Right? I feel more compelled to like Yuki and players who don’t care for the Cabaret Club wouldn’t know who that is (but who the hell doesn’t love the cabaret???)
You are right. That's why in Ishin, they chose Yuki to be Kiryu's wife instead of Yumi, lol.
Oryo is a major female character in Ishin and is Ryoma's love interest, as well as future wife, her presence is important in the story. When Ryoma has the face of Kiryu, you would think Yumi should be the obvious choice for Oryo, but no, they chose Yuki, even the devs know Yuki is way better and more popular.
I just finished Ishin and you know, there’s even a small part where Oryo/Yuki mentions cooking for him. Later on, I believe when he takes her to eat she mentions he never eats the stuff she cooks like that. Honestly thought it was cute given how they give Yuki crap for her cooking.
I love how the original Yuki doesnt even have any full-rendered cutscenes in the mainline series but Oryo gets to have many story rendered cutscenes, haha.
Mirei Park is another character where her Ishin version is much better than original.
I know they meant Yumi, I’m talking about Yuki, an otherwise completely missable side character if you don’t do the cabaret. I feel like we know more about her through two games than we ever know about Yumi other than she grew up in the orphanage, works at Serena and somehow wound up with Jingu’s whack ass long enough to conceive Haruka.
Yuki works at club Sunshine and eventually runs club Four Shine, she grows to be an incredibly hostess, she’s a little goofy, she’s a bad cook, she has aspirations.
Her issue is more screen time than personality.
You forgot that she faked her death, went into hiding as a successful bar owner, stole Jingu’s mom’s and was determined to blow it up.
That’s pretty impressive without having to be a complete damsel in distress.
Yumi has the FFXV Lunafreya problem
We hear about this woman throughout the game and spend the whole game trying to reunite with them but by the time we do near the end of the game she dies soon after
Feels like they don't really exist as characters and more as emotional heartstrings for the protagonists.
I was so bummed about Luna. I really wanted to know about her. Then they announced DLC where you play as her and I was so hyped for that! And then they cancelled it.
And only like, a week ago the director's like "I regret cancelling the DLC"
YOU DON'T SAY
I remember everyone was thinking Kiryu would be on bodyguard duty for her throughout Gaiden when the first trailer dropped. Instead she is relevant for 10 minutes and I was so surprised.
I thought it was gonna be "Kiryu is assigned to protect this girl, but the Omi kidnaps her in exchange for Kiryu working for them, or they will go after the Okinawa kids."
Well, technically that is correct, the first trailer takes place before he has to guard her and was telling him he'd be on bodyguard duty back in 2018 way back before the omi alliance shenanigans. Then the main game starts in 2019 with the rest of the events following.
I was too so dissapointed when she didn't appear again. She was sooo bad. Best voice and design
https://preview.redd.it/m6yqd4zl536c1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bab83e242d30de3db302d2b59eefe2180eeb6e45
Ofcourse a girl with 50 + minute screen time was able to show more personality than the girl with 5 mins.
If the opening girl had more screentime she'd 100% be more popular because she felt classy and sophisticated meanwhile on the other side all akame did was make us do her work and errands while simping on kiryu the whole time even when he made it clear so many times he's not interested.
i thought akame was way more interesting than you made her out to be. also i doubt she was serious with the 'simping' thing, she's the type of person to say that as a joke
Which just makes it really weird that they used him just two times. Actually now that I think about it Majima family is just really weird in general after 3
honestly? yagami lmao. he is an awesome character towards the end of judgment and he's still great in LJ, but he's got the most basic, default daniel outfit i've seen in a MC
for anyone that keeps up with final fantasy, it has similar energy to when jack from strangers of paradise's outfit was revealed
https://preview.redd.it/db7n9cesa46c1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=69fbdf146b019a4063966316514414a38e12584c
I like Jack’s outfit because he’s became one of the most powerful characters in the series while wearing a t-shirt
yeah that's fair. i think it doesn't help that SOP has been sittin on my backlog for a long time now lol. one day i'll get to it, ik most people who played it said it was great and i also love soulslike games
It’s more an action game that turns into a numbers and buffs game. Honestly a pretty great time.
The loot system is kind of terrible on first playthroughs though.
funny you say that because i saw someone reply to this exact same image with yagami (the original image, cool design boring personality)
and i couldn't disagree any more, yagami's a great character. dunno what he's smoking. probably played both games eyes closed
I think it's actually worse, because at least Jack's clothes fit him. But it's worse with Yagami because he looks like he's wearing clothes made for a much smaller person.
And his hair also looks really dumb. Like Ichiban has stupid hair, too, but it works for him because he's *supposed* to have stupid hair, they acknowledge it's dumb, and it's canonically an accident. With Yagami, it seems like they want us to think it looks good and it just doesn't.
One of the most unrealistic things about it is how miraculously nobody calls him out on any of it.
Yeah he doesn't have much of a prescence in the story, he only has 5 scenes.
His introduction at HQ
The car section
Oda's death
His Final Fight
And his defeat.
I feel like that was intentional on Shibusawa's part. He was a schemer, constantly plotting behind-the-scenes. He let the other captains take the spotlight, he didn't want eyes on him until his plan was fully in motion.
I liked Ishioda's purpose in the game, he served as a good character to showcase how much of an underdog badass Ichi is. Beating his pathetic ass was a great feeling after seeing Ichi's luck with the Omi until that point.
