Not sure if anyone has brought this point up, but somewhere online I saw someone point out the subtle xenophobia towards non-Japanese characters through their voice acted dialogue. For example, a lot of the Korean in these games is uh.... Not great. It feels like RGG can't be bothered (or chose not) to hire a native speaker and so they seem to just ask the JP VA to do their best which seems really disrespectful to the original language being spoken. Like, they get all these different Japanese regional dialects throughout all the different games but if someone is speaking anything outside of English or Japanese, it seems half-baked at best. (I'm only about halfway through the video so I apologize if this is brought up later on!)
I don't bring it up later on because I constantly continue to forget that this is something they do, despite being told pretty often by non-Japanese Asians about it. Thank you very much for pointing this out in the comments- because it's true! It's especially damning when we know sourcing that kind of talent is possible, because they recast the characters for the game's release in the respective countries who speak said language. Why they don't just hire them in the first place is beyond me, but part of it might be because they don't feel the need to achieve authenticity in Japan/they're made to do so by respective distributers or publishers in those countries. It's those kinds of changes, consistently done for other Asian countries across several games, that really raise the eyebrow; You know you're going to do this on future releases, you know it's cheaper to get ahead of the curb and hire the appropriate actor the first time- what's with maintaining the laughably awful Mandarin or Korean if not to further accentuate your already awful depiction?
@俊也角田 The comparison of the spoken Korean not being good in RGG games feels on a different scale compared to spoken Japanese in Korean specific media. RGG Studios is a sub-set of Sega which ships games to MANY different regions and, as CG Vasquez mentions, is dubbed in multiple native languages other than English. RGG and Sega can source all the actors for dubbing in those regions. Why doesn't RGG take the minor BUT IMPORTANT extra step of hiring a native Korean/Mandarin speaker so their languages are respected too? It feels like an intentional cut corner on their part and a lack of care. Also, many times in these games, the Korean and Chinese folks are the bad guys. Their languages not being respected in the Japanese dub doesn't feel like a coincidence. I don't know how many or how often Korean medias are released outside of Korea in a language that isn't Korean. Within the colonization period in Korea and the Japanese occupation, Koreans weren't even allowed to use their own language and were forced to speak and write Japanese. I could understand the perspective/notion of not wanting to involve their colonizer in their media and thoroughly search for a native speaker for what I can generally assume are minor roles. I admittedly don't consume much Korean media so I'm not familiar with the quality and quantity of the Japanese they use. That however is not a valid excuse and those Korean shows should ALSO be held up to a similar ideal of cultural respect of a foreign language. RGG has the budget to do better and in future titles I hope they decide to take more care. The statement that "this happens all across Asia" feels very broad and sweeping as Asia as a continent is a BIG place and doesn't just consist of Japan, North/South Korea, and China.
How is anyone gonna be like it’s bad because RGG is xenophobic, rather than it’s bad because RGG is just fucking up lmao or probably not enough budget for better VAs
@@mc_kublai If RGG has the money to pay for hiring costs for men like Takuya Kimura, Takaya Kuroda, Greg Chun, and Crispin Freeman, they have enough money to spend on researching and hiring better VA's for non Japanese speaking roles.
Despite the disappointments of Yakuza 6, there's a couple positives I'll always remember. The music. And Kiryu straight up insulting the final boss by calling him a baby in the presence of an actual baby. Also I still fucking cried once the credits were rolling so there's that...
Few things I'd like to say as a Chinese person. I don't think the portrayal of the triad is xenophobic. It might reuse some cliched aesthetics like lanterns and red, but the vilification of... well the villains, is completely normal. The series has loads of good Chinese characters too, much like how Japanese antagonists occur a lot in the game. Just because Chinese characters die, doesn't mean its xenophobic (I don't believe its meant to incite some anti-Chinese violence) Also, I just sort of felt that some cultural ideas aren't conveyed well to a western gamer. Namely your idea of the Pocket Circuit Fighter's substory. It's based on the asian archetypes of tiger moms, it's not meant to vilify women as angry or vindictive. The obsession with teaching newer generations English is a very real thing, since it's seen as something upper class and improves one's job prospects. I personally don't feel that the substory was misogynistic, rather a critique on the intense parenting that exists in Japan and that one should loosen up a little. Han Joon Gi, like Someya, to me, represented the stereotypical business-oriented new generation amongst Asians. Han is meant to be pissed off, the Tojo clan committed genocide to the Jingweon, which I saw as a metaphor for Japan's warcrimes to Korea/China. But Han is meant to be a psychopathic handsome character thats trying to simply make money and forget history, that's why he's so cold to the past. This type of mindset is seen even from China and Hong Kong, the idea of letting go of past grudges and focus on cooperating with the Japanese to make more money. However, your takeaways on Han being a metaphor for kpop and the Japan/Korea cultural rivalry is something I agree with. I won't speak for the Koreans, but I never felt like the game insulted my people, it just happened that the villains were the Chinese. I mean, the real scumbag final villain of this game are Japanese politicians and that part is quite explicit. And think about the imagery of the Battleship Yamato. I personally saw it as a symbol of post-war shame and the lies of nationalism. I will concede is that the depiction of Haruka sadly takes away from her agency, and in a perfect world, we would get some actual gameplay time with her. It is quite sad that she never really grows past the damsel in distress stereotype. Also wtf was the insinuation that Kiryu MAY be a love interest to Haruka. That's pure insanity.
@@kazzykun5235 Yakuza 0 had literally an assassin that was extremely ugly and was Chinese. They changed him to a normal Yakuza character model for the Chinese release.
@@kazzykun5235 there's hundred of powerful characters that are extremely scary and a big deal. None look like Lao Gui. He's also changed for the Chinese version? Now why would that be the case? Racism
@@kazzykun5235 and yet he's the only exception. He's the only extremely ugly man for no reason. If it wasn't racism, they wouldn't have changed his model. The eyes are useless when the mind is blind.
@@SneedtheAlmighty if he's called the old demon, why doesn't he have that face in the Chinese version? If he's modeled after an actor, why not keep that one for the international version?
@@SneedtheAlmighty ultimately the only important Chinese character in the game is portrayed as very ugly (when badder meaner Japanese characters have actual faces), it's bound to come off as racist, no matter the intention
I think we played two different game series. I think Yakuza 2's depiction of the Koreans is supposed to be a show of what happens when an imperialist society stomps through a country, causes damage, then refuses to act like it ever happened. Japan can foeget, but the people they stomp on can't. This type of mentality the Japanese use of just "forgetting" the past creates resentment from those they hurt, driving some to the point of becoming so spiteful as to fully entrench themslves into a state of existing only to vow revenge. Hence the Massacre that the Tojo and Police just pretend didn't happen while the affected Korean gang holds onto the pain imposed on them. And considering what we see from the Yakuza in the series (Kanda raping women in 3 as a patriarch and the Yakuza constantly betraying and hurting eachother for power without any sense of "honor", as examples) I don't see the games as glorifying the Yakuza and putting them above the Triads or Korean Mafia. If they did glorify it, Kiryu would just become chairman and live happily ever, honor bound Yakuza, after. But they show time and time that the Yakuza isn't a place Kiryu's values align with or a place where good people last (look at Nishiki). Yakuza 6 is about a clashing of the old and the new, the young and the withered. It shouldn't be reduced to expousing and elevating a certain type of thinking just because certain characters hold that thinking. May I remind you the main villains are the ones behind the Secret of Onomichi and holding onto the past. Jimmy Lo is shown earlier on, dead, so that you can be prepared for and easily recognize him at a glance when we see him alive later on.
I think different Yakuza games can have different worldviews, especially when the main writer for 6 wasn't Yokoyama. I also think, if the villains were behind the secret of onomichi, and the secret is supposed to be a bad thing about holding onto the past, Kiryu agreeing to keep the past a secret is ultimately our hero saying it's fine to do that as long as he gets what he wants. I don't agree with that sentiment at all! I just don't think this game is having the conversation a lot of people think it's having; I think it's honestly trying to intentionally confuse the message in order to say things it shouldn't.
@@GCVazquez beem boom 11 months later reply. I think it's justified that Kiryu agrees to keep the secret because he's tired of being dragged back into all these shenanigans and putting his loved ones in danger. He already lost so many people he truly cared about and in the end chose to stay away from them. His main goals were the search for Haruka then the father of her child. After reaching these goals he decided to fake his death so Haruka, Yuta and the kids in the orphanage could live the safe and peaceful live without threatened because Kiryu is involved into another criminal/political drama.
To any and all future commentors reading this, especially without having played Yakuza 6, I recommend not taking one man's word at face value. This is the perspective and take of one person. This is the conclusion he has come to, and you shouldn't just believe it without a second thought. If you have not played Yakuza 6, do not take this video at its word. Play the game, come to your own conclusions. Don't let one person dictate your own enjoyment of a game. And don't just read the top comments and be done with it. The top comments are buried in agreements to this video because naturally the video creator will want to give hearts to the people who agree with him. Sort the comments by the most recent if you wish to find arguments against the points being made in this video, because there are some very compelling counterarguments and to see them buried and not given any consideration is a shame.
@@GCVazquez Sure, but other people are being dissuaded from playing the game as a result of this video. I have seen several comments that say that they won't play the game now solely from your perspective, and I just think that's a damn shame. A surprising amount of people will latch onto the ideas of other people.
@@aneonfoxtribute I think it's none of your business if people decide whether or not to play a game based on what they've seen about it. No one's just taking my word for it, most of the comments saying they're going to skip it already took issue with certain things in other entries. Stop assuming lesser of people just because they're turned off on a video game. You're being an elitist.
@@GCVazquez Some of them do. But not all of them. I don't like the idea of people skipping things just because of what one person says. If your opinion was the consensus, then sure. But this video is the only place I've ever seen it, it's not the majority.
Assuming you're right about that, what you're doing is like walking into the only barbershop in town that doesn't do pompadours, and being upset you were told you couldn't get one done there. Then, you stood outside the shop and yelled, "HARKEN TO ME, FRIENDS! THERE ARE ALTERNATIVES!" They know, dude.
1:17:09 You know a video essay is really stretching itself on why a game is bad when the essayist finds it problematic that a dying man's wishes upon his daughter figure is for her to be happy with her newborn and husband, just because he worded it "MAKE them... happy".
At 39:31 I don't agree with your statement about them changing Lao Gui's face for backlash reasons, they changed his face to real Hong Kong actor Sam Lee just as they've used real actors for characters like Sagawa and Nishitani. It's just a way to get fans of those actors to take an interest in the games. Hell, even in Yakuza 5 we got freaks like the inmate Kugihara and the yakuza Kamon Kanai. They're ugly because they're supposed to be intimidating, which is their design choice for Lao Gui as well. You have to look at how Wen Hai Lee and Oda are both Chinese and look fine, you can't just look at one side of things for your verdict. I understand that you feel a certain way, but I don't agree with you only including examples that back up your argument while ignoring the examples that don't match your narrative.
Except characters like Oda are secretly villains, meaning you can't just make him look like the babadook, because it's a dead giveaway, and as I said in the video, non-Japanese characters attempting to completely assimilate into Japanese culture or raised Japanese aren't depicted in the same way as Chinese nationals. If casting a real life actor was their goal, why on Earth was the casting change only for the Chinese release of the game, and kept the same everywhere else, including future releases on PC? Why weren't those versions patched? I'm not ignoring examples that don't match my narrative, I'm just not exhaustively listing every single example and categorizing them. The points I made took those examples into account. And even beyond that, the core of the point in that section was to point out the series has had issues related to xenophobia in the past, but largely in the background of the greater narrative. The scale of those issues is clearly presented in that section. Don't ignore the entirety of what *I'm* saying to disregard a valid criticism of something.
@@GCVazquez(This is kind of long, but as a person of Chinese descent I feel that I can give you some new insight into this matter.) That may be the case for Oda, but I'd argue that they didn't have to make him as handsome as they did. Shinji from 1 and Rikya from 3 weren't ugly but they certainly don't look as good as Oda. Fei Hu from 0 is just a weapons dealer but they made him relatively attractive, Zhao from 4 isn't handsome but he looks about as good as real life actor Sammo Hung. In terms of the Koreans. There's not a single guy that isn't at least average, I would argue that Ryuji and his biological father are notably attractive despite the fact that they didn't really have to make his father handsome. I would argue that the reason for using Sam Lee for Lao Gui was the same as Iron Man 3 having new scenes with Chinese stars exclusive to the Chinese version, they wanted to attract fans that know the movie star. In both instances it altered the director's vision so that's why it was exclusive to that version, especially since the original Lao Gui's Chinese didn't sound fluent. International audiences wouldn't really realize that the original Lao Gui speaks Chinese badly. I feel that when you don't mention these other points in detail it makes the image of this series skew towards pure negativity, using just Tachibana and Makoto as your examples is a bit misleading as like I said there have been perfectly normal looking Chinese characters that still use their Chinese names. I don't agree with your opinion that the foreign criminals all have less honor than the yakuza, in every installment there are Japanese characters with mostly negative characteristics. There's Sohei Dojima, Shimano, Jingu, Shindo, Takashima, Sengoku, Kanda, Tamashiro, Katsuragi, Shibata, Aoyama, Kanai, Sugai, and Iwami. Even Nishiki tells Kiryu in 0 that the Dojima Family are so brutal, that the people they kill don't even look like humans when they're done with them. Admittedly most of Kiryu's allies are Japanese, but you could also say that most of Michael Corleone's allies are Italian. People within the same race are just more likely to be allies, that's just human nature. Regarding Han Joon Gi's comparison of Kiryu to a warlord, he was referring to the warlords of old meaning the Sengoku period. I've even read that the Chinese kingdom of Wei in 244-245 conquered the Korean kingdom of Goguryeo. As a descendant of Chinese Indonesians(Chinese people who moved to Indonesia) I feel that China spread its culture, and by extension its desire for an empire in ancient times. With Japan being the most eager to follow in creating an empire. Even the Korean kingdom of Goguryeo was known to have had ruins extending all the way to Manchuria and present day Mongolia. While I can't speak for Koreans, as a Chinese Indonesian I don't view China's imperial history in ancient times as something that was done for no reason, I see it as the Chinese people seeking a prosperous and powerful nation. I would say that China, Korea, and Japan all have had desires for an empire during their long histories. I can't speak for Mainland Chinese people, but I don't even think that Japan's WW2 crimes were without a reason. Admittedly they were quite heinous, but I feel that no country was truly guilt free in that era seeing as the European powers had so many colonies right before WW2. I have read up on ancient China and its dynasties, and I just feel that the reason there were so many dynasties is because everyone wanted to have their own empire. Not long before WW2 during the warlord era of China where Chinese warlords split China into many pieces, my paternal great grandfather was kidnapped for a ransom by one of the warlords. He wasn't even released long after his parents refused to pay, he had to escape his imprisonment and came back home with long hair and nails because he was treated like garbage by his captors. The fact that not long before Japan invaded China it was that bad has given me the impression that China from 1916 to 1928 was even worse than the Wild West, so Japan likely thought that they could just make a colony out of this lawless China like how Europe had colonies everywhere. Regarding Han Joon Gi's club atmosphere, it was more lewd than hostess clubs. If you recall that Majima told Nishitani it was against the rules of The Grand to grope the hostesses, which is why he was bribing the girl before Majima arrived. I honestly don't even remember much in the way of PDA between customers and hostesses in this series, the most PDA I remember in that sense is when Saejima and Kaguya ate a pocky together and accidentally kissed. So nothing quite as overt as the behavior shown in Han's club. In Yakuza 4 there were many Japanese corpses that were not treated too respectfully, even Tanimura plays around with Ihara's lifeless face. Akiyama finds the owner of Drama Queen's corpse half naked and pale as a ghost, and that's not even all of the people who die in 4. In 6, right before the scene you mentioned with Ed he stabs a yakuza in the neck with his karambit. Even the dead bodies you mentioned wouldn't be as graphic as portraying someone's neck slowly slashed open, and gunshots in the series have never been that gory with just a blood splatter and no guts coming out. I feel that at the end of the day, it's very limiting when you have to write your story and think about every thing that could potentially offend someone. Stories in fictional settings that feature slavery, terrorists, or extreme violence have often faced backlash back then and today as well, as an aspiring writer myself I feel that it can be very frustrating to predict every single reason your story can offend someone before you even complete it. I feel that the cultural difference exacerbates this issue further, I feel that as someone of Chinese descent I can somewhat understand the Japanese mindset a bit better than the average person. All I ask is that you take my words into consideration, as I myself have run into situations where Western people have misunderstood my values and culture.
I really don't agree with this idea that Lao Gui looks evil because he's supposed to be dark majima. The Dojima Lieutenants are all super fine with getting their hands dirty like that, and they don't look like that. Plenty of characters from the series are cold-blooded, and they're never modelled to look like a Sith Lord.
@@GCVazquez I don't think any of the dojima leuitennants are presented specifically as "evil version of kiryu" in the same way that lao gui is to majima, though Also Lao Gui doesn't have nearly the same depth of characterization as them, so his grotesqueness is just visual shorthand to make up for that imo
To note something really weird. They never bring up Kiwami 1's Pocket Circuit Racer stuff. Only 0's. This makes me think that 6 was in production exactly after 0, while some side teams made Kiwami 1 and Fist of the North Star: Lost in Paradise. ALSO WHERE THE HELL IS THE FLORIST?! HE WOULD LITERALLY BE THE MOST USEFUL CHARACTER IN THIS GAME BUT THEY NEVER MENTION HIM ONCE. THEY COULD HAVE LITERALLY SAID HE WAS IN HIDING OR SOMETHING.
You blew my mind with the takeaway that Yakuza 6 is about the dragon engine. I never realized it, but it totally is! When I think about 6, my fondest memories are just exploring the towns. Taking them at my own pace, just existing in the beauty. I was genuinely floored when I seamlessly walked into buildings. I loved just crushing some randoms on the sidewalk. But your analysis also brought to light some rather gross things that I either forgot about, or didn't give as much attention as I should have. I haven't played this game since it came out, and even then I was feeling some fatigue having played the other games back to back in the lead up. I didn't have nearly the negative reaction to 6 as others, but I think perhaps I romanticized the vibe without really analyzing the content.
Honestly the game is built to romanticize a lot of the environment to lead people astray with other aspects. That's by design, so you're all good. It's quite an eye opener when you realize the whole game is an ad for something lol
You make a little joke "Maybe he says 'you're the dragon now'" at 1:17:00 but the funny thing is I feel he basically did! On top of everything else that bums me out about this game, one of the things you haven't mentioned is that Haruka has basically inherited Kiryu's worst trait. When things are tough in these games, what does Kiryu do? More often than not, he shoulders the entire burden on himself, and his friends typically only get involved at their own insistence. So rarely does Kiryu ASK for help and I think part of it is because he realizes he's the most capable, being the ultra-strong series protagonist. He basically thinks he's Superman in a world of lesser heroes, needing to take the extra hits and extra burdens because he can take it better than they can. And what does Haruka do at the beginning of Y6 when things are bad? She runs off, and shoulders the entire burden on herself. And when they finally reunite, his last words to her are "make other people happy". He's reinforcing his own worst trait and passing the responsibility on to her to be the one to take care of others and protect them.
Ah yeah that's what I was getting at in one of the webcam footage after she comes out of the coma! The game heralds Kiryu's worst trait as his best trait, and it's extra annoying because 4 and 5 do a really strong job breaking him out of that Superman Complex. It just goes back to that issue of completely ignoring past character development to make Kiryu this flawless individual
@@GCVazquez i dont understand what you mean by saying his worst trait is portrayed as his best trait. In 5, kiryu and haruka leaving eachother was essentially shown to be a mistake. In 6, Kiryus distance to Daigo is also shown to be a mistake all along, doubling down the point. This also extends to Haruka obviously. The difference here at the end of Y6 is that he now sees it as unavoidable, and does it for seemingly the last time. The first Gaiden trailer shows that he is unhappy with his decision
Holy shit it's CyricZ. Besides all the people flinging shit back and forth in the comments, I'm inclined to take the word of this guy over many others.
57:50 A guy wanting to get beaten up on camera is an outdated example of trying to get online fame in 2016? Actually quite the opposite, it’s ahead of it’s time: Japanese (self deletion) forest video. Andy Warski’s “STAND BACK” irl stream where he tried to get his friend to shoot drunk guys he was continuously approaching. Arab Andy (I believe that was his name) irl streaming when his Chat Text to Speech donated a bomb threat which lead to him getting arrested on screen. Frank Hassle still filming and antagonizing Boogie2988 who drew a gun on him. Iced Poseidon’s irl RV stream that had what likely was an on screen $-ual assault. Jaystation. A man streaming while throwing his pregnant SO outside in the cold to later die. Around 2016 and prior we even had prank channels that lead to numerous people getting hit on camera for their bad natured pranks. Hits they gladly recorded and uploaded, then kept doing.
1:09:34 I don't think I agree with this point. I don't think being critical of the Chinese child policies is necessarily anti-Chinese as much as it is anti-Chinese government. Those policies are fucked up, and the people are made to suffer by an immoral law. Parents have to pretend their kids don't exist and children have to grow up with no "official" place in the world. Not that certain aspects of Yakuza 6, and the series on the whole, doesn't have problems with representing Asian people that AREN'T Japanese. I just don't think this is one of them.
That's fair, but this is a game criticizing those laws AND also placing Japan in the shoes of heroes to those kids, despite being able to criticize Japan's own mistreatment of immigrants and immigrant children and not doing so. If they wanted to make a meaningful statement, Yakuza 6 would have made an effort to criticize Japan's own issues in regards to immigrants- but it seems more interested, in fact cumulatively compared to defending non-Japanese people, in using them as scapegoats for everything that's wrong with the state of things.
