The Yakuza series seems like it would be extremely serious. Based around the real-world yakuza, members of organised crime syndicates known for having strict rules of conduct and unconventional ritual practices, each game is usually based around a crime drama plot line. In the game, you will find cold-bloo💎ded murder, conspiracies, power struggles, and themes of grief and loss. Despite this, actually playing the game will likely have you in fits of giggles – I have certainly cried laughing while playing it, multiple times.
The series is so compelling because it flip-flops so easily between serious themes and deeply unserious gameplay and subplots. You get so invested in the escapades of Kazuma Kiryu because of all the absurd situations you get to put him through and how he reacts to them. In Yakuza 0, there’s an incredible subplot where he ends up getting sucked into working as a producer on a video shoot – I used to work as a producer, and🐼 watching the crew use entirely made-up terms while Kiryu struggled to figure out what they were asking for through context clues made me think, ‘Oh, he’s just like me for real’.
In Notes on Camp, Susan Sontag says camp is about artifice and stylisation, the love of the exaggerated and the “off”, even that camp is the farthest extension of the metaphor of life as theatre. What better describes the Yakuza franchise? Life is theatre in these games. It’s clear the games don’t take themselves too seriously, which is the real beauty of them. is one of the most ridiculous and surprisingly revealing character introductions I’ve ever seen in a game, there’s a clan with diaper fetishes featured in more than one game, there’s even an attack style in Yakuza 0 called Breaker that you learn from a breakdancer that invoღlves spinning on your head. It’s unabashedly cheesy, with highly dramatic karaoke performances you can trigger when you pick a song at a karaoke bar.
The game’s characters are exaggerated and comedic as much as they are gritty and hardened. Yakuza games would typically not be considered high art because of their kitschiness, which is a characteristic of camp. The best part of Yakuza is that it knows it is camp – I disagree with Sontag’s assertion that camp that knows itself to be camp is less satisfying, in this case. Yakuza leans into its campiness – it is unapologetically, passionately extravagant. Through its refusal to be serious, it elevates itself. There are 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:endless substories across these games, some so absurd just the premise alone triggers laughter, and they are so humanising and so adept at fleshing out the world around the protagonists that I can’t imagine the game without them. It’s a reminder that more than just agents of violence, the protagonists are people who live in a world 168澳洲幸运🎃5开奖网:filled to the brim with human encounte♏rs.
I feel about Yakuza the same way I feel about Jennifer Cooli𓆉dge, or RRR – sometimes I watch them in action, and I clap my hands together in glee. They are entertaining, without letting up, and I also take them seriously as works of art and artists. As Sontag says, “Camp is generous. It wants to enjoy.” There is no need for cynicism here, only appreciation. Camp is a tender feeling, and I feel all sorts of tenderness towards the Yakuza series. Go play these games 🎉immediately.