Like a Dragon: Yakuza live-action series debuting on Prime Video this October

SEGA and Amazon have announced today that an original live-action series adaptation of the Like a Dragon series will be debuting on Prime Video. The kicker? The thing’s already almost ready to go.

The six-part series is titled, Like a Dragon: Yakuza and will naturally star Kazuma Kiryu. Ryoma Takeuchi (pictured below on the right), the hugely popular Japanese actor who has starred in a considerable amount of Kamen Rider films will be donning the suit and tie and starring as our Dragon of Dojima. The director is Masaharu Take (pictured below on the left), most known for the Netflix series The Naked Director. This project has been made natively in Japan.

What we know so far is that the show will loosely be inspired by the plot of the original 2005 Yakuza game. It’ll take place in Kamurocho in both the years 1995 and 2005.  Key characters include three of Kiryu’s known childhood friends in this period, likely Akira Nishikyama and Yumi Sawamura. This third character could either be an original character for the adaptation or Yuko, the late but never-shown in-game sister of Akira. As a fan myself, it’ll be exciting to see what they take from the game and what they create wholly new.

Like a Dragon: Yakuza and its six episodes are set to be split up into two parts, with the first batch dropping on October 25 and then on November 1 2024. Don’t worry, Kiryu will also likely be throwing bicycles and traffic cones at thugs’ heads; Takeuichi notes that the series will have the “intense fighting scenes” that the franchise is known for.

Amazon has been on a bit of a video game adaptation uptick in recent memory. Back in April, the Fallout TV show debuted and knocked it out of the park. While Yakuza looks to be the next fixing, the streaming giant has announced Life is Strange and Disco Elysium adaptations are also in the works.