Kiryu: "I'm an outsider, I shouldn't butt in" *Kiryu, this is how many games at this point and NOW you've said this???* Also, it really rubs me the wrong way how much Kiryu is just so cold towards Haruka; never a "I love you no matter what's happened," something that had Haruka apologize to *him* for whatever reason. But the bit at the ending, that bait-and-switch of that letter to be to *Daigo* and not his surrogate daughter got me fuming. It just takes a giant shit on Haruka as a character and puts her on a pedestal solely for wives and mothers.
The bait and switch would feel better if the rest of the story actually focused on Daigo and didn't fridge Haruka for the sake of Kiryu having a crisis he never really proactively works towards solving in the first place.
@@GCVazquez Agreed; and it tears my hair out on how a game *about* Haruka does nothing with her, but use her purely as a plot device. She gets pregnant with a dude with no chemistry, wakes up from a coma when convenient, and gets gaslit. All those vids of mods having Haruka kick ass is cathartic when crap like this happened.
Lovely video and a great analysis of Yakuza 6. There's a lot of shortcomings with Yakuza 6, both from a gameplay and writing perspective. I know Yakuza has suffered from some xenophobic / misogynistic messages in the past, but, sheesh Yakuza 6's is like the biggest example of it. You do a really great job talking about said issues. Especially with how shiny the new Dragon Engine is, it at times does feel like a distraction from the words being said on the screen, especially if you're not really thinking too hard about stuff. One thing about the prevalence of substories having relationships involved, especially involving parents and children, is that it's definitely very very intentional as theming for the game since, the game's core talks a ton about parent-child relationships and what it means? Especially with the focus on, Kiryu and Haruka, Yuta and his father and blood ties, and Iwami and his father, heck even Kiyomi / Someya having a daughter is like, a minor plot point. So, I can kinda get the theming with what they were going for, but it doesn't really excuse how a lot of those substories are written. I really look forward to your analysis of 7, whenever you get around to it!
Great video mate, but the "demonic voice" or whatever it's suppose to be just ain't it, had to skip all those segments of the video personally. Very excited for the eventual Y7 video though! I hope you cover Judgement as well!
Thank you so much for making this video I will preface this by saying I'm only 40 minutes in but I'm impatient I'm a huge fan of RGG Studios and every game they make and I'm confident in saying that Yakuza is one of the best series of games I've ever played But I think alot of people really tend to let that love for the series blind them to some of the issues, both subtle and obvious, with the writing I noticed from the moment I played 0 that despite how much I love the handling of the story overall, the treatment of non-Japanese characters came off as very crude. Little Asia was treated passably to me, though the idea of the place in the game where Chinese people live being treated as this mysterious and fantastical place was...weird. and Lao Gui, while I find him to be a very threating and interesting character that plays as a good foil to Majima, he was practically foreshadowing to how Chinese people are almost always treated as brutal people who are looking to uproot Japanese culture 1/Kiwami had the same problem with Lau and the Shadow Flower as a whole. They were fun but they were plagued with the same 2-dimensional writing that framed them as nothing but thugs looking to uproot the Yakuza, despite acting incredibly similar to the Yakuza 2/Kiwami 2 is just so weird. I love the story but the Jingweon mafia is so weirdly handled. Sometimes it felt like they wanted to treat them as a respectable and honorable gang, then others it felt like they were nothing but flat plot devices with elements of anti-Korean sentiment. Really didn't help that they took Ryuji and Kaoru and did exactly what happened with Tachibana and Makoto years later. Korean/half Korean model foreigners who are treated better because they uphold Japanese ideas. And I loved Ryuji and Kaoru. You touched upon the clear propaganda in Yakuza 3 quite well so I won't bother with it 4 and 5 I can't actually think of anything they did in this way. It's this sudden break where they treat foreigners better and criticise Japan for 2 games and it seems like it's gotten better Then there's Yakuza 6, which the entire video is about and I've so far enjoyed and agreed with your video so take that as you will And Yakuza: LaD *seems* to have moved past what 6 did. There's still elements of the lesser treatment of Geomijul and Liumang but for the most part, they really made strides to diversify their cast, criticise Japan, not put their Yakuza on a pedestal and generally, it did a far, far better job of representing these different cultures fairly and even fix some of the mistakes they made with the Jingweon Mafia. I really hope this improvement stays and we don't back step to Yakuza 6 again. I don't hate Yakuza 6 and I think that despite its major flaws in representing foreigners, it had some elements I really loved (Someya mainly) Okay very long ramble but basically I agree with and appreciate you speaking about this. You're not afraid to address negative aspects of the things you love and I admire that. Keep being cool
Love this comment thank you very much for sharing your own thoughts on it. It absolutely did not occur to me that, yes, Little Asia is treated like this mysterious place in the center of town. Though there's definitely districts like that in real-life, the way it's treated like this secret club and not a place where people can avoid persecution in the games is certainly something to think on. I wanted to talk about Someya too, because he's a damn good antagonist in this story. If the core of the narrative centered around Kiryu's age and creeping outdatedness, Someya would have remained a really solid contrast to him. It's part of what makes 6 so frustrating; you can see little hints of a really good discussion about passing the torch and struggling to keep up with the times, and it starts to drop those ideas in lieu of saying just...some of the worst things imaginable.
God Yakuza 6 is just mountains upon mountains of wasted potential. Your video perfectly points out how it's just corrupted to the core in its gameplay, its narrative, its treatment of foreigners, its treatment of women. The entire game reads as a vindictive script written by someone who just wanted to push their own oppressive political ideals on to the characters and it makes me so sad because of how many little nuggets of greatness there are. Someya is an amazing commentary on Kiryu's aging and the natural change in the Yakuza that needs to occur if they wish to survive in the modern world. Iwami is the embodiment of everything Kiryu has fought against and hated across the entire series, a vindictive megalomaniac who does what he does only because he wants power and does whatever cruel acts he deems necessary to do it, dragging civilians and innocent people in general into his wars. Patriarch Hirose and the Hiroshima gang were clearly made to show Kiryu a reflection of the relationship he once had with Kazama. There are so many great ideas in this game that, not so coincidentally, all revolved around *legacy* and *Kiryu.* Everything in this game that was good, was good because it was what Yakuza 6 *should've* been but it was completely drowned out by a rushed development, abandoning all of the progress the series had made, unlearning lessons that were already learned and of course, the myriad of xenophobic and misogynistic narrative choices throughout. God damn this game just brings me pain thinking of what could've been lmao. This is somewhat unrelated but it's always just irked me so much that the game picks up directly after the events of 5 and the events of 5 are literally never mentioned beyond the intro. It's the perfect example to how this game was never really about Kiryu's legacy
@@tenbeihazard1968You're describing a bunch of positive things and aspects about the story, themes and characters that are clearly there on purpose and had a lot of thought put into them and then you sabotage your own thinking and enjoyment by disregarding them as something the game wasn't ultimately about for some reason. Having just finished it I'd have to disagree with that and those aspects really contributed to my enjoyment and I found to be the ultimate focus of the narrative as the final chapters really highlight. The game/story isn't perfect of course and I do understand taking issue with how it presents certain things and the messages that may be taken from that, even if I could give it the benefit of the doubt of it being unintentional, but I don't see why youre so keen to disregard the positives despite recognizing them. That said, I also don't see why the events of 5 in particular needed to have an even bigger focus? It was literally the catalyst of a lot of what happens in the game. Although I agree that I would have liked some more introspection and looking back through the series as a whole from this game, cuz you really need to dig deep to find it (even in some substories surprisingly)
6 is a bizarre piece of the Yakuza series' history. Being the first mainline release after the series exploded in popularity following 0, coming after not only that but the also fairly well-received 5, and by extension likely being a lot of international fans' first time anticipating and playing a "new" Yakuza game, it proceeded to...fall flat on its face by combining all of 5 and 0's less-noticeable-at-the-time flaws (with almost none of their strengths to make up for it) to make an utter mess of the game. And since then we've practically had a series golden age between Like a Dragon and the two Judgment games, which makes me wonder if they took the major criticisms of this game into account when making those
I know Lost Judgment still suffers some issues, and 7 isn't perfect, but I also know a lot of people support them as "not as bad as 6" in a lot of ways, so here's hoping they deliver on that. But yeah 6 was a colossal disappointment- especially since I gave it the benefit of the doubt almost all the way to the end.
I'd say we've been away from the golden age ever since Kiwami. Everything post Kiwami is a coin flip, and it seems no Dragon Engine game has had fighting mechanics as good as even 5.
@@JCOdrjones lost judgment honestly has my favorite combat system by far. The different styles actually apply to different situations very well unlike in the 1st judgment, the heat moves are great, building meter is way easier, plus best part you beat the shit out of asshole bullies. Like seriously what's not love lol
Okay so regarding the Haruka Coma. Considering the "Yakuza Online Trailer", it's entirely possible she would've gone full Kiryu herself and the Yakuza devs are just fucking cowards.
God, it’s so fucking annoying that they don’t just make a female protagonist a playable fighter or make one as an antagonist. I’m getting REALLY sick of RGG being scared of doing that. JUST FUCKING DO IT.
if haruka were present at all in the game there would have been no need for a bunch of men to sit around and talk about abortion because the entire mystery surrounding her pregnancy would never have been a mystery. the problem is that the plot of yakuza 6 is bad in many ways even on a conceptual level, imo in part because it turns "child character representing innocence" into someone who got pregnant at 17. also just gotta say this, fuck the letter kiryu sends at the end of the game. "I've always seen you as my true child... daigo." As though haruka didn't deserve that validation and as though that wouldn't have made a much better send off for kiryu to give her.
Thaaaaank you. It is from the start a really yikes premise. Also YEAH FUCK THAT LETTER. FUCK THAT LETTER SO HARD. Where the fuck even is Daigo in this story anyway? I know he's in jail but I mean conceptually, narratively, WHERE? In isolation that scene is kinda wholesome and really nice- but in context of the game it's like "wait a minute what why here suddenly?"
@@GCVazquez Like, I'm not opposed to the concept of Kiryu writing Daigo a letter, if only they had given Haruka something. As he was reading it, before he revealed it was for Daigo, I was like, "Ok, this makes up for Kiryu's shitty last words to Haruka and is quite touching" Then it was to fucking Daigo.
I'm so happy that there's someone talking about the casual racism in the Yakuza series. It's not obvious, especially to people who don't know anything about discrimination in Japan, but it's definitely there in every game. It's interesting how they completely flipped everything for Judgment and Yakuza Like a Dragon though. Like a Dragon is even explicitly anti LDP and anti conservative. Maybe you could do a video about this change? I actually don't know why they completely flipped the script for these games, but I'm glad they did. Maybe you can research that?
I hear this about 7 a lot, and unfortunately haven't played it yet, BUT! That's definitely going to be in the video for 7 when I get to it if this is the case. Given the rest of this retrospective series, I think it's pretty clear the last thing I want is to have to point out the glaring issues in these games- but I will if they're there since it's somewhat my responsibility to do so. Definitely will take about the paradigm shifts when I get to them.
Jesus Christ, it's a fucking videogame. It's also made in Japan. They have a different culture, which people like you harp on about having to respect culture no matter what, yet here you are calling their cultre racist. Get a life
@@jmarra07 Hey, this actually makes me curious; if this game is supposed to be a comprehensive and factual representation of Japan’s monolithic culture, and not a subjective and fictional representation of a a few people’s perspective, is there an American game that does the same?
@@backup_bokoblin7398 It's not a literal and factual version of Japan. It's a Japanese game made in a Japanese culture, where they enjoy things like novelty, and crazy stuff, because it's humorous and fun. Closest thing I can think of for a US game, it might be GTA. Which, also, isn't a factual account of America, but rather a silly satire of it.
Fantastic video! iirc Yakuza 4 was originally going to be the last mainline game and they went all out with the fan-service in substories and just fleshing out Kamuro-cho. And the new trio really felt like they would be successors of the legend that is Kazuma Y6 meanwhile, was too busy sucking off 0 and K1 with its substories (same especially goes for K2, probably cuz all these 4 games released close to each other)
They tend to build every Yakuza game like it's the last one juuust in case, so there's a lot of focus on continuity and ensuring closure both for the story of that game and also the series as whole. Which is why 6 is...just so weird, that it was definitively going to be the last Kiryu game, without question, and they made little attempt to ensure those things were included.
I will edit this once I finish the video for further thoughts but I just want GC to know, in the moment, that forming his laughs into the shape of an H and and A is a stroke of pure editing genius. Edit: Okay, video is finished. Having not been terribly educated on the history between Japan and Korea when playing this game, I didn't catch the implications of Joon-gi's words and they faded entirely from memory, but looking back now with a bit more knowledge, it sent a chill up my spine. I was so bedazzled by all the wild set pieces in Yakuza 6 that I didn't catch how scary some of its messaging and storytelling is in hindsight, and that's not just you telling me how it is talking, that's paying attention to the cutscenes and dialogue with a fresh point of view. I'd ever been questioning whether or not it was the ending Kiryu deserved, but it was always disappointing that everyone I loved was mostly absent from it. Wonderful video as always, and I know it's already a long one, but I'm curious as to the absence of any mention of the actual villain in this one. Was there any reason for leaving it out? Not that you owe us talking about ever single character, of course. I just feel like remembering there were some nationalistic tones to his villainy, but honest to God he's such an unmemorable character I may have projected that onto him.
Thank you for noticing my H A joke :) And yeah the villain of Yakuza 6 felt to me like such a footnote in the greater issues of the game and also outside of that so sudden and unearned as a final boss that I had nothing of value to say other than "who?" It's wild to me how brazenly Yakuza 6 spits its messaging out like that, and then immediately tries to obfuscate what it's saying with spectacle. I found the whole thing incredibly in poor taste.
Great entry in the series and excellent work as always, GC. I am proud to be a patron of your consistently stellar work. You really pinned down the things that made me uncomfortable throughout 6 and why I found the ending of the game extremely disappointing and kind of infuriating. I was stomping around for weeks after like- He wrote a letter TO DIAGO. DIAGO. And NOT to Haruka??? And to the people who get upset at any criticism of their fave- just know that Yakuza is MY fave. I stream ONLY Yakuza. I am learning Japanese because of Yakuza. I adore these games and they have brought joy to my life while I have had a horrible struggle with long covid. I want Yakuza to be the absolute best version of itself. And I believe the series is strong enough to weather the criticism it has earned. This is legitimate, earned criticism. Art generates art criticism- that's how it has always worked. If you want video games to be acknowledged as a legit artistic medium- which I absolutely do because they absolutely ARE-- then art criticism is a part of that. Crit is how artists grow. It is a vital function of art education. It is NECESSARY to the growth of any artist or group of artists. This series is art. So we should treat it like art has been treated historically. And idk how anyone could question GC's cred as a fan- like come on now. No one makes this amount of detailed and rigorously researched content about something they don't care about deeply. Making videos is not easy and it's wildly time intensive. You don't have to agree with everything GC says but you cannot question his commitment to Yakuza as a series. It's ok for a work to not be perfect and it is OK to point out where it can be better. No one is going to come to your house and take your copy of Yakuza 6 like come on now.
After all these years playing Yakuza games, spending something around 50 to 90h with each one of them (Minus Dead Souls, since I never had a PS3, and the most recent release Lost Judgment because it's HELLA expensive here in Brazil), I started to feel like the "gimmicky" nature of these games caught up with them in 6. Every single game since 3 had to introduce some bombastic back-of-the-box feature to lure players back, and most of the time they did it without any detriment to the entirety of the product. Two towns! Four protagonists! Five protagonists AND five towns AND a revamped combat system! But everything else was there, y'know. The story, the themes, the intricate relationship that the player and the characters had with the places they were walking around in... having something to freaking say, dammit. But then we get to Yakuza 6 and face two fundamental problems, which are: 1) A beautiful, photorealistic new engine doesn't necessarily translates to meaningful, satisfying gameplay. At least not immediately, and they should have given themselves a year more or so of development to figure this out, and 2) Kiryu said what he had to say in 5. Hell, that little talk that Kiryu has with Saejima at the rooftop of New Serena? Him being found and saved by Haruka when he was about to die? Kiryu beating up a freaking army ALONE? That's his ending. Generally, the WHOLE CAST said what they had to say in 5, like it or not. In the end, any sort of sequel involving those characters would end up becoming too self-indulgent for its own good... ...which is exactly what Y6 is. It's Yakuza that doesn't have the catharsis derived from the gameplay nor it has meaningful, warm themes to develop. It's Yakuza without the good in it. Anti-Yakuza. Nega-Yakuza. Dark Yakuza. A monster that is as beautiful to the eyes as it is ugly to the heart. Just a terrible story about terrible, toxic old men who think that all the problems in the world can be solved with violence and coarse screams, repeating the same accursed cycles of egomania, greed and bigotry over and over and over again. In the wise words of the Angry Video Game Nerd: What were they thinking?! Still on the topic of xenophobia and racism and general ultranationalist propaganda: Let's not kid ourselves... Nagoshi has said in interviews that he's friends or at least in very friendly terms with IRL yakuza. IRL yakuza are some of the biggest donors of far right organizations in Japan. IRL yakuza frequently visit the infamous Yasukuni Shrine to pay respects to the terrible war criminals enshrined there, including the "Japanese Hitler", Hideki Tojo. IRL yakuza love to spout about how their practices are tethered to honor and duty to the people and the country, and about how the original feudal yakuza were samurai (Which is... kinda true, but not in the mythologized way they argue), AND about how yakuza helped rebuild Japan after WW2. I'm putting my tinfoil hat here for a bit and saying... there's gotta be a connection there. Either Nagoshi and Yokoyama are trying to cater to the real world criminals inspiring these games or they believe at least a little bit on what is being shown on the screen, and in both cases the result is very troubling. On misogyny: Old japanese men are starting to get a little to high on that low birth rate Kool-Aid. Using Haruka as this sort of symbol to what a woman "should" do with her body when it comes to having children, no matter how she is psychologically or what's her financial situation is tragicomical. All the other women in substories are either neglecting their children, being very mean to them, too "ugly" to have kids or are just warped vixens, but oh-so-sweet Haruka, almost-perfect Haruka, doe-eyed innocent Haruka will give her kid a chance to live because that's the right thing to do. Safe sex is a joke! If you're gonna fuck women, you should fuck 'em for real! Make them kids, gosh darn it! It's all just a big condensation of how the franchise treats women in general: No nuance, no chance to speak for themselves, one-dimension-is-enough kind of dynamic. The timeskip should've been at least five years long, if not longer to remedy that whole shit. Anyway, GC: You're too smart, man. For real. I learn something new every single time I watch and rewatch your videos. It's inspiring. I feel like an idiot for not perceiving certain things while I was playing the games, but it IS inspiring nonetheless! Keep up the good work for as long as you want or need to. No matter what happens in the future, I'm certain your work will be worthwhile. Sorry for the absurdly long comment and sorry for not watching the video on the day it came out! PS: *SPOILERS* Weirdly enough, I like the final bit with Kiryu saying he sees Daigo as his son. As least Daigo, that lame-ass useless idiot, will have a better father figure to reminisce about than that piece of shit rapist that he had for a biological father. And I kinda teared up a little bit with the final "ganbatte" moment.
I mean- yeah! Yeah! I couldn't have said it better myself hahaha! Also yeah TO BE CLEAR: The Daigo thing is a REALLY good touch, I just wish they focused more on THAT instead of waiting for a post-credit cutscene to even have that sort of theming.
Truly amazing video. I just beat 6 after finishing majority of the Yakuza games this year and what a journey it was. 6 really did lack closure. I love how you touch upon existentialism, legacy and how they are negatively amplified by capitalism. Something that really made me tilt my head (something you also touched on) was the casual misogyny of Nagumo and the others towards Kiyomi. Not just that it’s there but how the misogyny isn’t questioned or even combated by anyone. The misogyny is actually agreed with by the sub-stories and Kiryu because somehow he is a worse now. Same goes for the xenophobia, which you also covered excellently. Really one of the best video essays I’ve seen in awhile. You are a stand up person, respect for putting so much care and effort into your vids. You say a lot of important stuff. Keep it up, it’s great!
How's that workin' out for ya? I love the Sims but I haven't touched 4 at all yet. I'm still kinda peeved EA never discounts the plethora of expansion packs for the Sims. 3's been out for I think ten years now? They went on sale for $5 each ONCE.
@@GCVazquez Yeah...I've sunk a lot of money into Sims 4, and since I started playing it, haven't played anything else. But hopefully I will get back to the Yakuza franchise, last I remember was that I was playing Kiwami 2...crossing my fingers.
I agree with so many points that you made in this video. I don't think I've played another game in a long while that left me so confused and unexcited within the first hour as I did while playing this game. It was quite disappointing watching each of the series' quintessential characters get written out of the game's story one-by-one, especially when there were many roles that they could have taken within the game's plot. I think one of the most jarring points about the game's narrative was the complete exclusion of the Florist of Sai. Kiryu's main informant for... 5 games? It's moments like these that made me feel like Yakuza 6 didn't exist to occupy the space of a proper finale, since it completely sidestepped major characters and elements within the series. That's completely ignoring every other bad faith argument or red flag in the game (as soon as I learned about Haruka's pregnancy, I knew it wouldn't be handled delicately). It's been about 3 months since I finished Yakuza 6, but watching this video makes me feel like I've gotten some level of closure. I guess it's time to tackle Yakuza 7 and hopefully rediscover the love for the series that I had going into 6. Looking forward to your next video!
