Let’s Dance
Welcome to Friday Fortissimo, your weekly getaway for moody musings and general debauchery. This week, we celebrate the “so cringe, it’s off the hinge” music of Yakuza 0.
The Yakuza series sure knows its audience. Either you’ve played each entry in this massive RPG series, or you’ve stayed the hell away from it. Regardless of how you lean, your decision is understandable.
On the one hand, Yakuza is a tour-de-force of narrative storytelling. Mainstay protagonist Kazuma Kiryu is considered one of the genre’s all-time greats, while others like Goro Majima and Ichiban Kasuga have earned their own devoted fan bases. These eclectic characters help to inject personality into a dark, often brutal story about Japan’s seedy underground. Throw in engaging combat and a detailed Tokyo to scour for side quests and mini-games, and it’s hard not to love the series.
On the other hand, Yakuza is just plain weird. Cue the music!
Or, if you’d prefer the track sans dancing (why would you, though?)…
More Than a Meme
Look, I get that “Friday Night” is a bit of a joke around these parts. It’s become a weekly ceremony for folks on Twitter, much in the same vein as Daniel Craig’s “Ladies and gentlemen…” moment from SNL. It’s also commonly thrown around with another Yakuza staple, “Baka Mitai,” a song for those down on their luck.
But damn, it’s also a banger.
I don’t care how absolutely ludicrous Yakuza can get. Disco deviants, karaoke killers… it’s all irrelevant without some soul. At the end of a long week, all I want is to kick back and enjoy my Friday evening. And Kensuke Inage and Yoshihiro Arai’s track is just the jam for the occasion.
To all of you out there feeling the same, time to take to the dance floor. It’s Friday night, baby.
