Amazon has announced a Like a Dragon TV series, and it’s airing on Prime Video later this year. Like a Dragon: Yakuza will span six episodes, three of which will arrive in late October, with the remaining three set to debut the following week.
In an announcement post, Amazon says the series will feature an “original story” based on the franchise, so it doesn’t sound as if Like a Dragon: Yakuza will adapt any particular game in the Like a Dragon (nee Yakuza) series.
With that being said, it sounds like the series will hew pretty closely to the first game; it’ll take place in 1995 and 2005 and will feature Kazuma Kiryu as its protagonist.
Stepping into the rather intimidatingly large shoes of Kiryu is actor Ryoma Takeuchi, who played the main role in Kamen Rider Drive and also provided the Japanese dub for Tim Goodman in the movie Detective Pikachu.
Like a Dragon: Yakuza will be directed by Masaharu Take, a movie and TV director whose works include 100 Yen Love, which was submitted (but not nominated) as the Japanese entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2015 Oscars.
Take says that he’s “poured out my heart, soul, and the experience that I have garnered over 35 years” into the series, and that it’s fitting that Like a Dragon: Yakuza should be released in “the year of the dragon”.
For his part, Takeuchi says he’s “truly honored” to be playing Kazuma Kiryu. He playfully directs viewers to “take a look at Kiryu’s intense fighting scenes with the Dragon tattoo on his back”. Sounds like those iconic shirtless rooftop battles will make an appearance in the show.
We don’t yet know which other iconic characters from the Like a Dragon-slash-Yakuza series will be making an appearance in Prime Video’s series. Hopefully, we’ll get to see regulars like Goro Majima and Haruka Sawamura develop their relationships with Kiryu.
Like a Dragon: Yakuza seems to be part of a push Prime Video is making to create more shows based on video games.
It joins the likes of the critically-acclaimed Fallout, which launched earlier this year, and the upcoming Tomb Raider series, which boasts the involvement of writer Phoebe Waller-Bridge.
We’ll get to see how Like a Dragon: Yakuza handles the story of Kazuma Kiryu when its first three episodes arrive on Prime Video on October 25th. The concluding three episodes will subsequently arrive on November 1st.