It's so wild to me they didn't bring back the Florist at all in this one, let alone Majima of all people. Honestly there's so much besides the propaganda stuff that just...doesn't make any sense.
your segment regarding a lack of the series in this game and closure makes it seem as if you either didn’t actually play this game or you just have no understanding of the story the game was trying to convey. this is a story about kiryu and those most important to him while also establishing newer characters who parallel kiryu in many aspects i.e. orphans who’s adoptive father killed their real parents or those bearing the responsibility of father. as for majima and saejima this isn’t their story. daigo got the most closure despite not being on screen for long because kiryu addresses him as his own son and hears his burden that’s been affecting him since yakuza 3 plus daigo’s absence in scenes and him being imprisoned was a plot point to move the story forward and establish new villains. you’re complaints about not having closure just sounds like you wanted shitty fan service which would have made for a much worse game if fans like you got their request
It all just sounds like disorganized, recycled, and poorly used trite to me, sorry. I think a final game with a cast we've been with since the beginning should in some way give respect to that cast- not just the main character. And if it's going to focus on just two characters, Kiryu and Daigo, maybe it shouldn't send one of them to off camera jail as a plot contrivance at the very start, and then never mention them again? I don't know man, it's just my opinion about a video game. 🤷♂️
Man, I don't know what to say, I completely disagree with pretty much everything you said, I am surprised you came away with the opinion you did. I am not saying this game is perfect but to list out all my disagreements would be pages long, so I will stay away from this discussion. I am sorry you didn't enjoy it hope you like the other stuff
Hi. I'm not a professional at writing, nor am I the best at understanding certain subtexts of games, but wow. This was an incredible video to watch. You really have evolved over the years. I was always told by others that they really enjoyed Yakuza 6, or that it was one of the best games in the series. Then I finished it. Whilst I did enjoy certain elements like the music, the dragon engine and the minigames, the story did feel a little... off and weird and/or boring. Thanks to your analysis, I think I now understand why. Whilst I do enjoy 6, you brought some of my feelings into words. The story at best is saying goodbye to Kiryu and his life through the perspective of new and pointless characters, and at worst... exactly what you said. Thankyou for this critique of Yakuza 6, I'm glad you are able to criticize the franchises you enjoy. Thanks for all the content GC. I really hope you have a good weekend and make sure to stay healthy, we support you and what you make :)
Thank you very much for the support! I'm glad I could help pull some concrete thoughts out of the abstract feelings you were having. It's really unfortunate how 6 turned out, I think. 5 continues to be a much better send-off to the whole cast.
For the xenophobia (I might be wrong, haven't thought too much about it as other ppl), Yakuza 7 seems to go past that somehow? Like all 3 of the present factions are framed very similarly. you also notice the more progressive writing
I liked Yakuza 6 more than most people. My biggest problem, as you highlight, was that for a game which is supposed to be a conclusion to Kiryu and Haruka’s stories, it barely has Haruka do anything. However, now that you’ve highlighted all these xenophobic and misogynistic points, I do see what you mean. It’s so many disparate little things that I didn’t notice how much of it there was. I love Yakuza and I think that, for Japanese mass media, it tends to be more progressive than average, but it really does struggle with the xenophobia endemic to Japan. Some games like Y4 or Like a Dragon go out of their way to humanize Korean and Chinese people and depict their struggles in Japan, a society that is deliberately unfair to them, but some other games like Y6 just inexplicably spew terrible far-right nonsense. It’s so inconsistent. I wonder if it has something to do with project leads or the head writers in each entry.
ok not trying to be an um actually but one thing is that yakuza 0/5/k had the kiwami engine compared to 3 and 4 which used the Magical V Engine and yakuza dead souls is called yakuza of the end in japan in part because of the fact that it was the last yakuza game made using it. sorry for this someone else will probally just coment the same thing and it ddosnt take away anything from the videos main pont just comenting to inform.
LOL You're super fine. I actually love getting corrections like these because I learn something about the production that I missed! I had no idea the engine for 0/5/K1 was considered a new one; it just looked like a really heavily edited Magical V Engine- though I guess that's probably what it is anyway? Thank you for the correction! ^_^
Watched the whole video. Thought it was excellent. You've clearly spent a lot of time thinking about Yakuza 6 and did well voicing your opinion. I think this is one of your best. Also, those intermission clips were hilarious.
There's a lot of points of yours I agree with, about xenophobia, about misogyny, about the conservative undertones. But I'm not 100% sold on this video. There are plot points of this game revolving the conservative ideals and politicians being responsible for all the horrible events happening during this game. The triad and the Korean mafia and the yakuza were all pawns of the highly conservative ww2 apologist politicians currently in power in Japan. The game has a reference to shinzo abe being a disciple to a ww2 general who ordered the construction of a war weapon and how they abused immigrants to do so. I think I really like the comparison you made in this video, yakuza 6 (and the series as a whole) being a confused screaming kid while a old sleazy man forces itself and changes the script. This is me probably trying to wash the devs off some guilt and sin though. But I believe yakuza is a confusing clash of progressive and conservative ideas.
I forgot to reply to this, and I'm going to reply now because I don't entirely disagree with you either. I think the reason I made my argument was because there's elements outside of the parallels you've drawn that still frame immigrants and foreigners as lesser. Parts of the game which have little to nothing to do with the central plot in Hiroshima- because this game I think you can agree is a tangle of a bunch of plot lines not coming together in a sufficient way- still treat the immigrants like crap. A lot of the cinematography takes the time to show us their desecrated bodies, instead of really making the effort to paint them as the pawns we're supposed to sympathize with like you're suggesting. My issue with how those conservatives are portrayed in 6 is largely related to the emotions they want us to derive from them. It paints them as tragic figures, laments their fall from grace, and wants us to shift the blame to the current Japanese political schema- which definitely has issues, but the conservatives in question are the ones in power to begin with. They control that schema at the time of Yakuza 6. To ask us to feel bad for them, or pity them for being stuck in the world of politics is like asking me to feel bad for a king because he sits on the throne. Furthermore, we run into this issue where the true villain of the franchise is a younger man with radical new ideas, who usurps the throne because he holds a grudge against the king, who then manipulates the situation with the general in his favor. Rather than a criticism of those conservative ideals, the game laments the downfall of ultra-conservative values. It's that "drain the swamp" populist mentality you saw a lot of in the states around the time 6 came out, and it's that same mentality a lot of other countries' political forces adopted to bolster reactionary support in their respective regions around the time as well. It's because of this and the other reasons I state in the video. The way foreigners are directed in a scene, the way women continue to be treated as background elements only to be spoken down to when a man needs to look stronger, the insistence and nostalgia for Japanese imperial power. That I don't think Yakuza 6 is trying to criticize conservative views and outdated ideas conservatives still hold onto, and is attempting to bolster those ideas or at the very least paint them as the lesser evil. Though I definitely agree Yakuza is generally a confusing clash of ideas, I think there's too much in Yakuza 6 specifically for it to be the case in Yakuza 6.
@@GCVazquez heyyy here's a late response for you! I came back because I've been thinking about this series (and this video) a lot again. I'm still very much negotiating what to make of this series and what it wants to say, because I get mixed signals a lot,but I've come to the conclusion that if this series goes full on mask off Japanese nationalism and ultra conservative, I would be very dissappointed, but not surprised sadly. However I still am not %100 sold on this idea. The series is deeply steeped in nationalist and conservative rhetoric, yet somehow it's surprisingly and uncharacteristicly progressive at times, even in main plot points. It's also fair to say that studio is aware of its own issues in writing and problematic depictions, it's why we get extremely conflicting depictions of lgbtq+ folks in the same game (yakuza 3). But at the same time in recent releases, there have been... Attempts to do better in these regards. Removing bad depictions, further challenging contemporary Japanese and capitalist politics and etc. . They're not enough to satisfy, but they leave me with a bit of tiny hope that this series does care about the marginalized and how established institutions hurt them, how the very same ideals conservative Japan champions are hurtful, while at the same falling back on those and undermining the whole message they try to tell, it's very frustrating. (yakuza 0 criticizing real state while at the same time having a mini game where you become a real state mogul to make people's lives better... Sure) A big part of me thinks that series will be forever stuck in this messy ideological limbo, failing to see its own contradictions and failures, the evidence against that is not that strong, but I still think it ultimately wants better for people. I still think this game still tried to do that in its own way.
Well that's kinda disappointing to figure out. Guess when I first played this game it all went over my head. I mean, I'd like to think a lot of this weirdness and awkwardness comes from the transitional period that 6 feels like it represents. Of course I could be wrong on that. Always be critical of the things you love, they can only improve from it. :)
I definitely think there was some kind of transition that took place with 6, and a lot of the messy attributes stem from there, but boy howdy did they REALLY make a mess of it.
Whenever i talked with my friends about Y6. They give me a few lines and then change subject to the other games in the series. After seeing this deep dive, i could see why. I appreciate these questrospectives, makes me wonder on your opinions on LAD. ive finished that game and boi... i liked ichiban more than i did kiryu.
This game and series has an issue with letting Kiryu go. They faked his death not once, not twice, but four times. I was hoping after 6, Kiryu would no longer be a main character and we'll only see him in cameos. But then Like a Dragon 8 cane out and he's a main character. Yakuza 6 was a great final goodbye to Kiryu, but the team or higher ups at Sega didnt want to let him go. I mean 5 would have been a great way to let Kiryu go if 6's story was different
something i really noticed when people discuss the issues with the 3 games after yakuza 0 is they tend to have a problem standing on there own. like kiwami 1 and 6 rely heavily on zero and kiwami 2 is doing that same with 6. feels like the devs got burnt out after 5 and did not know what to do with the series going forward.
Y'know, Kiryu literally says that the bonds you have with people can be just as strong without blood, to one of the main characters (who is a ally mostly throughout the game) is Chinese right?
If you play the game as an observer and not as a receiver, a lot of your accusations fall flat, I think. Dont get me wrong, I dont want to attack you for your opinions, but I played this game, recognized most of the themes you mentioned, but never felt "teached" by it. For example: When the Secret of Onomichi got revealed and the Hirose/Kurusu story got told, I thought: Okay, Kuruse is an ultra-conservative shithead. When the game showed his intentions I never felt like it was trying to sell them to me. I understand what drives him, but that doesnt mean I dislike him less. I view the Yakuza Games as a Case Study of Japanese Crime Drama. Of course there will be morals I dont agree with. Its like watching Good Fellas or any other Scorsese Movie: There is always violence, sexism and racism. Its a bunch of criminals with twisted morals, of course there is. Maybe I missed the point, or maybe my tolerance to social- and/or cultural differences is just higher. I am not saying "I am right/you are wrong", just trying to bring in a different perspective and trying to defend the Game, I really enjoyed playing for 60 hours, a bit.
Uh, Good Fellas and a lot of Scorsese movies are in part about immigration and the "American Dream" concept not applying to everyone who shows up here. Part of the backbone of crime dramas, even Japanese ones, is exploring the disillusionment with society as a whole. I'm not really shocked or upset there's morals in the game I don't agree with; I know what moral ambiguity is. The problem I take with 6 isn't that it *has* those things, it's the way cutscenes are shot, it's the way dialogue is written, it's the way marginalized characters are the spokespeople for forgiving imperialism. So with all due respect, I think you did miss the point.
@@GCVazquez Uh, I dont think I missed the point, to be honest. What I was saying is that I dont felt the game was trying to influence me with all these topics, because the scenes in the Game are longer then those short bits you take for your base of accusations. There is context and that is important. Your Video might work as a discussion point for people who have played the game/series because they experienced the context, but that doesnt apply to everyone showing up here, too. Beiing sensitive to these topics is a good thing, but basing those strong claims out of context is just cheap and a staple of Propaganda in itself.
@@GCVazquez Uhhhhh, wasn't the point of the secret of Onomichi the exposure of a massive conspiracy and corruption scheme between the navy and a criminal organization, which enabled human trafficking as well? How can you assume someone sees this scene and goes like "yep, glory to the emperor!", that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
@@wrathchild7218 the human trafficking which was framed as saving Chinese children from a horrible life in China by the good guys in the story? The same secret that didn't end up getting exposed in the end because Kiryu decided he'd keep the secret?
I enjoyed this video, and it made me consider a perspective different from my own, whether or not I agreed fully with the things in this video. However, I thought that the joon gi han line about warlords referred to the Japanese invasions of Korea from 1592 - 1598. At that time, the warlords of Japan were proper warlords, and Korea actually came out victorious and in many ways, modernized. It makes more sense that he would refer to an event full of Korean Legends that was indeed, a long time ago, then a fairly recent event which did not help them.
I was super bittersweet on 6 when I played it and wasn't really sure how to process it. I'm really grateful to see someone who genuinely cares about RGG talking about the more deep-rooted issues in 6's plot and gameplay. Hopefully the series continues to improve for the better in terms of how it handles misogyny and xenophobia because I can tell at its heart that it does want to represent the mis- and underrepresented in society. 😓 Your preface and extra inclusions to your script are really important to the way you described these issues IMO and I'm glad you included them. On a side note, I think your exploration of the narrative impact the fighting style change has is really interesting and wasn't something I considered, and I completely agree with your criticisms of how 6's combat plays. I feel like the heat actions are very, very restrictive in 6, and that along with weapons being useless does get repetitive quickly. I agree with basically everything you said about the plot, too; how it doesn't really feel like a sendoff at all...it's very odd. Also, thank you for providing closed captions, it's really appreciated!
Thank you very much! I'm glad so many people appreciate the captions, it means a lot to know. I also want the series to do better in those regards. It's always so close sometimes, and then completely backtracks. It's exhausting to see sometimes! Especially in 6. Oi.
That interpretation would literally make no sense, because bleach Japan is clearly a right ring, anti crime, anti immigrant, and anti sex work organization with a almost evangelical ethos. So how would bleach Japan be making fun someone criticizing Yakuza 6 for harboring those ideas?
It's funny, when I got to the end of 6 I felt like the ending had ruined my day, my week, my month and my year lol but I looked back at the main story and thought "that was pretty alright up until the f&cking boat". But watching this video made it so much worse, like holy shit, I was so focused on getting 6 over with so I could play 7 that I guess I missed how shitty it is in terms of saying goodbye not only to kiryu but also every character from the previous games, including even Haruka and Date to be honest. It's a damn shame, but, even though I felt regret for every playing a yakuza game more than anything while watching the credits, now that the anger is more or less gone, I WAS a pretty journey. As they say, the journey is what matters in the end... but man... I really like endings y'know, closing everything out with one big final satisfying chapter is just so fucking good, especially when the journey is really long and it ends in a way that respects ALL of its chapters, even the less good ones, like FF14. This comment is getting long so I'll just say, I'm glad I got to play endwalker before yakuza 6 cause I can, at the very least, look back at a game where the long ass journey had a satisfying ending that respected even the most minuscular plot points and characters from years past, and I can't wait for more.
33:55 This is overall a good and insightful video for those not aware of the Eastern politics, but this was uncalled for. There was no need to be condescending to the people who "live under a rock."
That statement was more about people who don't make the connections between social issues and gang and organized crime politics in general. It's mostly a joke, because I assume most people know those connections. The joke is that this is something so obvious, you'd have to be actively ignoring it.
I'm a fan of your work but I'm honestly kind of baffled by some of the conclusions you come to in this video, with a few of the biggest ones being in the section about Joon-gi Han. The dialogue on Japanese colonialism for example: "I must admit, some within our organization still hold grudges against you. They claim you were responsible for driving the Jingweon to the brink of destruction, but that's just backward thinking. Those who believe such nonsense are akin to a poison inhibiting our pending resurrection. To me, you don't differ much from the warlords of old who invaded Korea so many years ago. It is no longer practical to view the Dragon of Dojima as our enemy. At least for my part, I accept our shared past as water under the bridge." This would be, in all the ways you said, a truly abject thing to write for a Korean character if it weren't made explicitly clear right after that Joon-gi Han didn't mean a word of it. Its still real gross, and full stop no one should be comfortable with RGG's writers using that history for cheap points, but the characterization of the writers speaking through a Korean character to absolve Japan's colonial history is just...it isn't what happens in that scene. The whole practical, reasonable persona that JGH is putting on to appeal to Kiryu's vanity is a manipulation that the player is in on from the start. When Kiryu leaves five minutes later you see the mask slip away, JGH shaking with rage, and the player has no basis to accept anything JGH said to KK as the truth. It ends up being the exact opposite of how its framed here, with the player not meant to be sympathetic to JGH's views at all. The player is meant to take them as a piece of dramatic irony, spoken to one of the most gullible people who have ever walked the earth. JGH had just literally BBQed his own man's face, I don't think its reasonable to assume that players are going to accept what he's saying at face value. As for the thing about Joon-Gi Han looking like a K-Pop star....I'm pretty baffled on that one too. Forgive me if I'm missing something here, but I'm not sure why you'd read this him as looking like a K-POP star and not as him looking like the 4000 other Kamurocho Hosts that have appeared through the series, especially since he's running a host bar in Yakuza 6. Everything from the gold chains, the tacky reflective suit coat, to the dye job and immaculate haircut...thats what hosts in the Yakuza series have looked like since Yakuza 1. Like a Dragon has a host class you can assign characters in your party, and the outfit looks just like Joon-gi Han's.
I'm sorry but that's just not true. Joon-Gi Han's fashion style is completely different from Kazuki's or Yuya's or any of the jobber hosts we've seen with the stapled-on long haircuts and brown hair. I mean, literally in Kiwami, the most prominent skeevy host is just some guy with long brown hair too. Compare Joon-Gi Han to literally any host in any Yakuza game, and I guarantee you, he looks absolutely nothing like the rest of them. Most of them are wearing plain white or red suits, most of them wear a watch- maybe? Yakuza 7 in large part is a response to 6, but I'm talking specifically about 6 itself, not about the steps made after 6 to improve on how poorly 6 represented people. I also don't think the player is meant to see Joon-Gi Han as a total deceptive character either. Joon-Gi Han has Kiryu ensnared in a trap and, honorably, let's Kiryu and Yuta go even though he has every chance to kill them after he loses the fight. Joon-Gi Han is prepare to reveal to Kiryu a lead on the secret of Onomichi after being defeated, even though it would betray others. Joon-Gi Han respects the bushido concepts the Yakuza uphold, and even begrudgingly, will adhere to them. He yields to the Japanese custom, and he's made to look inferior to said Japanese custom. Even though he's at odds with Kiryu, he's introduced with harming one of his own to appease the group, then insists on Japanese superiority, and then yields to Japanese superiority within the context of the story- before he's assassinated and his death is very openly showcased. Twice. With horrific blood squib and all. There's just way more speaking to the contrary of what you're saying. I'm sorry, but he's just not written or designed the way you say he is.
46:42 he literally mentions shogun Hideyoshi in Japanese. He isn’t talking about WW2, he’s referring to Japan’s invasion of Korea during the Sengoku era which was about 500 years ago. I would seriously recommend reading the original Japanese script since the localization does change around the wording for the sake of flavor text.
I still think it's suspect as hell for the comparison he makes to completely gloss over the pre-WW2 occupation that extended into and worsened in WW2. Don't you think that's odd? That the writer for this scene implies Koreans are still bitter about a 500-year old conflict, and not the much more recent one from only a couple of generations back? Because I do. Why, for a game set in the modern era and very much seeped in modern Japanese politics, would someone write that scene and completely ignore the WW2 occupation- a moment in history that Koreans accuse Japan of committing (well recorded) war crimes, and one Japanese officials frequently deny ever happened? I think it's weird that he wrote a scene talking about Korean hostility towards the Japanese, and then acted like the much more recent thing hadn't happened. I think he did that to make it seem like the Koreans who are critical of Japan's actions are angry over something much older than what they're most recently angry about in order to make Japan's actions seem a lot less criminal or relevant to current relationships between the two countries. America plays this card all the time, it's part of the Imperial toolbox to downplay atrocities they've committed in favor of making the victims of those atrocities seem old-fashioned or unreasonably upset.
I want to bring up something not mentioned in the video (or at least alluded to, I do not know if it was cut due to the pacing stuff mentioned) 6's main story feels tugged in two separate directions regarding the nationalistic aspects. While the game has those elements in the narrative, the pivotal moment reveals a secret WW2 battleship hidden away in shame after the war due to the pride the people who built it had, not wanting to dismantle the ship. If this goes along with the legacy themes, the game implies that the ship represents a negative one to leave, one that means the worse of WW2 Japan and the people who made it know this and needed to hide it away. I am sorta conflicted on what this is trying to say in the game, even when and after playing it. It feels like a massive afterthought in the story, as it's not brought up again once it is shown. It makes me wonder if this was a save face moment? That they are saying that nationalism and pride for it is actually, in fact, not good while also doing it earlier in the game. It could also be feeding into it, saying that it is best to hide those values from the world and ignore the negatives it brings. But that cannot be the case since it's explicit antagonistic forces that caused this all to happen, so the game is saying it's actually bad? I think it just shows how unclear the game's narrative and themes are, that it can try to tug in both ways, making it unsure where it actually stands at the end.
You forgot the vital part of what Kurusu said - Daidoji wanted the ship dismantled, but Kurusu saw it was more lucrative to keep it intact and use as a leverage and guarantee for further cooperation
*Substory segment* And that's why fighting Ghost Pirates out of nowhere with your fists is the best substory of Yakuza 6. Also is it possible the Substory writer for 6 is different from the rest of the series? I know he directed Yakuza 7 so... I wonder...
