If you try and walk down one of Kyo's main streets in the third chapter of Like A Dragon: Ishin, you'll find your way blocked by a large crowd who're singing and dancing towards the chant “Ee ja nai ka”. In the outset, it appears and seems like a 19th-century flash mob for action – even Ishin‘s samurai protagonist Ryoma finds himself absent-mindedly dancing along every time the camera cuts to him.
Scratch beneath the surface, though, and you discover that Ee ja nai ka – which means “who cares,” or “why not?” – was a real form of social protest that was sweeping across Japan in Bakumatsu, the ultimate years of the country's Edo period. Ishin is placed in 1867, as that era came to a close, so that as within the history books, Ee ja nai ka was descending into mob violence. Ryoma soon finds himself stepping in to save a shopkeeper from thugs who're co-opting the movement to bully and threaten others. Happening just three chapters in to the game, it's a fantastic example of developer Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio's talent for balancing its absurdist comic tropes with something a little bit more human – in this case, an academic segue disguised like a throwaway joke.
It's strange, because there's lots of history you can study through Ishin – it just happens to be packaged between toe-tapping karaoke sessions and mucky innuendo about how “pulling out” of duels sucks. Take Ishin's main story: in chapter 3, Ryoma is set on infiltrating the violent Shinsengumi to uncover the identity of his adoptive father's killer. In real life, the Shinsengumi would be a violent brigade of samurai who perpetrated numerous high-profile assassinations – in Ishin, the group's key figures may be portrayed by familiar faces from Ryu Ga Gotoku's Yakuza series, but dramatic portrayal aside, their revolutionary philosophies largely fall into line with the real deal.
Even Sakamoto Ryoma, the game's protagonist, would be a real individual who competitive his vision of the democratic Japan without feudalism or a caste system. Ryoma was assassinated at 31 – an uncomfortably common end for those who dabbled in Japanese politics at the time. Media portrayals of samurai often romanticise samurai with scenic duels and faultless honour, but reality was a little messier. Included in a hands-on session with Ishin, real-world samurai Otsuka Ryūnosuke demonstrated a feudal-age samurai assassination technique: a beheading that may be delivered several steps away from the target, while their back is turned. Bakumatsu was a bloody, turbulent era and that's captured remarkably well in Ishin – one boss fight that ends along with you sparing a bested Shinsengumi samurai takes a grim turn when his superior executes him while he's still on his knees.
Additionally, it might appear like Ishin takes some creative liberties with guns in Japan at the time – also it does, make no mistake – however i also found that not only did samurai warriors use guns, but even Smith & Wesson's revolvers – usually associated with Western cowboy flicks – cropped up throughout Japan along with weapons of war like Gatling guns. Samurai Museum Berlin features its own showcase of weapons, including ornate rifles to gigantic hand cannons. Whilst rooted in real history, Ishin never loses its light-hearted whimsy. A lot of Shinsegumi's leaders are charming, quippy killers who are hard to dislike-even if a person of these has probably offed your dad.
If you're interested in learning more about Japan's remarkably rich national history – or else you just fancy a side story that allows you to shout in a manchild for the gross standards he holds women to – Ishin offers all of that and much more. Again, it’s still worth having fun with greater than a grain of salt – it wouldn’t be considered a Ryu Ga Gotoku game if it wasn’t intentionally over-the-top. But going into this being an amateur, Ishin proved much more educational than I was expecting and sparked a genuine interest in being familiar with Japan's history. Could it be as accurate as the required reading listing of your standard history course? Of course not – but hey, it's much bloody cheaper.
Like A Dragon: Ishin launches last month 21 for PlayStation, Xbox, and PC.
