As we covered month ago there was news that Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio’s Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name would release without the English dub attached to it. While many were dismayed by this news, as they find it easier to consume media with English audio rather than subtitles, there was also a very vocal part of the fanbase that were glad first-timers to the series would essentially be forced to play with Japanese audio, one of the primary reasons being that there were many disagreements in the community over the casting of YouTuber YongYea as the voice of main character Kiryu Kazuma. In the past few days, there has been footage of YongYea’s performance as Kiryu and the reception has not been kind to the casting.
Many detractors claim that YongYea’s performance is flat at best and doesn’t fit the character. Not helping is that Kiryu Kazuma is a character whose Japanese voice is iconic, and any change from that was always going to attract negativity, but YongYea’s performance does leave a lot to be desired, especially the karaoke songs, which are heavily autotuned and sound uncanny and unnatural.
The official Yakuza Games subreddit has seen an enormous influx of posts tearing down YongYea’s performance, to the point where a moderator had to step in and tell the community that it was fine to criticize and joke about YongYea’s performance, just don’t cause too much trouble doing it.
Not helping things are past tweets being dug up by the audience of YongYea’s reaction to Chris Pratt’s casting as Mario in Universal Pictures’ Super Mario Brothers movie, which many find to have aged poorly in light of YongYea’s recent performance as Kiryu.
As stated before, Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name will be releasing without an English dub initially, and while that could be for any number of reasons one can’t help but speculate if the possible reception to the English performances in this game were a factor in delaying the game’s English voices.
This entire debacle has raised a debate on the internet as to whether or not celebrity guests such as YouTubers should be allowed as voice actors to major projects such as this, especially in iconic main character roles such as Kiryu Kazuma. Said debates will only be exacerbated upon the release of Atlus’ Persona 3: Reload where YongYea is cast as Mamoru Hayase, an extremely minor role in the game, but with this recent controversy, it’s an action that will likely drum up some drama when that game releases down the road.
Though if you want to experience Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name you can do so right now (without English voices for the time being) as the game was released on November 9thfor Playstation 4 and 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S, and for PC through Steam.