Screaming about Yakuza 5's Finale (and More Yakuza Tomodachi Life Updates)

I initially just wanted to write about Yakuza 5's finale, but I figure this would be a good time to also write an update about my Tomodachi Life island! So instead, all of my very spoilery thoughts on Yakuza 5 will be confined to the second half of this blog post, in case anyone here just wants to see my cute Yakuza Miis.

First order of business: we have new inhabitants! Watase, Park, Katsuya, Date, Baba, Mayumi, and Milky have been added since last update. I still have some characters I want to add (Aizawa, Nakajima, Takasugi) but I'm waiting to unlock more costumes. I also tweaked some of the existing Miis so they look more accurate (read: older).

Since last we spoke, a lover's quarrel has emerged: Saejima professed romantic feelings for Hana, and later Hana admitted that her relationship with Akiyama was rocky at best. I had found the two eloping at the cafe in broad daylight! This was too much. I had to put a stop to this immediately. How juvenile; how tactless.

This was likely due to Hana being the only woman on the island for a long time, so her relationship points with other Miis must have naturally crossed that relationship threshhold, but regardless, a Saejima and Hana pairing just feels incorrect to me. I'm not a veteran of the shipping wars, I'm not big off the deepend of shipping or rarepairs or crackships or otherwise, romantic relationships are not really something I tend to seek out in media. So when two characters are paired up that have no interactions with eachother at all, I don't personally see the appeal. Apologies to the Saejima x Hana shippers who were rooting for these two, but if playing god in my Tomodachi Life island is a crime then arrest me god dammit!

I told Hana and Akiyama to make up and they enjoyed a cute vacation together.

On the topic of blooming romance, I had the most cursed experience ever opening my Tomodachi Life save on April 9th, 2024.

KIRYU has feelings for PARK!?

AND PARK HAS FEELINGS FOR KIRYU!?!?!

Oh my god, I was losing it.

Needless to say, I shut this shit down immediately. But, from this faux pas, I did grab the objectively funniest screenshot in my whole collection:

Onward:

Katsuya and Haruka were kind of becoming friends for a little bit, which honestly I found really cute? Had they met under literally and other circumstances then I think they could have been friends... but they had some falling out, Katsuya was likely trying to yoink her from Dyna Chair. I'm so glad Haruka emits fire when she's angry just like her father <3

Aaaaand returing to this island's main characters: Hana and Akiyama got married!

(Majima and Daigo on a date in the background 👀👀👀)

Look at Haruka and Kiryu! This shit is adorable.

Honestly in retrospect this marriage mechanic is a bit annoying because married people move to their own house on a different island plot, so every time I want to check up on them I need to leave the complex where everyone else is located, and it's such an overbearing hassle. This will likely be the first and last marriage on this island, lmao.

After the wedding, I spotted Majima and Daigo going on a night walk... by the island's cherry blossom tree... HMMM...

A very weird synergy with this game and Y5 is ˖⁺‧₊˚dreams˖⁺‧₊˚, and the dreams (and news stories) in this game feel like an ambien trip lmao what the hell are these!!!! I'm honestly surprised these screenshots are coming from a Nintendo game. I'm telling you, a game like this could not be made today; having 20-second news story segments created with low-res JPG stock photo backgrounds and obviously photoshop-filtered item PNGs would not fly at all today. They probably banged out all the assets for these news sequences within the span of a day. If this was made in 2024, that would've been chopped at cutting room floor or it would've been an additional six months to the development time. Nintendo will never make games like this ever again and it's genuinely sad!

Seeing Haruka being besties with everyone without the context of Yakuza 5 is great. There was this one AU idea I saw in a tweet once where the user headcannoned that Yakuza games were in-universe yakuza films being acted by Kiryu and co. and I think this island could be an extension of that. That being said I will still bully Park and feed her Loco Mocos every day until she rots away. But isn't this island just so cute?

That will be all for this Tomodachi Life recap. I feel like this game is picking up now that I have more islanders! We'll see if there's enough new content to make a third entry.

Anyway, everything below this point is considered spoiler territory: I will be discussing Yakuza 5 and it's finale for the remainder of this blog. You have been warned!

This is the part where I word-vomit about Yakuza 5 and it's finale for 2.9k words: will any of this be comprehensible? Will this have any insightful analysis? Have I edited this well? Probably not!