True final word though- Great work thus far on this retrospective. I couldn't have possibly expected it to come to such difficult topics but your dedication and the efforts you've put forth to complete this work are impressive. I, for one, found it nice to take a harder look at this title in lieu of my casual playthrough and came away glad for havin' done it. I thank you for that. Here's to K2 and seeing what comes next for GC's good ol' Questrospectives :)
Definitely think you’re right about the ultra nationalism. Japan is infamous for their rewriting of history and their colonialism and war crimes. Almost as bad as America. I would say that it has actually been a main theme in Yakuza games and just has become more obvious. Honestly I am glad they switched over to Kasuga. Yakuza Like A Dragon was a better send off to the original saga of Yakuza characters than Yakuza 6. And as far as I remember was a better story that didn’t delve into the nationalism/racism though a couple characters they were really trying to sell as meaningful and likable when they die that I really couldn’t care less about but Kasuga cares about everyone.
I believe that all other cultures and nationalities have lived or experienced all of this racism or xenophobia through the years by western media, which is one of the most predominant media all over the world, and which is changing in a way that sometimes even feels forced. However in Japan, the culture, background and everything is different, that’s why yakuza took so long to be famous outside Japan. I’m not justifying them but yeah, i kind of understand it. Then again, watch China, and their super nationalism content, where every bad guy is a Japanese guy, and Korea with the banning of some old Japanese WWII symbolism. I mean, it’s Asia, and their culture, history and past conflicts defines them… but I think new generations are changing that, for the best. Hopefully international relations will improve more :)
I think xenophobia, racism, and a lot of social issues exist globally because of many factors. I think it's important to criticize all instances of that whether or not it happens to be a part of history. Like, yeah, if Yakuza was game made in China pushing ultranationalist ideas and claiming Chinese superiority over other Asian groups, I'd still be saying calling it out. When America does it, I call it out because that sort of shit is detrimental to human existence.
Everyone seems to really want Yakuza Kiwami 3, but honestly I think I’d rather have Kiwami 6. I still like it at the end of the day, but it’s just tragic to see how half baked this game was and how sloppily it seems to have been put together. It deserved the same kind of love that was put into Yakuza 5, if not more.
What sucks is that a Kiwami 6 would just have the same narrative issues and problematic depictions of people. It's impossible as is to remaster or remake into a better look because so much of it is entrenched in those problems. They'd have to retcon the whole thing and have a complete do-over- and it'd be bad for businesses to invalidate an entire entry in the franchise.
@@GCVazquez I'm not sure how much I agree with the whole hypothesis that Y6 is intentionally a piece of propaganda, but I do think it's possible that scenes like Joon-gi's problematic analogue for Kiryu, when Yuta is revealed to be Haruto's father, and some of Kiryu's very out of character moments, could all be rewritten to have just a bit more tact. You pointed out how careless Kiryu's last words for Haruka were, and I feel like that could be said for most of the cutscene dialogue in this game. And sadly, I think that's due to the writers deciding to disregard Kiryu's legacy for the majority of this story. It's an awful line of dialogue, but "Take care of Yuta and Haruto" probably resonated more with people who may have only played 6, or only played 0 beforehand. Despite being featured in the boxart, new players would barely know Haruka as a character- but they did just spend an entire game with Yuta. Obviously a Kiwami 6 that addresses all the issues I have with it will never happen,, but it's gotta be up there with some of my "dream" games. Anyways, thanks for always putting so much thought into these retrospectives. I'm really curious to hear your take on Kiwami 2, since I feel like it's (oddly enough), a way more gratifying goodbye to Kiryu as the protagonist.
This was a pretty great video as always. And man... Yakuza 6.. is gonna be an... interesting time to play once I get around to buying it, there's alot I want to say about it after watching all of this but for now all I can say is... these characters especially Kiryu and Haruka deserved a much better story and ending than what we got in the game... (I'm glad to see the Pocket Circuit Fighter again at least. He was one of my favorites and the Soundtrack is still pretty good as always)
Soundtrack continues to be pretty damn good, composer deserves so much more credit. And yeah, I'd honestly recommend you skip 6 if you want. 5 has a much better, conclusive ending to the whole Kiryu arc than 6 does, which is wild.
LOL I am watching this series as i play dragon quest 3 having beaten dragon quest 2 during your dragon quest retrospective because i was inspired to start the series of play throughs based on your glowing retrospective, and now your yakuza series is leading up to 7 which has alot of dragon quest inspiration in it, it's a long and windy series of events i thought you'd be amused by. as before thanks for hanging out with me while i play dragon quest.
The only time Jimmy Lo’s body needed to be seen in the story is when they’re talking about where/how he died, if they needed to show it, then only show it once
That's okay! As long as you can admit it has problems, I won't deny your enjoyment of it! I love this series a whole lot, and that's why I desperately want it to not necessarily be super duper good- but for it to not be so shit to people who aren't specifically Japanese men.
I really hope you will play Yakuza: Like a Dragon.since we can consider it an excellent value correction. greetings from Mexico. I love the series and I genuinely hope they correct the problems that the franchise has been carrying since its gensis.And without ruining anything for you, Yakuza 7 is genuinely a big step forward. Especially in his treatment of non-Japanese characters. I also agree that Kiryu's last words were complete bullshit. Yakuza 6, it's a decent game but a horrible farewell to Kiryu. Excellent analysis, finally someone expresses the big problems of Yakuza 6.
You covered this game's issues with how it depicts women very well and in great detail, and even then you only scratched the surface on Kiyomi and Someya. It baffles me that Someya ends up being depicted in a kinda-sorta sympathetic light even though the game - if I recall correctly - implied that he abused her. It's just... ugh.
not implied, i think it's explicitly stated. i completely agree though, the way someya was handled made my stomach turn. imo RGG in general has a weird track record with attempting to redeem villains that go a bit too far into uncomfortable and taboo areas (oda and [The Main Villain in Y7] come to mind). its odd. it's good seeing someone who really cares about the series talking about RGG's mishandling of misogyny and xenophobic themes
I responded to a comment earlier about him and it totally skipped my mind. As far as Someya's redemption arc- it feels so shoehorned into the rest of the character for me. It's almost like the Someya challenging Kiryu's paradigm is a completely different person to the Someya involved in the really crappy love-triangle plotline involving Nagumo and Kiyomi. Does that make sense? He just sort of shows up and is either Someya A or Someya B depending on who's writing the scene. And thank you both for the kind words! I appreciate it haha- I'm trying hard to make it clear that I *do* like this series, but I'm not about to give it a pass on everything.
I doubt you will read this given the fact that you uploaded this video a year ago or so, but the discussion on xenophobia reminded me of a particular side story in the fourth game involving officer Tanimura chasing after orphans who graffitied places with "anti-japanese rhetoric" (e.g.- "Japan sucks"). Tanimura gathers them all together and confronts them, and they reveal why they did it: they were rendered orphans because Japan's immigration policy resulted in their parents' deportations. Tanimura responds that the law must be followed (as if laws cannot be changed). The kids then ask if the fault lies with their parents for violating immigration policy or with Japan for imposing such a rigid immigration regime, to which Tanimura shrugs and says, "No one's to blame." A country's immigration system leads to children becoming orphans and there is no call for reform? That's just the way things are and you need to chin up and forget about it. It's all water under the bridge. I figured this little episode actually pairs well with what you said about Joon-Gi Han's interaction with Kiryu, except for the fact that Japan's immigration policy is a tool used to brutalize ethnic minorities in the present (though I should clarify that Japan is not an outlier with regard to its treatment of ethnic and national minorities as many countries today have adopted harsh policy sets and enforcment measures targeting immigrants to the point where it's giving rise to a number of human rights crises).
i first watched this on a car ride i couldn't focus on that well, but after a rewatch i completely agree with everything that you say! i was already 😬 about yakuza 6's treatment of korean and chinese characters (with what the writers have han joon-gi say, and the "blood ties" that they make important with the triads when it reads like it's straight from an extreme-right japanese mouth), but i never really connected it further to the "foreign men stealing your women" trope, and never really thought of the depiction of dead bodies. though i'm going to have to slightly disagree with your critique of yakuza 3? the american military bases on okinawa are a thing that its native population has resisted and fought against for decades, with very very good reason. something that's interesting and was pointed out to me by someone else is that the saio triad is a hong kong triad (/jimmy/ lo also being a very hong kong name), but that they don't speak cantonese at all, they speak mandarin. and maybe too on-the-nose to get mentioned in your video, but the resemblance the yomei pin has to the rising sun flag also made me do a double take when i finally noticed it it's such a shame so many people just stop at "the game is bad because majima isn't in it," when tbh that's like, the least of its issues 😂. overall a really great video, and i'll definitely recommend it to people who wonder why i'm :/ meh about yakuza 6 (instead of having to write several paragraphs every time 😂)
Yakuza 6 retroactively sucked all of the hope of Yakuza 5. Everyone's hopes were dashed, making all of the sacrifices meaningless. Even the post game sections with Haruka are worthless since they couldn't happened in continuity anymore.
This is probably the most iron case you made in your yakuza videos. Especially liked your talk on the side quests. Even before you started giving examples the images of the side quests brought memories back and I said "OH! Yeah there is definitely a pattern here."
Really liked the making clear segments have a similar function to the post-credit scenes in the game, but showing the effort and making sure what’s in the edited video is what is coming across and not quick patch-up. It was very insightful and I enjoyed a lot.
Great video. I missed some of these points so it was great having them explained. I was similarly very let down by the narrative. After the great narratives in 4 & 5 I don't know what I expected from this but it wasn't that. I also couldn't bring myself to care about any of the new characters. The comparison to being centered to a local Yakuza branch made me constantly flash to Yakuza 3 and while that game did have problems, the characters were so unbelievably better written (with much less screentime) that the juxtaposition really just made me care even less. I saw the same kind of things in many substories. Like I played the entire remastered collection before this in short order and eventually you start realizing Yakuza repeats themes a LOT, both substory and main, and yeah. The game wasn't fun. And I think the final opponent you face was so unbelievably unworthy with pointless motivations. Someya would have been allright, but that switch, ugh. Yeah, a pretty bad game all-around and certainly a terrible final act.
You basically spelled out what I was thinking the entire time when I was looking into this game, both in this retrospective video and your Twitch stream. If you feel disappointed by 6, Yakuza: Like a Dragon is much better in their representation of female characters and foreign characters, from what I saw.
I consider Y6 the weakest of the rgg series. I still got the achievements and whatnot, but my play time is much less than the others. Thanks for your perspective, I had other reasons for disliking the game and now I have more reasons. lol
When I originally played 6, I had no idea that the relationship between Korea and Japan was like that. That is a rather outrageous piece of dialogue to slide into the game.
Honestly yakuza 6 made me cry for 20 minutes straight the first time around but after watching this video and having replayed y6 after watching your stream of it I can honestly say everything you’ve said about the game is correct and even the first time around the final line kiryu said to haruka felt iffy to me like why would he say that and also with the hospital his words the second time around just felt passive aggressive and selfish I hope rgg can learn from y6 and be better and from playing judgment , y7, and lost judgment I can say they’ve been steadily improving, amazing video I hope you like y7 as much as I did it felt like a massive improvement for rgg
There are definitely some really strong emotional pulls in Yakuza 6! So I don't knock anyone for crying- honestly it's really easy to get an audience to cry over an emotional scene. I really wanna make a video about that someday. One talking about how, unless the movie/game/book/etc. *unearns* the emotional moment, you can very easily write a scene to make someone cry or be angry. I think for me, a lot of those other things stood out until they finally became what the story was super focused on, and that unearned those emotional moments.
And finally the close! Never have I more quickly pasted my comment into youtube and known I fucked up and this will be multiple comments even after I trim the bulk of this off due to redundancy. I have been intrigued by this video since I spotted it just because, well, that thumbnail and description are enticing in what kind of analysis you'll be comin' in with. My playthrough of 6 was generally positive; I liked the assassin guy dying without true redemption but having a story that emphasized complicated relationships and motivations and how it ended without, at least in my eyes, forgiving him- but showcasing how complicated his death was emotionally for those around him- the whole "You never know a whole person and can love what you do know" followed by the sheer dread and disappointment those loved ones felt finding what he was behind that. Also recall not liking Someya or how he, arguably moreso than fuckin' assassin guy Hiruse, attempts to gleam redemption when he's shitty the whole time, abusive, and grody. Like just, nah. Hirose stood out as interesting to me, as if they even played with the importance of him not being redeemed- Someya felt like a worthless attempt at redeeming someone who isn't worth it. Also enjoyed Daigo's close for Kiryu, laughed at Kiryu having a deep conversation about killing (and being told the Dragon doesn't kill) literally 1 cutscene after he blows up helicopters (must have been rubber missiles :^)), and while I can't remotely say I "liked" it, I laughed and enjoyed laughing enough to accept that this is the game where Kiryu "Dies." instead of "dies." Still a cop out to me that felt like it didn't add anything in the slightest. But also, and some comments near this one spoiled a bit before my watch, I can fully attest that I came at Y6 with a single minded goal which left me a bit distracted- finishing Kiryu's story; A goal that left me more placated towards everything that wasn't flashing bold text. I didn't play 6 because I was ready and in the mood for 6, I played it because I knew I had the time and felt obligated to finish, and that motivation isn't conducive to my best personal analysis. All to preamble- I'm aware of the context of my own playthrough and I'm aware of there being topics that genuinely matter to me- that I glossed over- and that I'm interested to hear better focused upon, especially now that I have had 'some' time to dwell on my own playthrough and am no longer in starstruck "I finished Yakuza" haze. ALRIGHT LET'S ACTUALLY START THE VIDEO. @ Y6 being about the engine, damn if that doesn't click. 13:46- Exorcism!??! You had a way more interesting playthrough than me lmao 19:17- @new heat, Never been a fan of extreme heat, but I dig the aging explanation you offer. Damns on the heat move stagnation though -.-, and the style deal made this game feel steps back entirely. I barely found 6 more entertaining to fight in than 3, which means in light of the Kiwami remakes you can play the entire series and only experience combat less fun than this one time- and it's in a game with vastly more interesting things going on in my opinion. 24:13- @lack of closure just IN GENERAL- YEAH. I spent the bulk of my playtime in Y6 waiting on big moments from all my past friends- a celebratory heist moment where every interaction Kiryu has had over the past 5(+1) games came into making it possible. Perhaps a bit hyperbolic there- but I expected SOMETHING, I thought we'd get a ton of Akiyama, a ton of Saejima, a ton of the orphans, deep cut references to characters that don't make sense to get a ton of screen time but deserve callouts- just something! Even playing it safe and not digging all the way back to beloved moments in like 3- 5 JUST gave me a breadth of characters I loved and then 6 barely mentions anyone, it's just the new story with the new characters- and I enjoyed part of that- I enjoyed the Hirose family deal, but then the entire game was just this new stuff, it was strange. A bit easier to understand under the guise of Y6 being about the engine more than Yakuza tbh, so I'd gladly accept that explanation lol. 24:26- @Akiyama, What a damning red flag that became through the game too- he's a beloved character with a million directions he can go- and his role in 6 is to be someone Kiryu can call sometimes. Like, why? 27:22- @ghost photos!, WHAT A DAMN COP OUT! 38:00~ Every story ever didn't sprout from nothing, and understanding the motivations behind a piece can open up concepts the piece itself doesn't spell out and might be important to understand. 44:27- Honestly astonished that this slipped right past my eyes as I played because I was so willing to turn off my brain while playing- a bit embarrassing but that's the rub. When my playthrough was so single mindedly focused on closing Kiryu's tale, I let things slip by so easily- sometimes I'd even raise an eyebrow then go "Eh, the context will blunt the blow" then didn't bother retaining focus to see if it did or not. This specific moment with Kiryu basically telling a different culture is wrong and the face for that culture saying "Yeah, you're right" is such an on the nose moment that even devoid of your narration this just made my brain scream- And I Glossed Over during my play. Oh that's embarrassin', oof. Attributing cultural differences to rights and wrongs and standing proud as the moral superiority, oh yeah that's solid. (Ramble cut in twain)
I know some of the chords to that! I considered doing the karaoke bit for this episode, but decided it might be pretty not the tone of the video LOL. I did pick up the ukelele though, because I had been planning on going the extra mile for it. The last minute or so of this video is me badly playing those chords a couple of hours after learning them hahaha!
When it comes to the new combat for Kiryu for Y6 and K2, I actually despise it a lot, and I cant figure out why though. Like yea, I still played through the games anyways, but while people dog on the combat for Y3, I actually enjoy it a lot more than Dragon Engine Kiryu. Thankfully with a brand new character and 2-4 new Fighting Styles, Yagami/the Judgment games made me forget how "ass" the combat is in Y6 and K2. Hell Judgment and Lost Judgment are actually my top 2 Yakuza games because of the gameplay, it's the best in the whole series
I think part of the problem with the combat is because they changed Kiryu's combat style too much. Before, he had a style that was direct and had few wasted movements. The new combat style felt too exaggerated, often using sweeping kicks to hit multiple enemies at once but would leave you open to attacks since they take longer to do. I believe it's to show off the rag-doll effects on the enemies in the new Dragon Engine than any real narrative purpose, since his attacks in the new style often looks like they exert more effort than the old Dragon style's attacks.
I'm glad you were honest about your thoughts on this game Yakuza 6 isn't a favorite of mine in the series either but I do like hearing points that I might have missed/haven't thought of I don't know if you've played Like A Dragon and the Judgment series yet but I'd think those would make great retrospective videos
I'm glad I could provide more talking points for you! I haven't played them yet but they're on the list! Going to be covering the whole RGG line-up actually :D
The first part of this video makes me think of Solidus Snake's speech at the end of MGS2. Fitting for a story that could easily be thought of as a Metal Gear plotline. lol
My biggest problem with dragon engine is the terrible picture quality and how choppy it felt on last gen consoles. The newer DE games have improved slightly but yakuza 6 feels especially bad.
Idk if anyone feels this with me, but playing through all the Yakuza games and both Judgment games only just made me realize how not different Japan is compared to the U.S., cause I definitely noticed those Conservative undertones in Yakuza representing [at the time?] current day Japan.
Something people don't understand is in most developed countries there's always a multitude of perspectives and ideas and beliefs and people arguing. I don't think people do the most basic research about other cultures- but they'll sure handwave any problematic statement away as a different world. But it's not. It's the same world, and different jdeologies can create media in Japan just like they can in the US. Just like they can anywhere.
Another questro rewatch in the bag. Hope to get a vid on like a dragon one day. This channel is like a warm cup of tea and a cozy blanket on a hard day.
wait, i just realised. Why the hell did Han Joon Gi's face just get butter smooth as soon as he was shot. Like, literally, all the bruises just reverted- Maybe there's something biological in play here that i don't know about IRL, but it still seemed off to me.
Not sure if anyone has brought this point up, but somewhere online I saw someone point out the subtle xenophobia towards non-Japanese characters through their voice acted dialogue.
For example, a lot of the Korean in these games is uh.... Not great. It feels like RGG can't be bothered (or chose not) to hire a native speaker and so they seem to just ask the JP VA to do their best which seems really disrespectful to the original language being spoken.
Like, they get all these different Japanese regional dialects throughout all the different games but if someone is speaking anything outside of English or Japanese, it seems half-baked at best.
(I'm only about halfway through the video so I apologize if this is brought up later on!)
I don't bring it up later on because I constantly continue to forget that this is something they do, despite being told pretty often by non-Japanese Asians about it. Thank you very much for pointing this out in the comments- because it's true! It's especially damning when we know sourcing that kind of talent is possible, because they recast the characters for the game's release in the respective countries who speak said language. Why they don't just hire them in the first place is beyond me, but part of it might be because they don't feel the need to achieve authenticity in Japan/they're made to do so by respective distributers or publishers in those countries. It's those kinds of changes, consistently done for other Asian countries across several games, that really raise the eyebrow; You know you're going to do this on future releases, you know it's cheaper to get ahead of the curb and hire the appropriate actor the first time- what's with maintaining the laughably awful Mandarin or Korean if not to further accentuate your already awful depiction?
@俊也角田 The comparison of the spoken Korean not being good in RGG games feels on a different scale compared to spoken Japanese in Korean specific media. RGG Studios is a sub-set of Sega which ships games to MANY different regions and, as CG Vasquez mentions, is dubbed in multiple native languages other than English. RGG and Sega can source all the actors for dubbing in those regions. Why doesn't RGG take the minor BUT IMPORTANT extra step of hiring a native Korean/Mandarin speaker so their languages are respected too? It feels like an intentional cut corner on their part and a lack of care. Also, many times in these games, the Korean and Chinese folks are the bad guys. Their languages not being respected in the Japanese dub doesn't feel like a coincidence.
I don't know how many or how often Korean medias are released outside of Korea in a language that isn't Korean. Within the colonization period in Korea and the Japanese occupation, Koreans weren't even allowed to use their own language and were forced to speak and write Japanese. I could understand the perspective/notion of not wanting to involve their colonizer in their media and thoroughly search for a native speaker for what I can generally assume are minor roles.
I admittedly don't consume much Korean media so I'm not familiar with the quality and quantity of the Japanese they use. That however is not a valid excuse and those Korean shows should ALSO be held up to a similar ideal of cultural respect of a foreign language. RGG has the budget to do better and in future titles I hope they decide to take more care.
The statement that "this happens all across Asia" feels very broad and sweeping as Asia as a continent is a BIG place and doesn't just consist of Japan, North/South Korea, and China.
This would be a good point if the USA werent the only country to give half a damn about that sort of thing :)
How is anyone gonna be like it’s bad because RGG is xenophobic, rather than it’s bad because RGG is just fucking up lmao or probably not enough budget for better VAs
@@mc_kublai If RGG has the money to pay for hiring costs for men like Takuya Kimura, Takaya Kuroda, Greg Chun, and Crispin Freeman, they have enough money to spend on researching and hiring better VA's for non Japanese speaking roles.