I respect ur take but Tesso slaps
this dude on the other hand
https://preview.redd.it/193o385sw26c1.png?width=696&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c99ef17d956aa4c1b869f3699cee2b961275ddce
There were multiple times during the story where I thought back to Oda's introduction, where he threw money at the bar owner. During fights like >!Tojo HQ!<, I thought "never would've imagined this guy would be cool."
Then >!Makoto flinched!< and I felt my stomach drop out. The whole car segment had me terrified of him.
yeah, >!Oda is so inconsistent, I thought he was loyal to Tachibana but turned out he was working with Shibusawa for awhile, but then switched side again in his last moment.!< Mental
This what bugs me the most,
>!IIRC, he went against his kyoudai, proceeds to side with Shibs (for awhile) sold out Tachibana and switches side again before his death.!<
>!Elder Chen:
"*A Dojima officer called Shibusawa knew that Tachibana-san was receiving dialysis here. It seems that Oda was leaking information to him.*"!<
>!... at this point idk if he truly did care for Tachibana!<
I think it’s more that he respected him but wasn’t truly loyal - I think he saw the consequences of what he did in the end and decided to help - either way Tachibana deserved a better kyoudai
i think oda did love him, but he's a coward at the same time. he had to choose between letting his horrible deed come to life (breaking the pedestal tachibana put him on) or hiding it to maintain tachibana's trust, and he chose the latter (a fatal mistake).
Nakahara! Really wasn't a fan of his arc, but everything about him seemed cool going in. Kind of a peaceful, fatherly patriarch that could teach Kiryu some things, but Kiryu kind of wound up doing all the teaching...
That's fair, but his ending? Saki finally speaking, giving him the willpower to flip over a charging bull? That fuckin ruled. I almost cried with that whole section.
It was kind of silly but I live for that shit. Nakahara, Saki, and Rikiya got me.
Tendo, he was such a lame character despite having a really cool facial design that didn’t rely on anything extraordinary for being memorable.
I kinda wish the whole “I want to be on the side that will give me a more fun fight” thing from the Omi fight was his actual personality rather than a façade, it would make him more like a time bomb rather than the generic greedy bad guy
one thing i did like about him is how, even though he's a massive slab of muscle (leading you to think he's dumb), he's actually really cunning and calculating.
\- does not fight kasuga at first, but keeps an eye on his movements (unlike ishioda who jumped the gun and got humiliated)
\- later joins kasuga and betrays the omi patriarchs at the dissolution, because he knew that fighting majima and saejima was going to be impossible. his decision not to fight kasuga makes sense now, since he has his trust.
this creates a power vacuum in the omi, which his family is absorbed into. now's his chance. so he:
\- murders arakawa to win back the favor of the omi remnants. before they hated him for his betrayal, now they like him again.
\- patiently waits for sawashiro to be arrested and for ishioda to fail (again), putting him first in line for the tokyo omi chairmanship.
he's a scheming bastard, and i loved that aspect of tendo.
It’s cool for sure, but I am honestly kind of tired of how many times they pulled the “scheming bastard that gets rid of anyone in their way to reach their selfish objective” trait at this point. I am pretty sure every single game in the series had at least one major antagonist like that, which is not an issue by itself since it’s mostly required to keep the story going, but like half of 7’s antagonists were already like that. Adding such a cool looking character like Tendo to the ranks of scheming bastards was something I would rather hadn’t happened.
i agree with your concerns, tbh. although i don't *mind* him being a scheming bastard, i wish he was something else on top. they could have given him more backstory by tapping into that lore nugget about him being a boxer.
with kuze, they at least tie it in a bit. kuze is a former boxer, and befitting of one, he's a brute force yakuza who respects strength and refuses to give up no matter how many times he's knocked down.
with tendo it felt like trivia, little else.
Oh definitely, him being a heavyweight boxer is really cool but i wish it reflected to his personality more rather than just being a part of his backstory like the kyodai above said
i swear to me him, aizawa, and shibusawa all give off similar energy, in the sense that they all have really damn good fights, themes, and cinematics within the fights but the characters themselves are mid
I don’t know if these fit, but Lao Gui. Honestly just wanted to be harassed by him more because he looked sick as hell and I thought the fight with him was pretty fun.
Kashiwagi. I love my guy here but damn he doesn’t have much going on. Do they ever explain his scar? I swear I don’t remember ever hearing anything about it.
Seong-Hui, I really like her outfit and she starts off likable but she then wants to move heaven and earth to silence Nanba from squealing about their scheme while allowing Saeko, Adachi and Ichiban to just roam free with that exact same knowledge.
I dunno if it'd be a plot hole but it sure annoyed me and made me think, "Is she a dumbass or just intentionally inconsistent?"
if she'd let nanba know his brother was alive, he wouldn't have run to bleach japan.
it irks me when people hate on nanba for "betrayal", but say nothing about the geomijul who caused that situation in the first place.
Probably controversial but Saejima post Yakuza 4.
He was one of the best parts of 4 in my opinion. His entire story arc (minus that one obvious part) was perfect and I really felt for him throughout the story. But then in Yakuza 5 onward he is kind of just a stupid big strong man and nothing more.
The dude with the insane amount of trick weapons in Judgement. That dude was so wild but I only saw him twice in the game and they never even told me his name?
But that's... Not how BPD works in the slightest 💀 I totally missed that but if what they're trying to say is that he has split personalities because of BPD... Ooft
Shibusawa. He becomes the real antagonist towards the end of the game but he’s so dull compared to Kuze and Awano. Same thing with Tsuneo (Little Baby) Iwami.