I need you all to trust me when I say I will try as hard as I possibly can to be composed while writing this because MAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AAAAAAAJKGHASKDJGH

I love this game. I love this game so much. I didn't expect to finish it loving it as much as I do, but the finale gave me everything I wanted from a Yakuza finale that I haven't felt since Yakuza 0. That finale was hype, it was flashy, it was emotional, it was fucking MOVIES!!! This shit is movies!!!!!!

Coming off of Yakuza 1-4 I was preparing myself that the finale would drop the ball and leave me really uninterested (especially after 4, god that finale was a mess lol. Who thought that an hour of four boss fights straight in the same location with no cutscene padding was a good idea??), so imagine my god damn surprise when this game gave all of its protagonists a proper conclusion and ended on the perfect themetic note for its credits scene. Every single time I thought the story was getting too convoluted with the plot twists or a dumb contrivance came up, it immediately roped me back in. I haven't stopped thinking about this since. I love all these characters, I love Shinada, I love Kiryu, I love Haruka, I love Kamurocho, I love Yakuza, I love this series so much. AUUUUGUHHHGHH!!! Fuck me!!!!

I started playing Yakuza 0 after my spring semester in 2021 (around the same time I started my art accounts) and it immediately had me hooked. I clocked roughly 98 hours in only one or two weeks. Kiryu and Majima were amazingly written characters with interesting nuance, the plot was gripping and engaging, the twists were exciting without feeling contrived or forced for an emotional response, and while it did have a fair share of bullshit (e.g. cutscene bullets), it ended on such a strong note and gave a full proper conclusion to all its characters that I could forgive it.

I played Yakuza Kiwami and Yakuza Kiwami 2 very quickly afterwards at roughly 45 hours and 55 hours respectively. Prefacing my comments by saying that these games are strong four to four and a half star games: the writing was much weaker. The two Kiwami games were faithful remakes to the original PS2 titles to a fault in that the games kept the weird writing from when they were just starting to write Kiryu's character and figure out his interactions with other people.

Unfortunately, I started watching Japanese yakuza films only after I finished Yakuza 4, which is a shame because I think having the context the media that inspired this game series would've make me appreciate these two games more on my first playthrough. Yakuza films are flashy, melodramatic, perhaps unsophisticated in their stories and character arcs because the real cornerstone of those films is the awesome action scenes! What should happen in our yakuza film? Ten billion yen goes missing and we blow up the tallest tower in the city and kill half of our main characters! Why not aim for the damn stars? I definitely would have enjoyed the first two games more under this lens, because the whole premise of the first two plots revolving around Kiryu's lady trouble rang very annoying and off-character, lol.

I played Yakuza 3 and Yakuza 4 much more slowly over the course of my last few college semesters, and by the time I got to these titles I'd resigned that I likely wasn't going to find another title that had the spark that 0 had. Which is not to say these games were bad at all! Playing in the orphanage in 3 and seeing Akiyama and Saejima in 4 were great highlights, and as always the substories and side content was as funny as ever. But it was clear at this point that the enigma of Yakuza 0 was one achieved through hard work and multiple revisions and attempts at the genre.

SO, when I finished playing Yakuza 5 on April 3rd, 2024, one and a half years after starting this game on November 24, 2022, I was left shocked, astounded, gobsmacked, emotional—the Yakuza I fell in love with with Yakuza 0 was finally back in my lap with an engrossing story that fully utilized its amazingly written cast, with emotional tugs that felt deserved, with plot twists that were engaging and exciting, and ending on the perfect thematic note that the game had been building to. We are so fucking BACK!!!!!!!!

Yakuza 5 has so, so, so much content. I ended the game with 99 and a half hours and that was still skipping over the Glory Road/Coliseum and some of the minigames (mahjong and that dumbass chicken racing minigame as Shinada—I could have just completed it after the finale when you get two million yen but I didn't feel like it lol). I refuse to 100% this game to get the Amon missions, but even at the end of the road, there's still four boss battles to fight AND a bonus boss idol to take down as Haruka! This is easily a 120-hour game that was developed in a TWO GOD DAMN YEARS!!!! I feel like I was going insane when I saw that this was was the development time, and that this was an extension of the previous games whose development times were limited to one year. Maybe it's just due to how things are in the games industry these days, but a game with a two year development cycle could never even dream of a 100+ hour runtime. Granted, the RGG team has the luxury of reusing character models and animations and combat systems and environments since all games revolve around Kiryu and co. in Kamurocho, but this game still introduced three new cities, four side story quests with 3+ hours of gameplay each, upwards of 15 substories for each of the five main characters. I knew that this game would have five protagonists and I was still shocked that Shinada got a fully fleshed-out minigame sidestory, AND that the finale was a four-chapter act that was STILL introducing new substories. There's so much in this game, and it's all good, and it landed the ending.

