When I try to explain the plot of the Like a Dragon series to my friends who don’t play games, I sound a little like a madman. I have to describe how throughout the series, you play as various members of the Yakuza, and a lot of really sad things happen, and there’s a lot of killing, fighting, a💙nd violence. Inevitably, after ten minutes of ranting without stopping to take a breath, I’ll be hit with, “I don’t know, sounds like ꦓa macho dude game.”
It doesn’t surprise me that people assume this of the games – after all, I did too, before I actually played them. On its face, the series follows men who beat people up. A lot of it is about honour and revenge. It all sounds very masculine on paper. But it’s hard to convey what playing the games really feels like. Yeah, you’re kic൩king people’s butts in the street, but you also sing karaoke with your friends with full earnestness and grieve the people you’ve lost, and you cry and laugh with abandon, and you do your best to live a 💝good life that serves the people around you.
I’ve always found this tonal contrast fascinating. The series has leaned on campiness since its 🌳inception, a device that is decidedly un-masculine in the💎 most stereotypical way. It gives you characters that could easily have been the🎉 most boring of stock characters – tough, brooding, quiet guys who are really good at fighting – and use them to model a different kind of masculinity altogether. The series offers some of the most compelling characters I’ve ever found in video games.
I even wrote a whole piece about how Ichiban Kasuga shows me how to ꦓlive a better, more optimistic life.
I’ve most recently played Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, so I’ve been thinking a lot about Kiryu Kazuma and Ichiban Kasuga as a contrasting pair. Both are as vulnerable as they are tough, but in very different ways. I’d say that most of the games’ male characters are too. These men are willing to be vulnerable with each other – they sha🌺re about their lives and problems over drinks, they’re considerate of each others’ feelings, and they are earnest in a way that traditional masculinity discourages. They sing karaoke together with dramatic performances, they give each other gifts, and they 🧔forgive each others’ past mistakes.
The games also explicitly break down stereotypes of what men must be in relation to women. Let’s look at when Kasuga proposes to Saeko, for example. He takes her out on a first date, proposes while insisting he wants to take carওe of her and give her the best life possible, and gets rejected. When he tells the boys about his massive failure, they don’t make fun of him or blame it on her just being ‘frigid’, they help break down exactly what he did wrong and why she felt that way. And afterwards, we don’t see Kasuga act like a weirdo and try to force her to change her mind, he simply accepts that he messed up, she doesn’t want to talk, and he doesn’t push his luck. That’s the normal thing to do, of course, but in an age of alpha males giving young men bad dating advice 𝐆on the internet, Kasuga’s behaviour is less common than it should be.
Through the Miss Match minigame, the writing even explicitly taꦏckles how weird Kasuga is for acting so hung up about Saeko, a girl who clearly does not want to speak to him.
This latest game touches heavily on themes of reassimilation, telling us that people that have done bad or crimin🥃al things can be led to a better life as long as they’re willing to put in the work to change. While it may not be an intentional metaphor for masculinity, I certainly read it that way. It is when men ꧑see their flaws and change that they can be redeemed.
The most direct example is how Kasuga reaches out to Tomizawa to help him, telling him that he’s not alone and that there are people willing to help him. A lot of young men get radicalised by right-wing grifters because they feel like they have nowhere to turn when it comes to learning how to be a man in the world. A lot of those men need friends like Kasuga, who can show them that you can be a man wh🐻o feels strongly, speaks with sincerity, respects people, and does things for his community.
Xbox Is The Only Way To Play Yakuza: Like A D༒ragon
Xboxꦐ’s in-built features take Yakuza: Like A Dragon to the next level
It’s the men that act like the masculine stereotype that are depicted as antagonists. The Yakuza are hostile and violent, often targeting the less fortunate and berating cabaret staff. (Kiryu is always polite to women.) We see Nishikiyama, Kiryu’s sworn brother, turn into a cold, distant character, hungry for power and his own gain. Majima, our own 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Meg Pelliccio’s favourite guy, shows up i🌄n Yakuza 0 as a man desperate to find his own identity, and unfortunately adopts the worst traits of the people around him to create the m𒅌ost intimidating version of himself. These characters are what men can become when they don’t realise they can be something different.
But our protagonists show us that not only is there a better way, but there are so many other ways. Every man in Infinite Wealth models a different type of masculinity. Kasuga is dumb and sweet, and always willing to help someone in need. Kiryu is quiet, deliberate, and respectful. Nanba, a former nurse, is 💎a little cynical and tends to go more with thꦗe flow, compromising instead of making it all about him. Adachi is more of a typical dude’s dude, spending his money on drinks and women but ultimately caring just as much about his friends as they do about him.
Rejecting the masculine stereotype doesn’t mean that you reject masculinity, it simply means you have the freedom to act outside of an arbitꩲrary set of rules that define how y💧ou see yourself in society, how you treat women, and how you treat other men. The series has always been ahead of its time, and its subversion of traditional masculinity is one I hope to see more games explore.
- Dates
- Ma༺rch 25-31, 2024
- Genre
- 🌱 𒅌 Action-Adventure
- Developer
- 🧔 Ryu Ga Gotoku Studios
- Publisher
- Sega
- Franchise
- Yakuza
- Games
- Yakuza 0, Yakuza Kiwami, Yakuza Kiwami 2, Yakuza 3, Yakuza 4, Yakuza 5, Yakuza 6: The Song of Life, Yakuza: Like A Dragon💜, Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth, Like a Dragon: Ishin, Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name, Judgment, Lost Judgme๊nt
Like a Dragon Week is TheGamer's celebration of all things Yakuza/Like a Dragon, with features, interviews, and opinions on Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio's massively popular series of action-adventue brawlers.