Despite the disappointments of Yakuza 6, there's a couple positives I'll always remember. The music. And Kiryu straight up insulting the final boss by calling him a baby in the presence of an actual baby.
Also I still fucking cried once the credits were rolling so there's that...
yeah this is why I love this kriyu he becomes more wise
Oh Haruto is more wise compared to the final boss
Me seeing the notification:
"Oh man he's gonna talk about one of my favorite yakuza games!"
Reads the title:
"Oh no..."
I'm so sorry
@@GCVazquez nah its ok. Just means i get to hear someone i know who puts 110% into his work give a take i didn't have myself.
Few things I'd like to say as a Chinese person.
I don't think the portrayal of the triad is xenophobic. It might reuse some cliched aesthetics like lanterns and red, but the vilification of... well the villains, is completely normal. The series has loads of good Chinese characters too, much like how Japanese antagonists occur a lot in the game. Just because Chinese characters die, doesn't mean its xenophobic (I don't believe its meant to incite some anti-Chinese violence)
Also, I just sort of felt that some cultural ideas aren't conveyed well to a western gamer. Namely your idea of the Pocket Circuit Fighter's substory. It's based on the asian archetypes of tiger moms, it's not meant to vilify women as angry or vindictive. The obsession with teaching newer generations English is a very real thing, since it's seen as something upper class and improves one's job prospects. I personally don't feel that the substory was misogynistic, rather a critique on the intense parenting that exists in Japan and that one should loosen up a little.
Han Joon Gi, like Someya, to me, represented the stereotypical business-oriented new generation amongst Asians. Han is meant to be pissed off, the Tojo clan committed genocide to the Jingweon, which I saw as a metaphor for Japan's warcrimes to Korea/China. But Han is meant to be a psychopathic handsome character thats trying to simply make money and forget history, that's why he's so cold to the past. This type of mindset is seen even from China and Hong Kong, the idea of letting go of past grudges and focus on cooperating with the Japanese to make more money.
However, your takeaways on Han being a metaphor for kpop and the Japan/Korea cultural rivalry is something I agree with.
I won't speak for the Koreans, but I never felt like the game insulted my people, it just happened that the villains were the Chinese.
I mean, the real scumbag final villain of this game are Japanese politicians and that part is quite explicit. And think about the imagery of the Battleship Yamato. I personally saw it as a symbol of post-war shame and the lies of nationalism.
I will concede is that the depiction of Haruka sadly takes away from her agency, and in a perfect world, we would get some actual gameplay time with her. It is quite sad that she never really grows past the damsel in distress stereotype.
Also wtf was the insinuation that Kiryu MAY be a love interest to Haruka. That's pure insanity.
@@kazzykun5235 Yakuza 0 had literally an assassin that was extremely ugly and was Chinese. They changed him to a normal Yakuza character model for the Chinese release.
@@kazzykun5235 there's hundred of powerful characters that are extremely scary and a big deal. None look like Lao Gui. He's also changed for the Chinese version? Now why would that be the case? Racism
@@kazzykun5235 and yet he's the only exception. He's the only extremely ugly man for no reason. If it wasn't racism, they wouldn't have changed his model. The eyes are useless when the mind is blind.
@@SneedtheAlmighty if he's called the old demon, why doesn't he have that face in the Chinese version? If he's modeled after an actor, why not keep that one for the international version?
@@SneedtheAlmighty ultimately the only important Chinese character in the game is portrayed as very ugly (when badder meaner Japanese characters have actual faces), it's bound to come off as racist, no matter the intention
I think we played two different game series.
I think Yakuza 2's depiction of the Koreans is supposed to be a show of what happens when an imperialist society stomps through a country, causes damage, then refuses to act like it ever happened. Japan can foeget, but the people they stomp on can't. This type of mentality the Japanese use of just "forgetting" the past creates resentment from those they hurt, driving some to the point of becoming so spiteful as to fully entrench themslves into a state of existing only to vow revenge. Hence the Massacre that the Tojo and Police just pretend didn't happen while the affected Korean gang holds onto the pain imposed on them.
And considering what we see from the Yakuza in the series (Kanda raping women in 3 as a patriarch and the Yakuza constantly betraying and hurting eachother for power without any sense of "honor", as examples) I don't see the games as glorifying the Yakuza and putting them above the Triads or Korean Mafia.
If they did glorify it, Kiryu would just become chairman and live happily ever, honor bound Yakuza, after. But they show time and time that the Yakuza isn't a place Kiryu's values align with or a place where good people last (look at Nishiki).
Yakuza 6 is about a clashing of the old and the new, the young and the withered. It shouldn't be reduced to expousing and elevating a certain type of thinking just because certain characters hold that thinking. May I remind you the main villains are the ones behind the Secret of Onomichi and holding onto the past.
Jimmy Lo is shown earlier on, dead, so that you can be prepared for and easily recognize him at a glance when we see him alive later on.
I think different Yakuza games can have different worldviews, especially when the main writer for 6 wasn't Yokoyama. I also think, if the villains were behind the secret of onomichi, and the secret is supposed to be a bad thing about holding onto the past, Kiryu agreeing to keep the past a secret is ultimately our hero saying it's fine to do that as long as he gets what he wants. I don't agree with that sentiment at all!
I just don't think this game is having the conversation a lot of people think it's having; I think it's honestly trying to intentionally confuse the message in order to say things it shouldn't.
i guess americans in general cannot consume media that challenge their worldview in any way.
@@GCVazquez beem boom 11 months later reply. I think it's justified that Kiryu agrees to keep the secret because he's tired of being dragged back into all these shenanigans and putting his loved ones in danger. He already lost so many people he truly cared about and in the end chose to stay away from them. His main goals were the search for Haruka then the father of her child. After reaching these goals he decided to fake his death so Haruka, Yuta and the kids in the orphanage could live the safe and peaceful live without threatened because Kiryu is involved into another criminal/political drama.
To any and all future commentors reading this, especially without having played Yakuza 6, I recommend not taking one man's word at face value. This is the perspective and take of one person. This is the conclusion he has come to, and you shouldn't just believe it without a second thought. If you have not played Yakuza 6, do not take this video at its word. Play the game, come to your own conclusions. Don't let one person dictate your own enjoyment of a game.
And don't just read the top comments and be done with it. The top comments are buried in agreements to this video because naturally the video creator will want to give hearts to the people who agree with him. Sort the comments by the most recent if you wish to find arguments against the points being made in this video, because there are some very compelling counterarguments and to see them buried and not given any consideration is a shame.
While I appreciate it, I think it's important to point out that most people probably understand this is my opinion. That's what they're here for.
@@GCVazquez Sure, but other people are being dissuaded from playing the game as a result of this video. I have seen several comments that say that they won't play the game now solely from your perspective, and I just think that's a damn shame. A surprising amount of people will latch onto the ideas of other people.
@@aneonfoxtribute I think it's none of your business if people decide whether or not to play a game based on what they've seen about it. No one's just taking my word for it, most of the comments saying they're going to skip it already took issue with certain things in other entries. Stop assuming lesser of people just because they're turned off on a video game. You're being an elitist.
@@GCVazquez Some of them do. But not all of them. I don't like the idea of people skipping things just because of what one person says. If your opinion was the consensus, then sure. But this video is the only place I've ever seen it, it's not the majority.
Assuming you're right about that, what you're doing is like walking into the only barbershop in town that doesn't do pompadours, and being upset you were told you couldn't get one done there. Then, you stood outside the shop and yelled, "HARKEN TO ME, FRIENDS! THERE ARE ALTERNATIVES!" They know, dude.
1:17:09 You know a video essay is really stretching itself on why a game is bad when the essayist finds it problematic that a dying man's wishes upon his daughter figure is for her to be happy with her newborn and husband, just because he worded it "MAKE them... happy".
Nice tree you got there. Have you seen the forest?
@@kazzykun5235 That's what literary analysis is, but yes!
At 39:31 I don't agree with your statement about them changing Lao Gui's face for backlash reasons, they changed his face to real Hong Kong actor Sam Lee just as they've used real actors for characters like Sagawa and Nishitani. It's just a way to get fans of those actors to take an interest in the games.
Hell, even in Yakuza 5 we got freaks like the inmate Kugihara and the yakuza Kamon Kanai. They're ugly because they're supposed to be intimidating, which is their design choice for Lao Gui as well. You have to look at how Wen Hai Lee and Oda are both Chinese and look fine, you can't just look at one side of things for your verdict.
I understand that you feel a certain way, but I don't agree with you only including examples that back up your argument while ignoring the examples that don't match your narrative.
Except characters like Oda are secretly villains, meaning you can't just make him look like the babadook, because it's a dead giveaway, and as I said in the video, non-Japanese characters attempting to completely assimilate into Japanese culture or raised Japanese aren't depicted in the same way as Chinese nationals.
If casting a real life actor was their goal, why on Earth was the casting change only for the Chinese release of the game, and kept the same everywhere else, including future releases on PC? Why weren't those versions patched?
I'm not ignoring examples that don't match my narrative, I'm just not exhaustively listing every single example and categorizing them. The points I made took those examples into account. And even beyond that, the core of the point in that section was to point out the series has had issues related to xenophobia in the past, but largely in the background of the greater narrative. The scale of those issues is clearly presented in that section.
Don't ignore the entirety of what *I'm* saying to disregard a valid criticism of something.
@@GCVazquez(This is kind of long, but as a person of Chinese descent I feel that I can give you some new insight into this matter.)
That may be the case for Oda, but I'd argue that they didn't have to make him as handsome as they did. Shinji from 1 and Rikya from 3 weren't ugly but they certainly don't look as good as Oda. Fei Hu from 0 is just a weapons dealer but they made him relatively attractive, Zhao from 4 isn't handsome but he looks about as good as real life actor Sammo Hung.
In terms of the Koreans. There's not a single guy that isn't at least average, I would argue that Ryuji and his biological father are notably attractive despite the fact that they didn't really have to make his father handsome.
I would argue that the reason for using Sam Lee for Lao Gui was the same as Iron Man 3 having new scenes with Chinese stars exclusive to the Chinese version, they wanted to attract fans that know the movie star. In both instances it altered the director's vision so that's why it was exclusive to that version, especially since the original Lao Gui's Chinese didn't sound fluent. International audiences wouldn't really realize that the original Lao Gui speaks Chinese badly.
I feel that when you don't mention these other points in detail it makes the image of this series skew towards pure negativity, using just Tachibana and Makoto as your examples is a bit misleading as like I said there have been perfectly normal looking Chinese characters that still use their Chinese names.
I don't agree with your opinion that the foreign criminals all have less honor than the yakuza, in every installment there are Japanese characters with mostly negative characteristics. There's Sohei Dojima, Shimano, Jingu, Shindo, Takashima, Sengoku, Kanda, Tamashiro, Katsuragi, Shibata, Aoyama, Kanai, Sugai, and Iwami. Even Nishiki tells Kiryu in 0 that the Dojima Family are so brutal, that the people they kill don't even look like humans when they're done with them. Admittedly most of Kiryu's allies are Japanese, but you could also say that most of Michael Corleone's allies are Italian. People within the same race are just more likely to be allies, that's just human nature.
Regarding Han Joon Gi's comparison of Kiryu to a warlord, he was referring to the warlords of old meaning the Sengoku period. I've even read that the Chinese kingdom of Wei in 244-245 conquered the Korean kingdom of Goguryeo. As a descendant of Chinese Indonesians(Chinese people who moved to Indonesia) I feel that China spread its culture, and by extension its desire for an empire in ancient times. With Japan being the most eager to follow in creating an empire. Even the Korean kingdom of Goguryeo was known to have had ruins extending all the way to Manchuria and present day Mongolia. While I can't speak for Koreans, as a Chinese Indonesian I don't view China's imperial history in ancient times as something that was done for no reason, I see it as the Chinese people seeking a prosperous and powerful nation. I would say that China, Korea, and Japan all have had desires for an empire during their long histories.
I can't speak for Mainland Chinese people, but I don't even think that Japan's WW2 crimes were without a reason. Admittedly they were quite heinous, but I feel that no country was truly guilt free in that era seeing as the European powers had so many colonies right before WW2. I have read up on ancient China and its dynasties, and I just feel that the reason there were so many dynasties is because everyone wanted to have their own empire. Not long before WW2 during the warlord era of China where Chinese warlords split China into many pieces, my paternal great grandfather was kidnapped for a ransom by one of the warlords. He wasn't even released long after his parents refused to pay, he had to escape his imprisonment and came back home with long hair and nails because he was treated like garbage by his captors. The fact that not long before Japan invaded China it was that bad has given me the impression that China from 1916 to 1928 was even worse than the Wild West, so Japan likely thought that they could just make a colony out of this lawless China like how Europe had colonies everywhere.
Regarding Han Joon Gi's club atmosphere, it was more lewd than hostess clubs. If you recall that Majima told Nishitani it was against the rules of The Grand to grope the hostesses, which is why he was bribing the girl before Majima arrived. I honestly don't even remember much in the way of PDA between customers and hostesses in this series, the most PDA I remember in that sense is when Saejima and Kaguya ate a pocky together and accidentally kissed. So nothing quite as overt as the behavior shown in Han's club.
In Yakuza 4 there were many Japanese corpses that were not treated too respectfully, even Tanimura plays around with Ihara's lifeless face. Akiyama finds the owner of Drama Queen's corpse half naked and pale as a ghost, and that's not even all of the people who die in 4. In 6, right before the scene you mentioned with Ed he stabs a yakuza in the neck with his karambit. Even the dead bodies you mentioned wouldn't be as graphic as portraying someone's neck slowly slashed open, and gunshots in the series have never been that gory with just a blood splatter and no guts coming out.
I feel that at the end of the day, it's very limiting when you have to write your story and think about every thing that could potentially offend someone. Stories in fictional settings that feature slavery, terrorists, or extreme violence have often faced backlash back then and today as well, as an aspiring writer myself I feel that it can be very frustrating to predict every single reason your story can offend someone before you even complete it. I feel that the cultural difference exacerbates this issue further, I feel that as someone of Chinese descent I can somewhat understand the Japanese mindset a bit better than the average person.
All I ask is that you take my words into consideration, as I myself have run into situations where Western people have misunderstood my values and culture.
@@zmovies7991 Thank you the insight on these things. It’s really good to understand the context of a narrative before making any accusations.
39:40
I think Lao Gui is modeled to be a dark version of majima, physically corrupted by his willingness to kill without question.
I really don't agree with this idea that Lao Gui looks evil because he's supposed to be dark majima. The Dojima Lieutenants are all super fine with getting their hands dirty like that, and they don't look like that. Plenty of characters from the series are cold-blooded, and they're never modelled to look like a Sith Lord.
@@GCVazquez I don't think any of the dojima leuitennants are presented specifically as "evil version of kiryu" in the same way that lao gui is to majima, though
Also Lao Gui doesn't have nearly the same depth of characterization as them, so his grotesqueness is just visual shorthand to make up for that imo
@@GCVazquez The lieutenants are also modeled after real life Japanese actors so of course they're not going to look like monsters.
To note something really weird. They never bring up Kiwami 1's Pocket Circuit Racer stuff. Only 0's. This makes me think that 6 was in production exactly after 0, while some side teams made Kiwami 1 and Fist of the North Star: Lost in Paradise.
ALSO WHERE THE HELL IS THE FLORIST?! HE WOULD LITERALLY BE THE MOST USEFUL CHARACTER IN THIS GAME BUT THEY NEVER MENTION HIM ONCE. THEY COULD HAVE LITERALLY SAID HE WAS IN HIDING OR SOMETHING.
In Kiwami 1 PC Fighter quit to go work at the tofu place.
You blew my mind with the takeaway that Yakuza 6 is about the dragon engine. I never realized it, but it totally is! When I think about 6, my fondest memories are just exploring the towns. Taking them at my own pace, just existing in the beauty. I was genuinely floored when I seamlessly walked into buildings. I loved just crushing some randoms on the sidewalk. But your analysis also brought to light some rather gross things that I either forgot about, or didn't give as much attention as I should have. I haven't played this game since it came out, and even then I was feeling some fatigue having played the other games back to back in the lead up. I didn't have nearly the negative reaction to 6 as others, but I think perhaps I romanticized the vibe without really analyzing the content.
Honestly the game is built to romanticize a lot of the environment to lead people astray with other aspects. That's by design, so you're all good. It's quite an eye opener when you realize the whole game is an ad for something lol
13:05 - I have been here.
Far more times than I care to count.
You're just like... that's the one. The moment I get rid of that tile.
Every time. EVERY TIME. I have a pretty good intuition but I always. Get. Caught up. In. Completing. My. HAND.
You make a little joke "Maybe he says 'you're the dragon now'" at 1:17:00 but the funny thing is I feel he basically did!
On top of everything else that bums me out about this game, one of the things you haven't mentioned is that Haruka has basically inherited Kiryu's worst trait. When things are tough in these games, what does Kiryu do? More often than not, he shoulders the entire burden on himself, and his friends typically only get involved at their own insistence. So rarely does Kiryu ASK for help and I think part of it is because he realizes he's the most capable, being the ultra-strong series protagonist. He basically thinks he's Superman in a world of lesser heroes, needing to take the extra hits and extra burdens because he can take it better than they can.
And what does Haruka do at the beginning of Y6 when things are bad? She runs off, and shoulders the entire burden on herself.
And when they finally reunite, his last words to her are "make other people happy". He's reinforcing his own worst trait and passing the responsibility on to her to be the one to take care of others and protect them.
Ah yeah that's what I was getting at in one of the webcam footage after she comes out of the coma! The game heralds Kiryu's worst trait as his best trait, and it's extra annoying because 4 and 5 do a really strong job breaking him out of that Superman Complex. It just goes back to that issue of completely ignoring past character development to make Kiryu this flawless individual
@@GCVazquez i dont understand what you mean by saying his worst trait is portrayed as his best trait. In 5, kiryu and haruka leaving eachother was essentially shown to be a mistake. In 6, Kiryus distance to Daigo is also shown to be a mistake all along, doubling down the point. This also extends to Haruka obviously. The difference here at the end of Y6 is that he now sees it as unavoidable, and does it for seemingly the last time. The first Gaiden trailer shows that he is unhappy with his decision
Holy shit it's CyricZ. Besides all the people flinging shit back and forth in the comments, I'm inclined to take the word of this guy over many others.
57:50 A guy wanting to get beaten up on camera is an outdated example of trying to get online fame in 2016? Actually quite the opposite, it’s ahead of it’s time:
Japanese (self deletion) forest video.
Andy Warski’s “STAND BACK” irl stream where he tried to get his friend to shoot drunk guys he was continuously approaching.
Arab Andy (I believe that was his name) irl streaming when his Chat Text to Speech donated a bomb threat which lead to him getting arrested on screen.
Frank Hassle still filming and antagonizing Boogie2988 who drew a gun on him.
Iced Poseidon’s irl RV stream that had what likely was an on screen $-ual assault.
Jaystation.
A man streaming while throwing his pregnant SO outside in the cold to later die.
Around 2016 and prior we even had prank channels that lead to numerous people getting hit on camera for their bad natured pranks. Hits they gladly recorded and uploaded, then kept doing.
1:09:34 I don't think I agree with this point. I don't think being critical of the Chinese child policies is necessarily anti-Chinese as much as it is anti-Chinese government. Those policies are fucked up, and the people are made to suffer by an immoral law. Parents have to pretend their kids don't exist and children have to grow up with no "official" place in the world.
Not that certain aspects of Yakuza 6, and the series on the whole, doesn't have problems with representing Asian people that AREN'T Japanese. I just don't think this is one of them.
That's fair, but this is a game criticizing those laws AND also placing Japan in the shoes of heroes to those kids, despite being able to criticize Japan's own mistreatment of immigrants and immigrant children and not doing so. If they wanted to make a meaningful statement, Yakuza 6 would have made an effort to criticize Japan's own issues in regards to immigrants- but it seems more interested, in fact cumulatively compared to defending non-Japanese people, in using them as scapegoats for everything that's wrong with the state of things.
The only thing I like about Joon gi han is his fight theme. It's pretty catchy :)
Oh the music is absolutely incredible. The composer for this series never disappoints.
He's also a great party member. Literally never benched him
@@GameFreak64101 he’s practically essential for the last half of the game
Kiryu: "I'm an outsider, I shouldn't butt in"
*Kiryu, this is how many games at this point and NOW you've said this???*
Also, it really rubs me the wrong way how much Kiryu is just so cold towards Haruka; never a "I love you no matter what's happened," something that had Haruka apologize to *him* for whatever reason. But the bit at the ending, that bait-and-switch of that letter to be to *Daigo* and not his surrogate daughter got me fuming. It just takes a giant shit on Haruka as a character and puts her on a pedestal solely for wives and mothers.
The bait and switch would feel better if the rest of the story actually focused on Daigo and didn't fridge Haruka for the sake of Kiryu having a crisis he never really proactively works towards solving in the first place.
@@GCVazquez Agreed; and it tears my hair out on how a game *about* Haruka does nothing with her, but use her purely as a plot device. She gets pregnant with a dude with no chemistry, wakes up from a coma when convenient, and gets gaslit. All those vids of mods having Haruka kick ass is cathartic when crap like this happened.
Lovely video and a great analysis of Yakuza 6. There's a lot of shortcomings with Yakuza 6, both from a gameplay and writing perspective. I know Yakuza has suffered from some xenophobic / misogynistic messages in the past, but, sheesh Yakuza 6's is like the biggest example of it. You do a really great job talking about said issues. Especially with how shiny the new Dragon Engine is, it at times does feel like a distraction from the words being said on the screen, especially if you're not really thinking too hard about stuff.
