Sandbox / Yakuza Playable Characters

Kazuma Kiryu

Kazuma Kiryu

Voiced by: Takaya Kuroda (Japanese), Kenji Nojima (Young, Japanese), Darryl Kurylo (English)

Portrayed by: Kazuki Kitamura (live-action film)

"Ready to die? Step up!"

Kiryu as he appears in Kiwami 2.

^{Click here to see Kiryu as he appears in Yakuza 0}.

^{Click here to see Kiryu as he appears in the PS2 games.}

The Dragon of Dojima, fourth Chairman of the Tojo Clan and our hero. Big and scary, but very kind, loyal and gentle as long as you don't get on his bad side.

Kiryu was raised in the Sunflower orphanage along with his closest friend Akira Nishikiyama and the woman he's always loved, Yumi Sawamura. Raised by Shintaro Kazama, he and Nishiki followed in his steps and joined the yakuza under the Dojima family in hopes to help the man who raised him. Three years later in 1988 at the age of 20, he was framed for murder and learned that the Dojima Family was seeking to obtain the Empty Lot where the murder took place, which was needed for them to gain control of the Kamurocho Revitalization Project. Seeking to prove his innocence, he teamed up with a Real Estate businessman named Tachibana and they tried to clear Kiryu's name while preventing the Dojima Family to get the Empty lot since it would mean having Sohei Dojima as a future chairman, something Kazama feared. After the last of Dojima's lieutenants, Shibusawa, the would-be Dragon of Dojima, tried to get rid of Kazama's followers in the Dojima Family, he faced Kiryu in a final battle and was defeated and incarcerated. For losing the Empty Lot race to Masaru Sera, Sohei Dojima was disgraced and lost almost all his influence and power.

Kiryu eventually returned to the Dojima Family where he became feared and celebrated as "The Dragon of Dojima". Things seemed to be working out well until one night in 1995. After a collection, Kiryu learned that his childhood friend Yumi had been abducted by Dojima, who was still known for getting anything he wanted, including women. Knowing the consequences if he dared to interfere, he went out to stop him. By the time Kiryu got to his office, he found that Nishiki was already there, and had murdered Dojima for trying to force himself on Yumi. Knowing the consequences Nishiki would face and what he would lose, Kiryu took the blame for the murder and went to jail for ten years to protect his friends.

However, he discovered that Yumi had lost her memory and disappeared after the incident, and after his release, that his closest friend had now become his bitter enemy, and ten billion yen was stolen from the clan. Seeking his friends and answers, he discovers Haruka, a young girl who is looking for her aunt Yumi and holds the key to the missing money. Kiryu fights to protect her at all costs, but loses everyone important to him in the ordeal, leaving only Haruka to keep him going. It's during this time that he's granted the title of Fourth Chairman of the Tojo Clan, but quickly gives up the position to start a new clean life with Haruka.

After a year of peace, the Fifth Chairman is murdered by his former colleagues, the Omi Alliance, and Kiryu finds himself pulled into another conflict that's part of a larger scheme involving the Korean Jingweon mafia. After putting an end to it, he and Haruka decide to leave Tokyo and move to Okinawa where he runs an orphanage, but even then he continues to be pulled back into the life he thought he left behind. By the fifth game, he's left the orphanage and has become a taxi driver in Fukuoka, going by the name "Taichi Suzuki", but fate continues to call him back into action once more. Following the game's events, he's arrested and serves a three year jail sentence. He returns to the orphanage to discover that Haruka had left long ago and that her whereabouts are unknown, until he's told she was hospitalized after being struck by a car. He also learns about the existence of her infant child, Haruto, and the truth behind everything lies in Hiroshima.

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See his character page here.

Haruka Sawamura

Voiced by: Rie Kugimiya (Japanese), Debi Derryberry (English, 1)

Portrayed by: Natsuo (live-action film)

"The man who brought me up was once what they call Yakuza."

Haruka as she appears in Kiwami.

^{Click here to see Haruka as she appears in Yakuza 4.}

^{Click here to see Haruka as she appears in Yakuza 5.}

Kiryu's adopted niece and Yumi's daughter Also raised in the Sunflower Orphanage, she first encounters Kiryu while she's searching for her aunt Yumi and her mother Mizuki, but is hunted by the various yakuza gangs for her connection to the missing ten billion yen. After the ordeal, Kiryu takes her under his wing and decides to start a new life with her, but the poor girl constantly finds herself pulled into the conflicts her "Uncle Kaz" is involved in.

Appearing in every game alongside Kiryu (except the prequel), she ages throughout the series and has a different appearance in each game. In the first game and its remake (2005), she's merely nine years old, and by the fifth game (2012), she's sixteen and has already moved out to Osaka on her own to pursue a career as an Idol Singer. She's one of the five playable protagonists in Yakuza 5. At the end, performing in front of a huge audience, she's no longer able to bear staying away from those she considers family and reveals the truth behind her upbringing and the man who raised her.

She returns to the orphanage following Kiryu's arrest and lives peacefully with the other orphans until it's discovered where she lives and the news goes viral. Fearing how she could affect the others living there, she leaves the orphanage without informing anyone of her true whereabouts. After Kiryu leaves jail and discovers this, she's hospitalized after being struck by a car in Kamurocho, and his only link to the truth is her infant son, Haruto and photo of Haruka in Hiroshima, which naturally takes him to Hiroshima to learn what happened and who is Haruto's father. She's stated to be nineteen years old as of Yakuza 6.

