor. Nothing is dynamic. Lighting and sound design could also be a lot better. Especially the sound design, the squelching stabs in the final episode are very funny. And I cannot stress enough how disappointed I am in the fight choreography in this show. For the yakuza genre it is breathtakingly boring.
Other minor details leave you baffled. They keep calling Kiryu oyagoroshi, which means patriarch killer, but never translate it or tell you what it means. You keep reading it in the subtitles and hearing it, but you're just meant to infer its meaning. The romantic conflict is just as shoehorned in as it is in the game. Kiryu and Miho's platonic interactions had more on-screen chemistry than anyone else shown. Saejima and his horrible wig are allowed to pop up for a few minutes before he dies-not-dies in a comically short gunfight. That the satanists are given more screen- and general punch-time than anyone else depicted is a baffling choice for a show like this and does nothing to generate interest in who the Satanists are beyond "why are they in this show?"
the invention of Aiko to serve as an older sister to Yumi and a mother to Haruka is baffling. A friend said it seems like she really was just created to load all the possible bad traits any of their group to have onto one person. I don't understand her purpose. To someone unfamiliar with the source material, she comes across as the friend group's load-bearing asshole.
Kento Kaku's performance as Nishiki, for what they've given him, is stellar. However convoluted the plot behind it was and how clumsily it was revealed, it was nice to see Nishiki's younger sister Miho given screen time and a personality so that you can experience some amount of connection to the grief felt by those she leaves behind.
I'm also really confused by the end. I assume that, if the second season they seem to be anticipating comes to fruition, they're going to drag the cult details forward. but my friends reminded me: if Nishiki has known about Kazama being the guy who killed their parents for this long and has been running around like a glorified El Tigre slashing and stabbing people for years, why is Kazama still alive? Surely he would have killed him?
I don't feel any need to be super positive about this series. as someone who's a fan of jank and clunky creativity, none of this series really comes across like it was made by someone having fun with it, and I think that's what makes me really disappointed in the whole thing.
@draayder I told myself I wouldn't check this blog again until I got the chance to watch the next batch of episodes, so sorry for my lack of reply! I hope you can forgive me. this sums up my thoughts.
