Tim Henderson: “The brown, tiger-print jacket worn by Shenmues lead, Ryo Hazuki, has had plenty of time to become iconic. And become iconic it has, almost by default after all, the rest of Ryos attire is of the white t-shirt and blue jeans variety. That jacket is literally the thing that gives him a visual identity. To put its importance into perspective, during Shenmue 3s record-setting Kickstarter campaign, 22 people coughed up USD $3000 for a replica as approved by franchise creator Yu Suzuki. That jacket is Ryo Hazuki. It seems ironic, then, that actively removing it was a key moment of liberation for my own playthrough of Shenmue 3. I had spent many of my first hours in the game slavishly living by my own memories, much as the game itself seems a slave to where it left off in 2001.”
Source: N4G PC How Shenmue 3 Chased the Memory, but Lost Sight of the Vision