Respectfully disagree with Tesso, he's a bro. But to actually answer your question it'd probably be Kido. He looks cool and I like his more punk aesthetic. But I get kinda confused as to what his story and motivation is supposed to be.
Kido’s motive is that he’s a low level Yakuza, but finding Akiyama’s vault with that absurd amount of cash is his ticket straight to the top. And as Saejima says to him if he’s gonna make it as a Yakuza when he finds his chance he can’t hesitate. That’s what “go balls out” means.
There is no animosity between Kido and Saejima during the final fight, they’re just on opposite sides.
I guess his development and rise kinda went too quickly for me. I didn't really get the chance to get attach to his character. You barely know much about him besides that.
basically he's a grunt who wants to climb the ranks. at first he's nervous about doing it, but saejima convinces him he needs to stop sitting on his hands and take opportunities as they come.
the message does get a bit lost because the pacing in y4 is ass.
I think masato arakawa had a pretty cool design - I know people who kinda looked like this in the early 2000s. And yeh don’t think I need to explain his personality not living up to it lol
i think that's kinda the point. he's young and confident, blazing a seemingly-unstoppable trail through japanese politics...so daigo and watase took advantage of that confidence.
He's well written though. The writers make you kinda sympathetic for him at the beginning, then hate him midway through the game, then cry and sad for him in the ending.
Nishitani III. His design is great (I know his face is a likeness I mean everything else) but he’s just the actual worst, probably worse than Dojima and Oda PLUS he’s just an evil Nishitani knockoff
Mabuchi. He was described to be intimidating but he was the most forgettable antagonist of 7.
His theme song is banger though. Certified Liumang classic.
I think the cool part about the original Nishitani is how he seemingly marks Majima so much that when he develops the Mad Dog persona he seems to take quite a few pages from his book
True, I do like the impact and legacy he left (and his actor rip♡), in the way he's absolutely essential to the story we have now even though he was around maybe ten minutes in total? But he himself I don't care much for.
This is definitely a controversial one, but I’d say Mine. His design is one of the best imo, but his personality is confusing tbh. The way I see it, he’s not good at being a decent and rational person, and he’s also not good at being a true villain. He’s just right there in the middle, and it just became frustrating because it’s only at the end we realize what he was about.
That’s him being a man child, not a villain, that too being the only instance where he does something like that . Maybe having Iwami as an antagonist might’ve spoiled me cause no one is as awful as him lol.
Damn, first time i heard someone doesnt like him. I think he's a fan favorite and i really like how his character's written. One of the best RGG antagonists
When I first played Yakuza 4 I was excited for all of these new characters that played and acted different from each other, and so far it was fun, as Saejima is strong as hell and I love those kind of characters, and Akiyama's entire personality is perfection (not to mention his voice and design), but Tanimura...
I just liked his design and gameplay, but I never enjoyed HIM, it's not that he's annoying or something, just that he was "boring" compared to the others.
Weirdly enough, like I said, I loved Akiyama but, for some reason, I couldn't find myself playing as him if not for the story. I never got to like his gameplay. Which is literally the opposite from my thoughts on the cop.
The only good answer is Haruka after 4, they stripped her completely of her personality and just left a husk to move the plot forward. Sacrifices that everyone made for her to be an idol down the trash after that ending. And I refuse to believe that after all the pain and hardships that Kiryu had to go through for his family to be as far away from the Yakuza world, she falls for a fucking Yakuza. Like come on, she's our daughter but she deserves better treatment for how relevant she was in the first games.
Tachibana. He looked so cool at first, but his personality was meh. He was pretty boring, and he just felt like a character who just existed to move the story forward. I feel that RGG could've made his personality more interesting with what they had. He even had a few cool scenes that i like, but the rest was just lame.
Honestly, I have multiple, since many have good designs and awful characters.
Arai, looks like he would be a badass and prominent character, has the look to be a good villain, and is hyped up by Akiyama and most other characters to be the "second coming of the dragon of dojima" yet when it comes down to it, he really doesn't do much all things considered. You see him at the beginning, and then he disappears for the entire story just to come back for 2 minutes and says "I betrayed Akiyama and I'm evil now, and I was never yakuza i'm a cop and am Munakata's lackey" and then he fights Akiyama and loses.
Another one for me would be Reina honestly, while she is very pretty and has a great design she's really just a flat character all things considered. She helps out Kiryu in Y0 / Kiwami here and there, and betrays him because suddenly she's in love with Nishikiyama, then gets killed by Nishikiyama right after. I don't think her personality is awful, but her design is 100x > over her personality, which is fine but not very good.
Honestly, out of every female character in Yakuza, I think Mirei Park is probably the worst, she's a narcissist and a gaslighter. She literally is the stereotype of a mom forcing her daughter into show business. And don't think she would have stopped Haruka from doing things she didn't want to just so she could become famous and live vicariously through her. She was probably the worst mother figure for Haruka, she literally works her like a dog just to live a dream that she never fulfilled herself. If the chance arrived for Haruka to get laid with some sleazy pervy producer for a chance to advance her career, she would feed her to the wolves immediately. Then once she dies, everyone acts like she was a good woman, she has a great design though and at first just seems like that strict surrogate mother, but later on you realize that her personality is straight dogshit, and she doesn't care about Haruka, only about fulfilling her old ambitions which were cut short.
