[ad_1]
During recent interview with Red Bull France, Yakuza Creator Toshihiro Nagoshi was asked about the common request for series protagonist Kazuma Kiryu to appear in a fighting game. Nagoshi is hesitant, he says, because he doesn’t want Kiryu to fight the women.
“We receive this request a lot,” Nagoshi told interviewer Grégory de Meyer, who English translations published of his interview in French on the Resetera games forum. “Of course there are exceptions, but fighting games usually have female characters, and I personally don’t really want to see Kiryu beat women.”
Except play arcade games and help a hostess channel her inner dominatrix, Kiryu spends much of the Yakuza franchise defeating enemies in the underworld of Japanese crime. That alone makes him a great candidate to be invited into fighting games like Tekken or Virtua Hunter (the latter, it should be noted, is also developed by Sega). But in nearly 15 years, the noble gangster and his creators at Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio haven’t even flirted with that kind of cameo yet.
Nagoshi’s hesitation makes sense. Kiryu practices an old-fashioned style of chivalry, which puts honor and respect at the forefront even as the large criminal family he belongs to makes his money largely from violence and extortion. While in the real world the image of the noble Yakuza may be an idealized myth partly built by classic Japanese cinema, in fiction Yakuza series, Kiryu wouldn’t put his finger on a woman.
I have wanted to see Kiryu’s guest in fighting games in the past, but Nagoshi’s fears made me rethink my position. A little like my dissatisfaction with how Mortal Kombat 11 manipulated characters like RoboCop and Rambo, seeing Kiryu beat Nina Williams and Pai Chan would certainly be a betrayal of his moral compass. Of course, treating these strong women like delicate flowers might be seen as a different kind of sexism, but Kiryu would probably find a way to avoid these fights all the same. He’s just that kind of guy.
[ad_2]
Source link