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• Absurdly Youthful Mother: In 6, she has a roughly one-year old son at the age of 19. This is one of the biggest shocks Kiryu faces when he finishes his prison sentence.
• Adaptational Badass: In the main games, she's a Non-Action Guy who's playable segments involve becoming an Idol. In Ryu Ga Gotoku Online, she can kick as much ass as her dear old Uncle Kaz.
• Affectionate Nickname: The localization has Haruka refer to Kiryu as "Uncle Kaz".
  • In the original Japanese, she refers to him as "oji-san", literally meaning "uncle". In Japanese, it's not uncommon for children to refer to strangers who are older than them as "uncle" or "big brother" or "big sister", so this is how it started for Haruka and Kiryu in Yakuza 1, making its use in that game not an example. In every other game, Haruka continues to call Kiryu "oji-san", making it her nickname for him, thus playing the trope straight.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: Played with. She eventually settles down with Yuta Usami, whom she seemingly first fell for after seeing him beat the shit out of a paparazzo for stalking and taking photos of her. While he is a yakuza, he means well and is shown to be a Nice Guy who would go to great lengths for her, and Yuta states their shared backgrounds drew them together. Being raised by Kiryu, she also knows that yakuza can be good people, and he also taught her that the heart of a person matters most.
• Big Eater: Dialogue between her and Kiryu in 5's Premium Adventure describe her as this. Kiryu can tease her saying this is why they should open a restaurant together.
• Big Sister Instinct: Whenever she feels the other kids at the orphanage are in danger, she won't let anyone near them. Just ask Mine and Hamazaki.
• Bound and Gagged: Happens just about every time the poor girl gets kidnapped.
• Break the Cutie: The games aren't necessarily kind to the poor girl, from being shot, slapped, kidnapped, and a lot of characters have been killed in front of her eyes. But for everything she's gone through, witnessed and suffered, it hasn't broken her. In the fifth game, she's bullied by her rival idols even after tragedy strikes, and while some realize she's a danger magnet, it's also made her stronger in the face of it. Then she gets hit by a car in the sixth game that triggers the game's plot.
• Celebrity Is Overrated:
  • In Yakuza 2, she turns down an offer to become a star to stay with Kiryu.
  • In Yakuza 5, circumstances change and she becomes an idol in an attempt to support Morning Glory, as it was having money trouble. At the end of the game, she retires during her debut concert, feeling her success and rise to stardom was not worth leaving her loved ones behind.
• Cool Big Sis: Although she served as Kiryu's second-in-command at the orphanage, the other kids see her as the big sister in the family and look up to her. In one of the substories in Yakuza 5, when Taichi writes a fan letter to her under a pen name, it's clear who he's referring to when he says the people who left were like father and mother to them, indicating she graduated to Team Mom status.
• Conditioned to Accept Horror: The countless run-ins she's had with the Yakuza as well as the ensuing beatdown by her adopted father Kiryu has done much for her ability to maintain her composure in tense situations in which other kids her age would have probably shown signs of hysteria. Lampshaded by Katsuya in 5 when Kanai is unable to intimidate Haruka into immediately handing over Park's letter.
  Katsuya: The adopted daughter of Kazuma Kiryu himself. The girl's seen enough yakuza to last a lifetime. Tell me, what happened when you threatened her? Did she cower in fear and hand over the letter? She didn't, did she? Quite the opposite. She dug in her heels harder than ever. Simply put, you're just not scary enough. Haruka Sawamura thinks you're a joke.
• Cute Bruiser: In a trailer for the non-canon Ryu Ga Gotoku Online, Haruka joins the other legends of Kamurocho and takes out some yakuza thugs entirely by herself, and is a recruitable unit within the game itself.
• The Cutie: Her role in the series, and really provides the heart of it. There are times where she tags along and asks for things to buy, and it's hard to resist. And when people hurt her, there's hell to pay. It's also notable that the world has thrown enough crap at the poor girl to strip her of every shred of naïvite, but none of her kind, cheerful and optimistic nature.
• Daddy's Girl: Haruka greatly adores her adoptive father. She's learned a lot from Kiryu, and just like him she won't back down when push comes to shove. Several characters in the fifth game recognize her at this, and realize she's not to be underestimated considering who raised her.
• Damsel in Distress: She has a tendency of getting kidnapped throughout the games, usually to lure out Kiryu.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Declared as such by Yakuza 5, and Mirei Park is determined to keep the public from learning the truth of Haruka's past, knowing it would destroy her image and her career as an idol. She even goes so far to convince Kiryu to leave the orphanage and sever his connections with Haruka and the orphans so no one finds out.
• Designated Victim: Aside from getting kidnapped often, a lot of bad stuff happens to the poor girl. Even when she's playable, she can't escape from this.
• Desperately Craves Affection: In the first game she snuck out of Sunflower Orphanage and went to Kamurocho all alone to find her Missing Mom, but grows out of this when Kiryu takes her in. In Yakuza 6, this may partly have been why her relationship with Yuta progressed as quickly as it did, as until then she had kept her distance from the Onomichi residents and left behind everyone she loved to spare them grief on her behalf.
• Deuteragonist: Of the first Yakuza, for all intents and purposes. It can also be argued that she serves as this for Yakuza 5 as much of the plot revolves around her idol career, especially toward the end as everyone fights to protect her from being assassinated.
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: In Yakuza 3, she slaps Yoshitaka Mine, a Yakuza boss who's about as tough and deadly as her adopted father but without his morality. When Mine slaps her back, she simply gives him a Death Glare.
• Didn't Think This Through: At the end of Yakuza 5, after spending the whole game hiding her Dark and Troubled Past from everyone including her fans, she reveals the truth behind her upbringing at a concert attended by thousands. She admits early on in Yakuza 6 that she got caught in the moment and wasn't thinking when she spoke to all those people, or consider the greater consequences of her actions.
• Even the Girls Want Her: One of her HEAT Moves in 5 is called "Charming Cuteness", the effect of which is to lower the opponent's HEAT Gauge, and it can be used on both men and women.
• Friendless Background: Moving to Sotenbori at age 16 and focusing primarily on her idol career has left her little time to make any friends at school after six months when her story arc begins.
• Happily Adopted: She accepts Kiryu as her family and father figure, and at no point expressed any concerns or angst regarding his background or being taken in by him. In Yakuza 2, she gives up the chance to make it big so she can be with him. In Yakuza 5, when she can no longer bear to be away from those she considers her family, namely Kiryu, she forfeits her career as an Idol Singer.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: Revealing her ties to the Tojo Clan's ex-fourth chairman, Kazuma Kiryu in 5 has resulted in her becoming the center of attention on news outlets and social media and most definitely not in a positive light. Her fears over her poor standing in the public eye preventing the other orphans from succeeding in any field where "living situation" and "public standing" matters is a major factor in her leaving the Orphanage in 6.
• Hidden Depths: The first game shows that she has a natural penchant for gambling despite only being nine years old.
• Idol Singer: Her goal in 5 is to become one. When one realizes that she's voiced by Rie Kugimiya, it brings to mind another role she did. Or another. Although her career is short-lived in canon, she dons her idol uniform once more in Yakuza Online, but now kicks some serious ass in it.
• I Just Want to Have Friends: Although Haruka grew up with Kiryu and the orphanage kids, who she considers family, she yearns for this when she moves to Osaka on her own. People at her school are afraid to talk to her because she's an Idol, which takes up most of her time as it is, leaving her incredibly lonely and eager for friends. The focus of her side story and some substories involve people trying to be her friend for the right and wrong reasons, some who have no friends themselves.
• Kid Detective: A sidestory in 2 shows her to be pretty perceptive and analytical for someone so young, and when she's joined by Akiyama in 5, their shared chapter involves her doing a lot of detective work with him.
• Light Is Good: Often depicted wearing white. Note that her red and white color scheme matches her adoptive dad's maroon and grey one.
• Little Miss Badass: Downplayed. Hasn't thrown a single punch in the entire series for obvious reasons, but she won't back down when threatened. In 3, she stands her ground against Mine when he comes to tear down the orphanage, and proceeds to slap him when he insults Kiryu. When he slaps her back, she simply gives him a defiant Death Glare in response. When Kanai is demanding she give him the letter she's carrying in 5, she doesn't even flinch when she refuses. She was also quite clever in her earlier appearances, and even had a good eye for gambling when she was nine!
  • Played straight in Yakuza Online where a trailer shows that she's learned a few tricks from Uncle Kaz and can take down some thugs and gangsters like the rest of them.
