Influences

Video games are by far the biggest influence in my life. I have been playing video games ever since I was four years old and they have shaped and sculpted my life ever since in numerous ways. From meeting and bonding with friends through online gaming, to helping me overcome severe mental health issues, video games are sorely responsible for making me who I am today. It is for this reason that when deciding on what influences to use for this module I knew it had to be something related to video games.

When deciding on what specific game to focus on there were many contenders, however the one I eventually decided upon was the “Yakuza” series, or as its known in Japan, “Ryū ga Gotoku”, which translates to “Like a Dragon”. As you can probably tell from its title, the Yakuza series is heavily based on the Japanese crime organization of the same name. The reason that I chose these games in particular is that Kazuma Kiryu, the main protagonist of the series, is what I consider to be the definition of a good person, and who I strive to be like. I would say these games have influenced my life because as strange as it sounds, there have been times within recent years where upon making some sort of decision I would stop and think to myself “what would Kiryu do in this situation?” which I really do feel has led to me making better decisions than I would have otherwise.

While the stories of these games are certainly fiction, they contain a lot of elements inspired by the real life Yakuza and it is one of these elements that I want to focus on, this element being the tattoos painted on the backs of the various characters throughout the series.

These tattoos are usually beautiful depictions of certain characters, creatures and gods found throughout ancient Japanese myths and are brought to life with various colours, the most common of which being white, red and black.

The thing that strikes me the most about these tattoos, beyond the designs of the tattoos themselves, are what they represent. In the Yakuza games, each tattoo can be seen as a reflection / representation of the character who wears it. For example, the main protagonist of the Yakuza series, Kazuma Kiryu, has a dragon on his back which represents his strength and courage. He is widely both respected and feared by those around him, who refer to him as the “Dragon of Dojima”. Meanwhile, Kiryu’s best friend and sworn brother Nishikiyama, has a carp on his back which is based on an ancient Japanese myth about a carp who tries to swim up a waterfall in order to become a dragon. This is represented in game by Nishikiyama being consumed by his jealousy of Kiryu’s strength to the point where he tries to kill Kiryu to prove that he too is worthy of being a dragon. The reason I bring this up is that whenever I play the Yakuza games I often ponder about what tattoo I would have myself if I was a character within this universe. I like to think about what animal or creature would be used to depict me and what colours would be used to bring it to life. This in particular is what I’m going to focus on when working on parts of this module, such as the typography of my name.