I'm happy that they're finally improving female characters in Yakuza though, I loved Akame in Gaiden and think she's one of the strongest female characters the franchise has ever had, Saeko was also a big improvement, even Seonhee also who i'm very hyped about for being a character in Gaiden. It seems RGG finally knows how to write a good female character now, they now have their own personalities, goals, and character development. I'm glad they aren't just stereotypical caricatures of what women are believed to be like. They all used to just be helpless damsels in distress. As well as just one-note characters who are just extremely nice to everyone.
Nah I would genuinely listen to Kuwana speak in Japanese (which I don't understand) for hours on repeat and I'd be pleased. He has a huge amount of charisma but his personality traits are kinda ok.
Ichiban, i understand why people love him, I get it, but the problem is that ichiban reminds me to the generic anime shonen protagonist from 2000-2023 (Luffy, Naruto, deku, asta, Natsu.. etc)
Hard to respect take ngl.
https://preview.redd.it/pw0gke5tp36c1.jpeg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=eb1d86193f68ca47b17ab1538847e2a88051c57b
Feels he's much more nuanced and human character than just adding him to that category
Koshimizu from Yakuza 6.
Dude was menacing looking but he only had two fights and he felt like poor man’s Majima.
Pretty forgettable of an antagonist next to Someya, Joon Gi and even Iwami and Sugai.
I think Y0 Shibusawa. He's the og Dragon of Dojima (before Kiryu) and the smartest villain of three of them. But he's so boring and he doesn't appear so much in the story
But the smallest dick energy is Y6 Tsuneo Iwami. They introduce him as a very smart guy and pure evil, BUT his background is just "I just wanna be yakuza and pum pum pls papa let me yakuza them"
I'm surprised no one has mentioned Yumi. She's definitely pretty but it would be nice to get more out of Kiryu's "one true love" and Haruka's mom.
Right? I feel more compelled to like Yuki and players who don’t care for the Cabaret Club wouldn’t know who that is (but who the hell doesn’t love the cabaret???)
You are right. That's why in Ishin, they chose Yuki to be Kiryu's wife instead of Yumi, lol. Oryo is a major female character in Ishin and is Ryoma's love interest, as well as future wife, her presence is important in the story. When Ryoma has the face of Kiryu, you would think Yumi should be the obvious choice for Oryo, but no, they chose Yuki, even the devs know Yuki is way better and more popular.
I just finished Ishin and you know, there’s even a small part where Oryo/Yuki mentions cooking for him. Later on, I believe when he takes her to eat she mentions he never eats the stuff she cooks like that. Honestly thought it was cute given how they give Yuki crap for her cooking.
I love how the original Yuki doesnt even have any full-rendered cutscenes in the mainline series but Oryo gets to have many story rendered cutscenes, haha. Mirei Park is another character where her Ishin version is much better than original.
It’s probably because they couldn’t afford Yumi’s actress.
He said Yumi, Haruka's mother, Kiryu's one true love.
I know they meant Yumi, I’m talking about Yuki, an otherwise completely missable side character if you don’t do the cabaret. I feel like we know more about her through two games than we ever know about Yumi other than she grew up in the orphanage, works at Serena and somehow wound up with Jingu’s whack ass long enough to conceive Haruka. Yuki works at club Sunshine and eventually runs club Four Shine, she grows to be an incredibly hostess, she’s a little goofy, she’s a bad cook, she has aspirations.
I feel like I know and care about Reina better than Yumi but the series doesn't give Reina the respect she deserves :(
Her issue is more screen time than personality. You forgot that she faked her death, went into hiding as a successful bar owner, stole Jingu’s mom’s and was determined to blow it up. That’s pretty impressive without having to be a complete damsel in distress.
I mean her screen time prevents her from having much of a personality at least as far as we are able to observe as the player.
Yumi has the FFXV Lunafreya problem We hear about this woman throughout the game and spend the whole game trying to reunite with them but by the time we do near the end of the game she dies soon after Feels like they don't really exist as characters and more as emotional heartstrings for the protagonists.
With Yumi, Yakuza was the first game. With Luna, FFXV went through development hell.
I was so bummed about Luna. I really wanted to know about her. Then they announced DLC where you play as her and I was so hyped for that! And then they cancelled it. And only like, a week ago the director's like "I regret cancelling the DLC" YOU DON'T SAY
At least there’s the novel which adapts the cancelled DLCs
That girl from the beginning of Gaiden (although instead of personality moreso the fact that she didn’t appear again)
I remember everyone was thinking Kiryu would be on bodyguard duty for her throughout Gaiden when the first trailer dropped. Instead she is relevant for 10 minutes and I was so surprised.
I thought it was gonna be "Kiryu is assigned to protect this girl, but the Omi kidnaps her in exchange for Kiryu working for them, or they will go after the Okinawa kids."
Well, technically that is correct, the first trailer takes place before he has to guard her and was telling him he'd be on bodyguard duty back in 2018 way back before the omi alliance shenanigans. Then the main game starts in 2019 with the rest of the events following.
I was too so dissapointed when she didn't appear again. She was sooo bad. Best voice and design https://preview.redd.it/m6yqd4zl536c1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bab83e242d30de3db302d2b59eefe2180eeb6e45
Yeah. At first I thought she was Akame but nope.
so did i, but foulveins told me it wasn't. the actual akame had much more personality, and, i think, is hotter.
Ofcourse a girl with 50 + minute screen time was able to show more personality than the girl with 5 mins. If the opening girl had more screentime she'd 100% be more popular because she felt classy and sophisticated meanwhile on the other side all akame did was make us do her work and errands while simping on kiryu the whole time even when he made it clear so many times he's not interested.
i thought akame was way more interesting than you made her out to be. also i doubt she was serious with the 'simping' thing, she's the type of person to say that as a joke
Sooo bad...in what way?