• Living Emotional Crutch: To Kiryu to an extent though it somewhat goes both ways as well. In the aftermath of the climax of the first game, many of Kiryu's closest friends and family have died and when surrounded by a group of cops who see him responsible for immediate mess, he's just about ready to go back to prison and spend the rest of his life there. Date has to shake him out of it and remind him that Haruka has also lost all of her family, with her mother having been mortally wounded by her horribly ambitious and murderous father who also perished during said climax. While Date emphasizes how much she needs him, a lot of games make it clear that Kiryu's something of a Death Seeker with Haruka's influence being major reason he hasn't completely given up in the face of unavoidable conflict and misery.
• Living Lie Detector: Nothing gets past this girl, especially not from Kiryu or the other orphanage kids.
• Made of Iron: Downplayed compared to the male characters, but at the age of 9 she recovered rather quickly from a gunshot wound to her arm and as an adult, she was able to survive a head-on collision with a car and her grip on Haruto remained firm enough afterwards to the point where he was left uninjured. Haruka herself was put in a coma for a few days because of it, but received no long-lasting injuries.
• Magical Girl: If you take her to the IF-8 station in Yakuza 5, she gets to play through the street battles just like the other protagonists rather than her usual dance gameplay, and she fights with a magical wand.
• Morality Pet: Mostly for Kiryu, who tries to change some of his habits in order to raise her right. Expect to see some of the other characters' better sides if she happens to be around.
• Most Writers Are Adults: Even at the age of 9, she was arguably more mature than a decent amount of the adults in the cast. Granted, going through that much trauma before you're old enough to drive would do that to you.
• Navel Window: In 5, the Climax Heat outfits she wears all have one.
• Nerves of Steel: It's frankly astonishing how well she deals with all the incredibly dangerous situations life throws at her. While later games suggest that her traumatic past experiences with the Yakuza have toughened her up considerably, she was already pretty strong-willed in the face of danger as far back as the first game.
• Nice Girl: Predominantly in the fifth game, where she innocently tries to be positive and friendly with everyone she can, even those who wrong her, and several rival idols find themselves irritated by her "goodie two shoes" behavior. As Park points out though, she's not naive about the realities of the world.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: At the end of Yakuza 5, in a heartfelt speech she reveals the truth about her upbringing and the man who raised her. It comes back to bite her hard in the beginning of Yakuza 6, potentially affecting everyone else at the orphanage, which leads to her running away to Hiroshima, where she gets herself into even more trouble.
• No Social Skills: Downplayed. Between a fairly traumatic childhood and taking care of other orphans at Morning Glory, by the time she's on her own and pursuing an idol career at the age of 16, she hasn't had a lot of time to really socialize and make friends with other highschoolers. As a result, she finds herself feeling awkward and out of her depth when dealing with other kids her age. Exemplified in the "A Normal Life" substory which has her invited to an outing with some highschoolers on the street who recognize her from TV. No matter how well it goes, she feels exhausted and wonders if the difficulties she has keeping a conversation going means that she just isn't meant to fit in with other kids. Thankfully another classmate, Yui is there to talk to her about it and reassure her that she's fine the way she is.
• Number Two: She's Kiryu's second-in-command at the orphanage, being the oldest of the kids.
• Obliviously Beautiful: In the fifth game, Haruka tells Park that she doesn't really think she's pretty, even though many characters point out how cute she is and attributes it to her popularity as an idol. Many other idols and dancers are clearly jealous of her looks, and it doesn't help that she's genuinely kind, which only irritates them more.
• Official Couple: By the end of 6, she and Yuta end up together and form a proper family with Haruto.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • When she gets out of Morning Orphanage and sees Goh Hamazaki out of Okinawa Penitentiary No.1 in the fourth game. She's utterly horrified.
  • She panics when she browses social media and sees that her actions caused Morning Glory to come under fire from the press in 6.
• Only Sane Woman: She becomes this when some of Kiryu's willingness to forgive people or eagerness to fight becomes questionable, and balances him out when he overdoes it. As she puts it, even he can be scatterbrained at times.
• Parental Abandonment:
  • Her quest to find the mother she never met is what brings Kiryu deeper into all the intrigue during the first game after he gets out of jail.
  • It's because she doesn't want that to happen again (Referring to Kiryu, of course) that she retires from the Idol business at the end of Yakuza 5.
• Plot Coupon: She has one in the first game, which is why everyone's trying to grab her. She learns of another one in the fifth game that also lands her in just as much trouble.
• Plucky Girl: Considering everything she goes through in the series, it's amazing she still turned out to be so sweet and cute as a button in Yakuza 5. Anyone else would've been scarred for life.
• Promoted to Playable: In the fifth game, she's given her own playable storyline about her idol career, although she engages in "dance battles" unlike the others.
• Proper Tights with a Skirt: In Yakuza 5, she wears black tights under a jean miniskirt in her casual outfit. She wears this same outfit in Yakuza 6, but her legs are left bare.
• Protectorate: Mostly in the first game for Kiryu given her Plot Coupon, though targeting her is a very quick way to piss off the protagonists. She also becomes this for Akiyama in the fifth game, and everyone by the end of it.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Purple. She's usually blue throughout the story (with one notable exception being when Hamazaki returns), but she'll quickly become red when doing activities with her.
• Sailor Fuku: As part of her school clothes in 4 and Dead Souls.
• Satellite Character: It's hard to claim otherwise, but she's one to Kiryu, providing him (and the series) with a Lighter and Softer balance. Even in the fifth game when she's grown up, independent and living on her own, several characters recognize her as "the girl raised by Kiryu", as well as his Achilles' Heel.
• She Is All Grown Up: As the games take place in real time, Haruka ages appropriately throughout the series. Puberty has made her almost unrecognizable by the third game, and she's become much more independent and confident in her role as big sister over the orphanage. By the fifth game, she is a 16-year old high school student, and even teases Kiryu about having a boyfriend in Premium Adventure mode, which nearly gives the Dragon of Dojima a heart attack. She's nineteen years old during the events of Yakuza 6, and also has a kid, who Kiryu is also very protective of.
• Stepford Smiler: Tries to reassure an imprisoned Kiryu that she's handling the attention of the media well after she revealed her ties to the Tojo Clan's fourth chairman in 5. One lonely night on the Morning Glory beach spent browsing social media and reading about how the people feel about her and the orphanage has her break down into tears and believing that she's a burden on them due to her choice.
• Tag Along Kid: From 1 to 5, after which she is no longer a kid. Still among the younger characters in the cast, though.
• This Is Unforgivable!: In the fourth game, she completely loses it when Hamazaki appears and wins Kiryu's forgiveness and trust overnight, considering what he did to him in front of her eyes in Yakuza 3's ending. She refuses to forgive him, but things change when Hamazaki dies and she realizes he gave his life up to help Kiryu.
• Took a Level in Badass: Takes a massive one in a trailer for Yakuza Online, where she's depicted as a Cute Bruiser who's clearly taken a few notes from her Uncle Kaz and can kick as much ass as any of the others. And thanks to being voiced by "The Queen of Tsundere" herself, when Haruka the Idol puts on her serious face, yes, she can be downright terrifying.
• Took a Level in Dumbass: At the end of Yakuza 5, despite Park's efforts to hide the truth of Haruka's past from the public, Haruka reveals it in front of thousands of people, which predictably turns into a scandal by the time Yakuza 6 rolls around. Despite telling Ayako she'll be moving closer to Kiryu, she instead runs away to Hiroshima without telling anybody, becomes pregnant and gives birth to Haruto, as the result of a one-night stand with Yuta without using protection, who happened to be the son of a Chinese mob boss (granted, neither of them were aware of that fact), which puts much of the sixth game's events into motion.
• Unexpected Gameplay Change: Her chapters in Yakuza 5 don't involve any fighting at all, instead she engages in rhythm-based dance battles.
• Video Game Caring Potential: It is possible in most titles to bring Haruka out on the town during Premium Adventure, with some challenges being offered if the player can fulfill her requests. Several optional conversations can be had for each of the cities present in 5 if the player travels to them.
• Wise Beyond Their Years: In her early appearances, where she's more clever and mature than one would think, knows more about what happens in the red light district than most are comfortable with her knowing, has an eye for gambling, and she's the one who brings Kiryu up to speed on what's changed since he's been in prison. The second game even dedicates a substory to her untapped detective skills.
• Yakuza Princess: Downplayed as Kiryu isn't even in the Tojo Clan anymore, but she's treated with respect by its members, as they know she means the world to him. By the fifth game, everyone is willing to put their lives on the line to protect her.

