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The Yakuza Style That Was Dynamic And Magnificent

Maxwell Paynewell

14,286 views

After way too long of a wait, the final remaining newcomer from Yakuza 4 steps up on the Style Rank stage and shows his worth. Outside of Kiryu, this may well be considered the final boss of playable styles in the Yakuza series, at least in terms of describing just how well it functions. No beating around the bush here, Akiyama is phenomenal, so much so that even his transition into a legacy boss in Yakuza 6 provides me with more than enough to read into to make up for his lacking showing in Yakuza 5. You know how people sometimes say that speaking positively is harder than speaking negatively when it comes to criticism? That only applies to writers who deal exclusively in summaries. Or perhaps those who sniff fewer of their own farts than I do.

Yakuza 4 footage provided by Khone (@/khone6662). Not outright tagging because I would prefer not to, search the channel yourself. Context for my choice is in that document about HNR.
Yakuza 5 footage provided by ‪@starcandy_U‬ who has a youtube that I can correctly credit in my description because I'm a good youtuber
CurveNastyJr existence can be found at ‪@CurveNastyJr‬, check out the history of advanced combos videos there, or watch the doppelganger theory videos and realize that RGG has been copying their homework from someone else.

This is Style Rank, the series where I go through every playable style in the Yakuza series and rank them in one giant list. By the end, we should be able to determine the definitive best and worst playable styles in the series. Hopefully. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

My Patreon: Patreon: MaxwellPaynewell
My Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/maxwellpaynewell

0:00 - Intro
0:58 - Chapter 1: Aesthetics
7:30 - Chapter 2: Basic Combat
12:13 - Chapter 3: Combos For Nothing, Heat For Free
18:22 - Chapter 4: The Speed King
24:10 - Chapter 5: Falling Star
35:34 - Chapter 6: In The Shadow Of The Legend
43:50 - Conclusion
50:15 - Outro

Music Listed In Order Of Appearance:
Yakuza 3 - Where Has Your Touch Gone? (Instrumental)
Yakuza 5 - PRIME - LOVE GAME -
Yakuza 4 - Underground Dazzling Star Neo
Yakuza 4 - Speed Star
Yakuza 4 - Theme of Saigoh
Yakuza 4 - Fang Marked Viper
Yakuza 4 - Four Face
Yakuza 5 - endless fight
Yakuza 5 - Affected fight
Yakuza 6: The Song Of Life - Kizuna
Yakuza 6: The Song Of Life - Through
Yakuza 5 - Dynamic & Magnificent
Yakuza 4 - Receive You The Ballad

#yakuza #likeadragon #yakuzalikeadragon #kiryu #kazuma #kazumakiryu #kiryukazuma #akiyama #shunakiyama #videoessay #sega

20 Comments

@starcandy_U 5 months ago (edited) Pinned

just read the description sorry i changed my youtube @ 😭😭😭 This is the current one i use

honestly y5 akiyama hurts to me specially cus he honestly has some neat tech and all !! But almost none of it is applicable in actual fights since his main bosses are ogita and kanai so what do you even do

some clarification abt y5 stuff though:

to do knockdown combos, not only does it have to be moves that inflict the rollover animation, but it specifically has to be from the back usually. there are moves that work on the front and stuff but it's few and far between, with akiyama's main tool when starting combos from the front being his running kicks after S-T, which causes enemies to turn to their back and allows you to continue the combo if you do it right

akiyama has resplats! mainly 3S-T, 4S-2T or 4S-3T, these cause wallbounds so you can resplat by quickstep cancelling these. also some air strike moves as you can quickstep cancel out of air strike's rush combo. there's one light attack which causes a wallbound and all the double finishers cause wallbounds too

also quickstep cancelling air strike launchers has some utility outside of enemies without knockdown immunity. there's an upgrade to make it go through block, making it a decent tool to use against kanai where you can get some guaranteed damage and safety afterwards (or a combo follow up! it works decently when hitting from the back as it usually hits straight on, not causing knockdown immune enemies to turn around ... only if you feel like labbing out y5 back combos LOLL)

ALSO that y6 segment made me really happy and realize more good things abt that game i love y6 so much

@askewery 5 months ago

playing akiyama in 5 feels like having unlimited speed but no speed

@Obviousinnuendo 5 months ago (edited)

I remember when I played 4 and was like "if they replaced kiryu with akiyama as the main protag going forward I wouldn't even be mad" I also read around about why he never punches, like at all save for a few specific instances and qte's in both 4 and 5. and one guy on reddit mentioned something interesting i'll never forget.

akiyama, while he does fight, runs a business and cabret clubs. in japanese culture, having rough, callous hands from getting into fights is a telltale sign you're yakuza or someone you want to avoid business with. But fighting solely through kicks, he can maintain having relatively gentle hands to keep the appearance of a trust worthy person to do business with.
in fact by the time we see him fighting in 6 with hands you could take that as him dropping the need to keep up the appearance, he's a legend of the underworld now, his company and businesses are gone in this game and ultimately don't return. ovbiously he's still going to be talented with his legs, but at that point he has more freedom(SELFLESSH DEEED) in his hands

@fleeb6707 5 months ago

the first finisher is actually a lua de compasso, a kick used in capoeira!

and the yakuza series LOVES to use that kick for QTE's and heat actions like holy

@k96man 5 months ago

I never noticed his shortcomings on account of just being so glad to see him after being stuck in the idol industry like: "oh thank God I get to hit things again"

@MikeJr9284 5 months ago

I hate the fact that Akiyama got extremely nerfed in Yakuza 5. I guess it was the byproduct of him being shoved into Haruka's story in that game.