One thing about the prevalence of substories having relationships involved, especially involving parents and children, is that it's definitely very very intentional as theming for the game since, the game's core talks a ton about parent-child relationships and what it means? Especially with the focus on, Kiryu and Haruka, Yuta and his father and blood ties, and Iwami and his father, heck even Kiyomi / Someya having a daughter is like, a minor plot point. So, I can kinda get the theming with what they were going for, but it doesn't really excuse how a lot of those substories are written.
I really look forward to your analysis of 7, whenever you get around to it!
Great video mate, but the "demonic voice" or whatever it's suppose to be just ain't it, had to skip all those segments of the video personally.
Very excited for the eventual Y7 video though! I hope you cover Judgement as well!
Ngl, but if I hadn't turned on the subtitles I wouldn't have understood anything about the parts you turned into darth vader
Yeah apparently my headset reduces a lot of the bass on playback, so on certain audio devices it's incoherent. Whups.
Those parts were wack
Thank you so much for making this video
I will preface this by saying I'm only 40 minutes in but I'm impatient
I'm a huge fan of RGG Studios and every game they make and I'm confident in saying that Yakuza is one of the best series of games I've ever played
But I think alot of people really tend to let that love for the series blind them to some of the issues, both subtle and obvious, with the writing
I noticed from the moment I played 0 that despite how much I love the handling of the story overall, the treatment of non-Japanese characters came off as very crude. Little Asia was treated passably to me, though the idea of the place in the game where Chinese people live being treated as this mysterious and fantastical place was...weird. and Lao Gui, while I find him to be a very threating and interesting character that plays as a good foil to Majima, he was practically foreshadowing to how Chinese people are almost always treated as brutal people who are looking to uproot Japanese culture
1/Kiwami had the same problem with Lau and the Shadow Flower as a whole. They were fun but they were plagued with the same 2-dimensional writing that framed them as nothing but thugs looking to uproot the Yakuza, despite acting incredibly similar to the Yakuza
2/Kiwami 2 is just so weird. I love the story but the Jingweon mafia is so weirdly handled. Sometimes it felt like they wanted to treat them as a respectable and honorable gang, then others it felt like they were nothing but flat plot devices with elements of anti-Korean sentiment. Really didn't help that they took Ryuji and Kaoru and did exactly what happened with Tachibana and Makoto years later. Korean/half Korean model foreigners who are treated better because they uphold Japanese ideas. And I loved Ryuji and Kaoru.
You touched upon the clear propaganda in Yakuza 3 quite well so I won't bother with it
4 and 5 I can't actually think of anything they did in this way. It's this sudden break where they treat foreigners better and criticise Japan for 2 games and it seems like it's gotten better
Then there's Yakuza 6, which the entire video is about and I've so far enjoyed and agreed with your video so take that as you will
And Yakuza: LaD *seems* to have moved past what 6 did. There's still elements of the lesser treatment of Geomijul and Liumang but for the most part, they really made strides to diversify their cast, criticise Japan, not put their Yakuza on a pedestal and generally, it did a far, far better job of representing these different cultures fairly and even fix some of the mistakes they made with the Jingweon Mafia.
I really hope this improvement stays and we don't back step to Yakuza 6 again. I don't hate Yakuza 6 and I think that despite its major flaws in representing foreigners, it had some elements I really loved (Someya mainly)
Okay very long ramble but basically
I agree with and appreciate you speaking about this. You're not afraid to address negative aspects of the things you love and I admire that. Keep being cool
Love this comment thank you very much for sharing your own thoughts on it. It absolutely did not occur to me that, yes, Little Asia is treated like this mysterious place in the center of town. Though there's definitely districts like that in real-life, the way it's treated like this secret club and not a place where people can avoid persecution in the games is certainly something to think on.
I wanted to talk about Someya too, because he's a damn good antagonist in this story. If the core of the narrative centered around Kiryu's age and creeping outdatedness, Someya would have remained a really solid contrast to him. It's part of what makes 6 so frustrating; you can see little hints of a really good discussion about passing the torch and struggling to keep up with the times, and it starts to drop those ideas in lieu of saying just...some of the worst things imaginable.
God Yakuza 6 is just mountains upon mountains of wasted potential. Your video perfectly points out how it's just corrupted to the core in its gameplay, its narrative, its treatment of foreigners, its treatment of women. The entire game reads as a vindictive script written by someone who just wanted to push their own oppressive political ideals on to the characters and it makes me so sad because of how many little nuggets of greatness there are. Someya is an amazing commentary on Kiryu's aging and the natural change in the Yakuza that needs to occur if they wish to survive in the modern world. Iwami is the embodiment of everything Kiryu has fought against and hated across the entire series, a vindictive megalomaniac who does what he does only because he wants power and does whatever cruel acts he deems necessary to do it, dragging civilians and innocent people in general into his wars. Patriarch Hirose and the Hiroshima gang were clearly made to show Kiryu a reflection of the relationship he once had with Kazama. There are so many great ideas in this game that, not so coincidentally, all revolved around *legacy* and *Kiryu.* Everything in this game that was good, was good because it was what Yakuza 6 *should've* been but it was completely drowned out by a rushed development, abandoning all of the progress the series had made, unlearning lessons that were already learned and of course, the myriad of xenophobic and misogynistic narrative choices throughout. God damn this game just brings me pain thinking of what could've been lmao. This is somewhat unrelated but it's always just irked me so much that the game picks up directly after the events of 5 and the events of 5 are literally never mentioned beyond the intro. It's the perfect example to how this game was never really about Kiryu's legacy
I love how in Yakuza 7 the Yakuza are actually bad people, the good ones being a minority, only two I could think of, excluding Ichiban
@@tenbeihazard1968You're describing a bunch of positive things and aspects about the story, themes and characters that are clearly there on purpose and had a lot of thought put into them and then you sabotage your own thinking and enjoyment by disregarding them as something the game wasn't ultimately about for some reason. Having just finished it I'd have to disagree with that and those aspects really contributed to my enjoyment and I found to be the ultimate focus of the narrative as the final chapters really highlight. The game/story isn't perfect of course and I do understand taking issue with how it presents certain things and the messages that may be taken from that, even if I could give it the benefit of the doubt of it being unintentional, but I don't see why youre so keen to disregard the positives despite recognizing them.
That said, I also don't see why the events of 5 in particular needed to have an even bigger focus? It was literally the catalyst of a lot of what happens in the game. Although I agree that I would have liked some more introspection and looking back through the series as a whole from this game, cuz you really need to dig deep to find it (even in some substories surprisingly)
6 is a bizarre piece of the Yakuza series' history. Being the first mainline release after the series exploded in popularity following 0, coming after not only that but the also fairly well-received 5, and by extension likely being a lot of international fans' first time anticipating and playing a "new" Yakuza game, it proceeded to...fall flat on its face by combining all of 5 and 0's less-noticeable-at-the-time flaws (with almost none of their strengths to make up for it) to make an utter mess of the game.
And since then we've practically had a series golden age between Like a Dragon and the two Judgment games, which makes me wonder if they took the major criticisms of this game into account when making those
I know Lost Judgment still suffers some issues, and 7 isn't perfect, but I also know a lot of people support them as "not as bad as 6" in a lot of ways, so here's hoping they deliver on that. But yeah 6 was a colossal disappointment- especially since I gave it the benefit of the doubt almost all the way to the end.
I'd say we've been away from the golden age ever since Kiwami. Everything post Kiwami is a coin flip, and it seems no Dragon Engine game has had fighting mechanics as good as even 5.
@@JCOdrjones lost judgment honestly has my favorite combat system by far. The different styles actually apply to different situations very well unlike in the 1st judgment, the heat moves are great, building meter is way easier, plus best part you beat the shit out of asshole bullies. Like seriously what's not love lol
@@JCOdrjones Idk man, Kiwami 2 felt pretty good to me. It was fun beating the stuffing outta enemies as Kiryu then
1:04:10
...I feel... the need... to bleach my brain now. Oh my fucking lord why would you even consider the 2nd option...
The lack of Majima is truely a disappointment... the only game with no Majima boss fight...
Yakuza 0 doesn't Majima boss fight...........................
Yeah but you get to play as Majima so it's like a loophole
Okay so regarding the Haruka Coma. Considering the "Yakuza Online Trailer", it's entirely possible she would've gone full Kiryu herself and the Yakuza devs are just fucking cowards.
God, it’s so fucking annoying that they don’t just make a female protagonist a playable fighter or make one as an antagonist. I’m getting REALLY sick of RGG being scared of doing that. JUST FUCKING DO IT.
if haruka were present at all in the game there would have been no need for a bunch of men to sit around and talk about abortion because the entire mystery surrounding her pregnancy would never have been a mystery. the problem is that the plot of yakuza 6 is bad in many ways even on a conceptual level, imo in part because it turns "child character representing innocence" into someone who got pregnant at 17.
also just gotta say this, fuck the letter kiryu sends at the end of the game. "I've always seen you as my true child... daigo." As though haruka didn't deserve that validation and as though that wouldn't have made a much better send off for kiryu to give her.
Thaaaaank you. It is from the start a really yikes premise. Also YEAH FUCK THAT LETTER. FUCK THAT LETTER SO HARD. Where the fuck even is Daigo in this story anyway? I know he's in jail but I mean conceptually, narratively, WHERE? In isolation that scene is kinda wholesome and really nice- but in context of the game it's like "wait a minute what why here suddenly?"
@@GCVazquez Like, I'm not opposed to the concept of Kiryu writing Daigo a letter, if only they had given Haruka something. As he was reading it, before he revealed it was for Daigo, I was like, "Ok, this makes up for Kiryu's shitty last words to Haruka and is quite touching" Then it was to fucking Daigo.
I'm so happy that there's someone talking about the casual racism in the Yakuza series. It's not obvious, especially to people who don't know anything about discrimination in Japan, but it's definitely there in every game. It's interesting how they completely flipped everything for Judgment and Yakuza Like a Dragon though. Like a Dragon is even explicitly anti LDP and anti conservative. Maybe you could do a video about this change? I actually don't know why they completely flipped the script for these games, but I'm glad they did. Maybe you can research that?
I hear this about 7 a lot, and unfortunately haven't played it yet, BUT! That's definitely going to be in the video for 7 when I get to it if this is the case. Given the rest of this retrospective series, I think it's pretty clear the last thing I want is to have to point out the glaring issues in these games- but I will if they're there since it's somewhat my responsibility to do so. Definitely will take about the paradigm shifts when I get to them.
@@GCVazquez Thanks, I definitely look forward to those videos.
Jesus Christ, it's a fucking videogame. It's also made in Japan. They have a different culture, which people like you harp on about having to respect culture no matter what, yet here you are calling their cultre racist. Get a life
@@jmarra07 Hey, this actually makes me curious; if this game is supposed to be a comprehensive and factual representation of Japan’s monolithic culture, and not a subjective and fictional representation of a a few people’s perspective, is there an American game that does the same?
@@backup_bokoblin7398 It's not a literal and factual version of Japan. It's a Japanese game made in a Japanese culture, where they enjoy things like novelty, and crazy stuff, because it's humorous and fun. Closest thing I can think of for a US game, it might be GTA. Which, also, isn't a factual account of America, but rather a silly satire of it.
Fantastic video! iirc Yakuza 4 was originally going to be the last mainline game and they went all out with the fan-service in substories and just fleshing out Kamuro-cho. And the new trio really felt like they would be successors of the legend that is Kazuma
Y6 meanwhile, was too busy sucking off 0 and K1 with its substories (same especially goes for K2, probably cuz all these 4 games released close to each other)
They tend to build every Yakuza game like it's the last one juuust in case, so there's a lot of focus on continuity and ensuring closure both for the story of that game and also the series as whole. Which is why 6 is...just so weird, that it was definitively going to be the last Kiryu game, without question, and they made little attempt to ensure those things were included.
@@GCVazquez And then they announced Like a Dragon Gaiden and that Kiryu will be co-protagonist for Like a Dragon 8.
This video beautifully sums up many of my complicated feelings about this game. Thank you for all of your hard work putting it together!
:DDDDD I try!
I will edit this once I finish the video for further thoughts but I just want GC to know, in the moment, that forming his laughs into the shape of an H and and A is a stroke of pure editing genius.
Edit: Okay, video is finished. Having not been terribly educated on the history between Japan and Korea when playing this game, I didn't catch the implications of Joon-gi's words and they faded entirely from memory, but looking back now with a bit more knowledge, it sent a chill up my spine.
I was so bedazzled by all the wild set pieces in Yakuza 6 that I didn't catch how scary some of its messaging and storytelling is in hindsight, and that's not just you telling me how it is talking, that's paying attention to the cutscenes and dialogue with a fresh point of view. I'd ever been questioning whether or not it was the ending Kiryu deserved, but it was always disappointing that everyone I loved was mostly absent from it.
Wonderful video as always, and I know it's already a long one, but I'm curious as to the absence of any mention of the actual villain in this one. Was there any reason for leaving it out? Not that you owe us talking about ever single character, of course. I just feel like remembering there were some nationalistic tones to his villainy, but honest to God he's such an unmemorable character I may have projected that onto him.
Thank you for noticing my H A joke :) And yeah the villain of Yakuza 6 felt to me like such a footnote in the greater issues of the game and also outside of that so sudden and unearned as a final boss that I had nothing of value to say other than "who?"
It's wild to me how brazenly Yakuza 6 spits its messaging out like that, and then immediately tries to obfuscate what it's saying with spectacle. I found the whole thing incredibly in poor taste.
Great entry in the series and excellent work as always, GC. I am proud to be a patron of your consistently stellar work.
You really pinned down the things that made me uncomfortable throughout 6 and why I found the ending of the game extremely disappointing and kind of infuriating. I was stomping around for weeks after like- He wrote a letter TO DIAGO. DIAGO. And NOT to Haruka???
And to the people who get upset at any criticism of their fave- just know that Yakuza is MY fave. I stream ONLY Yakuza. I am learning Japanese because of Yakuza. I adore these games and they have brought joy to my life while I have had a horrible struggle with long covid.
I want Yakuza to be the absolute best version of itself. And I believe the series is strong enough to weather the criticism it has earned.
This is legitimate, earned criticism. Art generates art criticism- that's how it has always worked.
If you want video games to be acknowledged as a legit artistic medium- which I absolutely do because they absolutely ARE-- then art criticism is a part of that.
Crit is how artists grow. It is a vital function of art education. It is NECESSARY to the growth of any artist or group of artists.
This series is art. So we should treat it like art has been treated historically.
And idk how anyone could question GC's cred as a fan- like come on now. No one makes this amount of detailed and rigorously researched content about something they don't care about deeply.
Making videos is not easy and it's wildly time intensive. You don't have to agree with everything GC says but you cannot question his commitment to Yakuza as a series.
It's ok for a work to not be perfect and it is OK to point out where it can be better.
No one is going to come to your house and take your copy of Yakuza 6 like come on now.
After all these years playing Yakuza games, spending something around 50 to 90h with each one of them (Minus Dead Souls, since I never had a PS3, and the most recent release Lost Judgment because it's HELLA expensive here in Brazil), I started to feel like the "gimmicky" nature of these games caught up with them in 6. Every single game since 3 had to introduce some bombastic back-of-the-box feature to lure players back, and most of the time they did it without any detriment to the entirety of the product. Two towns! Four protagonists! Five protagonists AND five towns AND a revamped combat system! But everything else was there, y'know. The story, the themes, the intricate relationship that the player and the characters had with the places they were walking around in... having something to freaking say, dammit.
But then we get to Yakuza 6 and face two fundamental problems, which are: 1) A beautiful, photorealistic new engine doesn't necessarily translates to meaningful, satisfying gameplay. At least not immediately, and they should have given themselves a year more or so of development to figure this out, and 2) Kiryu said what he had to say in 5. Hell, that little talk that Kiryu has with Saejima at the rooftop of New Serena? Him being found and saved by Haruka when he was about to die? Kiryu beating up a freaking army ALONE? That's his ending. Generally, the WHOLE CAST said what they had to say in 5, like it or not. In the end, any sort of sequel involving those characters would end up becoming too self-indulgent for its own good...
...which is exactly what Y6 is. It's Yakuza that doesn't have the catharsis derived from the gameplay nor it has meaningful, warm themes to develop. It's Yakuza without the good in it. Anti-Yakuza. Nega-Yakuza. Dark Yakuza. A monster that is as beautiful to the eyes as it is ugly to the heart. Just a terrible story about terrible, toxic old men who think that all the problems in the world can be solved with violence and coarse screams, repeating the same accursed cycles of egomania, greed and bigotry over and over and over again. In the wise words of the Angry Video Game Nerd: What were they thinking?!
Still on the topic of xenophobia and racism and general ultranationalist propaganda: Let's not kid ourselves... Nagoshi has said in interviews that he's friends or at least in very friendly terms with IRL yakuza. IRL yakuza are some of the biggest donors of far right organizations in Japan. IRL yakuza frequently visit the infamous Yasukuni Shrine to pay respects to the terrible war criminals enshrined there, including the "Japanese Hitler", Hideki Tojo. IRL yakuza love to spout about how their practices are tethered to honor and duty to the people and the country, and about how the original feudal yakuza were samurai (Which is... kinda true, but not in the mythologized way they argue), AND about how yakuza helped rebuild Japan after WW2. I'm putting my tinfoil hat here for a bit and saying... there's gotta be a connection there. Either Nagoshi and Yokoyama are trying to cater to the real world criminals inspiring these games or they believe at least a little bit on what is being shown on the screen, and in both cases the result is very troubling.
On misogyny: Old japanese men are starting to get a little to high on that low birth rate Kool-Aid. Using Haruka as this sort of symbol to what a woman "should" do with her body when it comes to having children, no matter how she is psychologically or what's her financial situation is tragicomical. All the other women in substories are either neglecting their children, being very mean to them, too "ugly" to have kids or are just warped vixens, but oh-so-sweet Haruka, almost-perfect Haruka, doe-eyed innocent Haruka will give her kid a chance to live because that's the right thing to do. Safe sex is a joke! If you're gonna fuck women, you should fuck 'em for real! Make them kids, gosh darn it! It's all just a big condensation of how the franchise treats women in general: No nuance, no chance to speak for themselves, one-dimension-is-enough kind of dynamic. The timeskip should've been at least five years long, if not longer to remedy that whole shit.
Anyway, GC: You're too smart, man. For real. I learn something new every single time I watch and rewatch your videos. It's inspiring. I feel like an idiot for not perceiving certain things while I was playing the games, but it IS inspiring nonetheless! Keep up the good work for as long as you want or need to. No matter what happens in the future, I'm certain your work will be worthwhile. Sorry for the absurdly long comment and sorry for not watching the video on the day it came out!
PS: *SPOILERS* Weirdly enough, I like the final bit with Kiryu saying he sees Daigo as his son. As least Daigo, that lame-ass useless idiot, will have a better father figure to reminisce about than that piece of shit rapist that he had for a biological father. And I kinda teared up a little bit with the final "ganbatte" moment.
I mean- yeah! Yeah! I couldn't have said it better myself hahaha! Also yeah TO BE CLEAR: The Daigo thing is a REALLY good touch, I just wish they focused more on THAT instead of waiting for a post-credit cutscene to even have that sort of theming.
you are so real for this
What this ape is on about 🤣🤣💀
Truly amazing video.
I just beat 6 after finishing majority of the Yakuza games this year and what a journey it was. 6 really did lack closure.
I love how you touch upon existentialism, legacy and how they are negatively amplified by capitalism.
Something that really made me tilt my head (something you also touched on) was the casual misogyny of Nagumo and the others towards Kiyomi. Not just that it’s there but how the misogyny isn’t questioned or even combated by anyone. The misogyny is actually agreed with by the sub-stories and Kiryu because somehow he is a worse now. Same goes for the xenophobia, which you also covered excellently. Really one of the best video essays I’ve seen in awhile. You are a stand up person, respect for putting so much care and effort into your vids. You say a lot of important stuff. Keep it up, it’s great!
everything here is so misguided, but ok... its your opinion and thats fine
Cool. More Yakuza. I'll get back to this series eventually, once I get out of the black hole that is The Sims 4.
How's that workin' out for ya? I love the Sims but I haven't touched 4 at all yet. I'm still kinda peeved EA never discounts the plethora of expansion packs for the Sims. 3's been out for I think ten years now? They went on sale for $5 each ONCE.
@@GCVazquez Yeah...I've sunk a lot of money into Sims 4, and since I started playing it, haven't played anything else. But hopefully I will get back to the Yakuza franchise, last I remember was that I was playing Kiwami 2...crossing my fingers.
I agree with so many points that you made in this video. I don't think I've played another game in a long while that left me so confused and unexcited within the first hour as I did while playing this game. It was quite disappointing watching each of the series' quintessential characters get written out of the game's story one-by-one, especially when there were many roles that they could have taken within the game's plot. I think one of the most jarring points about the game's narrative was the complete exclusion of the Florist of Sai. Kiryu's main informant for... 5 games? It's moments like these that made me feel like Yakuza 6 didn't exist to occupy the space of a proper finale, since it completely sidestepped major characters and elements within the series. That's completely ignoring every other bad faith argument or red flag in the game (as soon as I learned about Haruka's pregnancy, I knew it wouldn't be handled delicately). It's been about 3 months since I finished Yakuza 6, but watching this video makes me feel like I've gotten some level of closure. I guess it's time to tackle Yakuza 7 and hopefully rediscover the love for the series that I had going into 6. Looking forward to your next video!