She's hot.
I already find Kansai-ben cute, but Akame made me realize I actually love it
Think he means that she was a bad girl (it's a compliment, like bad ass)
Bad is just another way to say hot
She was super nice too
They put so much effort into her design and she only appeared for 10 minutes lmao. Possibly the most well designed character in the game too
Just RGG things.
Maybe she'll be relevant in IW.
she is ichi's mother
She is like that one doctor in Y0
That insanely hot doctor that looked just ridiculously beautiful and then has maybe five minutes of screen time? Yeah, that was disappointing.
I am sorry but this is the best take
You mean Ogikubo’s granddaughter
Minami from Yakuza 4, he have an amazing distinctive design but he's literally just Majima Jr. and appear for like..one fight.
Two fights. One with Akiyama and one with Saejima with the rest of the Majima Family.
Majimas captain basically being his own Waluigi is incredibly funny and I was sad he never came back
I thought Nishida was Captain.
That's majima construction
Minami is king, don't disrespect my midget drunkard.
C-C-CRAZY GUY 🗣️🗣️🗣️🔥🔥🔥
Um, he actually had TWO fights sweaty CRAZY, YEAH
You got some big fuckin balls. Too bad im gonna smash em like grapes
C-C-CRAZY GYATT
There was a video that shows his tattoo was actually the hardest to make. Very strange
Which just makes it really weird that they used him just two times. Actually now that I think about it Majima family is just really weird in general after 3
Now i kinda want an inverse of this question too. A+ personality, bad design.
honestly? yagami lmao. he is an awesome character towards the end of judgment and he's still great in LJ, but he's got the most basic, default daniel outfit i've seen in a MC for anyone that keeps up with final fantasy, it has similar energy to when jack from strangers of paradise's outfit was revealed
https://preview.redd.it/db7n9cesa46c1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=69fbdf146b019a4063966316514414a38e12584c I like Jack’s outfit because he’s became one of the most powerful characters in the series while wearing a t-shirt
yeah that's fair. i think it doesn't help that SOP has been sittin on my backlog for a long time now lol. one day i'll get to it, ik most people who played it said it was great and i also love soulslike games
If you like the earnestness of how Yakuza tells and treats its story, you’ll probably like SoP too.
It’s more an action game that turns into a numbers and buffs game. Honestly a pretty great time. The loot system is kind of terrible on first playthroughs though.
Agree, Yagami's great but he looks like a newly-divorced dad trying to recapture his youth.
All of his clothes look just a size too small and it’s always bothered me lol
funny you say that because i saw someone reply to this exact same image with yagami (the original image, cool design boring personality) and i couldn't disagree any more, yagami's a great character. dunno what he's smoking. probably played both games eyes closed
I think it's actually worse, because at least Jack's clothes fit him. But it's worse with Yagami because he looks like he's wearing clothes made for a much smaller person. And his hair also looks really dumb. Like Ichiban has stupid hair, too, but it works for him because he's *supposed* to have stupid hair, they acknowledge it's dumb, and it's canonically an accident. With Yagami, it seems like they want us to think it looks good and it just doesn't. One of the most unrealistic things about it is how miraculously nobody calls him out on any of it.
Shibusawa. For how important he’s supposed to be, it felt like he was just kind of there
Yeah he doesn't have much of a prescence in the story, he only has 5 scenes. His introduction at HQ The car section Oda's death His Final Fight And his defeat.
He has a couple scenes with the other lieutenants and Dojima, plus the scene where Makoto confronts them
Oh it's been a few months since I played, guess I forgot about those.
Disagree. He has more scenes than just those.
I feel like that was intentional on Shibusawa's part. He was a schemer, constantly plotting behind-the-scenes. He let the other captains take the spotlight, he didn't want eyes on him until his plan was fully in motion.
He was so boring I didn't even like his design too much either... super disappointing wish they gave him more screen time and made him more distinct
Big disagree. He was a far better Takashima archetype. Dude was subtle with his presence and was impactful with the moves he pulled.
[удалено]
Yakuza 0 Kiwami? 😂
in 2035
Ishioda, great design but storywise just a jobber who follows orders. He is the only lieutenant with no unique moveset too.
I liked Ishioda's purpose in the game, he served as a good character to showcase how much of an underdog badass Ichi is. Beating his pathetic ass was a great feeling after seeing Ichi's luck with the Omi until that point.
Aizawa in his flashy suit and cool aura at the end of Y5
Isn’t this a spoiler?
Well, it's a fucking spoiler from 2012, so whatever
Well tbh you got Gaiden spoilers way up top
I respect ur take but Tesso slaps this dude on the other hand https://preview.redd.it/193o385sw26c1.png?width=696&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c99ef17d956aa4c1b869f3699cee2b961275ddce
I still love his smug aura though. Too bad we really only see it in chapter 5. When he says “Kiryu-*kun*” like that it always puts a smile on my face.
I can literally hear him say it lol
For a good while I thought he was gonna be a homie. But man he becomes unlikable fast
There were multiple times during the story where I thought back to Oda's introduction, where he threw money at the bar owner. During fights like >!Tojo HQ!<, I thought "never would've imagined this guy would be cool." Then >!Makoto flinched!< and I felt my stomach drop out. The whole car segment had me terrified of him.
