6.22-6.26

 6.22

Probably something like 4 hours, I’ve gotten the intro, first chapter, done. I gotta go back to the hospital, but I’m doing a bit of junk first.

I feel good at the game, despite that I am struggling w fights a lot more than I am used to—I’m striking a mini-game/advance the story balance that seems very professional. [update- 7/5-- in retrospect, I was actually fucking up grotesquely mostly by purchasing the WRONG BENTO]

Kryu moves in an involved, realistic way, more motion, more natural, than I have seen him lately. It’s nice.

Fights are a bit hard, in a way that mostly works, Kiryu is old, and the game is more down to earth—but it is still a little incoherent, the fights are out of a martial arts movie, so they could just go for it. I like what they are trying tho. And the Yakuza 6 fights you seem much less invincible, so far, than you do in the Judgment games.

Do we gotta talk about how little I like Haruka’s role in this game? I don’t wanna, at least not yet.

Deadly Physical Force—Anglo-American Common Law of Self Defense

‘Deadly physical force’ is an action that could reasonably cause a death, and applies whenever you use a gun, knife and most blunt instruments, in most situations. A lot of the stuff that Kiryu does, attacks with found objects and unarmed moves that have a high likelihood of causing fatal damage, either are also clearly deadly physical force or close enough that, in a hypothetical trial any ruling would that they either were or were not could be counted on to generate an appeal. 

MASSIVE SIDE BAR- LETHAL PRESSURE POINT ATTACKS (SADLY) ARE NOT REAL AND TARANTINO IS A HACK

Pressure point attacks—as used by Ken from Fist of North Star, Daryl Louise (DL) from Vineland and Uma Thurman inKill Bill --- probably either don’t exist or are only known by monks too enlightened to kill people because, if they did, you could kill with them whenever you want, and get away with it, under most circumstances, as a matter of law. Unless you acknowledge the existence of many concepts that Western law and medicine do not, poking someone a whole bunch of times does not constitute either deadly physical force or possibly even the ‘acutus rea’ necessary for a murder/assault crime. So even after Bill drops dead from the five-finger exploding heart technique, it would actually be a real challenge to convict Uma Thurman of killing him. [and this is ignoring that death from most pressure point attacks is medically indistinguishable from a heart attack, or other natural cause—and in others the entire victim explodes which presents its own set of problems in determining a precise cause of death]

Not that it’s in anyway relevant, but Uma Thurman in Kill Bill is ripped off from DL from Vineland. Female white-trash kung-fu masters are rare enough that a certain amount of influence could be inferred in the first place, but, to make it embarrassing, they also both use pressure point attacks in major moments of their arc. Feeling (somehow) insufficiently embarrassed by his shameless unoriginality, Trantiono merely uses his pressure point attack as a kind of tacky end note and exclamation point, whereas Pynchon uses it as a hugely complicated plot beat that repositions several multi-layered characters in an in intricate narrative. Also DL is much more interesting than Uma Thurman in Kill Bill and could probably kick her ass.

My point being that if anyone thinks they can kill someone with a pressure point attack they should absolutely do that, whenever they can, until they get arrested for it, because the resulting case law will be FASCINATING. I would also be willing to attack a monk with a baseball bat, forcing them to draw upon powers they would prefer to keep hidden, if that is what it would take to get ‘death by pressure point’ into the annals of American law.

End sidebar

In Western law the concept of deadly physical force comes up (or used to come up—these days it’s mostly ok to shoot people, once you get scared enough) when you are trying to figure out if an action was appropriate in a self defense context. The idea is you can’t employ deadly physical force unless you reasonably believe the person you employ it against is in the process of employing deadly physical force against you or someone else. If someone is using or threatening non-deadly physical force, you can’t respond with deadly physical force without risking legal consequences (at least traditionally: again, these days, if you are scared enough you can start blasting and wait for the NRA’s legal team).

