Talk:Characters of the Yakuza series

Akira Nishikiyama

Hello fellow editors. I believe I've located an adequate amount of reliable sources to justify an individual article for Akira Nishikiyama. Does anyone have any opinions or objections, or if one of you guys have already started working on a draft article for the subject? Haleth (talk) 16:48, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

@Haleth: Whenever I aim to create an article, I first edit it in a sandbox. Remember that Nishikiyama was in both Yakuza vanilla and Kiwami. I remember seeing some comments about Nishikiyama in Kiwami reviews so there is chance. Also, I'm too familiar with the liveaction film, but there might be a chance that reviews of the movie mention the cahracter. I never read 0 reviews but it might be possible to to bring enough wp:notability if enough sources are provided. Same goes for a possible creation section.Tintor2 (talk) 17:26, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

@Tintor2: Pretty much all the significant coverage about him in English is from the last 5 years after Yakuza 0 came out. As I recall, one of the articles I read called him a one-note character in OG Yakuza, as a contrast to his nuanced portrayal in 0 and Kiwami. As for the films, probably the best place to look would be Japanese-language movie review sources, provided one is proficient in Japanese at all. I take it from your response that you currently have no plans on expanding such an article? Haleth (talk) 19:11, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

@Haleth: Bit busy right now this might help.Tintor2 (talk) 20:29, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

Through quick search in that device of google I found these articles:

• Yakuza Kiwami Makes Akira Nishikiyama’s Actions More Understandable
• Yakuza's Villain Is One Of Gaming's Best
• The Meaning Of Yakuza's Tattoos
• Shintaro Kazama is the real villain of Yakuza Kiwami
• Yakuza 0-2 should ditch Kiryu and embrace Nishiki
• A Yakuza Primer: Everything You Need to Know About the Series Before Yakuza 6
• The Things That Make Tokyo Feel Alive In Yakuza 0

All of these articles are focused only in the narrative of the Yakuza games where Nishikiyama starred. I'm pretty sure that by finding more reviews, the character might be able to pass notability and have his own article.Tintor2 (talk) 21:37, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

List

Should we perhaps, have a discussion on the scope of what this List of Yakuza characters article covers, in the event that it gets too big or unwieldy? Perhaps define a few rules and agree on a consensus?

As I understand it, the games which do carry the Yakuza branding are Yakuza 0 - 7, and Dead Souls. Although Judgment is set in the same world/universe, the producers have deliberately distanced the IP's branding from Gotoku/Yakuza and did not have any recurring Yakuza characters to appear due to a number reasons, and barely even consider it a spin-off. Well, it is most definitely a spin-off of the mother franchise, but should its main protagonist Takayuki Yagami and all other secondary characters be covered on this list given the reasons I listed? Or will a separate List of Judgment characters article serve its purpose better, especially if a Judgment sequel gets made?

Also, I am a bit concerned about the excessive number of minor or insignificant characters who get mentioned all over the article. How should we define which characters warrant at least a mention and which don't? Haleth (talk) 23:18, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, a lot of minor characters like Date's daughter or the guy behind the tattoos. Then again whatm characters are the most notable?Tintor2 (talk) 23:25, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

Date's daughter and tattoo artist should be fine since their brief appearances cover a major plot point in the narrative. I think most Side Story characters should be left out, unless reviewers specifically highlight or mention them (that'd be a lot to go through though). Almost all of the hostesses as well, except for say, Yuki or Koyuki since they are a major part of the minigame subplots in their respective games and the player character encounters them within the narrative one way or another.

Since it is a "List of Yakuza characters", I'd like the scope to be reduced and narrowed (so no characters from the non-localized material). For example, the Kenzan characters should be covered on the main Kenzan page, since there's plenty of room to expand the page over there. Same with the film-exclusive characters, they don't need to be listed here when the film articles have plenty of room to cover original characters.

I also think the "Expand" tag at the top should be removed, as it might seem like an invitation for some editors to just contribute more WP:CRUFT and bloat the list. Haleth (talk) 00:04, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

Yep, added the tag of cruft. Feel free to be bold. For now, I just focused on expanding the real world information of Kasuga in preparation for any article.Tintor2 (talk) 18:52, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

Judgment

I think Takayuki Yagami and most of the references about Judgment should be purged from the list. Judgment is technically its own sub-series and does not intersect with the main Yakuza franchise other then its shared setting of Kamurocho and yakuza NPC's, so any characters from Judgment should be covered in its own list. There are enough English language sources which broadly covers characters of the Yakuza franchise by now due to its steady increase in international popularity, so this list will not be undermined by the removal or spinning out of sources for a hypothetical Characters of Judgment, and it meets the size threshold of WP:SIZERULE as well. Tintor2, what do you think? Haleth (talk) 01:57, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

Agree. At first I thought they were same series but when expanding such article, I noticed that Judgment was directly created to be a new IP rather than a spinoff. The issues with Hamura's voice actor and Kimura's agency already might provide real world information important for the cast.Tintor2 (talk) 02:03, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

OK, I'll start to be bold and trim the superfluous stuff from the list first (i.e. random namedrops of unimportant NPC's). Unfortunately I can't really contribute to a Judgment characters list at this time as I don't have access to the game yet and I am trying to avoid spoiling myself with its plot. You can still retrieve any sourced reception from the edit history. Haleth (talk) 02:21, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

No problem. I already revised the article and noticed there were only mentions of Yagami and Kaito and thus removed them from the list. Nevertheless, this list seems to suffer from a lot of fancruft considering the focus on minor characters.Tintor2 (talk) 02:33, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

Definitely needs a major trim still, as the most recent game introduced a whole bunch of characters who haven't even been covered on this list yet. I also notice that all of the major characters introduced in Yakuza 6 are absent. Was all this fluff from an older list that was previously trimmed or deleted? Haleth (talk) 03:23, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

Removing minor characters

After a brief discussion with another use, I went bold and removed several characters lack any sort of importance in the narrative to the point they are sidequests.Tintor2 (talk) 13:58, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

There seems to have been another massive increase in the list. It went from 96,424 bytes to 225,491 bytes, making it pretty much undue weight. It already became impossible to navigate in certain computers. One game character who lack a big role in the games should be removed from the list.Tintor2 (talk) 15:53, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

From what I see, the most characters list in this article are main characters related to main plot, not just sidequest characters. Because it's a franchise with 8 main games so far, obviously there would be too many characters. I think there are many video game character list articles out there with this scope. After all it's a list about series not just one game. SimonWan00 (talk) 19:19, 22 April 2023 (UTC)