jothamponders

[jothamponders]

Maybe I haven’t really enjoyed a good piece of literature yet but the longer I ponder about the meaning of Infinite Wealth in the context of the story and its characters, the more I’ve come to love the game! I get that overarching themes are basically spoonfed to you courtesy of Ariamaru Tomi, but I think it gets deeper than that.

I only just realised that the reason Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth is called that is because the Japanese title was 龍が如く8, and the entire cover design is just an 8. Therefore, instead of fully redesigning the logo and promotional material for the international version, they just adjusted the orientation to pretend it was an ∞, moved the character renders around, and then added "infinite" to the title so nobody would question it.

[jothamponders]

this game is fuckin nuts man

[jothamponders]

spoilers for yakuza 6 onwards

I hate the way kiryu treated his eldest "son," who almost always gets the short end of the stick. Heck, nevermind the events from 2 to 5! It's just as bad after that, too!

I think that Kiryu never learned from his mistakes with Daigo which, by the way, he himself has acknowledged by the end of yakuza 6. By "disappearing," he just doomed himself to not be there for him. AGAIN. I replayed that Y:LAD and Gaiden cutscene, just observing Daigo and it was just painful seeing him try to speak with Kiryu.

Which brings us to that Infinite Wealth scene. I always thought that that fight was shoehorned (I still do, a bit). I mean, "you're cowards" is the lamest taunt Kiryu could have said. But if there's anyone there who deserves to be righteously angered, it's Daigo, for sure. And Majima. After all, he already honored Kiryu's "final request" in y6, believing he's dead. But then he sees him momentarily as a dead man walking, and then appearing for the third time, only to be given yet another request to help with the second dissolution. For all that time, Kiryu wasn't present in Daigo's life either.

Also, I might be reading into it too much, but y6 was the first and last time Daigo called Kiryu his father. (well, maybe that's just because they would never say that to each other personally or that old habits die hard)

oh no I'm rambling again, am I