More Yakuza 0 thoughts

• It’s not just Japanese faces and types, especially in the Osaka-based area it’s an interesting presentation of Chinese and Korean people from a Japanese perspective
• (a disproportionate share of Yakuza are ethnic Koreans or else burakumin, the outcast caste ethnically indistinguishable from other Yamato, the dominant “Japanese” ethnicity)
• Used to Majima from Kiwami as a figure of wacky fun; weird to take him seriously as a tragic figure bonding with a sex slave over being tortuously disfigured; interesting to find that “slugger” and “breaker” were real fighting styles
• Interesting how Yakuza fashion in ‘88 Tokyo is shiny fabrics and fancy tailoring and in more hayseed Osaka it’s like, checked fabric suits that “meant” the same kinda rube tryhard thing in America

Yakuza Zero discourse: Kiryu’s so great, he’s a friend to everyone!

Yakuza Zero discourse: Kiryu says trans rights!

me: well he’s a friend to fathers that bless him dating their seven-year-old

me: or that are excited to meet a hostess exactly like but not actually their daughter

me: or eight-year-olds he buys porn mags for cause Boy Solidarity

me: but that’s mostly because outside of the physical combat and ritualized honor of the Dojima Family he has no idea how to say “no”

Further Yakuza 0 thoughts:

• Inspired me to learn the history of the actual yakuza and Kabukicho and Golden Gai. Interesting!
• This has been a nice tour of a wide variety of quite different but all distinctly Japanese styles and faces
• I wonder if I’d appreciate it more if I was more familiar with Yakuza-movie tropes, but I think it’s mostly just performing them straight and I’m all “nice tropes!”
• On the other hand I wonder if it’ll follow the (remade) original and build to a batshit SEGA arcade climax where you fight a helicopter on a rooftop
• Now that I think of it that explains RE, too - Capcom also grew from an arcade model of storytelling as disjointed, increasingly much setpieces strung together by “yeah now this is happening” cutscenes
• They totally filmed like 30 1-minute gravure shorts with 80s-ass music and color schemes
• In fact, the music team must have loved going back to this whole 1988 Japan synth fantasia in general.
• Fishing minigame!

Needed something else to fill the “keep your thumbs and direction-oriented mind busy” vidya hole so I got Yakuza 0 on mad cheap discount

Thoughts:

• Wow, impressively new electronics in 1988 Japan looked like decently new stuff in the 1995 US, huh
• the 0-Kiwami (1 remake) gap of 1988-1995 is interesting and adds depth to my understanding of a period when “where’s Japan at?” really mattered to America
• the karaoke sequences where as they progress Kiryu becomes a player in the 80s-ass music video in his mind are hilarious
• reserving judgement on the all-cash advancement system
• In the first shot I noticed how not-ideal Kiryu’s tailoring was but dismissed it but then I saw Nishiki’s suit and heard him rag Kiryu on it and I realized they really put effort into animating fabric and made it matter
• can’t wait to see Majima’s outfits
• I was iffy about the Nishiki-Kiryu relationship carrying that weight in retrospect but it works
• The Japanese is laconically simple but idiomatic enough that hearing it while reading a subtitle translation is really interesting, probably levels up my Japanese a bit, but more than that I can actually appreciate the more “actorly” delivery of cadence and character