Kiryu is back? Already?

 Backstreet's back, alright!

I think the recent Saints Row debacle has made me appreciate the absolute mastery of Yakuza even more than I already did. Now if you've hung around here a little bit that's going to sound like a supremely loaded statement, given that I sing the praises of Yakuza so much you'd think they were paying may way through college; but the truth is that it's the failures of the Saints Reboot that has highlighted the successes of Yakuza franchise all the more for me. When they promised to nail that blend between seriousness and comedy invoking the name of Saints Row 2, I had to scoff at the true king of that balance; the Yakuza franchise, and the perfect protagonist who encapsulates that spirit of the dead pan heroic idol who can front the serious moments, and the affable straight-man off which the silliness can bounce, Kiryu Kazuma.

Kiryu is the amalgamation of all the cliché 'tortured gangster' stereotypes rolled up into one immaculately dressed fatherly package who deftly skirts around the moral issue of belonging to a supremely violent criminal organisation by somehow being unerringly devoted to beating money out of only 'bad guy Yakuza'. I swear, the only time Kiryu ever does anything morally questionable is at the very beginning of his journey in Yakuza 0 where he beats a guy up for loan shark money, but that slight moral darkness is immediately overshadowed by that man's prompt murder by a third party who then tries to pin it on Kiryu. "Oh he beat the guy up? Well at least he didn't kill him like everyone's saying; Kiryu is the innocent party here!" He still strong-armed a man for a slimy loan shark! But we can't bring ourselves to hold our main man accountable because he's just that darn classically heroic throughout the franchise.

Somehow in his entire long career he has never taken a life, with that single line being the major moral foil that Kiryu refuses to cross for that being the one-line which would forever corrupt his character; creating an almost sacrificial or religiously virtuous light on the man as he must skirt the dark corners of the criminal world ever adjacent to death but morally compelled to seek alternatives in his unending search to right the world's wrongs. Also, he literally adopts a tiny girl and a puppy in the same game. Oh, but hang on! We can't have Kiryu, virtuous and Christ-like figure as he, implicated in the debaucherously immoral act of procreation in order to make this girl. He must be virtuous and virtuous, if you're picking up what I'm putting down. (I'm saying he has to be a virgin.) So even though the girl's mother is the love of his life, we must conjure some elaborate scheme to ensure the girl is born by someone else, but is still kind of Kiryu's child anyway because her mother's heart belonged to Kiryu. I know I'm splitting hairs on this but I just need you to understand the extent to which this character is peerless to a hilarious level! He's Christ-like to a degree that Zack Snyder couldn't even dream of!

He's also practically inhuman. And that's not just me saying that; the creator of Yakuza himself said that comparing John Wick to Kiryu Kazuma was unfair because Kiryu isn't human. And that is something we can see in the gameplay, particularly in Yakuza Kiwami 2 when you unlock the ability to block bullets with your block pose, and then can literally stand through a line of machine gun fire blocking it all with your super-fast wrists like some sort of gender-swapped Asian Wonder Woman. But then even inside of cutscenes Kiryu is a monster. My man has been shot, stabbed, shot again, blown up, shot a few more times, and became so damned powerful that there is one scene wherein he stares down and then side steps two oncoming RPG rockets: I am not kidding. I would not even think of making that up. Also he Tiger Dropped an actual Tiger. You can't forget that.

But why am I going nuts over Kiryu? Well, in essence I'm doing a bit of a post-mortem for a man who's time in the major Yakuza franchise has finally ended. He starred in seven stellar main entries (Even 3 is great once you get past the god-awful combat system) and carried the franchise to where it is today, but now it's time to give our man his break and let him live through his retirement. What is Kiryu, like 60 by the events of modern Yakuza? The guy just doesn't need to be throwing bloody fists around like he once did, or battling tigers and rocket launchers and helicopters and whatever else the sadists at RGG want to throw his way! They wouldn't even let my man get married or even have a romantic interest for more than a single game! At least he can rest. Oh wait, no he can't-

After Yakuza 6: Song of Life, the franchise was supposed to be passed onto the two new leads of the franchise, Ichiban and Yagami; for their dual series of Ryu Ga Gotoku and Judge Eyes. (Or 'Yakuza' and 'Judgement', as they're known in the west.) Yakuza Main was switching to an RPG style of game for the long haul, and Judgement would adopt the action fighting gameplay that Yakuza had become known for. Nothing would be lost, everything would be gained; the world would be happy. But then the unthinkable happened. If you remember when I last covered this, you might remember that Yagami's increadibly famous actor Takuya Kimura, was stuck with agents that had shut down any plans for Judgement to be ported to the PC for some inane fears over brand control, halting RGG Studio's plans for Judgement. So how has the team decided to fill this void? By bringing an old man out of retirement, that's how!

I understand Kiryu's cameo role in Yakuza 7 so that he could pass the torch on to Ichiban, it made a lot of sense. But not that he's done that, maybe he should have taken a bit of a back seat and enjoyed a life without worries. But instead we're looking at brand new Kiryu starring spin-off game, which I'm betting is going to play with that action fighting gameplay that RGG were previously going to reserve for the Judge Eyes games, and Yakuza 8 was revealed with Kiryu in a starring role next to Ichiban. (And rocking the sort of hair you'd expect from a Devil May Cry protagonist.) Oh, and we're getting a localisation of 'Like a Dragon: Ishin'; something I can pretty safely say none of us expected to happen. So are we eating good as Yakuza fans? Hell yeah we are! But is our boy Kiryu getting the rest he deserved? Not really.

This is kind of like if when Witcher 4 comes out, Geralt hops his way into the main story in a support role, and then goes on to star alongside the new hero and get his own spin-off. It would kind of spit in the face of that very touching scene when Geralt literally declares he's earnt a rest after the events of Blood and Wine and then turns directly to the camera as if to say "You got that? I'm about done with all this crap!" Then there was a out-of-universe goodbye from Doug Cockle. All of this gave fans the closure that they needed travelling along with this character for all these years and seeing him get his semi-happy ending. Kiryu has served as an unbending, uncompromising, force of nature for over forty, years (within the timeline of the games he started in) and in all that time he really stopped evolving personally after the events of 2. We still love the man, but unless there's anything more to do with his character, does he need to be bought back into the fold?

Again, I am not complaining about any of the incredible announcements we got because unlike a lot of the western game franchises that are slowly pulling apart at the seams; the Yakuza games have only been getting better and better; I just think there's plenty of room for cool new protagonists that might have more... shall we say... flexibility than Kiryu Kazuma does. I just think that at this point in his career Kiryu would serve best as an impressive backdrop in front of which more human and fallible heroes can struggle and learn to become an ounce of the legend he represents; that way we might see more incredible emotional moments that have us on the edge of our seats, which is something I know this franchise is capable of from past experience. Still, I love Yakuza and 2023 is going to be a damn RGG onslaught at this rate!