Akiyama's conclusion was by far the weakest but I feel like saying that is still a compliment. Kanai didn't really have strong personal motivations and it felt like he had no stakes in the finale so his inclusion feels unsatisfying, but like, he's obligated to be present on basis of him being in Omi. Akiyama's monologue was dumb and it could have been much better if it just rehashed that he was protecting Kamurocho to protect Park's dream, Haruka's dream, and the dreams of everyone in Tokyo who were rooting for Haruka. His "maybe I'll go down as one of the greats too!" reasoning is reductive. Doesn't he have the most money out of anyone in the city? But maybe this speech was more meant to portray his cockiness and lackadaisical nature even in the face of his city crumbling before him? It's not a huge deal, because the scene after their fight where Watase and the three yakuza clans all bow down to Akiyama was SO god damn cool. I'm so lame for being wowed by this, but COME ON!! The imagery of rivaling yakuza clans bowing in unison to some jackass money lender because he beat up one big guy? That shit was awesome.

Saejima is an amazing character and I hate how everyone thought his part of the story was boring. I legitimately enjoyed his gameplay sequence, even the prison chapters and the hunting side story—I love reading up about native hunting cultures and I was luckily playing this section during snowy midnights in December last year, so the vibes were perfect.

Majima, on the other hand, was kind of a little bitch in this game! I have beef with his appearance in Saejima's first chapter—wanting to fight your brother to make sure he's tough enough for prison is very in-character for Majima, but you don't have the balls to fight him yourself so you send your whole family to rough him up instead while you sit back and watch? And his excuse was that he was getting old and too weak to fight him? And THEN reversing that in the finale saying that Saejima was the one who went soft instead? Outside of whether this was in-character, it's a bitch move for sure. I can't comment too much on this since, like, Majima just isn't in the game before the finale and his work is done off-screen, but I initially interpreted this as the two having some animosity between one another (maybe Majima's mad at Saejima for leaving him again after finally being reunited and doesn't want to admit it?... aw).

Saejima started the game wanting to toughen himself up as a message to the newer generation of Tojo soldiers. As explored more in Yakuza 4, the newer generation favors social status and capital—but the yakuza isn't just a business, it's an underbelly of thugs and delinquents willing to go to war at the drop of a hat for their patriarch. If you want to walk this path, you need strength and grit. I think this character motivation gets closure with Shinada's boss fight.

I initially thought Shinada's fight with Baba was forced but now I get it—and I think it's my favorite moment in the finale if not the whole game. Shinada's reason to fight Baba was fueled by wanting to pass on Saejima's message to Baba ("I'm going to make you pay for everything you've done 'til now. If I don't, you'll disappoint everyone who still has faith in you")—walking away and leaving the camera is the metaphor of Baba wanting to run away from the problems he signed up for without earning it—wanting to swear a brotherhood oath to Saejima while still being hands-deep in blood. At the end, he still showed up to the idol concert with a rifle—Even after his Part 2 fight with Saejima and his Part 5 conversation with Kiryu, I still was not sure what side Baba would be on come the finale! As he walks away in concert, Shinada stands as a barrier so Baba can prove to himself that he's willing to fight to change his path. This also gets closure for Saejima: he (indirectly) gets to teach the newer generation Baba that he can't survive on this path of conniving and political stratagem without the resilience to back it up.

In this fight, both Shinada and Baba get closure, and it's fucking fantastic. Shinada crying to Haruka's performance reflecting on how small he must've looked on the field and Baba's prisonmates returning to save him is the best fucking scene in this whole game. Both Shinada and Baba feel lost and alone, and both of them realize that they do have found families they can return to. Shinada crying on the phone to Takasugi, who says that Nagoya is worried sick about him??? UGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. I love Shinada so much. What an amazing character. Baba too.

And lastly, Kiryu and Haruka.