The idea behind all of that is that once you put deadly physical force on the table, introduce a knife or gun into a conflict, it becomes relatively out of your control weather or not someone dies—so it is only appropriate to do so when the possibility of death is already substantially present.

Kiryu is constantly using deadly physical force, it’s just that, through some combination of luck, cartoon physics, and a superlative Japanese health care system, it’s never fatal. This disconnect between death and deadly physical force is fascinating. Multiple times a day (at least during the parts of his life covered by video games) Kiryu does stuff that couldkill someone, only it does not. The idea that these events are somehow completely under Kiryu’s control is one of the most pure fantasy elements in the Yakuza series or anywhere else.

Once you make that leap, decide that Kiryu is has complete control over weather slamming someone’s head into the sidewalk will kill them, then a lot of it falls into place. It is an interesting, and crucial, leap to make, though. 

YAKUZA 6

So, you do the intro, and Kamuchero, and the question is ‘just what the fuck is going on?’ both with the plot (in a good way) but also in a kind of ‘seriously what sort of video game am I playing?’ way which is less good. It’s not fatal, but you are in for possibly a hundred hours of something, and it’s really not clear what.

Then, you get to Hiroshima, and, while there is no real clarity about anything, it is, at least, obvious that some of what is going on is an homage/re-creatin of Yakuza 3. Onomishi and Okinawa have a similar vibe, you’ve just checked in with the actual Yakuza 3 orphans, there’s this real Yakuza 3 sense AND THEN Nagano (who had earlier been just obnoxious and confusing) does exactly the same stuff that Rikia did in Yakuza 3—and it’s all saccharine and annoying but also a little moving and deeply satisfying (like Yakuza 3 was) but mostly just strange that, 3 games latter, we seem to be just redoing Yakuza 3, but with better graphics, and without some of the deeply awkward and disonent elements. Which is kind of sad because even if the graphics were pretty bad Yakuza 3 was a good time, so it feels mean to beat up on it, and (other then the ones that were racist and unplayable**Mac**) many of the dissonant elements in Yakuza 3 were actually pretty charming and/or fun.

[10.16: re-reading this, it’s oddly inaccurate. Time and memory are weird, ya’ll. When I FIRST PLAYED Yakuza 6 in 2018 I had never played Yakuza 3-- since it wasn’t released for the PS4 at the time-- so I was completely unaware of the connection to it. When I finally did play Yakuza 3 in 2019, I realized that they had been largely trying to recreate it in the game I played the year before. Playing Yakuza 6 having played both it and Yakuza 3, the connections are EXTREMELY obvious]

And then Nagano- now your unwanted, overly enthusiastic new Yakuza minion, introduces you to his boss and it’s TAKESHI KITANO, eating a fancy-ass ice cream. This is such a huge moment for those of us on the ‘way of the Yakuza film’ that it is hard to convey it’s shattering significance to the heathen world.

It is sort of like if you were a devote Christian and you went to church expecting a sermon from a minister, deacon, pope, or some other bozo, but instead the guy preaching was FUCKING GOD. 

And that’s your game: it’s a weird platypus motherfucker, with some charm, little cohesiveness, and very little of the exuberance that makes other Yakuza games so great but also FUCK THAT IS TAKESHI KITANO and nothing can every be more great or right or cool.

All this shit—Yakuza 6, wiritng about it—is running a very real risk of getting put on hold while I get into some fuckn Takeshi Kitano movies.

Takeshi Kitano MOTHERFUCKERS! Beat Takeshi, ya’ll!

AND THEN ONOMICICHIO I can’t even… when ur on a roll like that…gonna have to talk about that a bit latter.

--Onomichi (town) is real nice, looking and feeling + bold on a few levels but could use more mini games. I guess spear fishing has not opened up, or a few other things. It’s a good place, small town vibe that the series does well and idk if we’ve seen since 6. Izaki Ijincho has a bit of it, but is in many ways completely different, in that it’s defining characteristic is it’s big, so the smallness exists in corners. Interesting to see if we see a smaller more intimate level in Gaiden or Infinate Wealth.

