A wild man in a snakeskin jacket greets a shadowy figure on a neon-lit nightlife street.

Original artwork, not a still

Goro Majima

Kiryu-chan!

— Yakuza 0 ‧ 2015

Behind the line

What it means

Our interpretation.

The pet name is the whole character: a man with a knife, a hair-trigger and a cabaret manager's smile, using a nickname you might give a classmate for the man he is about to fight to the death. Fans took the greeting up as the sign that Majima is about to appear (and ruin your afternoon), and the 'Majima Everywhere' gag in Kiwami turned the name into a running joke across the series.

Context reviewed

In context

Spoilers for Yakuza 0Show the scene

In Yakuza 0 (Sega, 2015) Goro Majima, the one-eyed madman who will later become the Mad Dog of Shimano, spends the 1988 story managing a Sotenbori cabaret and working his way back into the Tojo Clan. As his arc closes, he bumps into Kazuma Kiryu on a Kamurocho street, the wiki describes this as their first meeting, and greets him with a drawn-out "Yo. Kiryu-chan!" The suffix -chan is a childish, affectionate Japanese diminutive, so it is Majima's breezy way of addressing the man he will spend the later games trying to fight. He uses the same pet name before their batting-cage duel in the first Yakuza.

Sources (3)

Context reviewed

Share this quote