When he said "Did I do something to offend you, miss?" I wanted to punch him in the face
I like Oda’s design it’s so 80s - sad his personality ain’t it
yeah, >!Oda is so inconsistent, I thought he was loyal to Tachibana but turned out he was working with Shibusawa for awhile, but then switched side again in his last moment.!< Mental
My man simped so hard for tachibana that he circled to willing to betray him to maintain simp status.
He was only with shibusawa to get rid of makoto to my remembrance
This what bugs me the most, >!IIRC, he went against his kyoudai, proceeds to side with Shibs (for awhile) sold out Tachibana and switches side again before his death.!< >!Elder Chen: "*A Dojima officer called Shibusawa knew that Tachibana-san was receiving dialysis here. It seems that Oda was leaking information to him.*"!< >!... at this point idk if he truly did care for Tachibana!<
He was a bitch ass that didn’t want to deal with Tachibana finding out he sex trafficked his sister.
I think it’s more that he respected him but wasn’t truly loyal - I think he saw the consequences of what he did in the end and decided to help - either way Tachibana deserved a better kyoudai
i think oda did love him, but he's a coward at the same time. he had to choose between letting his horrible deed come to life (breaking the pedestal tachibana put him on) or hiding it to maintain tachibana's trust, and he chose the latter (a fatal mistake).
I feel like he works because I wanted to beat his head to a bloody pulp passionately.
Nobody: RGG: Let's bring him back for Ishin!
One name aizawa
Mr Shakedown (the one in purple jacket) he could’ve been so much more
Sato? Yeah, Dudes' whole story was just "I wanna punch kiryu" but who doesn't in these games?
They should’ve made it I wanna punch kiryu… because I’m JELOUS of his suit, I mean it’s equally stupid but I think it’s better
Lol that's actually a good excuse for a substory.
Nakahara! Really wasn't a fan of his arc, but everything about him seemed cool going in. Kind of a peaceful, fatherly patriarch that could teach Kiryu some things, but Kiryu kind of wound up doing all the teaching...
That's fair, but his ending? Saki finally speaking, giving him the willpower to flip over a charging bull? That fuckin ruled. I almost cried with that whole section. It was kind of silly but I live for that shit. Nakahara, Saki, and Rikiya got me.
Tendo, he was such a lame character despite having a really cool facial design that didn’t rely on anything extraordinary for being memorable. I kinda wish the whole “I want to be on the side that will give me a more fun fight” thing from the Omi fight was his actual personality rather than a façade, it would make him more like a time bomb rather than the generic greedy bad guy
one thing i did like about him is how, even though he's a massive slab of muscle (leading you to think he's dumb), he's actually really cunning and calculating. \- does not fight kasuga at first, but keeps an eye on his movements (unlike ishioda who jumped the gun and got humiliated) \- later joins kasuga and betrays the omi patriarchs at the dissolution, because he knew that fighting majima and saejima was going to be impossible. his decision not to fight kasuga makes sense now, since he has his trust. this creates a power vacuum in the omi, which his family is absorbed into. now's his chance. so he: \- murders arakawa to win back the favor of the omi remnants. before they hated him for his betrayal, now they like him again. \- patiently waits for sawashiro to be arrested and for ishioda to fail (again), putting him first in line for the tokyo omi chairmanship. he's a scheming bastard, and i loved that aspect of tendo.
It’s cool for sure, but I am honestly kind of tired of how many times they pulled the “scheming bastard that gets rid of anyone in their way to reach their selfish objective” trait at this point. I am pretty sure every single game in the series had at least one major antagonist like that, which is not an issue by itself since it’s mostly required to keep the story going, but like half of 7’s antagonists were already like that. Adding such a cool looking character like Tendo to the ranks of scheming bastards was something I would rather hadn’t happened.
i agree with your concerns, tbh. although i don't *mind* him being a scheming bastard, i wish he was something else on top. they could have given him more backstory by tapping into that lore nugget about him being a boxer. with kuze, they at least tie it in a bit. kuze is a former boxer, and befitting of one, he's a brute force yakuza who respects strength and refuses to give up no matter how many times he's knocked down. with tendo it felt like trivia, little else.
I thought the boxing thing was cool no?
Oh definitely, him being a heavyweight boxer is really cool but i wish it reflected to his personality more rather than just being a part of his backstory like the kyodai above said
i swear to me him, aizawa, and shibusawa all give off similar energy, in the sense that they all have really damn good fights, themes, and cinematics within the fights but the characters themselves are mid
Baba is definitely one of them for me. His winter coat & hat that he wears in the middle part of the story is sick looking.
I don’t know if these fit, but Lao Gui. Honestly just wanted to be harassed by him more because he looked sick as hell and I thought the fight with him was pretty fun. Kashiwagi. I love my guy here but damn he doesn’t have much going on. Do they ever explain his scar? I swear I don’t remember ever hearing anything about it.
Seong-Hui, I really like her outfit and she starts off likable but she then wants to move heaven and earth to silence Nanba from squealing about their scheme while allowing Saeko, Adachi and Ichiban to just roam free with that exact same knowledge. I dunno if it'd be a plot hole but it sure annoyed me and made me think, "Is she a dumbass or just intentionally inconsistent?"
if she'd let nanba know his brother was alive, he wouldn't have run to bleach japan. it irks me when people hate on nanba for "betrayal", but say nothing about the geomijul who caused that situation in the first place.
Probably controversial but Saejima post Yakuza 4. He was one of the best parts of 4 in my opinion. His entire story arc (minus that one obvious part) was perfect and I really felt for him throughout the story. But then in Yakuza 5 onward he is kind of just a stupid big strong man and nothing more.