It's so wild to me they didn't bring back the Florist at all in this one, let alone Majima of all people. Honestly there's so much besides the propaganda stuff that just...doesn't make any sense.
your segment regarding a lack of the series in this game and closure makes it seem as if you either didn’t actually play this game or you just have no understanding of the story the game was trying to convey. this is a story about kiryu and those most important to him while also establishing newer characters who parallel kiryu in many aspects i.e. orphans who’s adoptive father killed their real parents or those bearing the responsibility of father. as for majima and saejima this isn’t their story. daigo got the most closure despite not being on screen for long because kiryu addresses him as his own son and hears his burden that’s been affecting him since yakuza 3 plus daigo’s absence in scenes and him being imprisoned was a plot point to move the story forward and establish new villains. you’re complaints about not having closure just sounds like you wanted shitty fan service which would have made for a much worse game if fans like you got their request
It all just sounds like disorganized, recycled, and poorly used trite to me, sorry. I think a final game with a cast we've been with since the beginning should in some way give respect to that cast- not just the main character. And if it's going to focus on just two characters, Kiryu and Daigo, maybe it shouldn't send one of them to off camera jail as a plot contrivance at the very start, and then never mention them again?
I don't know man, it's just my opinion about a video game. 🤷♂️
I mainly play Yakuza 6 to hopefully become, one day, the top ranked Clan Creator.
Man, I don't know what to say, I completely disagree with pretty much everything you said, I am surprised you came away with the opinion you did. I am not saying this game is perfect but to list out all my disagreements would be pages long, so I will stay away from this discussion. I am sorry you didn't enjoy it hope you like the other stuff
I do actually. I've played everything up to 6, and I like them all but 6. It's all good to disagree, homie. Thanks for being respectful about it!
Hi. I'm not a professional at writing, nor am I the best at understanding certain subtexts of games, but wow. This was an incredible video to watch. You really have evolved over the years. I was always told by others that they really enjoyed Yakuza 6, or that it was one of the best games in the series. Then I finished it. Whilst I did enjoy certain elements like the music, the dragon engine and the minigames, the story did feel a little... off and weird and/or boring. Thanks to your analysis, I think I now understand why. Whilst I do enjoy 6, you brought some of my feelings into words. The story at best is saying goodbye to Kiryu and his life through the perspective of new and pointless characters, and at worst... exactly what you said. Thankyou for this critique of Yakuza 6, I'm glad you are able to criticize the franchises you enjoy. Thanks for all the content GC. I really hope you have a good weekend and make sure to stay healthy, we support you and what you make :)
Thank you very much for the support! I'm glad I could help pull some concrete thoughts out of the abstract feelings you were having. It's really unfortunate how 6 turned out, I think. 5 continues to be a much better send-off to the whole cast.
For the xenophobia (I might be wrong, haven't thought too much about it as other ppl), Yakuza 7 seems to go past that somehow? Like all 3 of the present factions are framed very similarly. you also notice the more progressive writing
Very excited to get to Yakuza 7!
Yes, and ichiban is sex work positive, which is something interesting to see from him an such a game
The villains are also out and out ultra-conservatives who despise sex workers, ethnic minorities and the poor
I liked Yakuza 6 more than most people. My biggest problem, as you highlight, was that for a game which is supposed to be a conclusion to Kiryu and Haruka’s stories, it barely has Haruka do anything. However, now that you’ve highlighted all these xenophobic and misogynistic points, I do see what you mean. It’s so many disparate little things that I didn’t notice how much of it there was. I love Yakuza and I think that, for Japanese mass media, it tends to be more progressive than average, but it really does struggle with the xenophobia endemic to Japan. Some games like Y4 or Like a Dragon go out of their way to humanize Korean and Chinese people and depict their struggles in Japan, a society that is deliberately unfair to them, but some other games like Y6 just inexplicably spew terrible far-right nonsense. It’s so inconsistent. I wonder if it has something to do with project leads or the head writers in each entry.
It's definitely related to who leads the series in some way or another.
My brother in Yakuza this is a god awful review and take
ok not trying to be an um actually but one thing is that yakuza 0/5/k had the kiwami engine compared to 3 and 4 which used the Magical V Engine and yakuza dead souls is called yakuza of the end in japan in part because of the fact that it was the last yakuza game made using it. sorry for this someone else will probally just coment the same thing and it ddosnt take away anything from the videos main pont just comenting to inform.
LOL You're super fine. I actually love getting corrections like these because I learn something about the production that I missed! I had no idea the engine for 0/5/K1 was considered a new one; it just looked like a really heavily edited Magical V Engine- though I guess that's probably what it is anyway? Thank you for the correction! ^_^
dislikes disabled by owner lmao
Watched the whole video. Thought it was excellent. You've clearly spent a lot of time thinking about Yakuza 6 and did well voicing your opinion. I think this is one of your best.
Also, those intermission clips were hilarious.
There's a lot of points of yours I agree with, about xenophobia, about misogyny, about the conservative undertones. But I'm not 100% sold on this video. There are plot points of this game revolving the conservative ideals and politicians being responsible for all the horrible events happening during this game. The triad and the Korean mafia and the yakuza were all pawns of the highly conservative ww2 apologist politicians currently in power in Japan. The game has a reference to shinzo abe being a disciple to a ww2 general who ordered the construction of a war weapon and how they abused immigrants to do so.
I think I really like the comparison you made in this video, yakuza 6 (and the series as a whole) being a confused screaming kid while a old sleazy man forces itself and changes the script.
This is me probably trying to wash the devs off some guilt and sin though. But I believe yakuza is a confusing clash of progressive and conservative ideas.
I forgot to reply to this, and I'm going to reply now because I don't entirely disagree with you either. I think the reason I made my argument was because there's elements outside of the parallels you've drawn that still frame immigrants and foreigners as lesser. Parts of the game which have little to nothing to do with the central plot in Hiroshima- because this game I think you can agree is a tangle of a bunch of plot lines not coming together in a sufficient way- still treat the immigrants like crap. A lot of the cinematography takes the time to show us their desecrated bodies, instead of really making the effort to paint them as the pawns we're supposed to sympathize with like you're suggesting. My issue with how those conservatives are portrayed in 6 is largely related to the emotions they want us to derive from them. It paints them as tragic figures, laments their fall from grace, and wants us to shift the blame to the current Japanese political schema- which definitely has issues, but the conservatives in question are the ones in power to begin with. They control that schema at the time of Yakuza 6. To ask us to feel bad for them, or pity them for being stuck in the world of politics is like asking me to feel bad for a king because he sits on the throne. Furthermore, we run into this issue where the true villain of the franchise is a younger man with radical new ideas, who usurps the throne because he holds a grudge against the king, who then manipulates the situation with the general in his favor. Rather than a criticism of those conservative ideals, the game laments the downfall of ultra-conservative values. It's that "drain the swamp" populist mentality you saw a lot of in the states around the time 6 came out, and it's that same mentality a lot of other countries' political forces adopted to bolster reactionary support in their respective regions around the time as well.
It's because of this and the other reasons I state in the video. The way foreigners are directed in a scene, the way women continue to be treated as background elements only to be spoken down to when a man needs to look stronger, the insistence and nostalgia for Japanese imperial power. That I don't think Yakuza 6 is trying to criticize conservative views and outdated ideas conservatives still hold onto, and is attempting to bolster those ideas or at the very least paint them as the lesser evil.
Though I definitely agree Yakuza is generally a confusing clash of ideas, I think there's too much in Yakuza 6 specifically for it to be the case in Yakuza 6.
@@GCVazquez heyyy here's a late response for you! I came back because I've been thinking about this series (and this video) a lot again.
I'm still very much negotiating what to make of this series and what it wants to say, because I get mixed signals a lot,but I've come to the conclusion that if this series goes full on mask off Japanese nationalism and ultra conservative, I would be very dissappointed, but not surprised sadly.
However I still am not %100 sold on this idea.
The series is deeply steeped in nationalist and conservative rhetoric, yet somehow it's surprisingly and uncharacteristicly progressive at times, even in main plot points. It's also fair to say that studio is aware of its own issues in writing and problematic depictions, it's why we get extremely conflicting depictions of lgbtq+ folks in the same game (yakuza 3). But at the same time in recent releases, there have been... Attempts to do better in these regards. Removing bad depictions, further challenging contemporary Japanese and capitalist politics and etc. . They're not enough to satisfy, but they leave me with a bit of tiny hope that this series does care about the marginalized and how established institutions hurt them, how the very same ideals conservative Japan champions are hurtful, while at the same falling back on those and undermining the whole message they try to tell, it's very frustrating. (yakuza 0 criticizing real state while at the same time having a mini game where you become a real state mogul to make people's lives better... Sure)
A big part of me thinks that series will be forever stuck in this messy ideological limbo, failing to see its own contradictions and failures, the evidence against that is not that strong, but I still think it ultimately wants better for people. I still think this game still tried to do that in its own way.
Well that's kinda disappointing to figure out. Guess when I first played this game it all went over my head. I mean, I'd like to think a lot of this weirdness and awkwardness comes from the transitional period that 6 feels like it represents.
Of course I could be wrong on that. Always be critical of the things you love, they can only improve from it. :)
I definitely think there was some kind of transition that took place with 6, and a lot of the messy attributes stem from there, but boy howdy did they REALLY make a mess of it.
Whenever i talked with my friends about Y6. They give me a few lines and then change subject to the other games in the series. After seeing this deep dive, i could see why.
I appreciate these questrospectives, makes me wonder on your opinions on LAD. ive finished that game and boi... i liked ichiban more than i did kiryu.
Friends of mine keep saying Ichiban is just me in a lot of ways, so I can't wait to play Yakuza: Like A GC
This game and series has an issue with letting Kiryu go. They faked his death not once, not twice, but four times. I was hoping after 6, Kiryu would no longer be a main character and we'll only see him in cameos. But then Like a Dragon 8 cane out and he's a main character.
Yakuza 6 was a great final goodbye to Kiryu, but the team or higher ups at Sega didnt want to let him go.
I mean 5 would have been a great way to let Kiryu go if 6's story was different
The Dragon Engine is basically Yakuza’s version of the Hedgehog engine (either the original one or the 2.0 version)
something i really noticed when people discuss the issues with the 3 games after yakuza 0 is they tend to have a problem standing on there own.
like kiwami 1 and 6 rely heavily on zero and kiwami 2 is doing that same with 6.
feels like the devs got burnt out after 5 and did not know what to do with the series going forward.
Yakuza 7 was pretty fresh, and it’s one you could play without having played 0
@@eduardogarciamejia5033 yeah but 7 has it's own issues that need to be sorted out if the series is really gonna continue to be a turn based jrpg.
Y'know, Kiryu literally says that the bonds you have with people can be just as strong without blood, to one of the main characters (who is a ally mostly throughout the game) is Chinese right?
If you play the game as an observer and not as a receiver, a lot of your accusations fall flat, I think. Dont get me wrong, I dont want to attack you for your opinions, but I played this game, recognized most of the themes you mentioned, but never felt "teached" by it. For example: When the Secret of Onomichi got revealed and the Hirose/Kurusu story got told, I thought: Okay, Kuruse is an ultra-conservative shithead. When the game showed his intentions I never felt like it was trying to sell them to me. I understand what drives him, but that doesnt mean I dislike him less. I view the Yakuza Games as a Case Study of Japanese Crime Drama. Of course there will be morals I dont agree with. Its like watching Good Fellas or any other Scorsese Movie: There is always violence, sexism and racism. Its a bunch of criminals with twisted morals, of course there is. Maybe I missed the point, or maybe my tolerance to social- and/or cultural differences is just higher. I am not saying "I am right/you are wrong", just trying to bring in a different perspective and trying to defend the Game, I really enjoyed playing for 60 hours, a bit.
Uh, Good Fellas and a lot of Scorsese movies are in part about immigration and the "American Dream" concept not applying to everyone who shows up here. Part of the backbone of crime dramas, even Japanese ones, is exploring the disillusionment with society as a whole. I'm not really shocked or upset there's morals in the game I don't agree with; I know what moral ambiguity is. The problem I take with 6 isn't that it *has* those things, it's the way cutscenes are shot, it's the way dialogue is written, it's the way marginalized characters are the spokespeople for forgiving imperialism. So with all due respect, I think you did miss the point.
@@GCVazquez Uh, I dont think I missed the point, to be honest. What I was saying is that I dont felt the game was trying to influence me with all these topics, because the scenes in the Game are longer then those short bits you take for your base of accusations. There is context and that is important. Your Video might work as a discussion point for people who have played the game/series because they experienced the context, but that doesnt apply to everyone showing up here, too. Beiing sensitive to these topics is a good thing, but basing those strong claims out of context is just cheap and a staple of Propaganda in itself.
@@GCVazquez Uhhhhh, wasn't the point of the secret of Onomichi the exposure of a massive conspiracy and corruption scheme between the navy and a criminal organization, which enabled human trafficking as well? How can you assume someone sees this scene and goes like "yep, glory to the emperor!", that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
@@wrathchild7218 the human trafficking which was framed as saving Chinese children from a horrible life in China by the good guys in the story? The same secret that didn't end up getting exposed in the end because Kiryu decided he'd keep the secret?
@@GCVazquez the "good guys"? which are you referring to, the Yomei or the Triads?
I enjoyed this video, and it made me consider a perspective different from my own, whether or not I agreed fully with the things in this video. However, I thought that the joon gi han line about warlords referred to the Japanese invasions of Korea from 1592 - 1598. At that time, the warlords of Japan were proper warlords, and Korea actually came out victorious and in many ways, modernized. It makes more sense that he would refer to an event full of Korean Legends that was indeed, a long time ago, then a fairly recent event which did not help them.
I was super bittersweet on 6 when I played it and wasn't really sure how to process it. I'm really grateful to see someone who genuinely cares about RGG talking about the more deep-rooted issues in 6's plot and gameplay. Hopefully the series continues to improve for the better in terms of how it handles misogyny and xenophobia because I can tell at its heart that it does want to represent the mis- and underrepresented in society. 😓 Your preface and extra inclusions to your script are really important to the way you described these issues IMO and I'm glad you included them.
On a side note, I think your exploration of the narrative impact the fighting style change has is really interesting and wasn't something I considered, and I completely agree with your criticisms of how 6's combat plays. I feel like the heat actions are very, very restrictive in 6, and that along with weapons being useless does get repetitive quickly. I agree with basically everything you said about the plot, too; how it doesn't really feel like a sendoff at all...it's very odd.
Also, thank you for providing closed captions, it's really appreciated!
Thank you very much! I'm glad so many people appreciate the captions, it means a lot to know. I also want the series to do better in those regards. It's always so close sometimes, and then completely backtracks. It's exhausting to see sometimes! Especially in 6. Oi.
honestly this game really need a next upgrade with yakuza Kiawami graphics
I choose to believe that Bleach Japan in 7 is making fun of you specifically.
In that case, how do you feel about them immortalizing me in their series?
That interpretation would literally make no sense, because bleach Japan is clearly a right ring, anti crime, anti immigrant, and anti sex work organization with a almost evangelical ethos. So how would bleach Japan be making fun someone criticizing Yakuza 6 for harboring those ideas?
Just here to say that this comment has aged like milk. lol. Grow up kiddo.
It's funny, when I got to the end of 6 I felt like the ending had ruined my day, my week, my month and my year lol but I looked back at the main story and thought "that was pretty alright up until the f&cking boat". But watching this video made it so much worse, like holy shit, I was so focused on getting 6 over with so I could play 7 that I guess I missed how shitty it is in terms of saying goodbye not only to kiryu but also every character from the previous games, including even Haruka and Date to be honest. It's a damn shame, but, even though I felt regret for every playing a yakuza game more than anything while watching the credits, now that the anger is more or less gone, I WAS a pretty journey. As they say, the journey is what matters in the end... but man... I really like endings y'know, closing everything out with one big final satisfying chapter is just so fucking good, especially when the journey is really long and it ends in a way that respects ALL of its chapters, even the less good ones, like FF14. This comment is getting long so I'll just say, I'm glad I got to play endwalker before yakuza 6 cause I can, at the very least, look back at a game where the long ass journey had a satisfying ending that respected even the most minuscular plot points and characters from years past, and I can't wait for more.
33:55
This is overall a good and insightful video for those not aware of the Eastern politics, but this was uncalled for. There was no need to be condescending to the people who "live under a rock."
That statement was more about people who don't make the connections between social issues and gang and organized crime politics in general. It's mostly a joke, because I assume most people know those connections. The joke is that this is something so obvious, you'd have to be actively ignoring it.
I'm a fan of your work but I'm honestly kind of baffled by some of the conclusions you come to in this video, with a few of the biggest ones being in the section about Joon-gi Han. The dialogue on Japanese colonialism for example:
"I must admit, some within our organization still hold grudges against you. They claim you were responsible for driving the Jingweon to the brink of destruction, but that's just backward thinking. Those who believe such nonsense are akin to a poison inhibiting our pending resurrection. To me, you don't differ much from the warlords of old who invaded Korea so many years ago. It is no longer practical to view the Dragon of Dojima as our enemy. At least for my part, I accept our shared past as water under the bridge."
This would be, in all the ways you said, a truly abject thing to write for a Korean character if it weren't made explicitly clear right after that Joon-gi Han didn't mean a word of it. Its still real gross, and full stop no one should be comfortable with RGG's writers using that history for cheap points, but the characterization of the writers speaking through a Korean character to absolve Japan's colonial history is just...it isn't what happens in that scene.
The whole practical, reasonable persona that JGH is putting on to appeal to Kiryu's vanity is a manipulation that the player is in on from the start. When Kiryu leaves five minutes later you see the mask slip away, JGH shaking with rage, and the player has no basis to accept anything JGH said to KK as the truth. It ends up being the exact opposite of how its framed here, with the player not meant to be sympathetic to JGH's views at all. The player is meant to take them as a piece of dramatic irony, spoken to one of the most gullible people who have ever walked the earth. JGH had just literally BBQed his own man's face, I don't think its reasonable to assume that players are going to accept what he's saying at face value.
As for the thing about Joon-Gi Han looking like a K-Pop star....I'm pretty baffled on that one too. Forgive me if I'm missing something here, but I'm not sure why you'd read this him as looking like a K-POP star and not as him looking like the 4000 other Kamurocho Hosts that have appeared through the series, especially since he's running a host bar in Yakuza 6. Everything from the gold chains, the tacky reflective suit coat, to the dye job and immaculate haircut...thats what hosts in the Yakuza series have looked like since Yakuza 1. Like a Dragon has a host class you can assign characters in your party, and the outfit looks just like Joon-gi Han's.
I'm sorry but that's just not true. Joon-Gi Han's fashion style is completely different from Kazuki's or Yuya's or any of the jobber hosts we've seen with the stapled-on long haircuts and brown hair. I mean, literally in Kiwami, the most prominent skeevy host is just some guy with long brown hair too. Compare Joon-Gi Han to literally any host in any Yakuza game, and I guarantee you, he looks absolutely nothing like the rest of them. Most of them are wearing plain white or red suits, most of them wear a watch- maybe? Yakuza 7 in large part is a response to 6, but I'm talking specifically about 6 itself, not about the steps made after 6 to improve on how poorly 6 represented people.
I also don't think the player is meant to see Joon-Gi Han as a total deceptive character either. Joon-Gi Han has Kiryu ensnared in a trap and, honorably, let's Kiryu and Yuta go even though he has every chance to kill them after he loses the fight. Joon-Gi Han is prepare to reveal to Kiryu a lead on the secret of Onomichi after being defeated, even though it would betray others. Joon-Gi Han respects the bushido concepts the Yakuza uphold, and even begrudgingly, will adhere to them. He yields to the Japanese custom, and he's made to look inferior to said Japanese custom. Even though he's at odds with Kiryu, he's introduced with harming one of his own to appease the group, then insists on Japanese superiority, and then yields to Japanese superiority within the context of the story- before he's assassinated and his death is very openly showcased. Twice. With horrific blood squib and all.
There's just way more speaking to the contrary of what you're saying. I'm sorry, but he's just not written or designed the way you say he is.
46:42 he literally mentions shogun Hideyoshi in Japanese. He isn’t talking about WW2, he’s referring to Japan’s invasion of Korea during the Sengoku era which was about 500 years ago. I would seriously recommend reading the original Japanese script since the localization does change around the wording for the sake of flavor text.
I still think it's suspect as hell for the comparison he makes to completely gloss over the pre-WW2 occupation that extended into and worsened in WW2. Don't you think that's odd? That the writer for this scene implies Koreans are still bitter about a 500-year old conflict, and not the much more recent one from only a couple of generations back? Because I do. Why, for a game set in the modern era and very much seeped in modern Japanese politics, would someone write that scene and completely ignore the WW2 occupation- a moment in history that Koreans accuse Japan of committing (well recorded) war crimes, and one Japanese officials frequently deny ever happened? I think it's weird that he wrote a scene talking about Korean hostility towards the Japanese, and then acted like the much more recent thing hadn't happened. I think he did that to make it seem like the Koreans who are critical of Japan's actions are angry over something much older than what they're most recently angry about in order to make Japan's actions seem a lot less criminal or relevant to current relationships between the two countries. America plays this card all the time, it's part of the Imperial toolbox to downplay atrocities they've committed in favor of making the victims of those atrocities seem old-fashioned or unreasonably upset.
I want to bring up something not mentioned in the video (or at least alluded to, I do not know if it was cut due to the pacing stuff mentioned)
6's main story feels tugged in two separate directions regarding the nationalistic aspects. While the game has those elements in the narrative, the pivotal moment reveals a secret WW2 battleship hidden away in shame after the war due to the pride the people who built it had, not wanting to dismantle the ship. If this goes along with the legacy themes, the game implies that the ship represents a negative one to leave, one that means the worse of WW2 Japan and the people who made it know this and needed to hide it away.
