Yakuza: Like a Dragon and Character

Screenwriter Blake Snyder built a consulting career on the backs of sympathetic characters with his famous “Save the Cat” series, named for his method of eliciting audience sympathy through acts of compassion. In “Save the Cat,” Snyder describes the eponymous character-building moment as follows: “It’s the scene where we meet the hero and the hero does something — like saving a cat — that defines who he is and makes us, the audience, like him.“⁠⁵ Here, the idea of saving a cat is used as shorthand for an act of compassion, something that shows the protagonist is willing to put the needs of others ahead of their own. Ideally, these acts of compassion will fit naturally into the story, as making them too obvious will alert the audience to the technique. A student biking to school is far more likely to encounter a stray cat than an astronaut on a space station, but the astronaut may have a crew in need of help. Even single-character stories can have these moments, so long as the characters can demonstrate empathy and kindness. A character stranded on an island can tend to the plants; a character stranded in space can write logs for future generations. So long as the character’s actions show their consideration for the world at large, audiences will connect with their stories.

Yakuza: Like a Dragon uses acts of compassion to establish the protagonist, Kasuga Ichiban, as a good man whose conviction is untainted by the criminal underworld. When players first gain control of Kasuga, he’s chasing a low-level street thug through a maze of alleyways. Once Ichiban catches his target, the motive behind the hunt comes out: the thug was swindling teenagers out of their money by selling them animal mating videos labeled ‘uncensored pornography.’ The thug pleads with Kasuga, insisting that the scam isn’t hurting the family’s bottom line, but Kasuga refuses to listen. Even though Kasuga needs that money to meet his collection quota, he won’t accept anything that tarnishes the Arakawa family name. In his eyes, that thug took advantage of people on Arasaka turf, so it’s their job to make things right. Through this scene, audiences learn that although Kasuga may be a member of the yakuza, he’s first and foremost a compassionate human being.

In a shorter story, a single scene demonstrating a character’s compassion would be enough to establish their nature, but Yakuza: Like a Dragon takes its time, requiring over forty hours to play to complete the story⁠6. With this much space, Yakuza: Like a Dragon has room to reinforce the essential character details, which it does with a second intro scene showing Kasuga’s compassion. Directly after Kasuga handles the counterfeit video seller, he confronts a construction worker who owes money to the Arasaka family. According to the clan captain, Kasuga’s job is to take the man’s wallet as payment for the debts, but Kasuga chooses to interpret it literally. He empties the wallet, then hands the money back to the worker. When a fellow gang member asks Kasuga why he didn’t take the money, Kasuga replies: “You think he’s out here working his ass off, doing construction on New Year’s Eve, just for fun?…He probably wanted to buy his mom a nice meal, so he got some cash outta the bank, y’know?” He adds that he knows the mother from her old candy shop and reveals she had to close it after getting sick. In Kasuga’s eyes, the construction worker is just trying to help someone in need, and it would be wrong to deprive him of the opportunity. This reinforces Kasuga’s compassion in turn, securing his upstanding character in the audience’s heads. From here on out, they’re willing to follow Kasuga wherever he goes because they know he’s a decent man.