Like a Dragon: Yakuza, a live-action Amazon Originals drama series based on Sega’s long-running game franchise , will begin broadcast on Prime Video on October 25. Directed by Masaharu Take (The Naked Director), the show partly follows the story of the first game, 2005’s Yakuza , while telling an original story. The show follows series protagonist Kazuma Kiryu in his misadventures in Japan’s crime underworld, set in the fictional Tokyo red light district Kamurocho in both the mid-1990s and 2005.
Playing stoic antihero Kiryu is actor Ryoma Takeuchi. Takeuchi played the titular role in Kamen Rider Drive in 2014, quickly reaching a wide audience in Japan, before going on to feature in multiple prestige drama series and films. He voiced Justice Smith’s character Tim Goodman in the Japanese dub of 2019’s Detective Pikachu movie adaptation , in which he also had an on-screen cameo as a Pokémon trainer.
A highly physical actor with a background in soccer, Takeuchi is also a sensitive performer, who has earned acclaim for his roles in theater. Like a Dragon: Yakuza will be the actor’s first starring role in a global drama series. “I was surprised to be offered this role,” Takeuchi tells IGN Japan shortly after the announcement of the series, at the historic Hotel Gajoen Tokyo in Tokyo’s Meguro neighborhood.
“I knew about the game series and had played the first game at my uncle’s home. It’s a real challenge to play a character from an existing work, and I co.