Goro Majima

Goro Majima

Voiced by: Hidenari Ugaki (Japanese), Mark Hamill (English, 1), Matthew Mercer (English, Like A Dragon; current)

Portrayed by: Goro Kishitani (live-action film)

"Ya know what I'm about by now. The stronger they come, the more I'm gonna like 'em."

Majima as he appears in Like a Dragon.

^{Click here to see Majima as he appears in Yakuza 0.}

The patriarch of the Majima family, formerly the "Mad Dog of the Shimano Family" and all round crazy dude. Known to be completely unpredictable and untamed, he is none the less highly respected for his skill and deceptive intelligence. Once the captain of the Shimano family until the man's demise, the Majima Family are as loose in their allegiances as their unpredictable Patriarch. In the second game Majima turns them into a (mostly) legitimate construction company, though they are no less dangerous because of it, and is talked into returning back to the Tojo Clan in the third game.

Majima is always eager to seek a challenge and only respects strength. In the first game, he's a constant hindrance in Kiryu's quest, only interested in fighting him as a rival and couldn't care less about the missing ten billion yen. He becomes something of an ally onward, shown to be immensely loyal toward those who win his respect, which is only earned by besting him in a fight. With the exception of games where he's playable, he's fought in almost every game as a boss. By the fourth game, he's toned down quite a bit, and it's shown that he was extremely tight with his sworn brother, Taiga Saejima.

The beloved Ensemble Dark Horse of the series, Majima was finally Promoted to Playable in the non-canon Dead Souls. He is also one of the two main playable characters in the prequel Yakuza 0. After being excommunicated from the Tojo Clan after the failed Ueno Seiwa hit, Majima is given another chance to make a name for himself in the Japanese underworld.

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See his character page here.

Ichiban Kasuga

Ichiban Kasuga

Voiced by: Kazuhiro Nakaya (Japanese), Kaiji Tang (English)

"I've been waiting for a shot like this!"

Ichiban as he appears in Yakuza: Like a Dragon

^{Click here to see Ichiban in the year 2000.}

^{Click here to see Ichiban as he appears in Yakuza Online.}

The protagonist of Yakuza: Like a Dragon, taking place after the end of Kazuma Kiryu's saga.

Ichiban was born on New Year's Day, 1977. Born and abandoned within the soapland by a prostitute, he was adopted by the Shangri-la soapland manager Jiro Kasuga, who named him "Ichiban". Jiro raised the young boy with various prostitutes and gave him a loving home in the red light districts of Kamurocho, up until his death. As a teenager, Ichiban ignored school and any semblance of a career, and instead opted to pick fights with punks and lift money off of them to help the locals. He eventually ended up biting more than he could chew after beating up the thug of a Yakuza, whom then came for revenge. At the hands of their torture, he attempted to threaten them with a bluff by using the name of the Arakawa Family.

This worked all too well, and now believing they had a valuable hostage on his hands, the Yakuza contacted the Arakawa Family in an attempt to extort money from them. Ichiban was sure that this was the end of him... but then none other than the head of the Arakawa Family, Masumi Arakawa himself, showed up for the exchange. Instead of calling Ichiban out on his bluff, the seasoned gangster instead decided to help the young man out of his deadly predicament, and played along with the charade, even taking responsibility for Ichiban's actions by cutting off a part of his little finger without any hesitation. Humbled by this display of fearlessness, the Yakuza immediately released Ichiban with no further questions asked. Moved by Arakawa's sacrifice and strength, he insisted on pledging himself to the Arakawa Family, and approached Arakawa for a hundred days until the old man finally accepted him into the family. Despite that, Ichiban failed to be a successful Yakuza due to his goodhearted nature, only spared from the worst due to his claim as a member of the Arakawa, and Masumi's constant leniency towards him.

However, on December 31, 2000, the Arakawa Family became implicated in a murder of a member of the Tojo Clan. Not only that, the murderer was Arakawa's own son, Masato, who was a civilian with no ties to the Arakawa Family but Jo decided to take the fall hoping Ichiban would make the sacrifice to protect Arakawa's son. If this case went the way it was going, the Arakawa Family would have to be disbanded. In order to keep the family alive, and seeing the event as an opportunity to finally pay back Masumi Arakawa for saving his life, Ichiban agreed to take the blame for the murder. The next day, January 1, 2001, his 24th birthday, Ichiban Kasuga turned himself into the local police.

Eighteen years later, Ichiban's sentence was up and he was released from prison, expecting a grateful reunion only to be met with silence and his Patriarch taking control of Kamurocho as the clan captain of the Omi Alliance and Masato had passed away. Meeting his father-figure for the first time, he was met with a gun aimed at him and was shot...

When he came about to his senses, he ends up waking up in Yokohama's Isezaki Ijincho red light district in a dumpster, surprisingly alive but now exiled from his home. Determined to rise to the top again, he and an unlikely band of misfits must now take over Yokohama and get the happy ending he hoped for.

His default job is Freelancer, which is a powerful scrapper class designed to overwhelm enemies with single-target attacks. He later trades out this job for the much more powerful Hero job, which focuses on him using a baseball bat for wide-hitting swings and devastating blows. His personal skills revolve around using his charisma to get his way in battle, like buffing his allies or convincing enemies to fork over items.

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See his character page here.

Shun Akiyama

Voiced by: Kōichi Yamadera

"Money changes peoples lives. I just like to see it happen up close and personal."

Akiyama as he appears in Yakuza 5.

The first of the three new playable characters starting from Yakuza 4. A moneylender known as "The Lifeline of Kamurocho." He's famous for helping those nobody else will, and uses strange tests for applicants in lieu of charging interest or collateral. Once an up-and-coming financier, he was betrayed by his bank and left homeless, until he got caught in a literal rain of money related to the events of the first game. After some clever investing, he opened Sky Finance and became the man he is today. He's also friendly with the Tojo family and generally just a nice guy. He returns in Dead Souls to witness and take part in fighting the zombie outbreak, and in Yakuza 5, where he opens a new branch of Sky Finance in Sotenbori only to discover the death of a colleague, and helps Haruka discover the truth behind it.

