If you’re into anime at all1 you’ve probably seen One Punch Man. One Punch Man was something of an anime phenomena a few years ago; it’s essentially a comedy that mercilessly parodies all of the cliched Dragonball Z knockoffs out there, while also having the self-awareness not to fall into the same traps by delivering some exquisitely well-animated fight scenes interspersed with a plot decent enough to stitch them together and held up by believable, natural character arcs. Basically, it’s an anime that has its cake and eats it too; it’s a parody of action anime that’s also a better anime, period, than the things it’s parodying. I mention this because watching One Punch Man is the best analogue I can come up with for what playing Yakuza 0 feels like — of course it’s a little different, as Yakuza is first and foremost a crime drama about factional politicking within the Japanese yakuza, but the dramatic story bits are juxtaposed with scenes of such insane frivolity that it can’t help but feel like it’s taking the piss out of itself at the same time.
- I’m not all that much, but I’ll idly watch stuff when it shows up on Netflix in the hope that it’ll be entertaining. ↩