Like a Dragon series' actors on bringing their characters to life

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I don’t often get to speak on my love for Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio’s Like a Dragon series. Occasionally I get to speak about the newer games — such as Infinite Wealth — but I don’t get to indulge in my love for the classic titles, my nostalgia for a time when the series was called “Yakuza.” I got my chance recently when I interviewed the stars of the new Like a Dragon: Yakuza series coming to Prime later this year: Ryoma Takeuchi, who plays Kazuma Kiryu and Kento Kaku, who plays Akira “Nishiki” Nishikiyama. I also spoke with the show’s executive producer Eric Barmack.

Speaking about taking on the role of Kiryu, Takeuchi told me, “I think it’s really important to start from the ground-up and focus on the human emotion. How we feel things is the most important part to focus on — extracting that and expanding on it is the process to start anything, regardless if it’s based on an IP… What’s most important is not starting from the shell or the outside of things. Starting from the inside is the key, and the source material helps you out.”

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Asked about his familiarity with the series before being cast as Nishiki, Kaku said he tried to play the first game, but director Masahiru Take stopped him. “They wanted to follow the character in the script, and explore it from scratch and create a new version of Like a Dragon. So I decided not to play it.”

Barmack said that the Like a Dragon IP resonated with millions of people, and Prime wanted to bring it to audiences authentically. “For us, that was making the decision that this absolutely should be in Japanese with the best Japanese actors and a fantastic director. Your goal is to serve a gaming community authentically, but then also extract the portions of ‘Why is that game so popular? Why do people love these characters so much?’ How do you expand that audience by being thoughtful about storytelling in general?”

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The discussion culminated in my confession that I’ve played all of the games in the series (haven’t finished all of them, but that’s beside the point); Barmack also had, saying, “What connected with me is that the characters are finely drawn — you really feel like Kiryu and Nishiki and Yumi have souls. There was a quirky humor to it that was unique, and the world was big enough to tell lots of stories. There’s real estate stories, there’s the Tojo Clan, there’s the Omi Alliance — there are so many overlapping worlds that made me feel like it was worth putting together a premium series around it.”

Side note: Barmack and Takeuchi have both acknowledged me as Kiryu’s common-law wife, given how much time I’ve spent with the character (ten games and counting). That had no relevance to the interview — I just want everyone to know that my persistence has paid off.