I am sorta conflicted on what this is trying to say in the game, even when and after playing it. It feels like a massive afterthought in the story, as it's not brought up again once it is shown. It makes me wonder if this was a save face moment? That they are saying that nationalism and pride for it is actually, in fact, not good while also doing it earlier in the game. It could also be feeding into it, saying that it is best to hide those values from the world and ignore the negatives it brings. But that cannot be the case since it's explicit antagonistic forces that caused this all to happen, so the game is saying it's actually bad?
I think it just shows how unclear the game's narrative and themes are, that it can try to tug in both ways, making it unsure where it actually stands at the end.
You forgot the vital part of what Kurusu said - Daidoji wanted the ship dismantled, but Kurusu saw it was more lucrative to keep it intact and use as a leverage and guarantee for further cooperation
*Substory segment*
And that's why fighting Ghost Pirates out of nowhere with your fists is the best substory of Yakuza 6.
Also is it possible the Substory writer for 6 is different from the rest of the series? I know he directed Yakuza 7 so... I wonder...
True final word though- Great work thus far on this retrospective. I couldn't have possibly expected it to come to such difficult topics but your dedication and the efforts you've put forth to complete this work are impressive.
I, for one, found it nice to take a harder look at this title in lieu of my casual playthrough and came away glad for havin' done it.
I thank you for that. Here's to K2 and seeing what comes next for GC's good ol' Questrospectives :)
Definitely think you’re right about the ultra nationalism. Japan is infamous for their rewriting of history and their colonialism and war crimes. Almost as bad as America.
I would say that it has actually been a main theme in Yakuza games and just has become more obvious.
Honestly I am glad they switched over to Kasuga. Yakuza Like A Dragon was a better send off to the original saga of Yakuza characters than Yakuza 6. And as far as I remember was a better story that didn’t delve into the nationalism/racism though a couple characters they were really trying to sell as meaningful and likable when they die that I really couldn’t care less about but Kasuga cares about everyone.
I believe that all other cultures and nationalities have lived or experienced all of this racism or xenophobia through the years by western media, which is one of the most predominant media all over the world, and which is changing in a way that sometimes even feels forced. However in Japan, the culture, background and everything is different, that’s why yakuza took so long to be famous outside Japan. I’m not justifying them but yeah, i kind of understand it. Then again, watch China, and their super nationalism content, where every bad guy is a Japanese guy, and Korea with the banning of some old Japanese WWII symbolism. I mean, it’s Asia, and their culture, history and past conflicts defines them… but I think new generations are changing that, for the best. Hopefully international relations will improve more :)
I think xenophobia, racism, and a lot of social issues exist globally because of many factors. I think it's important to criticize all instances of that whether or not it happens to be a part of history. Like, yeah, if Yakuza was game made in China pushing ultranationalist ideas and claiming Chinese superiority over other Asian groups, I'd still be saying calling it out. When America does it, I call it out because that sort of shit is detrimental to human existence.
Everyone seems to really want Yakuza Kiwami 3, but honestly I think I’d rather have Kiwami 6. I still like it at the end of the day, but it’s just tragic to see how half baked this game was and how sloppily it seems to have been put together. It deserved the same kind of love that was put into Yakuza 5, if not more.
What sucks is that a Kiwami 6 would just have the same narrative issues and problematic depictions of people. It's impossible as is to remaster or remake into a better look because so much of it is entrenched in those problems. They'd have to retcon the whole thing and have a complete do-over- and it'd be bad for businesses to invalidate an entire entry in the franchise.
@@GCVazquez I'm not sure how much I agree with the whole hypothesis that Y6 is intentionally a piece of propaganda, but I do think it's possible that scenes like Joon-gi's problematic analogue for Kiryu, when Yuta is revealed to be Haruto's father, and some of Kiryu's very out of character moments, could all be rewritten to have just a bit more tact.
You pointed out how careless Kiryu's last words for Haruka were, and I feel like that could be said for most of the cutscene dialogue in this game. And sadly, I think that's due to the writers deciding to disregard Kiryu's legacy for the majority of this story. It's an awful line of dialogue, but "Take care of Yuta and Haruto" probably resonated more with people who may have only played 6, or only played 0 beforehand. Despite being featured in the boxart, new players would barely know Haruka as a character- but they did just spend an entire game with Yuta.
Obviously a Kiwami 6 that addresses all the issues I have with it will never happen,, but it's gotta be up there with some of my "dream" games. Anyways, thanks for always putting so much thought into these retrospectives. I'm really curious to hear your take on Kiwami 2, since I feel like it's (oddly enough), a way more gratifying goodbye to Kiryu as the protagonist.
This was a pretty great video as always. And man... Yakuza 6.. is gonna be an... interesting time to play once I get around to buying it, there's alot I want to say about it after watching all of this but for now all I can say is... these characters especially Kiryu and Haruka deserved a much better story and ending than what we got in the game... (I'm glad to see the Pocket Circuit Fighter again at least. He was one of my favorites and the Soundtrack is still pretty good as always)
Soundtrack continues to be pretty damn good, composer deserves so much more credit. And yeah, I'd honestly recommend you skip 6 if you want. 5 has a much better, conclusive ending to the whole Kiryu arc than 6 does, which is wild.
@@GCVazquez Agreed, Good thing I already have 5 thanks to Remastered Collection if I do consider skipping lol (though I'm still on 3)
LOL I am watching this series as i play dragon quest 3 having beaten dragon quest 2 during your dragon quest retrospective because i was inspired to start the series of play throughs based on your glowing retrospective, and now your yakuza series is leading up to 7 which has alot of dragon quest inspiration in it, it's a long and windy series of events i thought you'd be amused by. as before thanks for hanging out with me while i play dragon quest.
Comment for the algorithm. Love the comprehensive content as always. Keep it up GC
Much appreciated!
The only time Jimmy Lo’s body needed to be seen in the story is when they’re talking about where/how he died, if they needed to show it, then only show it once
His death didn't need to be that gruesome tho...
yakuza 6 is my favorite yakuza game and i will die on this hill
That's okay! As long as you can admit it has problems, I won't deny your enjoyment of it! I love this series a whole lot, and that's why I desperately want it to not necessarily be super duper good- but for it to not be so shit to people who aren't specifically Japanese men.
I really hope you will play Yakuza: Like a Dragon.since we can consider it an excellent value correction. greetings from Mexico.
I love the series and I genuinely hope they correct the problems that the franchise has been carrying since its gensis.And without ruining anything for you, Yakuza 7 is genuinely a big step forward. Especially in his treatment of non-Japanese characters. I also agree that Kiryu's last words were complete bullshit. Yakuza 6, it's a decent game but a horrible farewell to Kiryu. Excellent analysis, finally someone expresses the big problems of Yakuza 6.
You covered this game's issues with how it depicts women very well and in great detail, and even then you only scratched the surface on Kiyomi and Someya. It baffles me that Someya ends up being depicted in a kinda-sorta sympathetic light even though the game - if I recall correctly - implied that he abused her. It's just... ugh.
not implied, i think it's explicitly stated. i completely agree though, the way someya was handled made my stomach turn. imo RGG in general has a weird track record with attempting to redeem villains that go a bit too far into uncomfortable and taboo areas (oda and [The Main Villain in Y7] come to mind). its odd. it's good seeing someone who really cares about the series talking about RGG's mishandling of misogyny and xenophobic themes
I responded to a comment earlier about him and it totally skipped my mind. As far as Someya's redemption arc- it feels so shoehorned into the rest of the character for me. It's almost like the Someya challenging Kiryu's paradigm is a completely different person to the Someya involved in the really crappy love-triangle plotline involving Nagumo and Kiyomi. Does that make sense? He just sort of shows up and is either Someya A or Someya B depending on who's writing the scene.
And thank you both for the kind words! I appreciate it haha- I'm trying hard to make it clear that I *do* like this series, but I'm not about to give it a pass on everything.
I doubt you will read this given the fact that you uploaded this video a year ago or so, but the discussion on xenophobia reminded me of a particular side story in the fourth game involving officer Tanimura chasing after orphans who graffitied places with "anti-japanese rhetoric" (e.g.- "Japan sucks"). Tanimura gathers them all together and confronts them, and they reveal why they did it: they were rendered orphans because Japan's immigration policy resulted in their parents' deportations. Tanimura responds that the law must be followed (as if laws cannot be changed). The kids then ask if the fault lies with their parents for violating immigration policy or with Japan for imposing such a rigid immigration regime, to which Tanimura shrugs and says, "No one's to blame." A country's immigration system leads to children becoming orphans and there is no call for reform? That's just the way things are and you need to chin up and forget about it. It's all water under the bridge.
I figured this little episode actually pairs well with what you said about Joon-Gi Han's interaction with Kiryu, except for the fact that Japan's immigration policy is a tool used to brutalize ethnic minorities in the present (though I should clarify that Japan is not an outlier with regard to its treatment of ethnic and national minorities as many countries today have adopted harsh policy sets and enforcment measures targeting immigrants to the point where it's giving rise to a number of human rights crises).
Contrary to popular belief, I do still read almost every comment I get
i first watched this on a car ride i couldn't focus on that well, but after a rewatch i completely agree with everything that you say! i was already 😬 about yakuza 6's treatment of korean and chinese characters (with what the writers have han joon-gi say, and the "blood ties" that they make important with the triads when it reads like it's straight from an extreme-right japanese mouth), but i never really connected it further to the "foreign men stealing your women" trope, and never really thought of the depiction of dead bodies.
though i'm going to have to slightly disagree with your critique of yakuza 3? the american military bases on okinawa are a thing that its native population has resisted and fought against for decades, with very very good reason.
something that's interesting and was pointed out to me by someone else is that the saio triad is a hong kong triad (/jimmy/ lo also being a very hong kong name), but that they don't speak cantonese at all, they speak mandarin. and maybe too on-the-nose to get mentioned in your video, but the resemblance the yomei pin has to the rising sun flag also made me do a double take when i finally noticed it
it's such a shame so many people just stop at "the game is bad because majima isn't in it," when tbh that's like, the least of its issues 😂. overall a really great video, and i'll definitely recommend it to people who wonder why i'm :/ meh about yakuza 6 (instead of having to write several paragraphs every time 😂)
Haruka: I'll give up my dream to be with Uncle Kaz
Kiryu: I'll guess i fake die
Yakuza 6 retroactively sucked all of the hope of Yakuza 5. Everyone's hopes were dashed, making all of the sacrifices meaningless. Even the post game sections with Haruka are worthless since they couldn't happened in continuity anymore.
Ok but how did haruka get a smart phone to that level in 2012??
She's got that idol money I'm sure that's how
This is probably the most iron case you made in your yakuza videos. Especially liked your talk on the side quests. Even before you started giving examples the images of the side quests brought memories back and I said "OH! Yeah there is definitely a pattern here."
Wow, thanks! I tried to be extra concrete on this one in order for the video to be airtight.
Really liked the making clear segments have a similar function to the post-credit scenes in the game, but showing the effort and making sure what’s in the edited video is what is coming across and not quick patch-up. It was very insightful and I enjoyed a lot.
Glad you enjoyed it! I honestly might employ it again if I ever have to cover topics like this in the future.
Why people stopped watching your videos
Great video. I missed some of these points so it was great having them explained. I was similarly very let down by the narrative. After the great narratives in 4 & 5 I don't know what I expected from this but it wasn't that. I also couldn't bring myself to care about any of the new characters. The comparison to being centered to a local Yakuza branch made me constantly flash to Yakuza 3 and while that game did have problems, the characters were so unbelievably better written (with much less screentime) that the juxtaposition really just made me care even less. I saw the same kind of things in many substories. Like I played the entire remastered collection before this in short order and eventually you start realizing Yakuza repeats themes a LOT, both substory and main, and yeah. The game wasn't fun. And I think the final opponent you face was so unbelievably unworthy with pointless motivations. Someya would have been allright, but that switch, ugh. Yeah, a pretty bad game all-around and certainly a terrible final act.
what is bro on about
You basically spelled out what I was thinking the entire time when I was looking into this game, both in this retrospective video and your Twitch stream.
If you feel disappointed by 6, Yakuza: Like a Dragon is much better in their representation of female characters and foreign characters, from what I saw.
I'm so excited for 7 I hope it does a good job working past it's hurdles.
Great video! Cant wait to see your video on Yakuza Like a dragon
Me too! I'm genuinely hoping it takes steps in the right direction, as a lot of people continue to say it does.
I consider Y6 the weakest of the rgg series. I still got the achievements and whatnot, but my play time is much less than the others.
Thanks for your perspective, I had other reasons for disliking the game and now I have more reasons. lol
I think it's really telling that what that game has going for it is half its collection of mini-games and that's mostly it.
When I originally played 6, I had no idea that the relationship between Korea and Japan was like that. That is a rather outrageous piece of dialogue to slide into the game.
Honestly yakuza 6 made me cry for 20 minutes straight the first time around but after watching this video and having replayed y6 after watching your stream of it I can honestly say everything you’ve said about the game is correct and even the first time around the final line kiryu said to haruka felt iffy to me like why would he say that and also with the hospital his words the second time around just felt passive aggressive and selfish I hope rgg can learn from y6 and be better and from playing judgment , y7, and lost judgment I can say they’ve been steadily improving, amazing video I hope you like y7 as much as I did it felt like a massive improvement for rgg
There are definitely some really strong emotional pulls in Yakuza 6! So I don't knock anyone for crying- honestly it's really easy to get an audience to cry over an emotional scene. I really wanna make a video about that someday. One talking about how, unless the movie/game/book/etc. *unearns* the emotional moment, you can very easily write a scene to make someone cry or be angry. I think for me, a lot of those other things stood out until they finally became what the story was super focused on, and that unearned those emotional moments.
Insane stretches. Hilarious video.
Could you further explain?
Why?
Ok, elaborate further if you really disagree.
And finally the close!
Never have I more quickly pasted my comment into youtube and known I fucked up and this will be multiple comments even after I trim the bulk of this off due to redundancy.
I have been intrigued by this video since I spotted it just because, well, that thumbnail and description are enticing in what kind of analysis you'll be comin' in with.
My playthrough of 6 was generally positive; I liked the assassin guy dying without true redemption but having a story that emphasized complicated relationships and motivations and how it ended without, at least in my eyes, forgiving him- but showcasing how complicated his death was emotionally for those around him- the whole "You never know a whole person and can love what you do know" followed by the sheer dread and disappointment those loved ones felt finding what he was behind that.
Also recall not liking Someya or how he, arguably moreso than fuckin' assassin guy Hiruse, attempts to gleam redemption when he's shitty the whole time, abusive, and grody.
Like just, nah. Hirose stood out as interesting to me, as if they even played with the importance of him not being redeemed- Someya felt like a worthless attempt at redeeming someone who isn't worth it.
Also enjoyed Daigo's close for Kiryu, laughed at Kiryu having a deep conversation about killing (and being told the Dragon doesn't kill) literally 1 cutscene after he blows up helicopters (must have been rubber missiles :^)), and while I can't remotely say I "liked" it, I laughed and enjoyed laughing enough to accept that this is the game where Kiryu "Dies." instead of "dies." Still a cop out to me that felt like it didn't add anything in the slightest.
But also, and some comments near this one spoiled a bit before my watch, I can fully attest that I came at Y6 with a single minded goal which left me a bit distracted- finishing Kiryu's story; A goal that left me more placated towards everything that wasn't flashing bold text. I didn't play 6 because I was ready and in the mood for 6, I played it because I knew I had the time and felt obligated to finish, and that motivation isn't conducive to my best personal analysis.
All to preamble- I'm aware of the context of my own playthrough and I'm aware of there being topics that genuinely matter to me- that I glossed over- and that I'm interested to hear better focused upon, especially now that I have had 'some' time to dwell on my own playthrough and am no longer in starstruck "I finished Yakuza" haze.
ALRIGHT LET'S ACTUALLY START THE VIDEO.
@ Y6 being about the engine, damn if that doesn't click.
13:46- Exorcism!??! You had a way more interesting playthrough than me lmao
19:17- @new heat, Never been a fan of extreme heat, but I dig the aging explanation you offer. Damns on the heat move stagnation though -.-, and the style deal made this game feel steps back entirely. I barely found 6 more entertaining to fight in than 3, which means in light of the Kiwami remakes you can play the entire series and only experience combat less fun than this one time- and it's in a game with vastly more interesting things going on in my opinion.
24:13- @lack of closure just IN GENERAL- YEAH. I spent the bulk of my playtime in Y6 waiting on big moments from all my past friends- a celebratory heist moment where every interaction Kiryu has had over the past 5(+1) games came into making it possible. Perhaps a bit hyperbolic there- but I expected SOMETHING, I thought we'd get a ton of Akiyama, a ton of Saejima, a ton of the orphans, deep cut references to characters that don't make sense to get a ton of screen time but deserve callouts- just something!
Even playing it safe and not digging all the way back to beloved moments in like 3- 5 JUST gave me a breadth of characters I loved and then 6 barely mentions anyone, it's just the new story with the new characters- and I enjoyed part of that- I enjoyed the Hirose family deal, but then the entire game was just this new stuff, it was strange. A bit easier to understand under the guise of Y6 being about the engine more than Yakuza tbh, so I'd gladly accept that explanation lol.
24:26- @Akiyama, What a damning red flag that became through the game too- he's a beloved character with a million directions he can go- and his role in 6 is to be someone Kiryu can call sometimes. Like, why?
27:22- @ghost photos!, WHAT A DAMN COP OUT!
38:00~ Every story ever didn't sprout from nothing, and understanding the motivations behind a piece can open up concepts the piece itself doesn't spell out and might be important to understand.
44:27- Honestly astonished that this slipped right past my eyes as I played because I was so willing to turn off my brain while playing- a bit embarrassing but that's the rub.
When my playthrough was so single mindedly focused on closing Kiryu's tale, I let things slip by so easily- sometimes I'd even raise an eyebrow then go "Eh, the context will blunt the blow" then didn't bother retaining focus to see if it did or not.
This specific moment with Kiryu basically telling a different culture is wrong and the face for that culture saying "Yeah, you're right" is such an on the nose moment that even devoid of your narration this just made my brain scream- And I Glossed Over during my play. Oh that's embarrassin', oof.
Attributing cultural differences to rights and wrongs and standing proud as the moral superiority, oh yeah that's solid.
(Ramble cut in twain)
Today is a diamond is a banger tho
I know some of the chords to that! I considered doing the karaoke bit for this episode, but decided it might be pretty not the tone of the video LOL. I did pick up the ukelele though, because I had been planning on going the extra mile for it. The last minute or so of this video is me badly playing those chords a couple of hours after learning them hahaha!
@@GCVazquez yeah not gonna lie, the actual ending to you video was a better fit haha
When it comes to the new combat for Kiryu for Y6 and K2, I actually despise it a lot, and I cant figure out why though. Like yea, I still played through the games anyways, but while people dog on the combat for Y3, I actually enjoy it a lot more than Dragon Engine Kiryu.
Thankfully with a brand new character and 2-4 new Fighting Styles, Yagami/the Judgment games made me forget how "ass" the combat is in Y6 and K2. Hell Judgment and Lost Judgment are actually my top 2 Yakuza games because of the gameplay, it's the best in the whole series
I think part of the problem with the combat is because they changed Kiryu's combat style too much. Before, he had a style that was direct and had few wasted movements. The new combat style felt too exaggerated, often using sweeping kicks to hit multiple enemies at once but would leave you open to attacks since they take longer to do. I believe it's to show off the rag-doll effects on the enemies in the new Dragon Engine than any real narrative purpose, since his attacks in the new style often looks like they exert more effort than the old Dragon style's attacks.
I'm glad you were honest about your thoughts on this game Yakuza 6 isn't a favorite of mine in the series either but I do like hearing points that I might have missed/haven't thought of I don't know if you've played Like A Dragon and the Judgment series yet but I'd think those would make great retrospective videos
I'm glad I could provide more talking points for you! I haven't played them yet but they're on the list! Going to be covering the whole RGG line-up actually :D
Lets go! so excited to see this one finally out!
Sorry for the wait on this one! Thank you for coming to the streams and participating in my process :D
The first part of this video makes me think of Solidus Snake's speech at the end of MGS2. Fitting for a story that could easily be thought of as a Metal Gear plotline. lol
My biggest problem with dragon engine is the terrible picture quality and how choppy it felt on last gen consoles. The newer DE games have improved slightly but yakuza 6 feels especially bad.
Idk if anyone feels this with me, but playing through all the Yakuza games and both Judgment games only just made me realize how not different Japan is compared to the U.S., cause I definitely noticed those Conservative undertones in Yakuza representing [at the time?] current day Japan.
Something people don't understand is in most developed countries there's always a multitude of perspectives and ideas and beliefs and people arguing. I don't think people do the most basic research about other cultures- but they'll sure handwave any problematic statement away as a different world. But it's not. It's the same world, and different jdeologies can create media in Japan just like they can in the US. Just like they can anywhere.
I love a lot about this game but I can't wait for it to get shit on
This is the right perspective to have!
Another questro rewatch in the bag. Hope to get a vid on like a dragon one day. This channel is like a warm cup of tea and a cozy blanket on a hard day.
wait, i just realised. Why the hell did Han Joon Gi's face just get butter smooth as soon as he was shot.
Like, literally, all the bruises just reverted-
Maybe there's something biological in play here that i don't know about IRL, but it still seemed off to me.