Given that the JRPG-style fights are specified as Ichiban imagining things, what is actually happening? Do they all take turns in real-time? And how does it work in substories involving fights, where it's just Ichi and not his party?
I think he's actually planning it all out terryifingly fast and accurately. Then he just orders his allies to do as he imagined it to ensure victory. But even I don't know about how it works in the substories
How did Kasuga not know about Kiryu, when the latter was cemented as the Dragon of Dojima in 0? Not to mention, his supposed murder of Sohei Dojima sent shockwaves throughout the Tojo Clan.
Everyone is a big guy with a dragon tattoo in the yakuza world, not everyone has an eyepatch like Majima. That's easier to recognize. Dragon of Dojima is not even that cool of a title until it got tied to the Fourth Chairman of the Tojo Clan, it was just a strong guy of a formerly great family.
Also, keep the timeline of the two in mind: by the time Ichiban joins the Arakawa family, it’s highly likely Kiryu was already in prison for murder, and Ichiban would be locked up by the time Kiryu got out. It’s straight up possible he could have never met the guy.
There's also the fact that unlike Kiryu, who was a lieutenant advisor to the Dojima Family, Ichiban was just a simple mook in his time in the Arakawa family, so he probably wouldn't recognize the impact that Dojima's death had on the Tojo Clan. Not too different from the various mooks you fight as the other playable characters throughout the series. The way their title cards are introduced also reflects this -
[Kiryu's Yakuza 1 title card] Kazuma Kiryu | Lieutenant Advisor of the Dojima Family, a Tojo Clan subsidiary
[Ichiban's title card] Ichiban Kasuga | Of the Arakawa Family, a Tojo Clan subsidary
Another possible explanation could be the fact that Ichiban was in prison during the events of the first twogames, which is where Kiryu's title as the Dragon of Dojima (and by extension, the Fourth Chairman of the Tojo Clan) would have more weight to it.
Also take into consideration Majima's title as the Mad Dog of Shimano. He single-handedly earned this title by staging a one-man assaulton Dojima HQ and came close to decimating the entire Dojima Family (hell, he's no slouch against the Sengoku Family in Yakuza 2, either), including nearly killing Sohei himself, had it not been for Sera's intervention. Ichiban easily recognized Majima more than Kiryu not only because of the eyepatch but also because of the weight that his title has. And he more than earns it in his boss fight, too.
That, and from a meta standpoint, Majima is more recognizable than Kiryu (if only slightly) - even earning the top spot for the most popular character in the entire series. Anyone that's never even touched a Yakuza game in their life would at least recognize Majima to some extent.
Why does Ichiban have this idiotic notion that yakuza are heroes?
Arakawa is a yakuza and saved his life, he grew up in the slums where the proper Japanese job archetype would spit on his face and it's the Assassin that gives him a job and some sense of worth. That, and Arakawa would come to treat Ichiban like a son, which is touching in retrospect since Ichiban is Arakawa's biological son, and would've been the actual Masato Arakawa had he not been Switched at Birth.
Sure, but yakuza like Arakawa are of the minority. Most are selfish, greedy assholes like any other criminal.
And he was raised by that exception, in a tiny Yakuza family.
The Yakuza Kalari also an organisation that has spent considerable effort on their own PR and marketing, to the point where many Japanese citizens saw them as a necessary evil. They have fan magazines. For a poor kid growing up on the streets, it's easy to see them not only as a way out, something to aspire to, but even a group who can keep society ordered and safe. It's not true, of course, but this isn't the first 'Yakuza' protagonist who started off with ideals about the yakuza that he would quickly learn weren't shared by most yakuza.
So in one of the scenes, Kiryu returns and reveals to most people that they are alive. Considering that he faked his death in order to prevent others from knowing, why did he reveal himself, and how did Watase find Kiryu?
Could be that Kiryu is simply using a fake identity not unlike how he did back in Yakuza 5 when he took up the alias "Taichi Suzuki". Watase probably found him by chance and simply tells Daigo in particular that he couldn't tell him [Daigo] his name. Plus, it's Kiryu we're talking about here. Anybody that knew him would recognize him almost immediately anyway. He only reveals that he's alive to Daigo, Majima, and Saejima, three of his closest comrades, while Ichiban, understandably, doesn't even recognize him.