6.23

YAKUZA 6

It occurs to me that playing Yakuza 6 essentially twice in a row, five years ago, was actually the major turning point in my relationship w the Japanese language, becoming something other than “I understand none of this whatsoever in any way” to something other than that

Question is always, how grindy a play through, and how much to rely on the guides, and it always comes up grindy, do all the things. Guides, jury bit out on. I have checked them to know that I have already fucked up some things I had hoped to not fuck up by virtue of having played this game twice before.

I meant to show up in Onomich w a handful of stuff that I would need for getting my baseball team started, and, I just fuckn blew it. It’s not HUGE. I’ll be back in Kamuchero, then back in Onomchi, so it’ll all be ok eventually but DAMMIT. I should have either resigned myself to exactly this happening, not even tried to cheat-prep for Onomichi, OR looked at the guide before I left Kamuchero. Fuckn a.

The larger issue is that Kiryu’s dumb baseball team is I think, the most fuck-up able thing in the yakuza-verse, which was a big part of why I played it twice in a row five years ago in the first place. I’m hoping that I can get the nuts and bolts of the baseball team done, and then kind let it fuck off? My GOAL is not to freak out, crack the baseball game, do all the things in order to put together the best Warriors squad I can but…this might happen. It just might. There might be a couple days of this where it is like, I did more dumb baseball + played mini games with the hopes of getting better shit for dumb baseball.

AND the baseball is dumb but it should be NOT dumb because the idea of a manage a baseball mini-game has serious potential and this one is, if I remember, straight up not all that good. So dammit. Again, might or might not spend DAYS on mini games in order to get better at one especially worthless mini-game. Honestly, keeping up these entries will be key.

Also, tho, there are a couple sub stories which I have done the intros for, the Freaky Firday one, and the girl who wants to be an idol that, if I remember, were just awful. Will I not finish them? Fuckn a. 

Motherfucker…looked at the guide and seems I can get a baseball player by a shity substory, fuck off.

6.24

YAKUZA 6

So far: did some spear fishing, got the pitcher I needed form that, got into the clan missions, finished Pocket Circiut Fighters Story to unlock him for clan, won a ballgame, got done w Yano Tore in clans.

Plan: keep working clans until I can unlock the best spear gun and then kill the fucking shark. This made a bit more sense when I thought I needed a black market spear gun to kill the octopus that I needed to recruit the pitcher (even tho that sentence ruled this game isn’t quite THAT good), but I killed the pitcher’s octopus on my own, so now I just want an overpowered spear gun so I can fuck up a shark. The path to this is through beating Japanese pro wrestlers in gang wars.

6.25

I have DONE all that stuff (fuck you shark, you dead bitch ass motherfucker) and gone to Tokyo, beat up some Koreans, and went to the gym.

6.26

Yakuza 6

I’m in the middle of the battle dungeon that is also kind of a bondage dungeon. IDK weather I will get some time to wrap up junk in Kamuchero when I am done w it, or if it will drop me back in Onomichi—this is an EASY question to answer, but fuck it. It’s not like I am in any way above using the guides—I’ve been checking nearly all of the meal recommendations. I spent most of yesterday working out and playing arcade games.

Fighting is more tactical, deliberate than it is in, I think, any other game; although it could just be that I am doing an ass backwards job of upgrading Kiryu. But I like it—you have to approach even street fights with a plan. 

I realize that a greivence I have with the game-- that you can’t carry weapons – is mostly about how I wish you could get weapons for doing shit, and less that I want to use weapons in fights. (although it is sad when you steal some guy’s sword for like three blows—why can’t I have my own sword?) Or, what’s good about weapons in other Yakuza games is that they are fun rewards for doing stuff, not really that they are good for fighting. 

