Sympathy for the Underdog

A former American G.I. joins a yakuza family after his release from prison in post-World War II Osaka.

Former yakuza underling Kazuma Kiryū has recently been released from prison after a lengthy incarceration and is trying to piece his life together and distance himself from his yakuza past. Unfortunately, Kiryū's problems slowly escalate as he is pursued by a former associate, the baseball-bat-wielding psycho Gorō Majima, who has a grudge to settle with Kiryū.

Repeatedly beat to a pulp by gamblers, cops, and gangsters, lone wolf Shoji Yamanaka finally finds a home as a Muraoka family hitman and falls in love with boss Muraoka's niece. Meanwhile, the ambitions of mad dog Katsutoshi Otomo draws our series' hero, Shozo Hirono, and the other yakuza into a new round of bloodshed.

A harsh young man seduces a freeloading young woman and eventually takes advantage of her knack for hitchhiking to rob middle-class men.

Two New York cops get involved in a gang war between members of the Yakuza, the Japanese Mafia. They arrest one of their killers and are ordered to escort him back to Japan. However, in Japan he manages to escape, and as they try to track him down, they get deeper and deeper into the Japanese Mafia scene and they have to learn that they can only win by playing the game—the Japanese way.

When a mysterious stranger muscles into two rival yakuza gangs, Tokyo's underworld explodes with violence.

After serving time, a defiant street thug is incensed to find his town overrun by two yakuza factions. He gathers his crew and takes them on.

In the teeming black markets of postwar Japan, Shozo Hirono and his buddies find themselves in a new war between factious and ambitious yakuza.