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New Yakuza 5 characters revealed

Leaves Kamurocho for the uncanny valley.

Yakuza 5's known cast expanded today as Sega announced new characters accompanied by pictures of their motion-capture-based actors.

Below is the newly revealed cast, as reported by Andriasang, with pictures below:

  • Kouichi Takasugi (played by Shou Aikawa) is a loan shark from Nagoya who's after playable character, Tatsuo Shinada, a former baseball player with severe gambling debts.
  • Shigeki Baba (Shunsuke Daitou) is a prisoner in Hokkaido whose life changes dramatically upon meeting the hulking life-sentence prisoner and star of Yakuza 4's best cutscene Taiga Saejima.
  • Mayumi (Nana Katase) works at a club in Fukuoka. She'll play a major role Kiry's storyline, and will appear in each of the game's five cities.
  • Daigo Dojima (Satoshi Tokushige) the sixth chairman of the Tojo clan and friend of Kiryu's who first debuted in Yakuza 2. Tokushige said he has far more spoken dialogue than in any previous Yakuza game.
  • Naoki Katsuya (Mitsuru Fukikoshi) is the head of a talent production company with ties to the mob. We assume this links with Haurka's storyline about her pursuing a career as a pop star. We rate her chances of getting kidnapped likely.
  • A Detective in Osaka (Eiji Okuda). The man with no name - yet. He's evidently pursuing all the main characters, as detectives are wont to do.

In other Yakuza news, Sega is teasing a major Yakuza-related announcement soon on its official Yakuza site (via Andriasang). Since it's not on the Yakuza 5 page, it's presumed that this may relate to the rumoured Yakuza 1 & 2 HD Collection spotted earlier this week.