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Tokyo Game Show — Cosplay dreams broken, Mr. Sato heads to the Like a Dragon/Yakuza booth anyway

Casey Baseel Sep 27, 2025
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Awesome recreation of the Kamurocho Gate eases his Majima pain.

The Tokyo Game Show has kicked off, once again calling developers and fans to the Makuhari Messe convention center in Chiba Prefecture, about half an hour east of downtown Tokyo.

It’s been a couple of years since our ace reporter Mr. Sato last hit up TGS. He can’t remember when his most recent visit was, but he’s sure it was before the pandemic. This year, though, he was set on going, although his first choice wasn’t to go as a reporter. No, in his heart of hearts, Mr. Sato wanted to be making the trip out to Makuhari as part of his official cosplayer debut.

As some of you might recall, back in the spring Mr. Sato dressed up as Goro Majima, one of the most colorfully charismatic and unabashedly unhinged characters from Sega’s Like a Dragon/Yakuza video game franchise, as part of the Mafia Day festivities at SoraNews24 HQ (our office atmosphere is…unique). So when Sega recently put out the word that it was holding a cosplay audition to find official cosplayers for its Tokyo Game Show booth, Mr. Sato decided to throw his hat in the ring. After getting some extra tips from a couple of acquaintances with more extensive cosplay experience than he himself has, here was the look he achieved.

Mr. Sato passed the first round of evaluations, but in the second round the audition organizers decided he wasn’t quite what they were looking for. Honestly, he was bummed out, but still wanted to see what the Sega booth looked like, even if he himself wasn’t an official part of it.

So after flashing his press credentials and making his way to the show floor, Mr. Sato headed straight to Sega’s booth, which it shares with Atlus.

A large section of the booth is devoted to Like a Dragon, since Sega has just announced an updated re-release of the third game in the series, to be titled Yakuza Kiwami 3 in overseas markets, which will be bundled with a new side-story called Dark Ties, and the booth’s signage prominently displays images of the game’s cast.

But what’s even more eye-catching is the recreation of the Like a Dragon franchise’s most iconic location: the Kamurocho Gate!

Inspired by the real-world gateway to Tokyo’s Kabukicho neighborhood (which itself serves as the model for Kamurocho), the Kamurocho Gate acts like a psychological start screen for the games, a symbol that the player is stepping into Like a Dragon’s enhanced world of action and intrigue. The stories and stakes may vary from game to game, but the Kamurocho Gate is always there, showing that some aspects of society’s seedy underbelly never change.

And periodically gathering under the Kamurocho Gate were Sega’s official booth cosplayers. Though he couldn’t help feeling a little jealous, more than that Mr. Sato was impressed by the quality of their outfits, and deeply respects the obvious amount of effort and passion that went into them.

The gate isn’t reserved for the exclusive use of the official cosplayers, though, so Mr. Sato still got to pose for photos at the Sega booth…

…and since they were handing out paper masks of series protagonist Kazuma Kiryu, he did, in a sense, get to cosplay at Tokyo Game Show after all.

With the rapid pace at which Sega pumps out new, remastered, or spun-off titles in the Like a Dragon franchise, and the subsequent frequency of promotional events for them, it probably won’t be too long until Mr. Sato gets another shot at becoming an official Majima cosplayer. In the meantime, though, he salutes this year’s booth models, and while he’s waiting for his next opportunity he can always stay connected to the series through its “useless English” lessons.

Photos ©SoraNews24
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[ Read in Japanese ]