Majima Deserves His Own Yakuza Spin-Off

27.01.2024 - 18:51 / thegamer.com / Mark Hamill / Goro Majima

I (rightly) started my Yakuza playthrough with 0, jumping between Goro Majima and Kazuma Kiryu’s beginnings in the world of a cutthroat criminal empire back in the ‘80s. I wouldn’t change a thing, since it sets up Kiwami perfectly and made me care about all of the short-lived characters that kickstarted the first game and series as a whole, but I was disappointed that Majima never returned as a fully-fledged protagonist. He was as much the heart of 0 as Kiryu, and was shown to be as rich and in-depth a character as the face of Yakuza himself.

Seven games later, I’d resigned to the fact that Majima was doomed to be the quirky side character who popped up now and then for the odd minigame or brawl. His vulnerable side had been pushed down as he branded himself an eccentric who loved to fight, a sharp juxtaposition to the man who wouldn’t lift a finger to fight his customers at The Grand. But the Kiryu-helmed spin-off Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name has offered Majima another chance at taking the helm of a Yakuza game.

Ichiban Kasuga is the face of Yakuza now, but Kiryu got a new standalone game explaining what he was up to after faking his death. It set a precedent that spin-offs can be more than alternate what-ifs like Ishin and Dead Souls or unrelated stories in the same world like Judgment. They can expand on the characters we’re familiar with, letting us peer into their lives while the main story looks to the future with Ichiban.

I haven’t played Infinite Wealth yet, and I’m not gonna look for spoilers, but I assume that it’s a proper send-off for Kiryu, with 7 being the passing of the torch. I doubt we’ll see him much more, even in spin-offs, but the idea of Gaiden shouldn’t stop with Kiryu. Majima is the perfect next step, a shorter spin-off looking at how he’s tackled the disbanding of the two major yakuza families in Japan and where he, who has built a life around fighting and violence, finds himself trying to fit into society.

It’s a chance to rip back the mask again and look at the real Majima, the one who was buried after 0 so that he could cope with all of the horrors and pain he had been put through. So much has changed in his life since we were able to step into his shoes, and a standalone game to give the time and depth he deserves to unravel that character development would no doubt be as poignant as the highest heights of the series.

Frankly, I miss the Majima of 0. With how much longer he has spent as the bizarre jokester, even voiced by Mark Hamill in the original English dub, I’ve come to terms with it being a character I’d never see again. Gaiden—and the dissolution put into motion in Like a Dragon—changes things. I just hope RGG grabs the opportunity it laid out