Funny / Like a Dragon

"Comedy? There's no place for comedy in a yakuza story..."

— Kiryu during the Yakuza Sunset substory, Yakuza Kiwami 2

Despite being a hard-boiled crime story at heart, the Like a Dragon series has plenty of hilarious moments to ease up the tension.

Games with their own pages:

• Yakuza/Yakuza Kiwami
• Yakuza 2/Yakuza Kiwami 2
• Yakuza 3
• Yakuza 4
• Yakuza: Dead Souls
• Yakuza 5
• Yakuza 0
• Yakuza 6
• Yakuza: Like a Dragon
• Judgment
• Lost Judgment
• Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name
• Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth

General

• The sheer amount of mood whiplash in the game in general. The absurdity of those moments in the sidequests and revelations contrasts with the serious plot wonderfully, giving the game its own straight man.
• Any time Majima busts out a "Kiryu-chan!", especially since his voice shoots up a couple of octaves when he says it.
• In the karaoke sessions where Kazuma is accompanying, the vocalizations he makes can be gold since they're often yelps or interjections in Engrish... hearing the Dragon of Dojima go "oy oy HEY!" over J-Pop is a wonderful feeling.
• Heat Moves can be pretty funny with how ridiculous and/or over-the-top brutal they are, to the point of being semi-slapstick. Especially since the targets of even the most lethal-looking heat moves seem to end up with just a few bruises afterwards.
  • Some general examples would include the moves where a character stomps on a guy's face (potentially more than once), or in Saejima's case; punches them right in the face, with their teeth noticeably flying out. Such moves would probably cause severe concussions or serious brain damage in real life, but not in the Yakuza series.
  • Some Heat moves with bladed weapons have guys being outright shanked and impaled.
  • Even more egregious with bosses, who can take MULTIPLE heat moves, even the aforementioned bladed weapon moves.
  • Other heat moves with weapons examples include shoving a portable burner right into a guy's face, forcing a guy to drink 'mystery fluid', and dropping a Christmas tree on them. Or picking up and dropping a motorycle/generator on a guy, the latter has him being electrocuted for a bit afterwards. Or you can just salt some fools in the eyes.
  • It gets crazier in Yakuza 0, with Majima having the most brutal heat moves. One of which is an outright Neck Snap, which gets passed to Kiryu in Kiwami and the other move where Majima jams his bat's handle to a poor guy's mouth and then kicking it so violently that blood and gums fly out of it.
  • Kiryu has a certain Counter-Attack in 0 with his Beast Style moveset, which has him rage out and grab his victim by the arms, showing that they are shocked/scared as he does so, and he instantly dislocates their shoulders by pulling them, which leaves them drooping lower on their model. He then bitchslaps them senseless and so hard that they spin around 180 degrees, before grabbing them from behind and throwing them overhead, slamming headfirst onto the ground.
  • 0 and Kiwami have a Heat move where Kiryu stuffs a mandarin orange into a mook's mouth and stomps on it, turning the guy into a juice fountain. You can use an orange as a weapon. Especially funny if you bought the orange expecting it to be just another healing item.
  • Like a Dragon cranks this shit up to eleven on coke and horse amphetamines with various Heat Actions involving the use of wrecking balls, a labor parade, a makeshift concert, calling in an airstrike with a helicopter gunner a la Call of Duty, Ichiban calling in a Kill Sat that would make the Amon Clan proud, Saeko handing a curb-stomp beatdown to an unlucky mook with a fucking face massager of all things, Saeko or Eri siccing some rabid fanboys on an unfortunate mook while dressed as idols... the list just goes on.
    • Oh, and for added points, you can use any of the above-mentioned Heat Actions on most bosses. Including Kiryu, Majima, and Saejima themselves!
• This tweet from late 2018 showing Kiryu upset over all the crossovers of the year.
  Neagan is in Tekken.
  Noctis is in Tekken.
  2B is in Soulcalibur.
  RWBY and P4 have a crossover fighting game.
  Joker is in Smash.
  Kiryu is in a bar drinking alone.
• This hilarious compilation of various Heat Actions and QTEs, incorporating the Coffin Dance meme. Becomes Hilarious in Hindsight with Like a Dragon's "Essence of RIP" KIWAMI action, which is essentially the game's equivalent to the latter meme. Highlights include:
  • Akiyama getting flung away to kingdom come by a wrecking ball of all things.
  • Saejima getting run over by a car while he's wearing a Santa Claus costume.
  • Majima getting his head crushed by Awano.
  • Kiryu having an office plant dropped on his head and actually knocking him down!
  • The iconic action sequence where Kiryu drop kicks Yoneda out of a window inside a multi-story building. Kiryu's STILL never killed anyone despite this.
    • Yoneda actually shows up later in the game, only to be beaten to a humiliating death by someone else. He's the one who deals Tachibana his mortal blow.

Live Action Adaptation

• Majima stalking down at Kiryu and Haruka on a hallway wouldn't be as funny if not the fact that he's sticking his body out with the part that has the eye patch.
• Haruka, a ten-year-old child, threatening Majima, and Majima being good-humored enough to play along with it.
  Haruka: If you kill Uncle Kaz, I'll kill you.
  Majima: (Pretends to be genuinely fearful) Hoo. That's pretty scary.
  • Right after the said scene, Kiryu and Majima duke it out in a shootout and proceed to clean floor with only two of them remain. As they about to finish each other out, both of them pumps their shotgun several times and just realizes they're running out of shells, so they decided to "fuck it!" and toss the gun off and caves on their faces with their fists at the same time, to predictable results.
• Just after Kiryu was badly beaten by Nishiki and his men in the finale, the Nishikiyama family pulls him out so Nishiki can finish him off, only for Kiryu to pull out a Staminan Royale out of nowhere, complete with an advert, drank it, and proceed to floor them in seconds, their reaction upon seeing him doing so says it all. It's as surreal as you can get.

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