@daniellamb8867 5 months ago

akiyama is so based he defies the laws of physics by having a kick based style despite wearing a suit
yakuza logic

@theraym14 4 months ago

Akiyama, along with Leon Kennedy, are my reminders that legs are just as important to train lmao

@SaintMarianne 5 months ago

Yakuza 5 would have made way more sense if Saejima was the one helping Haruka (and thus learning about Majima's past) and Akiyama was the one who had been imprisoned imo.

@mork2972 5 months ago

I didn't expect anyone to convince me Akiyama was secretly goated in y6.

@blastbot7339 5 months ago (edited)

"some nobody" made videos on shinada and saejima as characters and for shinada's meteor tackle he said it represented his spirit; when he fights you he's gonna give it his all and then some,technique, style and power be damned and I think that's kinda beautiful, paired with how specific you gotta make akiyama's inputs to make the most out of wall bounding in 4 I think the "power focus and spirit" bars in 5 also represent each character, kiryu is all 3, saejima is power, akiyama was focus and shinada and tanimura are spirit (cause both give it their all)

Akiyama in 4 was unique on my first Playthrough I remember going "guess kiryu ain't here...", then doing a bunch of substories and getting to know him as a character and going "I love this guy" his fighting style was similar in vibe to kiryu so I didn't have to do much differently to how I played kiryu in previous games, in 5 I hated playing as him on my first Playthrough it felt like I did no damage, enemies could make me fall like they're secretly aang and how whenever id finally get my extreme gauge filled id immediately lose it cause i needed up using an extreme heat move on a street thug who was already at death's door then needing to scrape up enough heat for 10 heat actions so that I have extreme heat for that bastard kanai. It was just a feedback loop. When I replayed 4 it was amazing, replaying 5 currently and it wasn't as atrocious as the first go-around but man does akiyama not fare well in this game

For him launching enemies into the air I can only guess it was given to akiyama cause it looked cool and it would be him flying and getting slashes on enemies in mid-air as if he were an actual bird slashing some beast with it's talons, similar to how tiger puppetry is cool looking and a way for the gsme to go "dude look at how strong saejima is"

@onionbrotm570 5 months ago

41:11 'Friends' my ass, he has never punched Ryuji this hard.

@rockman08 5 months ago

Im glad to hear you arent partial to afflected fight because i was watching a battle theme ranking vid and this dude put it at number 1 like what

@Juno4Uno 5 months ago

Man I love akiyama and if there’s 2 things I’d have to say for akiyama in 5 as a character, it’s I wish that he and haruka had more time onscreen showing their chemistry as they solve their murder-mystery for park. And, I highly agree with dynamic and magnificent being akiyama’s street fight theme as it sounds so effortless, like a street fight to akiyama is no more effort than lighting a cigarette meanwhile, affected fight is a much more heavier, aggressive theme for kanai as like you said, he’s protecting haruka at that moment so of course he’s gonna lock in and take it seriously compared to a regular street brawl. I’d say more but I don’t wanna make my comment any longer than I already did good video as usual.

@SoberSpork 5 months ago

the best way i can describe Launch Strike is how it feels more like a separate "style" than an extension of Akiyama's game plan, disguised as an enemy state. it doesn't flow into or out of Akiyama's ground game, and it feels way more limiting since it basically amounts to mashing buttons until you lose all your Heat. RGG did eventually manage to figure out that juggling should just be something you can do from moves in your kit a là gut stuns into knockdowns from Y3 and Y4 by the time of Lost Paradise and the Judgments, before Gaiden soiled juggling hard while simultaneously not having a good ground game at all.

on the topic of combat in general, i always stand by the fact that Yakuza's DNA is more in arcade beat-em-ups than character action games, but what makes Yakuza stand out is that the tech is there, it just needs to be used more thoughtfully; shit like knockdown, stuns, and staggering can all be used if you're willing to go the extra mile, while not outright forcing you to interact if you just want to clear a room of goons effortlessly. it's a balance that Lost Judgment gets so right, it hurts. such a shame that the newer brawlers dumb things down so hard that it forces you into being braindead.

i just wanna really quickly shout out spurge for his Awakening of the Dragon God mod for Gaiden. not only did his mod single-handedly make Gaiden a game i'd regularly boot up just for the coliseum (optionally with Boss Replay or modded Mine and Kuwana boss fights), but it legitimately served as a gateway drug for me to dig into Yakuza tech (along with Curve's advanced tech series) purely because of how fun it is to just combo (arguably more than Legend Remix, which Dragon God is built on). you can actually just knockdown, wallbound, juggle, and revert back to wallbounding in a single combo across the whole damn room if you know what you're doing, along with a stun combo game that can transition into the others with the right hit reactions.

so in conclusion, i like it when funny japanese man lets me think and not think whenever i want

@theraym14 1 month ago

I love that these turn into character analyses along with the fighting style themselves complimenting it. I always appreciate it when the fighting conveys personality and themes, and you putting them to words in a really well structured video is awesome man 👏