Like a Dragon: Yakuza trailer is a bloody, high-octane, and effortlessly cool adaptation of the beloved games – the picture-perfect Kamurocho is just a bonus

The first proper trailer for Like A Dragon: Yakuza has arrived.

In the brief clip, which can be viewed below, a voice can be heard telling Kazuma Kiryu (Ryoma Takeuchi) that he turned his back on the brotherhood 10 years prior, with another voice telling him that there is no leaving the yakuza – and that he will never be free. Violence ensues, a car crashes from above, stacks of cash fly, and a rather spooky masked figure known as the Demon of Shinjuku lurks in the shadows.

“Channel the demon that lurks,” the on-screen text says. “Devour and dominate.”

The new live-action series is based on the Sega video game of the same name. Kazuma and his friends Yumi (Yumi Kawai) and Miho (Hinano Nakayama) plan a heist at a local arcade, but they don’t realize that the arcade is controlled by the Dojima family, a powerful yakuza organization that rules the fictional Japanese town of Kamurocho. When Kiryu is set to be released from prison in 2005, he learns that his friends are in danger and he must return to Kamurocho to protect them.

The show takes place in two contrasting timelines, which we see in the trailer. Takeuchi previously told GamesRadar+ that Kazuma is “a hothead, messy kid in 1995 and a grown cold, cool, masculine character in 2005.”

The cast includes Kento Kaku, Munetaka Aoki, Toshiaki Karasawa, Subaru Shibutani, Shohei Uno, Mistao Morita, Ryudo Uzaki, Hinano Nakayama, Tomoya Maeno, and Koichi Sato.

The Yakuza game series, which contains eight mainline titles, was first released in 2005. The player controls Kiryu (or another protagonist) in an open world where he fights baddies, takes on missions, learns new movies from NPCs, and even gambles. The games are set primarily in Kamurocho, which is based on Kabukicho, a red-light district of Tokyo.

Like a Dragon: Yakuza hits Prime Video on October 24, with the first three episodes in tow. For more, check out our chat with the Like a Dragon: Yakuza cast about playing the video games, or, our chat with the cast about how the live-action series tells a new Yakuza story we haven’t seen before.