There was such an interesting tension playing Haruka's section. She's introduced in a brief glimpse in a TV interview dressed as an idol. When her section starts proper, she's introduced in a flashback where Park convinces Kiryu to leave Morning Glory so Haruka can be safe in her idol career. Haruka is shown eavesdropping and very visibly upset—obviously for the fact that she'll be cut off from her main parental figure for the indefinite future, but I also have to ask if this runs deeper. This dream to become an idol is so muddied by her circumstances: it's obscured by Park, who's desperate to find a new breakout star after her last talent T-Set got scooped by Osaka Talent; and it's obscured by Morning Glory, who would be struggling without her and Kiryu, but the money would help fund the futures for the rest of the kids; and it's also indirectly obscured by Kiryu, who is making the ultimate sacrifice of cutting himself off from his own kids in order to support her. If she backs out of this dream now, his sacrifice would have all been in vain. Haruka proves to be hardworking to become an idol, but when playing I mostly took the whole idea of her dream in stride; when Park dies, Haruka commits to holding the Tokyo Dome concert explicitly to fulfill Park's dream, and to make it up to all the mentors who supported her journey. Additionally, as more explored in Shinada's section and the finale, the dream of an idol doesn't begin an end at the idol. Haruka's dream is being carried by her fans—those who are rooting for her to succeed, those who are vicariously living their dreams through Haruka, those who are using Haruka as proof that if she can make her dreams come true, they can as well. Haruka's dream is not Haruka's, and I have to argue it was never her dream to begin with.

As for Kiryu's conclusion, the Aizawa twist was bullshit. But also, I'm kinda not mad about it? And it kinda makes sense? Kurosawa's journey in the yakuza ranks was a brutal climb from nothing; he had to fight tooth and nail to become chairman. When he discovers he has cancer, he constructs this plot to take down Tojo and weaken Omi so that his son Aizawa can take over Omi unopposed. Aizawa is such a random character to have been granted this, but at the same time, this is not unlike exactly what happened with Daigo! Aizawa even explains this: Daigo was the song of a Tojo family patriarch, had the unbridled support of the fourth chairman, and came into power when Tojo was fractured with no chairman and could rise almost unopposed. If what Kurosawa's doing is so wrong, then shouldn't that same energy be directed to Daigo? And that itself could be read under the lens of dreams. Kiryu finds himself on both ends of this dream equation: he benefitted when projecting the dream of becoming chairman onto Daigo so he could run away from the responsibility of Tojo and chase his own dream of running an orphanage. Now, that karma creeps back onto him when Park and the people of Tokyo project the dream of becoming an idol onto Haruka: he has to concede his dream of running an orphanage, the reason why he left Tojo in the first place, and now he's left with nothing. In this fight with Aizawa, wounded and bleeding out, he atones responsibility and protects Tojo from it's downfall.

I love how the theme of dreams was explored here. In the end, after Haruka performs her concert and fulfils Park's dream, she reclaims her dreams and decides to step down on the spot so she can go back to what matters most to her: her family. The final scene before the credits being Haruka running for her life out of the concert, away from the dream that so many people projected onto her, was very powerful imagery.

Plus, the last note of Dreamline's ballad song cutting to Aizawa falling to the ground? Too good.

IN CONCLUSION:

While not a perfect conclusion, this gave me everything I wanted from a Yakuza game. Playing through the backlog allowed me to gain a new appreciation for this series—seeing how it was made, the media it was inspired from, and seeing how far the game systems came from its inception. And just in itself, Yakuza 5 was fantastic. It reinvigorated that spark that initially got me into the series. I deeply cherish Yakuza 5, Yakuza 0, and this whole universe. I'm SO EXCITED to play the new games on the Dragon Engine.

Immediately after reaching the credits, I made the mistake of looking up reaction videos and reddit threads attempting to validate my feelings and to get some verbiage to articulate why I was so blown away, and to my god damn surprise many people are haters. I read a comment saying that Yakuza 5's ending was mediocre and I audibly said "MEDIOCRE?" in the same cadence as that stupid Tim Allen "huh" sound byte from Home Improvement. Come on!!!! This shit was hype!!!!!!!

I did play exactly two hours of Yakuza 6: The Song of Life because I desperately needed closure from the finale's events, and I will put my very brief thoughts on the first half of the first chapter underneath this spoiler tag:

That's all, I think. This was almost 3k words, fuck me lol.