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• Arbitrarily Large Bank Account: It's not said exactly how much Akiyama made of his initial million, but it's enough for him to casually loan out tens of millions of yen to perfect strangers without charging interest or even usually bothering to collect.
  • Later in the game, it's shown he has 100 billion yen!
• The Ace: He's a natural at fighting, singing, dancing, understanding people, and especially financing since he graduated with a Business degree at the top of his class at Toto University. While he's not exactly the only example in the series being a Yakuza protagonist and all, he's also got far less emotional baggage than the others who tend to be varying degrees of Broken Aces. His status as the most consistently wealthy of the bunch probably helps.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: In a minor but still notable instance, a somewhat infamous conversation he has with Hana was altered in the remaster of 4 (albeit only in the English version), specifically the one where she expresses concern over possibly being raped by a bunch of tough yakuza hanging around Sky Finance only for Akiyama to uncharacteristically laugh at the idea of that happening. Instead, she's worried about the yakuza getting their thuggish hands on someone delicate like her with Akiyama instead laughing at the idea of her being delicate. Still rather callous but his skepticism is justified when it's later shown that she's an Action Girl who doesn't have any trouble dealing with random thugs herself.
  • Akiyama also uses some transphobic language to describe the employees at "Drama Queen" in the original, which was revised in the remaster.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: Wears a nice maroon shirt with black pants.
• Battle Strip: He and Tanimura are the aversions among the male playable cast. Akiyama never tears off his shirt at any point to fight anyone. Then again, he's not a Yakuza.
• Beware the Nice Ones: He's probably the nicest guy in Kamurocho, but he won't hesitate to break some teeth if he needs to.
• Blood Knight: Not nearly as much as other characters though. While he sees his early tutorial fights in 4 as a waste of time, he gets a bit more excited when up against Ihara who he can tell is tougher than the usual lot. He even remarks that he might even enjoy the fight this time.
  • Subverted for the Coliseum Matches in 5. His character profile notes that he's never all that excited about participating despite doing so anyway at the player's behest.
• Breakout Character: Of the new Yakuza 4 characters, he's got the most screentime in follow-up games. While he and Saejima prove important enough to return in 5, Akiyama got a stint as a playable character in Dead Souls, and is a central character in 6, whereas Saejima was Demoted to Extra while Tanimura was Put on a Bus.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: Is too lazy to clean his office leaving it a complete mess and often forgets about or delays collecting loan payments to goof off. However, he's also a business graduate from a top-level university and knows where everything in his office is to the point where he knew something was off when the books on the shelf hiding his vault were out of order.
  • He also has no known history of formal training in martial arts or just experience with street fighting like most of the cast prior to 4 but is naturally gifted with agility most men would die for and can kick ass with the best of them. It's possible he's self-taught due to having to deal with rival money lenders and the rough environment of Kamurocho, but it's never explicitly explained. An optional conversation in 4 that Akiyama can hear after his tutorial fight has two people speculating if he knows Capoeira. His actual fighting style seems to be closer to Taekwondo but again it's unclear.
• The Champion: He becomes Haruka's in Yakuza 5 after her chapter takes a tragic turn and she needs a little muscle in Kiryu's absence.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: While it's expected of a Yakuza protagonist, in the finale of 4, during the dynamic intro for the Final Boss fight against Arai, Akiyama uses a suplex throw to send the muscular, visibly larger man flying throw the air several dozen feet away until he ends up landing on a lower platform of the Millenium Tower rooftop. One must wonder if he relies more on kicking techniques just to keep from injuring foes too much with his powerful arms.
• Chivalrous Pervert: He owns and frequents the most popular hostess club in Kamurocho, and his tests for his female clients always seem to include becoming a hostess for a period of time and/or going on a date with him. He can also romance the most hostesses of the four protagonists in Yakuza 4.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Wears primarily black with a mauve blazer but is the nicest and goofiest of the main characters.
• Deadpan Snarker: Comes with being arguably the most lighthearted out of all the Yakuza 4 protagonists.
• Death from Above: His unique mechanic in 5 allows him to do aerial combos and his Meteor Strike Climax Heat is a nasty curb stomp from about ten feet in the air.
• Demoted to Extra: Downplayed. Between 5 and 6, he's become a supporting character and NPC with sporadic appearances in the main story rather than one of the main playable characters with major significance to the game's plot. Compared to what happened to other major characters like Majima, Daigo, and Saejima, he got off easy really.
• Drunken Master: Has the unique "Boozer's Lore" upgrade in 4 which boosts the power of his attacks when he's drunk. One of the heat actions he can learn by fighting Kiryu's data with Minamida's IF7-R arcade machine is "Essence of Pole Dancing" which requires him to be drunk to be able to use it. He also has it in 5 though Shinada can also learn it.
• Dueling Player Characters: He and Tanimura team up against Kiryu in the fourth game, mistaking him for one of Katsuragi's men. Since it's his chapter and...well...its Kiryu, they get their asses handed to them. They fight again in Yakuza 6 one-on-one when they disagreed on how to handle Haruto. Once again Akiyama lose, this time without even making him break a sweat, and he admits that while he can't fight him at full strength due to his doubts, it's clear Kiryu wasn't really pulling all the cards in his sleeve.
• Establishing Character Moment: The first time we see him he's lazing around in his office and has to be nagged by his secretary to even bother making his collections. Shortly afterwards we see him casually drop in on a Yakuza family's office and when he leaves to go buy beer to share with the homeless the boss of said family comes out of the bathroom where he was hiding. Everything about Akiyama's personality is shown here: he doesn't particularly care about money despite being a loan shark, he has enough influence that a Yakuza boss hides from him and that he lives up to his nickname as the Lifeline of Kamurocho given how he interacts with the likes of the homeless.
• Excellent Judge of Character: The tests he assigns to clients are very specialized, generally being based around their personalities and capabilities. He specifically has them perform activites that a person like them would find difficult with clients asking for larger sums of money getting tasks they specifically would find especially challenging. He often discusses the reasoning behind his test with Hana, highlighting the client's flaws and displaying an uncanny talent for determining a person's character after a single conversation alone.
  • Double Subverted with regards to Arai. While he openly questions his ability to judge people's character after everything that Arai's done, he learns towards the end of the game that Arai truly is dedicated to his vision of justice. That said, he's not about to let Arai get away with stealing 100 billion yen from him for the sake of said vision.
  • In general, he considers himself a poor judge of character since he claims to have been betrayed so much in the past but if so he's clearly wised up considerably since then.
  • In 5, he manages to get an idea of the sort of man Naoki Katsuya is from a single meeting and conversation alone, rightfully identifying him as hiding his true emotions and passions under a cold, ruthlessly professional veneer as a businessman.
  • Later in 5, he notices there's something off about Haruka after waking up in the aftermath of Katsuya retrieving her from Kanai. Akiyama correctly surmises that Katsuya contacted her about handing him Park's letter and that she's hiding that fact.
• Extremity Extremist: He fights almost exclusively with kicks, though he's not entirely averse to using his hands.
• Foil:
  • To Tanimura. He wears red to Tanimura's blue, fights with kicks vs punches and grabs, and they have opposing views on money. Akiyama could care less about throwing away millions of yen on a whim while Tanimura will extort shady business for money and is willing to risk his life in a Russian Roulette game on a 3 million yen payout to gather money for the Asian Gateway. They even have opposing titles with Akiyama is known as 'The Lifeline of Kamurocho' while Tanimura being known as the 'Parasite of Kamurocho'.
  • In many ways Akiyama is who Yoshitaka Mine from Yakuza 3 could have been had the latter not gone down a dark path. Both men are highly intelligent investment bankers with Yakuza connections and extremely skilled fighters who used money as a crutch. The major difference is that Akiyama realized how futile his single-minded pursuit of money was and developed compassion after his homelessness, deciding instead to use his moneymaking skills to help people. Mine never got over the fact that he was using money to compensate for his own self-loathing, and his one human connection (Daigo) was so toxic that it nearly led him to kill Daigo.
• Fiction 500: It's revealed near the end that he has over 100 billion yen! To put it into perspective, that's over 937 million USD!
• Five Temperament Ensemble: Phlegmatic
• The Gadfly: Does seem to enjoy teasing and messing around with others. Sometimes he gives certain tests to people he doesn't think really deserve his loans just to derive amusement from seeing them struggle with a task that seems easy but they're very unlikely to actually pass due to their own limitations. This can be seen with the tests he gives to Shiobara during the "Layoff Already" substory.
  "He's just so astoundingly clueless. Don't you want to see how it all ends?"
  • Also has shades of this during his confrontation with Daisuke Minami of the Majima Family at Akiyama's own hostess club. When Minami tries to put off conversing with Akiyama for the sake of singing more Karaoke, Akiyama picks up the remote and stops the song before Minami can get any lyrics out infuriating him. While Akiyama apologises, trying to play it off as pressing wrong button due to the dimmed lighting, Minami unsubtly threatens him with Akiyama's response being to simply smirk and even chuckle quietly to himself.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Despite being loaded and throwing around millions of yen at the drop of a hat, Akiyama apparently only limits his expendable income to what he gets from side quests and thugs.
• Gratuitous English: He says "Thank you" to Hana at the end of Part 2 of his chapter in 4 after getting back to Sky Finance and being given some water.
• Groin Attack: The aptly named "Essence of Loin Reaving" heat action: He gives a back heel kick into a thug’s crotch from behind before hammering him with an overhead backflip kick to their head.
• Guest Fighter: His Dead Souls incarnation appeared as a DLC character for the Japanese version of Binary Domain.
• Guns Akimbo: His preferred unique weapons in Dead Souls. While lacking in firepower compared to the others' weapons, his pistols have unlimited ammo just like the default sidearms.
• Hand Behind Head: A fairly common reaction of his to all sorts of situations even done in anger at one point.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: Downplayed. He considers himself a poor judge of character despite lots of evidence to support the opposite. He's also pretty frank about knowing plenty of people stronger than himself after defeating a Victory Road challenger who's itching for a strong opponent.
• Honest John's Dealership: Subverted. Everything about Sky Finance screams red flag, from offers of limitless loans with zero interest and little to no deadline for paying it off, to the total lack of background and credit score checks and the owner being a frivolous playboy with ties to the yakuza and only one employee in his pigpen of an office. No one in their right mind would think to take out a loan there unless they really have nowhere else to turn. Despite this, Akiyama's business really is all it purports to be (if you pass his tests, at least) and he is a geniunely good and down-to-earth guy as far as Yakuza protagonists go.
• Idiot Ball: He keeps his entire fortune in apparently an unlocked vault in his office instead of at a bank. Unsurprisingly it ends up getting stolen by the police. Granted it's because he doesn't trust banks (he used to work for one that fired him after framing him for embezzling all of the stolen money from the first game) but still, it's a remarkably boneheaded thing to do.
  • However, with the money he's throwing around for his business, and his reaction to said theft, and how he gets rid of it all without a problem in the end, it's very likely he just doesn't care at all. He has so much money, and makes so much money, it's lost all value to him.
• Iconic Sequel Character: With the exception of 0 and Like a Dragon, he's become a major player in every game released after his debut.
• Inelegant Blubbering: He describes himself as "ugly crying" when Arai helped saved him and his newfound windfall from the Millennium Tower explosion from the homeless hunters.
• In a Single Bound: While the chase segments on rooftops show that all the Yakuza 4 protagonists apparently have superhuman jumping abilities able to clear massive streetwide gaps between buildings with relative ease, Akiyama will actually weaponize this for his Meteor Strike Climax Heat, taunting an enemy to strike him only to disappear from view by taking a huge leap just before he's struck.
• Inexplicably Awesome: His martial arts skills are never touched upon. He just happens to be a world-class fighter, despite his background being a stock trader and then homeless guy. Consider Kiryu who's spent years fighting and training, Saejima who's lived a similar life of violence and building his own physical strength, or Tanimura who's a trained officer of the law and has to regularly deal with violent criminals on the streets. Compared to them, Akiyama's life isn't much different from the average civilian and yet he can somehow keep up with them.
  • When questioned by Saigo about his insane physical ability and whether he ever played any sports, Akiyama claims that "the last time [he] kicked a ball was in middle school" leading to Saigo to conclude that he's just naturally gifted.
  • Given that Arai uses a similar, if not identical, fighting style during their final duel and Akiyama states that Arai had to save him from homeless hunters before the story began, it's likely that Arai either taught him or Akiyama emulated his fighting style out of respect.
• Instant Expert: During a substory in 5, the fancy footwork he employs in battle attracts the attention of an Osakan street dancer who then challenges him to a Dance Battle despite Akiyama's protests that he has no experience in dancing whatsoever. If Akiyama accepts, he decides to emulate some of Haruka's moves that he saw from TV and will be about as skilled as she is despite Haruka training for at least 6 months to get as skilled at dancing as she is now.
