Laura Kate Dale's Yakuza: Like A Dragon Critique is Lazy & Dishonest
Laura Kate Dale is a figure that’s been around in video game journalism for quite a while having worked for Destructoid, Kotaku and even the British Bias Corporation. I recently subscribed to her YouTube channel where she has fared much better in terms of quality content, talking about important topics like accessibility in video games and her video on trans representation in Deadly Premonition was very insightful. Nevertheless, I had this feeling that one day I’d be forced to do a video response on something of hers, after all, I’ve come close in the past with how dishonestly she has handled some of her work. But I won’t retread that old ground, because I’m here today to talk about...representation of homeless people, in my favourite video game series: Yakuza.
Homelessness: It’s No Joke
Yakuza 7, the latest in the series, is the game in question for the bulk of Laura’s latest video critique titled: Yakuza Like a Dragon Can’t Decide if Homeless People are A Joke. in my opinion the studio has done a fantastic job once again in delivering a detailed and heartfelt story with a tonne of depth to even the most minor of side characters. Yakuza games never cease to surprise me and this game has done that with it’s very frank depiction of sex workers, which in the past has been only hinted at with things like so called “massage parlours” or a box of tissues being conspicuously placed in a room where men pay to have conversations with sultry sounding women.
The main character Ichi was raised in a brothel and has tremendous respect for the women earning a living in this profession and one of the antagonistic groups of the game is a protest group, ‘Bleach Japan’ who want to clean up the streets as they put it, not giving a care for the shaky immigration status of the women working the streets or the crippled economy which has led to rises in unemployment and homelessness. These are all huge themes throughout the game and almost every character you interact with is affected by these things in some way.
Though her comment that Yakuza 7 is “interesting, not good, but interesting” is a hint of the dishonesty to come, Laura thankfully recognises the expertly told story to some extent and begins her analysis by praising some of the narrative points of the game where these issues are handled well. As she says, Ichiban is ignorant at first about the reasons a person might be homeless and the kinds of solutions to the problem of homelessness. The second main character, a homeless man named Namba is quick to point out that it isn’t quite as simple as “getting off your butt and going to the job centre” and as someone who has been on the dole in the past for far longer than I wanted to be, I have indeed heard this from the ignorant kind of people that believe life will always work itself out if you just “get to graft”...I’m talking about my dad basically.
The Problem
So what’s the big problem with Yakuza 7’s representation of homeless people? Well, the series has always walked a thin line when it comes to telling a serious narrative overall but injecting strong doses of goofy humour. At its core it’s a JRPG, with levelling up, learning new moves, eating to restore health and a lot of the humour actually plays into that. I find it hilarious for instance that thugs will constantly accost the main characters and drag them into street brawls at the drop of a hat, but at the end of the day, this is a game and that is how the combat and levelling system of the game shines. Laura felt uncomfortable with the juxtaposition of serious gritty crime drama and goofy Japanese RPG, completely understandable, it’s not for everyone (least of all mainstream games journalists) but the reason behind her video and the reason she struggles to recommend the series is because of the “problematic” humour tied to these systems.
At this point in Laura’s video I was thinking “Ok, I’m listening.” After all, I had accepted I was wrong about things in her breakdown about trans representation in Deadly Premonition. My stance was that people were being overly sensitive about minority characters being the villain in media, however, as it turns out, developer Swery65 had used a slew of weird and harmful tropes for his trans character in the first game and worst of all, rather than writing a completely different character in the second game, just used all of the exact same tropes again. So I was ready to hear the argument for what Yakuza did wrong.
Well, Namba’s main moveset in the turn-based battles of Yakuza 7 is based on a stereotype of homeless people. He throws bird seed at people so they will be attacked by pigeons, his bad breath will lower the defence of enemies and he can heal himself by falling flat and having a power nap on the spot. He also swigs alcohol and uses a lighter to set enemies aflame.
The problem is, simply pointing this out is not an argument against stereotypes. Laura set up the concept for a video, gave us her opinion that stereotypes are bad and just kinda left that hanging as if it was a rhetorical argument. You might think, hold on, of course stereotyping is bad and yes, although Laura did not make them, there are arguments to be made about stereotypes being bad. Imagine, rather than just ending the video, she had said “stereotypes are bad because they reinforce narrow thinking about a particular group of people, which in the worst cases leads to discrimination of that group by ignorant people. Not only that, stereotypes can be used very effectively as a propaganda tool to prop up fascist groups or governments that thrive on “otherising” people and keeping them pointing the finger at each other instead of the real problems.” That would have been a more honest and dare I say, journalistic way of presenting the video, however even if she had said this, I would still have to make this video because the dishonesty goes deeper.
Comedy Case Studies
Castaway on the Moon, one of my favourite films, is a South Korean comedy about a man who is deeply traumatised by his life in the high pressure business world of capital city Seoul. In Japan, he might be referred to as a “salaryman” but this kind of worker is common in South Korea as well. After attempting suicide by throwing himself off a bridge, our protagonist gets stranded on a small island in the middle of the Han river. Despite civilisation being within ear and eyeshot, he decides he quite likes it on his island. But as he has no modern amenities, his hair goes scraggly, his beard grows and his dental hygiene suffers. The one thing he really misses is noodles, so he comes up with an ingenious plan to use seeds from pigeon poo to grow his own grain crops.
Let me ask you this, where is the potential humour coming from in this comedy film? Because there are much of the same stereotypes here as there are in Yakuza, so is this just “haha he’s homeless?” No, of course not, the humour comes from the situation we find our characters in. An easier way of saying this might be:
context
...and that’s so important I’m gonna put it in big bold letters.
