"Yakuza 3" reviewed by three yakuza.

[snarp]

On BoingBoing, via james_nicoll.

M: Kiryu is the way yakuza used to be. We kept the streets clean. People liked us. We didn't bother ordinary citizens. We respected our bosses. Now, guys like that only exist in video games.
S: I don't know any ex-yakuza running orphanages.
K: There was one a few years ago. A good guy.
M: You sure it wasn't just a tax shelter?
K: Sure it was a tax shelter but he ran it like a legitimate thing. You know.

I remember reading somewhere - I have no idea where, and whether there's any truth to it - that some mafiosi kind of learn how to behave by watching Hollywood movies about mafiosi. It seems like there might be a feedback loop like that at play with yakuza, too. The interview mentions that there's a yakuza manga sitting the office they're playing in, and this game is not exactly the first piece of Japanese media I've encountered that thinks yakuza are kind of cool. I mean, I've watched two anime in the past month - Darker Than Black and Yami no Matsuei - and sympathetic yakuza dudes show up in both of them.

For a while, there were trailers for this game playing constantly at the electronics store next to the school in Shibata. I wasn't sure how I felt about that, given that, you know, there were both prostitutes and a lot of violence in the trailers, and there was a display of magic markers and stickers right next to the screen showing it. (Actually, the trailers gave so much attention to the prostitutes that I thought at first it was some kind of extremely-high-production-values dating sim.)

Comments

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, considering sympathetic/romanticized noble-outlaw yakuza flicks were a HUGE thing in the 60s? And all the books and plays and songs and folktales about heroic Robin Hood-type gangsters, dating back centuries? Nothing new under the sun...that feedback loop's been around for ages.

(I must admit, though, that I'm cracking up at the mental image of the two guys in slick suits and the third one in sweats and a Doraemon t-shirt. EVEN GANGSTERS LOVE DORAEMON!)