• Irony: Despite having such a huge amount of money, it is surprisingly hard for Akiyama to acquire cash for him to use in 5 as mooks he fights off hardly drop anything valuable.
• I Shall Taunt You: Specializes in them to a greater degree than the rest of the cast, and has several for different situations, like while he's standing up or gloating over a downed foe. One of his Climax Heat Actions in 5, "Meteor Strike" is used while he's taunting.
• I Was Quite a Looker: He's not bad-looking by any stretch but the stress from his past homelessness and his more disheveled appearance is a stark contrast his his clean-shaven youth. During his investment banker years he was borderline Bishōnen territory.
• Jack of All Stats: With an emphasis on speed, since he's not squishy enough to be a Fragile Speedster. His individuals strikes may not hit very hard, but he does so many of them that they add up quickly. Similarly, this describes his role in Dead Souls, as while his unique weapons don't hit as hard as the other characters, he benefits from infinite ammo due to using handguns. With easy to learn mechanics and as the closest gameplay-wise to Kiryu, it makes a lot of sense for him to be the starting character to play as in both 4 and Dead Souls.
• Leitmotif:
  • "Speed Star" in 4. As a boss fight, he shares "Smile Venomously" with Kiryu and Tanimura.
  • "Affected fight" in 5.
• Kneel Before Frodo: After defeating Kamon Kanai for the final time, the the two of them find themselves surrounded by an army of Yakuza headed by some of the biggest yakuza names across the country. While Captain Watase of the most powerful yakuza clan, the Omi Alliance tells Kanai that his actions have made him an enemy of all yakuza in the country, he compliments the noble efforts of Akiyama and his allies and kneels before him with the other yakuza patriarchs and soldiers following suit. Akiyama keeps his cool through it all and simply hopes to himself that Kiryu can wrap things up back at Tojo HQ.
• Launcher Move: Can perform air combos Rival Schools-style in 5.
• Loan Shark: A weird subversion: he loans out money with no interest and no collateral on the condition that people pass a Secret Test of Character. However, like regular loan sharks, he is very, very good at beating the crap out of people; in his case, though, it's usually either rival loan sharks or muggers looking to fleece him.
• Limit Break: His Climax HEAT techniques in 5:
  • Final Drive: An overhead spinning axe kick which launches airborne enemies downwards.
  • Meteor Strike: As the name implies, it's a Meteor Move where Akiyama leaps high into the air after avoiding an enemy's punch and then landing with a curbstomp onto his foe's face.
  • Killer Kick Combo: Akiyama launches a brutal 11-hit combo culminating with a spinning side kick to the face.
• Meaningful Name: The meaning of his first name "Shun" has various connotations of "speedy" or "a fast person", and his combat style makes him the series' resident speedster.
• Mistaken for Gay: While he's eyeing up the Drama Queen bar that Lily claimed to have worked at, a nearby Okama sees him and assumes he's also into men. While the Okama doesn't believe Akiyama's simply thinking about Lily and that he's denial, Akiyama takes it in stride.
• Mr. Exposition: Towards the end of 5, a good chunk of his screentime is spent trying to put pieces of the plot together out loud for the sake of not just helping his allies understand but the player as well.
• Mr. Imagination: Downplayed. After Hana leaves Akiyama near the end his chapters, all substories in which she's necessary become unavailable. In the endgame, in which you're supposed to be able to complete all substories, the game developers rectified this by having Akiyama "reminisce about Hana-chan" if you examine the desk in his office, bringing her back in his mind, and allowing the player to complete any unfinished "Hana substories" and even sing Karaoke with her. Strangely, this only works if the "Hana substories" haven't been completed yet. If you already have, you'll have to wait until the postgame, Premium Adventure Mode to be able to sing with Hana again.
• Narcissist: Played for Laughs. The karaoke Imagine Spot that most characters have singing Baka Mitai involve them reflecting mourningly over a significant photo from their past, usually depicting past loved ones or at a least very good friend. While already often played for laughs with the loved one being a minor character in their overarching plot, Akiyama's Imagine Spot has him staring sadly at a photo of himself but as a hobo. This juxtaposed with the content of other characters' photos makes him come across as the most self-absorbed of them all. Then again, the lyrics of the song are about how the singer feels like they've been a fool and Akiyama admitted that the money he lost trying to prove his innocence over the incident that lost him his job drove him homeless in the first place. Him looking at a photo of himself in those darker days fits when the song's about self-reflection upon past mistakes. Doesn't exactly justify why he happens to have a photo of himself from those days on hand though.
• Nice Guy: With a little shopping, his niceness can get to the point where half of Kamurocho's vendors and homeless guys will gladly help him out in a fight.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: Downplayed. Though he's a veritable One-Man Army and one of the series' best fighters, he tends to be treated as somewhat outclassed by the more ludicrously strong Kiryu and Saejima who are heavily implied to be fairly even matches to one another. Even Majima probably has a better track record against Kiryu than Akiyama with the Majima Everywhere system in Kiwami allowing Majima to get countless wins against Kiryu and not have it count as a game over for the player. Meanwhile, Akiyama straight up loses to Kiryu the two times he canonically fights him in spite of one of those instances having him backed up by fellow One-Man Army Tanimura though the other instance has him claim he couldn't bring himself to fight full-power against Kiryu due to the circumstances. It also doesn't help that the games tend to limit Akiyama's moveset compared to Kiryu's. That said, it doesn't stop a skilled player from subverting this and defeating Kiryu as Akiyama albeit in certain instances of uncertain canon.
• Out of Focus: Goes from being one of the main playable characters in 4 to being playable but serving as something of a Supporting Protagonist for Haruka in 5 to being an unplayable side character in 6 to not appearing at all in Like A Dragon.
  • With regards to 5, Akiyama doesn't even show up in the part of the game focusing on Haruka and him until chapter 3 of the 4 chapters in said part. He also doesn't get any sort of optional questline like Kiryu getting taxi driving missions, or Saejima getting missions that involve hunting wildlife in the mountains. Instead, only Haruka gets optional quest lines in those chapters, relating to her idol career.
• Perma-Stubble: As a sign of how slovenly he can be.
• Perpetual Smiler: Unique among the series' protagonists is that his character model tends to be grinning by default even in the midst of combat. It goes well with his cheerful, laid-back personality. Even in cutscenes he tends to have a little smirk on his face, so long as shit hasn't hit the fan too badly and sometimes even when it has.
• Pocket Protector: At the end of "4", Munakata, realizing how utterly screwed he is with Date's newspaper exposing his corruption, grabs the gun Arai dropped and shoots him. Turns out he had a nice thick stack of yen in his coat to save him.
• Progressively Prettier: His model as of 6 makes him look younger and more handsome than the ones used in 4 and 5, despite his being older in that game than the previous two.
• Put on a Bus: After having been featured as a main character in just about every game since his introduction, he's completely absent during the events of Like a Dragon. Then again it's not like there's any specific reason for a moneylender like him to be involved in the game's plot.
• Quizzical Tilt: Performs this motion in a number of in-game cutscenes in 5, especially during substories. While he's not the only character to do it, his variant is particularly exaggerated with how far his head tilts.
• Rags to Riches: He was living on the streets after losing his job as a banker. Luckily, he was right near Millennium Tower when a bomb was set off on its 60th floor, and he managed to snatch up some of the money that fell, using it to start Sky Finance and get a second chance at life.
• Rapid-Fire Kicks: His basic combo ends in a series of inhumanly fast kicks in succession referred to as "Slash Kicks". In general he's consistenly had the most fast-paced fighting style among the protagonists in the series with only Rush style Kiryu from 0 and Kiwami rivaling him in speed.
• Really Fond of Sleeping: Frequently shown sleeping, usually on the couch of his office, though he also used to snooze on the streets of Kamurocho as shown in a flashback to his homeless days.
• Red Baron: The Lifeline of Kamurocho, after his reputation as the last chance for people in deep financial trouble to save themselves if they were rejected by every other moneylender in town.
• Red Is Heroic: Wears a mauve jacket and is one of the main protagonists from 4 onwards.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The blue to Saejima, Hana and Shinada's red. Ironically, he wears a red jacket, as mentioned above.
• Respected by the Respected: Apparently the yakuza are more lenient with Sky Finance being a rival moneylender because of how good of a fighter Akiyama is. Arai notes this after seeing Akiyama wipe the floor with a somewhat tough Ueno Seiwa goon. Gets taken up to eleven in the finale of 5 when hundreds of yakuza from clans across the country bow their heads to him in gratitude including the powerful Omi Alliance who is noted to have never bowed their heads to anyone before. Deconstructed in the next game, where the Saio Triad hunts him down because of this standing.
• Riches to Rags: Downplayed: in 6, Akiyama was forced into hiding as a result of escalating violence between the Tojo Clan and Saio Triad. To that end, he sold off his business and returned to living on the streets. By the end of the game, however, he is planning to reopen his office and resume business.
• Secret Test of Character: How he decides if his clients are deserving of a loan or not.
• The Smart Guy: Definitely has this role in Yakuza 5, often devising plans and strategies for the team and as well as usually being the first one to put together parts of the villain's plan so he can explain it to his allies.
  • In the ending for Yakuza 6, he doesn't buy the story behind Kiryu's fate.
• Smoking Is Cool: He certainly seems to smoke a lot. Possibly moreso than any other protagonist considering how stuffed his ash tray in the office tends to get. Deconstructed since it's implied that it's affecting his physical stamina. He outright states multiple times in 5 that he should quit smoking when he's out of breath during vital moments.
• Tall, Dark, and Handsome: Though most of the cast is black-haired and brown-eyed, Akiyama in particular is considered attractive in his own way on top of being relatively tall and often dressing in darker clothing than other the protagonists.
  • Tall, Dark, and Snarky: He's also one of the snarkiest protagonists though he's rivaled if not surpassed by Shinada in 5 in terms of snarkiness.
• Token Wholesome: A rare male example in 5 amongst the other playable male characters seeing as how he's the only one that never performs a Battle Strip at any point in the game not even when participating in the Coliseum matches.
• Trash of the Titans: He really can't keep an office clean without Hana around.
• Unkempt Beauty: A male example to some extent. He's definitely dishelved-looking but he also has little trouble romancing the greatest number of hostesses in 4.
  • A couple characters in the story also refer to him as "pretty" albeit in a mocking manner.
  • In the same game, Mack the photographer even mistakes him for a washed-up pornstar.
  • In a substory in 5, a highschooler seems to dig the way he pulls off the "dishelved look".
• Uncle Pennybags: The real reason he runs his loan business. He wants to give people money for free, he just wants to make sure they deserve it. He even says it himself, as in his page quote.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: The end of 6 has Akiyama plan to re-open Sky Finance but his office in Kamurocho doesn't appear to be up and running in any later games. It's possible he simply re-opened in a different location in the city or maybe even took to running the office in a different city altogether like the Sotenbori branch he had in 5. In any case, with Like a Dragon being the first new game in the main series timeline to not feature him at all, we have no idea how his business is going or what the man himself is even doing these days.
• With Catlike Tread: During a substory, he attempts to trail one of his client while she's undergoing one of his tests to monitor her success. When they next meet, she tells him that she know that he was following her and that he'd make for a terrible detective.
• The Wonka: Downplayed. He's not really that weird as a person, especially considering the sort of people Kiryu encounters, but he's regarded as eccentric by many, particularly Takashi Kido who relays to an underling how strange his business model is. He offers loans to people with nowhere to go, often people who've been turned down by other lenders who've suggested Akiyama's credit company, Sky Finance. While he has Hana run a background check on them, he'll give money to anybody so long as they show their determination to getting the loan money and using it to turn their lives around. Thus he comes up with specialized tests that tend to be more difficult the more money clients ask for. Perhaps the most peculiar thing about his business practices is that his loans are no interest, no collateral. He doesn't make a single cent off of Sky Finance and yet he's one of the wealthiest members of the cast though owning other businesses like Club Elise presumably helps. Kido also ominously notes that anyone who's ever borrowed from him has never asked for another loan from him again. Kido theorizes that his past clients want to "stay as far away from that nutjob as they can". Akiyama himself believes that he gives people not just money but the motivation to turn their life around so that they'll never have to borrow money again. In any case, he's a very wealthy man despite these quirks and the apparent "success" of Sky Finance has attracted the attention of several rivals. His tutorial fight even involves the disgruntled employees of a rival company.
• Wouldn't Hit a Girl: In one of the fifth game's substories, he encounters a group of schoolgirl bullies who try to pressure a girl into prostitution so they can use the money to go party. When one of the girls calls her brother and his gangster friends to take care of him, Akiyama gladly takes his anger out on them instead, saying he has a thing against hitting girls.
• Younger Than They Look: He's only 32 in Yakuza 4 but is viewed as much older by a variety of characters, with one NPC even wondering he has grandchildren despite being just three years older than the youthful looking Tanimura. His rather disheveled appearance plays a part in this, but the stress of going bankrupt and living on the streets also likely aged him quickly.

