Like a Dragon: Yakuza

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Like a Dragon: Yakuza is a six-episode Prime Video crime action drama with an original script based on Sega's Like a Dragon game series, telling across two eras how its hero, Kazuma Kiryu, came to be called the Dragon of Dojima.

Prime Video released it exclusively in more than 240 countries and territories starting October 25, 2024 (Japan time), putting out the six episodes three at a time on October 25 and November 1. The Japanese title is Ryu ga Gotoku: Beyond the Game (龍が如く～Beyond the Game～), and the English title is Like a Dragon: Yakuza. The Prime Video Korea page rates the season 16+, with content descriptors for violence, drug use, alcohol use, smoking and foul language. The original game debuted in 2005 under the banner of "entertainment for adults" and is set in Kamurocho, a fictional district modeled on a real-life nightlife district. A live-action film, Like a Dragon, directed by Takashi Miike and starring Kazuki Kitamura as Kiryu, was also released in 2007.

The series was directed by Masaharu Take, who made the Sakura Ando-led film 100 Yen Love (2014) and served as chief director of the Netflix series The Naked Director, together with Kengo Takimoto. According to Amazon's announcement, the screenplay and story are by Sean Crouch and Yugo Nakamura, with the Japanese-language screenplay by Yasuhiro Yoshida and Kana Yamada. Filming ran for about six months starting around May 2023. Director Take said Ryoma Takeuchi was the first person who came to mind when he thought about casting, explaining that he needed an actor with presence just by being there and a back broad enough to carry a huge dragon tattoo. Takeuchi revealed that the first film set he ever worked on, 11 years earlier, was one of Take's, where he appeared as an extra for just over two seconds. During the shoot, the makeup team spent two hours every day painting the dragon tattoo on his back.

Ryoma Takeuchi plays Kazuma Kiryu; Kento Kaku plays Akira Nishikiyama (Nishiki), who grew up with him like a brother in the same orphanage; Yuumi Kawai plays Yumi Sawamura, who also grew up there; and Hinano Nakayama plays Nishiki's younger sister, Miho. Toshiaki Karasawa plays Shintaro Kazama, who runs Sunflower Orphanage, where the four grew up, and has been a father figure to them; Munetaka Aoki plays Goro Majima, a character who also appears in the games; and Subaru Shibutani plays Detective Date. In 1995, trying to break free of the orphanage's rules, the four raid a game arcade, but the arcade turns out to be tied to the Dojima Family, the yakuza group that controls Kamurocho, and they are pressed to take responsibility, which is how they come to set foot in the yakuza world. In the 2005 story, 10 billion yen belonging to the Omi Alliance goes missing, and Kiryu, nearing the end of his prison term, hears from Detective Date that Nishiki and Yumi are in danger.

In a comment released at the production announcement in June 2024, Takeuchi said he felt the pressure because the game is popular around the world, but believed it was a project that would not work unless he put his life on the line, and at a press event the same day he noted that because the series depicts both 1995 and 2005, viewers would get to see sides of Kiryu not yet shown in the games. In an interview around the release, he explained that rather than playing the Kiryu of the games, he drew Kiryu toward himself. Masayoshi Yokoyama, head of Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio, which makes the game series, said after watching the finished series that, honestly, the two actors' performances were nothing like the Kiryu and Nishiki of the original, but that this was exactly why they worked. Munetaka Aoki, who plays Goro Majima, said at the world premiere in October that he carefully studied game footage and picked out memorable lines to bring into the drama. At the same event, Kento Kaku said that Takeuchi handled all of the underground fighting scenes himself without a stunt double, shooting several bouts a day.

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Drama Lineup editors · Fact-checked against: press.moviewalker.jp, cinematoday.jp, press.aboutamazon.com, automaton-media.com, eiga.com, dengekionline.com, game.watch.impress.co.jp, primevideo.com · 2026-10-18