Despite some of the initial impressions regarding Luke, Aleks Le managed to turn the perception around on the new Street Fighter 6 protagonist thanks to his humor and charm as the character’s English voice actor.
Le is now taking on the mantle of Kazuma Kiryu from the Yakuza / Like a Dragon series, which is something the actor wished for over five years ago before Luke was ever revealed.
Although he’s not in the actual games (yet) as the Dragon of Dojima, Aleks recently revealed he portrays Kiryu in the Like a Dragon: Yakuza live action series.
He’s part of the pretty high profile English dubbing cast that includes Matthew Mercer as Goro Majima, who you may recognize as Resident Evil’s Leon S. Kennedy and Guilty Gear’s Zato-1 among many other roles, and Johnny Yong Bosch as Akira Nishiki, who Capcom fans should know as the voice of Nero in Devil May Cry, Zero in Marvel vs. Capcom and now Dante in the upcoming Devil May Cry anime.
Honored to say I voice KAZUMA KIRYU in the dub of Amazon’s LIKE A DRAGON: YAKUZA
Watch the sub too bc the actors rock, but if ya wanna check out the English dub we also got an INSANE cast LOTS I wanna talk about with this role- BUT I’ll share clips when I get home! pic.twitter.com/5jMmV0tPiK
— Aleks Le (@AleksLeVO) October 25, 2024
What’s funny about this too is Le apparently posted online all the way back in August 2020 that “I wish I was Kiryu Kazuma.”
ain’t no way
— Aleks Le (@AleksLeVO) October 26, 2024
That post has obviously come back up now because of the obvious relevance after fans rediscovered it, but Aleks responded that he apparently “straight up forgot” about the tweet.
Le also shared some clips of his work and some of the thoughts put into his portrayal of Kiryu.
For the younger version of Kiryu, the actor says he tried to match Ryoma Takeuchi’s energy while taking things in a bit of a different direction for the older version of the character.
HOLY SHIT HOW DID YOU FIND THIS I STRAIGHT UP FORGOT I TWEETED THIS LMAOOOOOOO
— Aleks Le (@AleksLeVO) October 26, 2024
There Le says he tried to capture Takaya Kuroda’s more laid back attitude mixed with Darryl Kurylo’s grit from the original Yakuza game.
Aleks is obviously a lot more than just Luke and Kiryu too as one of the seemingly fastest growing talents in voice acting with Demon Slayer’s Zenitsu, Dragon Ball Super’s Gamma 1, Persona 3 Reload’s protagonist, Solo Leveling’s Sung Jin-woo, Final Fantasy 7’s Sonon and more under his belt.
Plus, he already technically got to be in the Yakuza universe as Eiji Mitamura in Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth.
You can check out a couple of Le’s scenes as Kiryu below for the new Amazon series to hear for yourself.