Taiga Saejima

Voiced by: Rikiya Koyama (Japanese), Ron Yuan (English)

"Which one of you lunatics said killing a guy's no big deal?! Was it you? Or you? Ya sit up there chantin' "kill, kill, kill." But how many of ya have taken a life with your own two hands!?"

Saejima as he appears in Yakuza: Like a Dragon.

^{Click here} to see Saejima as he appears in Yakuza 4.

New playable character number two debuting in Yakuza 4. An ex-yakuza who infamously gunned down 18 yakuza in a noodle shop, and has spent 25 years in death row. After he learns he was set up, he breaks out of prison and returns to Kamurocho to find out what happened to his old family and why he was abandoned on that fateful night before the police catch up to him again. He was set up to take the fall by Katsuragi of the Ueno Seiwa clan, who was the real killer. He is the oldest and strongest of the four protagonists, and by the game's end, he's brought back into the Tojo Clan and made the boss of the Saejima Family.

He also returns in Yakuza 5, turning himself in for the events of the previous game, but near the end of his sentence, learns that there are forces out there trying to prolong it, and escapes once again. In Yakuza 6, he returns to jail again to fulfill his previous sentence.

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• All for Nothing: Downplayed, in that learning that the Ueno Seiwa hit didn't truly kill the intended target and his Sasai boss ended up losing the family in the aftermath due to the whole thing being a setup utterly eats at Saejima after realizing his twenty-five years of prison time were one giant waste of agony. However, he doesn't actually regret following the order itself, solely because orders were orders and he'd have it no other way on his honor as a yakuza.
• Animal Motifs: The tiger. Naturally, he and Kiryu end up fighting after they've barely spoken.
• Anti-Hero: Established as one of the darkest in the series from his massacre of an introduction to the rest of his character arc consisting of trying to have his revenge on his old Oath Brother Majima, believing that he had betrayed him all those years ago. Still, he proves to have a surprisingly strong moral core underneath it all particularly during his Shaming the Mob scene.
• Badass Longcoat: He's always wearing some sort of beaten old coat that reaches down to his knees. Starting in Yakuza 6 and all future Dragon Engine games, he switches to a shorter though no less badass Alpha Industries N3B parka.
• Badass in Distress: He's captured in the climax of Yakuza 4 along with his step-sister Yasuko. They catch up while Kiryu comes to their rescue.
• Bald Head of Toughness: He's shaved in the 4th and 5th games having left prison. Out of all of the protagonists in the series, he is the strongest in terms of raw physical strength, having developed his Charles Atlas Superpower of immense strength and durability in jail. Notably, he is the only protagonist besides Kiryu able to pick up motorcycles and in one cut scene, stops a moving car with his bare hands before moving out of the way.
• Barbarian Longhair: In 4 and 5's imagination segments.
• Better the Devil You Know: In 5, he States this almost word-for-word with regards to the relationship between the Police and the Tojo Clan. The Tojo Clan may be a powerful criminal syndicate but at least the Police know how to easily communicate with them and keep them on a leash. All bets are off if the Tojo Clan allows the Omi Alliance from the west to roll in and take control of Kamurocho.
• The Big Guy: He's the strongest guy of the bunch and one of the tallest.
• Big "SHUT UP!": When the crowd boos at him for not killing his first defeated opponent at a tournament deathmatch, then he gives them a touching speech about how murdering people traumatized him after the 1985 incident, and he sees his victims' dying faces every night in his dreams.
• Blood Knight: Downplayed. Unlike Majima, he doesn't immediately try to twist situations into a fight when there's no reason to but he does seem to enjoy butting heads with strong enemies like Kiryu or Majima. When Jo Amon once again tries to challenge Kiryu to a fight to the death in 4, Saejima's eager to tag along to see a guy tough and scary enough to make Kiryu take the situation seriously.
• Boots of Toughness: When in civilian clothing he always has one. Gotta make sure those stomps to the face hurt.
• Car Fu: Saejima’s the only one strong enough to lift and swing motorcycles and scooters as if they were bats.
• Celibate Hero: To a degree. Saejima probably would if he could, but he has far more important things to do with what little time he has.
  • He has a bit of a freak out when he sees Haruka. This is what tipped Kiryu off that he spent time in prison as, "you had the look of a guy who hadn't seen a woman in a long time".
  • If you to enter a hostess club while playing as him in Yakuza 4, he'll straight-up refuse, saying that he's not interested. Of course, given that he's currently on the run from the police, going to a hostess club wouldn't be a bright idea.
  • In Yakuza 5, while he can win over the voluptuous Kaguya, he finds her to be more of a pain and doesn't express much affection for her. It's pretty much stated that their "private time" wasn't intimate, but rather spent talking about what his dreams and aspirations were. Not that it stops him from fantasizing about her in the hot springs and checking her out in air hockey.
• Charged Attack: He can charge up his Finishing Moves to hit even harder. He also has to charge them in order to access his powerful Double Finishing Blows.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: He's had a very long time to work on his natural strength in prison. Most of his fighting style revolves around his sheer muscle, and he's the only playable character outside of Kiryu in 0 and Kiwami to be able to pick up motorcycles and smash people with them.
  • It gets even more absurd in Yakuza 5 where one of his HEAT actions has him punch the ground so hard it knocks opponents off their feet by causing a MINI-TREMOR. Goro Daimon would be proud.
  • There's also a scene where he nearly gets run over and briefly stops a moving car with his bare hands before rolling out of the way.
  • And who could forget the time he ripped a huge metal exhaust pipe as thick as a tree off of a wall with his bare hands and swung it around at the goons surrounding him before dropping it on the one poor schmuck he missed.
  • He can also unlock the ability to rip signposts and electrical transformers out of the ground.
• Combat Pragmatist: Weapons, walls, enemies in any conceivable position... if it exists, Saejima has a finisher for it.
• The Comically Serious: Maintains his gruff demeanor even when he's trying to tame a pair of stray cats by meowing in 4. 5 also has him lay the smackdown on some punks while dressed as Santa in a substory.
• Cool Old Guy: Despite being in his 50s he's still a force to be reckoned with.
• Cruel Mercy: Makes a promise to Kosaka not to kill anyone that's part of the conspiracy that seems be targetting Saejima and his allies so that they can receive proper justice in prison. He still plans to make them wish he had with Kugihara in particular receiving the most brutal beatdown.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Black shirt, pale green tailcoat, snowfield camouflage trousers, black military boots and he is on the light side of the characters in the entire series.
• Desperation Attack: 4 grants him access to quite a few Heat Actions that he can only use at low health.
• Dueling Player Characters:
  • He faces off against Kiryu after he broke out of Okinawa Penitentiary No.1. They fight each other again in the fifth game to lure out the game's mastermind. Notably, for their rematch, the player has control of which character they want to use, although it has no effect story-wise.
  • In Like a Dragon, he takes on Ichiban and his team alongside Majima after catching them infiltrating the Omi HQ.
• Dual Boss: In Like a Dragon, he fights alongside Majima. More specifically, he steps in after you reduce Majima's health to 50%.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: During the events of 4, he had long hair that reached his shoulders. After going back to prison in 5 to make amends for the past, he has his head shaved.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: A lot has changed in the 25 years since Saejima was put away. He's even more Hopeless with Tech than Kiryu, as he doesn't know what a CD-ROM is, nor does he even know how to use a cell phone. While Kiryu and Akiyama both use their phones to capture Revelations, Saejima pulls a massive log out of Hammerspace and chisels a wood sculpture instead. Though he improves enough to be able to use a cell phone by the time 5 rolls around.
• Five Temperament Ensemble: Choleric
• Friend to All Children: For a self-admitted bad guy and convicted mass murderer, Saejima sure has a soft spot for kids (Yasuko mentions he was planning to become a schoolteacher before he became a gangster to support her kidney operation). One substory chain in 4 has him help an orphan repay his debt to a loan shark who kidnapped his older sister.
• Gentle Giant: He gives this vibe, especially in Yakuza 5, since he softened up quite a bit.
• The Ghost: Aside from a few brief flashbacks, he doesn't make any sort of physical appearance in 0 despite being Majima's primary motivation for still trying to get back into the Tojo Clan's good graces. Justified since he's in prison and in order for Saejima's plot in 4 to make sense, Majima cannot visit Saejima and explain his actions.
• Good Is Not Soft: He's civil and pleasant to friends, allies, and the average civilian but wreaks brutal destruction on anyone who brings unnecessary harm to him or any of the previously stated categories of people.
• Good Old Ways: Saejima's general reaction to just about everything, especially the state of the yakuza. That said he does wonder during at the end of one of the substories in 4 if he was simply ignorant to how ruthless yakuza always have been.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: The man has no issues with picking enemies up and using them to hit other punks. He gets even more techniques for this in 5 with his Tiger Puppetry ability.
• Heroic Build: The guy’s absolutely shredded, giving even Kiryu a run for his money. 25 years in prison didn’t dampen his brick house physique any either.
• He-Man Woman Hater: Usually averted but his age combined with the 25 years spent in prison does contribute to certain antiquated views on proper male behavior. At one point in 4 during the Dojo sidestory, he has the opportunity to give student Hideo Sugiyama advice on how to ask a woman out. Apparently, the ideal answer is to tell him to say to her "Make me breakfast every mornin, woman!" with Saejima's justification being that it's the sort of line that men have used for generations and will surely still work now. Sugiyama gets motivated at the thought of having a nice breakfast every morning with his crush and even learns a new ability.
• Hidden Depths: He's a pretty good singer.
  • When he was a young boy, he wanted to become a school teacher. Needless to say, that didn't end up happening.
  • His conversations with Fukushi from the Dojo can have him admit that he used to love watching a certain robot anime back in the day. It helped him see how even bad guys can have their own purpose and sense of justice.
• Homeless Pigeon Person: Saejima himself as well as most of his friendly contacts as a consequence of only being playable in games where has to escape from prison and become a fugitive of the law.
• Honor Before Reason: His duty to his family and allies takes priority over his own safety and happiness, and he'll fully admit this. Even if he has nightmares and agonizes over the lives he was put into prison for, it was still the order laid on his lap and that's that.
• Iconic Sequel Character: To a lesser extent than Akiyama but he's still become an important character in the series and making several appearances in games after his debut.
• If I Do Not Return: In 5 during the Hunting arc, when he goes after Yama-oroshi, he tells the villagers that if he dies fighting against the bear, to tell Deputy Warden Kosaka that he's sorry he didn't keep his promise.
• Immune to Flinching: He gets two abilities in "5" that make him this in Heat mode: "Stability" from the Soul tree and "Herculean Spirit" from Tendo's training.
• Large Ham: He holds nothing back when he sings, but have him do "Lively Interjections" on Rouge Of Love and he takes it up to eleven.
  Saejima: EVERYBODY SAY ROUGE OF LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE!
• Leitmotif:
  • "Massive Fire" in 4. It returns in Like a Dragon whenever Ichiban Summons him.
  • "Hailstorm" in 5. As a potential boss fight in the same game's story "The maximum ill luck" will play either while fighting him as Kiryu or fighting Kiryu as him, meaning they share this leitmotif.
  • In Like A Dragon, he shares "Receive and Turn You" with Majima when assisting him in their shared boss fight.
• Limit Break: His Tiger Essence Climax HEAT attacks in 5:
  • Tiger Essence of Bashing: Saejima leaps into the air while taking hold of his opponent and plants them with a modified flying Tombstone Piledriver.
  • Tiger Essence of Blitzing: Saejima charges his way through a group of enemies ala a football player before grabbing the last man, tossing him upwards and slamming him down.
  • Tiger Essence of Shockwave: A massive Ground Pound which knocks all nearby enemies off their feet.
  • Raging Tiger Cyclone: His Poundmate Special in ''Like a Dragon; Saejima bursts out from a manhole, catches the cover, starts spinnning hard enough to create a tornado that picks up surrounding debris and cars before tossing the the cover at the enemies (and sending the tornado at them along with it).
  • Blade Kill: His Combination Attack with Majima in their boss fight in Like a Dragon. Saejima swings Majima around while the latter has his knife extended to attack all party members before tossing him at Ichiban. Majima then proceeds to fly right by and bounce off a wall to knee Ichiban in the back of the head while Saejima gut punches him.
• Living Legend: Convicted of killing 18 yakuza in a noodle shop has made him one in the eyes of the underworld. Unfortunately, it also paints a huge target on his back.
• Magikarp Power: His Mighty Glacier fighting style alongside his very slow attack speed makes him really weak in the early game, especially in his prison break segment of 4. But once you upgrade his attack speed, Charged Attack, and Immune to Flinching abilities, he becomes a walking bulldozer who can overpower even bosses in a battle of attrition.
• Magnetic Hero: Has a tendency to turn prospective antagonists trying to take advantage of him into strong allies because he treated them with respect and even calls them "brother" at times. Hamazaki in Yakuza 4 and Baba in Yakuza 5 end up on the side of the heroes' because of this.
  • In 5 he also becomes pretty close friends with all of his cellmates at Abashiri Penitentiary. It probably helps that all of them are surprisingly decent people for convicted felons. Even the cold, no-nonsense, yakuze-hating Deputy Warden Kosaka comes to respect and trust Saejima a rather great deal to the point where he arranges for Saejima to break out of prison with Baba in order to uncover the deadly conspiracy that's causing trouble for the prison.