Kiryu v Shark

In Kiryu’s confrontation with the shark it is kind of weird that he does not jump over it (he does punch it in the face), leading one to wonder if the Japanese use the expression. There isn’t any reason to think they would, accept it just sort of feels like they should. I’ve never seen an episode of ‘Happy Days’ in my life and I know it. 

It also seems like 1) the kind of thing the Japanese might think about and 2) like how a lot of expressions in Japanese seem to exist. Like they are pretty involved references to an event or concept with which the speaker might have only second or third hand knowledge, but yet this concept is universally understood broadly enough to form the basis for an expression that is comprehensible to most Japanese people. 

Mini games—more generally

So, when I observed that Onomichi was a nice place but short on minigames, that was sort of one of the dumbest things I could have said. Not only does Onomichi have a bunch of mini-games but it makes some pretty interesting moves in getting multiple mini games kind of working together. The thing though is it is all more ‘structurally innovative’ and ‘ a foreshadowing of stuff that would work better in other games’ than it is ‘fun’ or ‘memorable.’ 

One of the things that ties it all together is ‘snack new gaudi’ which is a bar where you can hang out, play a few mini-games, and make friends who will help you with other mini-games. I have been avoiding this because 1) drinking and having friends are kind of sore spots for me, personally, these days but mostly 2) it’s actually not that much fun, and another kind of awkward beat that is propelled entirely by how much everyone loves Kiryu, which, you can’t blame them, but it is mostly better when things are driven by slightly more original stuff. 

Both Baseball and Clans do not live up to their potential. Baseball is worse, but has more potential. Clans is better, but probably with a lower ceiling. Yakuza Kiwami 2 has a fun version of Clans. The thing is that, at it’s best, in both Kiwami 2 and 6, Clans succeeds by enlisting various weirdoes in the Yakuza-verse, which is what baseball should have done.

It’s not like the single most wonderful playable character in the history of video games is a disgraced former ball player that Kiryu is kind of friends with…

Fuckn’ a: if, once the baseball unlocks, doing weird shit to get other Yakuza odd balls on the team was just the rest of Yakuza 6, that would be possibly a cooler game: you’d have beat the crap out of a ton of guys to bust Majima out of prison, and then beat his ass so he would play for you-- and who knows what kind of mini games you’d have to do to get Shineda. It’s bullshit that Shineda isn’t on the Warriors, or in anything, other than a card in Ishin. The world needs more Shineda, goddamit. 

Of course NOT doing that stuff was sort of the point of Yakuza 6—to get Kiryu out of the world of his weird friends and into the world of Gods (Takeshi Kitano)

Anyway, after 6, they seemed to have kind of figured it out and substantive mini-games in Kiwami 2, Ishin, and Kasuraga’s game DO have more ties to the wider Yakuza-verse.

[Judgment does not use Yakuza wierdos in substantive mini-games and this is kind of understandable, but I will call bullshit on Tashiro-kun not having used Majima, and some other classics as villains in Dice-and-Cube. In the Judgment games confining those guys to a video-game space would be sort of appropriate and Tashiro-kun is ex-Tojo clan himself so he presumably knows, or at least has heard of, them]

Ballad of Onomichio-kun

Onomichio-kun is one of the big things they use to call out the wider Yakuza-verse in all games after 6, even the Judgment ones. [Not Ishin tho, which is too bad] They already do a lot with Onomicho-kun in 6, so you have to wonder if they knew exactly how good a thing they had come up with. That is almost what is most impressive: not how well they nailed it, but how much they KNEW they nailed it.

Onomichio-kun is the mascot for Onomichi, but he is also a mascot for the series. He is this moment of extreme goofieness and maudlin humanity that should not work but works better than one would have thought possible. In both Kasuraga’s game and the Judgment series they use him as a kind of stand-in for Kiryu, an opportunity to observe that even if Kiryu is not there physically, he is still a little bit present, in all of us, man.