The only member of Ichiban's team that does recognize Kiryu is Joon-gi Han, who even then isn't the real one, but rather a body double named Yeonsu Kim. Kiryu in turn recognized Han from his previous encounter with him in Yakuza 6, musing that the last time the two saw each other, Han took a bulletto the head courtesy of Hirose. It's likely that Han kept Kiryu's identity a secret mostly out of courtesy seeing as Han himself also has secrets of his own.
Given all the music to collect from so many different previous games, and even other franchises, how is not one Haruka Sawamura CD around?
Well, since Haruka's idol career tanked hard after the events of Yakuza 5, it's possible that - though some nods of her time as an idol still exist through the form of a figure of her in Judgment (set in 2018) and as DLC outfits for Saeko and Eri (set a year later in 2019) - her agency effectively discontinued any of her merchandise to distance themselves as far away from the bad PR and, obviously, Haruka wasn't around to record any new music. Also take into consideration the four year gap between Y5 and Y6, as well as that of Y5 and LaD (seven years). So the best possible reason could be that virtually anything related to Haruka is (very possibly) a very expensive collector's item that's difficult to come by. Soundfamiliar?
Alternatively, it could just be that RGG Studio simply forgot to place a CD in the first place to find in the world or buy somewhere in a pawn shop. There are quite a few to come by, after all. Or because they didn't want to. Whatever works for you, really.
How could Sawashiro forget the name of Masato's mother? I get that they were stupid teenagers who probably didn't even like each other very much, but you'd think that the person who you had a child with would leave some sort of impact on you.
Considering that this is Sawashiro we're talking about here - the same one who was more than willing to let a newborn babydie in the cold night inside a coin locker - that really shouldn't be too surprising... even if it did come back to bite him in the ass later. His girlfriend regretted it immediately after, sure, but not him. Goes to show how ruthless Sawashiro was even before he joined the Arakawa Family.
What the hell kind of "lung transplant" did Masato have in America? He went from "confined to a wheelchair due to multiple organ damage" (including possibly brain damage; he wasn't breathing when taken from the locker), only able to temporarily walk by shoving an epipen full of ephedrine straight into his heart (ephedrine is chemically similar to amphetamines, and has a similar effect) to able to stroll around and even fist-fight with Kasuga a bit.
Speaking of, how is it that 2 babies, Arakawa Masato and Ichiban Kasuga, were both dumped and found inside the coin locker at the same time, but one got multiple organ failures due to hypothermia and lack of oxygen while the other one came out fine?
Time. Every amount of context informs us that Ichiban was simply in that locker for a shorter time frame than Masato was (We don't know how long Sawashiro and his lover waited before going back, and Ichiban was almost certainly placed in the locker after they left for the first time). The doctors outright told Masumi that had he gotten Masato to the hospital 5 minutes sooner then the complications from the hypothermia could've been avoided. Ichiban was just fortunate that he was retrieved asap.
Also, Masato was placed into the locker essentially to die out of sight, while Ichiban's parents very much wanted him to live. Ichiban may have been more carefully bundled up, allowing him to withstand the cold for longer.
Ichiban is also, as evidenced by the turn-based combat allowing him to get slugged in every fight he's in — something that the beginning of the game makes clear is something he actually does in reality — a tough son of a bitch. Shrugging off the same conditions that crippled Masato even as an infant is evidence that of the two of them, Ichiban is simply better prepared to take the hits life deals out and rebound from them to greater heights. If it had been Ichiban that Kume stabbed in the end, he might have survived the injury not unlike Kiryu had in prior circumstances. Ultimately, Masato was too frail, only living to adulthood because of the actions of others who protected him, and went down easily in the end because of that frailty, no matter how much he'd grown sicne.
in the entire series. Anyone that's never even touched a Yakuza game in their life would at least recognize Majima to some extent.