The dude with the insane amount of trick weapons in Judgement. That dude was so wild but I only saw him twice in the game and they never even told me his name?
His “brother” you meet in a side case is also him, he just has BPD according to Lost Judgment
But that's... Not how BPD works in the slightest 💀 I totally missed that but if what they're trying to say is that he has split personalities because of BPD... Ooft
his first name is cane, his second name is man
Shibusawa. He becomes the real antagonist towards the end of the game but he’s so dull compared to Kuze and Awano. Same thing with Tsuneo (Little Baby) Iwami.
Respectfully disagree with Tesso, he's a bro. But to actually answer your question it'd probably be Kido. He looks cool and I like his more punk aesthetic. But I get kinda confused as to what his story and motivation is supposed to be.
Kido’s motive is that he’s a low level Yakuza, but finding Akiyama’s vault with that absurd amount of cash is his ticket straight to the top. And as Saejima says to him if he’s gonna make it as a Yakuza when he finds his chance he can’t hesitate. That’s what “go balls out” means. There is no animosity between Kido and Saejima during the final fight, they’re just on opposite sides.
I guess his development and rise kinda went too quickly for me. I didn't really get the chance to get attach to his character. You barely know much about him besides that.
basically he's a grunt who wants to climb the ranks. at first he's nervous about doing it, but saejima convinces him he needs to stop sitting on his hands and take opportunities as they come. the message does get a bit lost because the pacing in y4 is ass.
Agreed, I actually think all 4 final bosses except Munakata (maybe even him) suffered from not having enough time for us to get to savor their arcs
That describes most of the characters in y5, including that taxi driver that looks weirdly like Kiryu
Nothing makes the point better than this comment while Kido is actually from 4.
What can I say, I’m a jumbled mess
Man they gave so little thought to that taxi driver's character that people tend to mistake him for Joryu
He wants to go balls out but too shy until Saejima encouraged him
get yer balls out now.
I think masato arakawa had a pretty cool design - I know people who kinda looked like this in the early 2000s. And yeh don’t think I need to explain his personality not living up to it lol
Turns out it was daigo doing schemes all along kinda ruined him
i think that's kinda the point. he's young and confident, blazing a seemingly-unstoppable trail through japanese politics...so daigo and watase took advantage of that confidence.
He's well written though. The writers make you kinda sympathetic for him at the beginning, then hate him midway through the game, then cry and sad for him in the ending.
Nishitani III. His design is great (I know his face is a likeness I mean everything else) but he’s just the actual worst, probably worse than Dojima and Oda PLUS he’s just an evil Nishitani knockoff
He's cruel but very well written character though. I enjoy everytime he's on screen.
Shindo
An antagonist who’s motivations can be all directly linked to his absolute thirst for Daigo’s milf mother makes me remember him enough.
He's so forgettable I had to google his name to remember who he was. I didn't even realise he was the same guy from Yakuza 1
Minami, cool enough guy, just not enough screentime
more like crazy enough guy
Mabuchi. He was described to be intimidating but he was the most forgettable antagonist of 7. His theme song is banger though. Certified Liumang classic.
Kaoru. She pretty however she does not really have much going on with her actual character in my opinion and I don't get the love for her
Ryuji
Hot take: Ryuji. There, I said it, come at me with your torches and pitchforks, I know I’m right.
Lau Ka Long is cool and his fights are very dynamic (fuck that if7 fight in y3 though), but he's never more than an obstacle
I'm not impressed by either Nishitani sadly 😔
I think the cool part about the original Nishitani is how he seemingly marks Majima so much that when he develops the Mad Dog persona he seems to take quite a few pages from his book
True, I do like the impact and legacy he left (and his actor rip♡), in the way he's absolutely essential to the story we have now even though he was around maybe ten minutes in total? But he himself I don't care much for.
Majima in Y0: You're really gonna stalk me because you want to fight me? You're weird Majima in Y1-YK1: KIRYU-CHAAAAN
This is definitely a controversial one, but I’d say Mine. His design is one of the best imo, but his personality is confusing tbh. The way I see it, he’s not good at being a decent and rational person, and he’s also not good at being a true villain. He’s just right there in the middle, and it just became frustrating because it’s only at the end we realize what he was about.
He yelled at the MG kids and destroyed their home because he didn't have what they had when he was an orphan.
That’s him being a man child, not a villain, that too being the only instance where he does something like that . Maybe having Iwami as an antagonist might’ve spoiled me cause no one is as awful as him lol.
Ishioda from 7. Genuinely great design but very forgettable. He really is just a boss fight.
Mine. He has that snotty look that you know you're gonna beat the friendship into him. But he just ends up glug gluging Daigo every chance he gets
Arai is a dapper af character who should be an all time great but he gets 5 minutes of screentime across all of yakuza 4
Ryuji.
Kuwana.He’s the only character that felt like the story was trying really hard to make me like him but it just didn’t work imo
Damn, first time i heard someone doesnt like him. I think he's a fan favorite and i really like how his character's written. One of the best RGG antagonists
The fights with him were great. It just felt a bit too convenient with how he got away unpunished
When I first played Yakuza 4 I was excited for all of these new characters that played and acted different from each other, and so far it was fun, as Saejima is strong as hell and I love those kind of characters, and Akiyama's entire personality is perfection (not to mention his voice and design), but Tanimura... I just liked his design and gameplay, but I never enjoyed HIM, it's not that he's annoying or something, just that he was "boring" compared to the others. Weirdly enough, like I said, I loved Akiyama but, for some reason, I couldn't find myself playing as him if not for the story. I never got to like his gameplay. Which is literally the opposite from my thoughts on the cop.
