Yakuza's Baka Mitai is Now a Meme, and Kazuma Kiryu's Actor is Very Happy

You might recently have heard of Baka Mitai, a new deepfake trend that has historical and fictional characters alike singing the song from Yakuza 0. I've actually only just realized the meme is revolving around the song from Yakuza 0 and so, it would seem, has Kazuma Kiryu's actor.

Deepfake technology has really taken off over the past few years, to put it lightly. Recently though, a new trend has evolved in which users get a fake or real person to sing Baka Mitai using lip syncing technology. Like, for example, Thanos.

Baka Mitai can be heard in full just below. It's one of the many songs in Yakuza 0 that protagonist Kazuma Kiryu can sing in any one of bars dotted around Kamurocho, the fictional red light district of Tokyo (and based on the real-world location of Kabukicho).

Takaya Kuroda plays Kazuma Kiryu in all the Yakuza games, and it appears he's just caught on to the trend using the song that he sings in Yakuza 0. Reacting to the newfound popularity of Baka Mitai on his Twitter account, Kuroda says that he's "very happy the world is singing his song."

It absolutely went over my head that the Baka Mitai trend was based on a Yakuza 0 karaoke song. I've spent upwards of 70 hours roaming the streets of Kamurocho and Sotenbori in that game, but no, I totally forgot about Baka Mitai.

Now, if everyone could go and play Yakuza 0, that'd be wonderful, thank you very much. It's absolutely one of the best games of the past decade, and actually took my Game of the Year spot for 2017, beating out Nier Automata, Breath of the Wild, and more.