• Manly Men Can Hunt: His unique sidequest in 5 has him take up hunting, with his ultimate goal being to hunt an extremely dangerous bear.
• Manly Tears: During his speech to the crowd chanting for blood in the Underground Coliseum.
• Metronomic Man Mashing: Just like Kiryu, he can unlock the ability to grab downed enemies by the legs and then swing them over his shoulder which he can do multiple times until the enemy runs out of health. Just like Kiryu however, it's ineffective on minibosses and bosses who tend to immediately break free from attempts to grab them by the legs while downed. One of his Heat Actions in 5 also amounts to grabbing an enemy by the face and swinging them over his shoulder repeatedly in order to knock away all the other enemies surrounding him.
• Mighty Glacier: He's the slowest of the main playable characters, but can deal a ton of damage. While attack speed upgrades mitigate his slowness, his inability to perform a basic Quickstep or quickly roll back to his feet when getting knocked down combined with having upgrades that give him more Super Armor and defense in Heat mode means he's best played as a tank. Notably, when Kiryu tries to grab a heavyset sumo-type enemy he gets pushed away instantly, but Saejima can actually grab these guys like any other mook (with a certain upgrade) which is a testament to his monstrous strength.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: He gives Kido advice that if he wants to climb the ranks, he must seize an opportunity when he sees it. This ends up causing Kido to pull a Face–Heel Turn, resulting in Saejima and Yasuko getting captured by the villains, and Yasuko getting fatally wounded by Katsuragi.
• Noble Demon: He may be more of a Yakuza than the other protagonists to the point of performing a hit when ordered to but he tries his best to live as a dutiful, honorable man and genuinely seems to be a good person at heart.
  I'm just livin' the life me and my bro chose to lead. That's what bein' a yakuza's really about. People think we're criminals or whatever. But I'm proud to be part of somethin' bigger. Honor and duty. That's what it all means.
• Older Hero vs. Younger Villain: At least two of the major villains he's faced in his two playable experiences have been significantly younger than him: Takeshi Kido in 4 and Shigeki Baba in 5.
• Older Than They Look: Like Majima and Kiryu before him, by the time he shows again in Like A Dragon his features are far less harsh and he loses a lot of his more noticeable wrinkles, either due to graphical changes or finally not being forced into prison again. This despite him being 53 at that point.
• Perpetual Frowner: His default expression is a frown or a slight scowl and it’s pretty rare for him to ever smile. Justified considering his circumstances in both Yakuza 4 and 5. He looks much more cheerful in Like A Dragon.
• Promotion to Parent: After his mother died, Saejima had to be responsible for both his own and his stepsister Yasuko's welfare, as his father had left the family early on.
• Punny Name: His first name "Taiga" sounds like Tiger.
• Put on a Bus: He appears very briefly at the beginning of Yakuza 6, and isn't seen again until the end of the game, discussing with Majima and Daigo how to handle Kiryu's apparent death.
  • At one point early on in Like a Dragon, Adachi tells Ichiban that after the Omi Alliance took over Kamurocho in the wake of the diminishing Tojo Clan, the heads of the Tojo took their leave from the city while a still image shows the backs of Majima, Daigo, and Saejima as they leave through the gates of Kamurocho. They don't make a reappearance until much later in the game while Ichiban's crew is trying to sneak into the Omi Alliance HQ.
• Red Baron: 18-Count Saejima, after being convicted of 18 counts of murder during the Ueno Seiwa hit. He is still occasionally referred to this way even after it's revealed he wasn't the actual killer, since regardless of his gun being loaded with rubber bullets without his knowledge, the determination and badassery it takes to pick a fight with 18 high-ranking yakuza by yourself and win is still the real deal.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The red to Goh Hamazaki, Kiryu, Yasuko, Shun, Majima and Masayoshi's blue. He changes to blue in 5.
• Remember the New Guy?: He's actually Majima's best friend and they were a huge influence on each other in their early yakuza days. Funny that Majima never mentioned him. Probably due to Maijima's unwilling role in Saejima's frame up.
• Remember When You Blew Up a Sun?: The Ueno Seiwa hit is often brought up as an example of his badassery. Also, in 6 you can bring up that time Saejima fought a bear as a topic of casual conversation in Cabaret Clubs.
• The Scapegoat: He didn't actually kill anyone during the hit of 1985. All of the revolvers he was given were loaded with experimental rubber bullets. Isao Katsuragi shot everyone at the shop to pave the way for his own promotion, and had his own blood-brother shoot him to make him look like a survivor.
• Secret A.I. Moves: The data based on him in the IF 7-R in 4 has access to a regular quickstep and will even make heavy usage of quickstep attacks unlike the real Saejima who has only has a roll as an evasive ability and is more focused around Charged Attacks and strong grappling techniques. This makes for a noticeably more agile take on the normally rather sluggish Saejima.
• Shaming the Mob: The mob in this case being rich and bloodthirsty spectators of a deathmatch tournament he's forced to participate in. He lectures them on what it's really like to kill someone. This is combined with What Measure Is a Mook? and "The Reason You Suck" Speech.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Even after 25 years have passed since the 18-death hit, Saejima was left traumatized by memories of the event which continued to haunt his nightmares throughout his time in prison.
• Shoryuken: Has one called the "Great Bomber" in 4 and renamed to "Super Uppercut" in 5. They're basically identical and tied to his charged heavy attack though in 4, he has to charge it twice as long as it takes to perform his Spin Attack whereas in 5 their charge time order has been reversed with the Super Uppercut being his first Charged Attack
• Stay in the Kitchen: Spending 25 years of his life in prison on top of being one of the older protagonists makes it unsurprising that he shows this attitude at times. In 5 when visiting Kaguya at a hostess club, he'll state that he expects men to fight their own battles but not women.
  • The above becomes ironic during Like a Dragon where he averts this trope by having no problem fighting against female party members with his bare fists.
• Tattooed Crook: A tiger, contrasting with Kiryu's dragon. Incidentally, the tiger in the tattoo is seen surrounded by Japanese Sasa leaves, which is likely a nod to the Sasai Family that Saejima once swore allegiance to.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: Averted in the past, which is a pretty big deal considering other main characters. He’s introduced gunning down a restaurant full of Yakuza thugs and personally executes their patriarch. Even the reveal that it was all rubber bullets doesn’t change that he was willing to murder all those people. Played straight in the present day where the trauma from said shooting means he finds it difficult to take another life. He even gives a speech telling the audience of Purgatory how much they suck for goading him to kill a contestant.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: As stated before, his childhood aspirations to become a schoolteacher obviously didn't pan out that way, not to mention all the traumatic experiences he's faced ever since he joined the Tojo Clan. Still, it's apparently canon that Saejima really did engage in the side-content in 4, helping Sodachi instruct his students in self-defense and turn his dojo from a failing endeavor into a successful and reputable place to learn martial arts. Saejima himself seems to cherish his memories coaching the students as implied by 5 in both substories and during his Imagine Spot while singing Baka Mitai in which he'll gaze sentimentally at a photo of himself and Sodachi smiling in his dojo. In a way, he did become some sort of teacher after all if only temporarily.
• Tiger Versus Dragon: He's not quite the first "Tiger" to Kiryu's "Dragon" (that'd be Shimano), but he's certainly the most prominent and recurring one, being one of the only characters in the series who can actually fight Kiryu to a stalemate. Going with this theme, he also has an equivalent to Kiryu's famous "Tiger Drop" called "Dragon Fall".
• Took a Level in Kindness: Compared to his initial personality, he's far more mellow in 5.
• Tranquil Fury: Gives Kugihara a nasty and terrifying lesson in torment in 5 that stains the snow red with blood and leaves his left hand crippled. After everything Kugihara's done to Saejima for the past six months, he'd be justified in this form of revenge and yet Saejima's facial expression barely changes as he stomps Kugihara's wrist to a bloody mess. He also doesn't raise his voice at all as he lectures him on the dangers of picking fights with a yakuza.
• Unnecessary Combat Roll: Lacks a quickstep for evasion unlike the other characters. Instead, he can only roll around or hop backwards which is significantly slower. He also means doesn't have any sort of evasive attack equivalent to the Quickstep Attacks every other playable character in 4 has.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Saejima's fighting style is based around brute force more than finesse. Even his sword style is unrefined, but considering how absurdly strong he is he doesn't NEED to be fancy.
  • Tellingly, neither of the two training masters he's had in his playable appearances actually try to teach him the skills he learns. One of them mostly has him mining a cave out or shattering rocks with his bare hands while the other gets possessed by mountain gods, granting him incredible powers and durability before attacking Saejima. In other words, they just give him opportunities to put his insane strength to use, occasionally inspiring him to utilize those experiences to improvise his own techniques. As opposed to any sort of formal teachings or sparring sessions conducted by a well-trained martial artist.
  • Strong and Skilled: However, this is Downplayed in that Saejima is very obviously an exceptional fighter himself when it comes to skill. Not only is he able to match Kiryu's physical abilities, he also displays roughly equal levels of skill. Notably, he is able to teach students of a Dojo to become masters of fighting which naturally requires extensive experience so he's clearly very competent in the technical aspect of fighting.
• Use Your Head: In 5, he gets access to the Tiger Dragon Drop, which, unlike Kiryu's ducking punch, is a massive, stun-inducing headbutt.
• Villain Protagonist: Skirts closer to this trope than any other protagonist since he proves to be far more dedicated to the Yakuza lifestyle and mindset than the likes of Kiryu. He's introduced in 4 willingly gunning down nearly 20 rival Yakuza on the orders of his boss putting him on deathrow for 25 years until he breaks out of prison aided by the nefarious Hamazaki. He then tells Kiryu that he has no plans of reforming and instead is focused on uncovering the truth behind what went wrong during his 18-person hit and even get some revenge on whoever's responsible. Tellingly, Kiryu initially declines to help him unless he gives him a better reason than just vengeance. Ultimately averted since he doesn't go through with killing any of those who were supposedly responsible for his 25 years like Majima who turns out to be rather innocent or Katsuragi who carries much of the blame but Saejima attempts to spare him anyway considering him Not Worth Killing. When it becomes clear how dangerous the bad guys are, he doesn't hesitate to join in on delivering righteous justice to them.
  • Averted in 5. He doesn't spend much time as a fugitive-of-the law Yakuza before going back to prison both to atone for past crimes as well as to find greater strength worthy of a man trying to be a leading Patriarch in the Tojo Clan. When he's expelled from the Yakuza for unknown reasons, he opts to continue trying to live a good life with people he cares about like his new friends in his cell block at Abashiri Penitentiary. The rest of his story is spent trying to uncover the conspiracy behind the mysterious death of the Warden as well as whoever's sent Kugihara and his cronies to torment and try to kill Saejima.
• Warrior Therapist: With all the time he's spent in prison, he's had a lot of time to reflect upon his actions the thought process leading up to them allowing him to offer his own brand of advice to those who have had similar experiences, especially fellow yakuza. He even manages to give words of encouragement to fellow Warrior Therapist Kiryu who's in a particularly low point in his life by the time of 5.
• When He Smiles: Much like Kiryu, he's a Perpetual Frowner. But when he gives a genuine smile, he means it.
• Worthy Opponent: In Like a Dragon, while Ichiban and his friends ultimately didn't come close to beating him and Majima, the fact that they made the two work up a decent sweat is enough to earn Saejima's respect. As he leaves, he tells Ichiban that he's looking forward to the next round.
• Would Hit a Girl: Surprisingly, Like a Dragon shows that like Majima he's perfectly fine with getting into fisticuffs with the women in Ichiban's party.
• World's Strongest Man: Saejima's performance all but confirms he is a very strong contender for both the title of the strongest man and the best fighter, being the only one who has the skill and strength needed to match Kiryu enough to end in a stalemate, being stronger than Majima in this regard as Majima always ends up losing in the end despite putting up a good fight, but Saejima has only ever lost to Kiryu once, not to mention he's also defeated Majima twice. Their physical strength and durability are potrayed to be on a similar level in gameplay, Saejima relying on sheer brute strength and ignoring enemy attacks to take down very similarly enormous numbers to what Kiryu goes through and able to wield huge heavy objects as weapons such as motorcycles, electrical transformers, and tall metal signposts, feats that match Kiryu's own strength. Notably, against Ichiban's crew while Majima is actually bleeding and somewhat sweating, Saejima is shown to be uninjured and unfazed he even stated he was ready to stop holding back, indicating he was confident he could beat them by himself.
• Written-In Absence: In Dead Souls, his absence is explained as being on business for the Tojo Clan in China.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: He has this reaction in the "A Special Place" substory in "5" when it looks like Sodachi is about to die after succumbing to his injuries after fending off a realtor's goons, but then he ends up passing out and talking in his sleep.
• Younger Than They Look: Like Kiryu and Majima before him, his flashback appearance to when he was 20 has him look way older due to his harsh features and wrinkles. He could easily pass for someone in his 30’s or 40’s.