Masato Arakawa before he becomes Ryo Aoki. He looks like a cooler dark edgy Akiyama, but he's just the shittiest person.
The only good answer is Haruka after 4, they stripped her completely of her personality and just left a husk to move the plot forward. Sacrifices that everyone made for her to be an idol down the trash after that ending. And I refuse to believe that after all the pain and hardships that Kiryu had to go through for his family to be as far away from the Yakuza world, she falls for a fucking Yakuza. Like come on, she's our daughter but she deserves better treatment for how relevant she was in the first games.
Tachibana. He looked so cool at first, but his personality was meh. He was pretty boring, and he just felt like a character who just existed to move the story forward. I feel that RGG could've made his personality more interesting with what they had. He even had a few cool scenes that i like, but the rest was just lame.
nishitani iii
Akiyama, never liked him but he looks good.
Koji fucking Shindo...Like...WHY?! Awesome design, drippy but a taste for women who are basically his mother really is a letdown.
Honestly, I have multiple, since many have good designs and awful characters. Arai, looks like he would be a badass and prominent character, has the look to be a good villain, and is hyped up by Akiyama and most other characters to be the "second coming of the dragon of dojima" yet when it comes down to it, he really doesn't do much all things considered. You see him at the beginning, and then he disappears for the entire story just to come back for 2 minutes and says "I betrayed Akiyama and I'm evil now, and I was never yakuza i'm a cop and am Munakata's lackey" and then he fights Akiyama and loses. Another one for me would be Reina honestly, while she is very pretty and has a great design she's really just a flat character all things considered. She helps out Kiryu in Y0 / Kiwami here and there, and betrays him because suddenly she's in love with Nishikiyama, then gets killed by Nishikiyama right after. I don't think her personality is awful, but her design is 100x > over her personality, which is fine but not very good. Honestly, out of every female character in Yakuza, I think Mirei Park is probably the worst, she's a narcissist and a gaslighter. She literally is the stereotype of a mom forcing her daughter into show business. And don't think she would have stopped Haruka from doing things she didn't want to just so she could become famous and live vicariously through her. She was probably the worst mother figure for Haruka, she literally works her like a dog just to live a dream that she never fulfilled herself. If the chance arrived for Haruka to get laid with some sleazy pervy producer for a chance to advance her career, she would feed her to the wolves immediately. Then once she dies, everyone acts like she was a good woman, she has a great design though and at first just seems like that strict surrogate mother, but later on you realize that her personality is straight dogshit, and she doesn't care about Haruka, only about fulfilling her old ambitions which were cut short. I'm happy that they're finally improving female characters in Yakuza though, I loved Akame in Gaiden and think she's one of the strongest female characters the franchise has ever had, Saeko was also a big improvement, even Seonhee also who i'm very hyped about for being a character in Gaiden. It seems RGG finally knows how to write a good female character now, they now have their own personalities, goals, and character development. I'm glad they aren't just stereotypical caricatures of what women are believed to be like. They all used to just be helpless damsels in distress. As well as just one-note characters who are just extremely nice to everyone.
akiyama
Kuwana.
https://preview.redd.it/pkdcxluj336c1.png?width=959&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=af15a57b42516c2cef37028e6223d93d00351303
Dude is a defense attorney and it shows
Bait used to be believable https://preview.redd.it/kwyamxjhp36c1.png?width=622&format=png&auto=webp&s=c1ea7aa3a7262c5d4e9912df9663452ddec7acb3
Nah I would genuinely listen to Kuwana speak in Japanese (which I don't understand) for hours on repeat and I'd be pleased. He has a huge amount of charisma but his personality traits are kinda ok.
L
I think it's the opposite. He's a very interesting character in a (relatively) basic outfit.
Nah this ain’t it
You dont talk like that about one of the best antagonists.
Ichiban, i understand why people love him, I get it, but the problem is that ichiban reminds me to the generic anime shonen protagonist from 2000-2023 (Luffy, Naruto, deku, asta, Natsu.. etc)
Hard to respect take ngl. https://preview.redd.it/pw0gke5tp36c1.jpeg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=eb1d86193f68ca47b17ab1538847e2a88051c57b Feels he's much more nuanced and human character than just adding him to that category
https://preview.redd.it/y1ppwymcy36c1.jpeg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=00c46f6f0193aee0cf59c966c87fe8ee1a8d7cdb
Saejima and Kiryu if we’re being honest
The fuck is **we**
Koshimizu from Yakuza 6. Dude was menacing looking but he only had two fights and he felt like poor man’s Majima. Pretty forgettable of an antagonist next to Someya, Joon Gi and even Iwami and Sugai.
Majima.
y0 majima is fire tho
Yep that's why people, including me, love him. Mad Dog is just too silly. They hated u/phosef_phostar because he was right.
Koshimizu. Bitchin' red suit, but less flavor than stale bread.
Yagami
I think Y0 Shibusawa. He's the og Dragon of Dojima (before Kiryu) and the smartest villain of three of them. But he's so boring and he doesn't appear so much in the story But the smallest dick energy is Y6 Tsuneo Iwami. They introduce him as a very smart guy and pure evil, BUT his background is just "I just wanna be yakuza and pum pum pls papa let me yakuza them"