When Jim Carrey’s character in Liar Liar is asked was the sex good for you and his response is “I’ve had better” is that funny on its own merit as a line? I don’t think so. It’s funny because we understand the context, that he was suddenly unable to tell a lie at the most inopportune moment. This is also how a film like Pulp Fiction, where someone gets shot in the head at close range and people are throwing out the N word left, right and centre can be, to people with a sense of humour, funny. Boiling the humour of Yakuza 7 down to “haha he’s homeless” as Laura does by claiming homeless people are “the butt of the joke” is a failure to provide the necessary context to the viewer. Either purposely in favour of preaching to a choir of easily offended wokescolds, through laziness in the writing of her script, or because she simply doesn’t get what is arguably the entire hook of Yakuza 7.
Doing A Journalism
Yakuza 7 was conceived as a homage to classic turn based JRPGs, most notably Dragon Quest.
Dragon Quest has a bestiary full of whacky and colourful enemies that often have recoloured or tweaked designs the higher level the enemies go and often use puns in their naming conventions for example ‘Funghoul’ or ‘Night Sneaker.’
Ichiban, main character of Yakuza 7 was an avid fan of Dragon Quest and played games frequently until the year 2000 when he was sent to prison for 19 years.
Both before and after his sentence, other characters describe Ichi as having an over-active imagination and comment on his strange style of fighting, always allowing his opponent to have “a turn” in hitting him.
As the story progresses, the video game references come hard and fast and it is hinted at over and over again that the enemies in the game are not necessarily what they appear to be to the player, only that Ichi’s imagination and love for Dragon Quest is driving the unrealistic turn based mechanics of the game.
So if the claim is that representation in Yakuza 7 is exclusionary and offensive towards homeless people because they are the butt of the joke, you better also be prepared to explain how all of these extremely important points of context do not explicitly paint Ichiban himself as the butt of the joke. You had better be prepared to explain why it is bad to have a scene where a homeless person is friendly but then another part where homeless people are in fights with the player. These are different characters, some bad, some good and although I was wrong about the problems with trans representation in Deadly Premonition, this time I am spot on, that the complaint is really that homelessness is a sensitive issue so the game should not portray homeless people as an enemy type.
Another problem is that homelessness is interchangeable with almost anything in any piece of media in this way. We could use the job system, Yakuza 7’s nod to Final Fantasy. Each character can switch between a handful of different jobs with their own movesets and the place they go to switch jobs is….get this: the job centre. Now that is funny! It’s taking the more realistic setting of Yakuza and parodying JRPG tropes, clearly the intention of the developers. But if I wanted to write a Kotaku article the headline might go something like “Yakuza’s Problematic Job System Trivialises Unemployment.”
The Comments Section Is Confused
A big thing Laura gets caught up with and as she repeatedly states, makes her so uncomfortable that she struggles to recommend the game to people, is that these enemies have names like “hungry hungry homeless.” Here’s a good time to read this enlightened comment from one of Laura’s subscribers who is clearly disappointed that this is one more game their horse is too high to be able to play.
“Damn, that sucks. I've been interested in the Yakuza games but I haven't played them yet, and now I'm kind of on the fence about them. :/ Are the previous games also problematic?”
You are on the fence about playing the best game series ever because an enemy in one of the games is called Hungry Hungry Homeless? I know that’s a bit hyperbolic but the video and the response in the comments section really does boil down to being offended at the mere idea of puns or stereotypes being used as humour in any way. Many people in the comments section seem confused, why are these names like this? Was it the localisation team’s fault? Did they not understand that the main story is a gritty crime drama? Was there another insanely popular JRPG that this game was entirely based around parodying? Do Japanese really like puns? Wait! Hold up, go back. That last question! No not the puns question, the one about the insanely popular JRPG that anyone in games media should be acutely aware of. Yeah that one. The answer is YES!
Another person writes:
“I think there's a lot of great discussion to be had surrounding the strange ways the battle system seems to be uniquely terrible in its use of gross stereotypes but If, for instance, Nanba's moveset could evolve to be less based on stereotypes over time as Ichiban is disabused of his misconceptions about the homeless that would actually be quite nice.”
Except this pseudo-intellectual has not paid attention, at all, to the character of Namba. As you progress you can unlock cutscenes focussed on the backstory of each of the companion characters as Ichi speaks to them at their favourite bar. Here we learn that, despite Laura chastising this as only stereotypes that apply to all homeless, Namba is actually fond of drinking. He likes a bit of whisky. Also, Despite Ichiban’s assumption that Namba was a great and dedicated nurse when he was in gainful employment, Namba admits that no, he started out with high hopes for his career path, but as he got older he became lazy and cynical, he started taking naps during his shifts. So you see, here are direct examples relating to the character themself as to why those moves exist in the battle system and so the argument crumbles even further to dust.
One of the reasons I started this channel and why this video was a no brainer for me, is that mainstream games journalists don’t seem to really like or play JRPGs. They might clumsily attempt to critique a game such as Yakuza but there’s always this niggling feeling that they don’t really get what people like about the genre, they also don’t quite understand (or want to accept) how vastly different Japanese culture is from our own and how that is one of the main draws of Japanese games. Laura’s video is a prime example of this. Yakuza only really started to break out of its cult status when Yakuza 0 came to PS4, before this time it was a much loved but obscure spiritual successor to an already much loved but obscure Dreamcast game called Shenmue. As the series grows in popularity, it is bound to draw more contention from people who are offended by certain types of humour and whose career is based on jumping the gun with clickbait articles, decrying video games for not being inclusive enough before even sitting down and playing them through. But actually Laura, if you’re reading this, I’m extremely surprised that you would be so offended by stereotypes…because you are one. You are the perpetually offended, social justice warrior games journalist and this is the kind of dishonest behaviour that gives the left a bad name and has pushed many in gaming to the right, if only to mock you.