© Asuto Konishi/Kodansha/I Want Someone Else in My Next Life Production Committee
Don’t let the glut of cute and adorable yakuza anime fool you. this is not Yakuza’s Babysitter’s Guidetaking advantage of the gap Cute A group of tough gangsters dote on a small child, and cartoon fights occasionally break out, but no one gets hurt. This is not a A girl and her watchdog In this case, the man may be a tough guy in general, but be gentle with her. Like a dragon fiancé It tells the story of a young woman who finds herself engaged to a terrifying, violent young man. In this case, she has two choices: either run back to Osaka in disgrace, or cooperate with his energy, gain the upper hand in the relationship, and use her own strength.
No sugar here, folks, just spice.
It all started when Somei Yoshino’s grandfather, one of Osaka’s gang bosses, informed her that she was moving to Tokyo as the fiancée of the grandson of one of his best friends. He assured her that the boy she had never met was not a gangster per se, but merely related to one. Yoshino reluctantly agreed.
Tokyo has little to offer Yoshino. Sure, Miyama is beautiful and looks sexy, but her status as his fiancée makes her draw the ire of the other girls in the class. Then one troubled night, she learns Miyama’s true face: romantically, he’s a masochist who’s disappointed that Yoshino isn’t the spoiled, controlling ice queen she’s been, like he’s always hoped she would be crushing him like a bug. In all other respects he is a complete sadist, a violent thug with no self-control who does not hesitate to beat to death anyone who crosses his path. He horrified her by suggesting she sell her body to make money.
Yoshino did what anyone would do in this situation: called home for comfort. However, her grandfather gives her very unorthodox advice, suggesting that she find a way to the heart of the mountain, make him fall in love with her, and then use it to destroy him. She figured out how to follow two men’s advice in one fell swoop: disappear for two weeks and come back with millions of yen, the proceeds from selling her kidney. Just as planned, Shen Shan couldn’t help but fall in love with a woman who made such a crazy choice.
I’m new here Like a dragon fiancéso I really don’t know what kind of story this is going to be. It seems to eschew most of the typical conventions of recent yakuza romances. Shenshan is not a good person at heart. Yoshino would not use her love to tender him. If anything, he’d make it worse for her. So far, the story isn’t striving for likability or moral lessons. It’s a pure spectacle, top to bottom, and aside from the thrill of watching terrible people do terrible things and the unease of watching Yoshino, largely unsheltered by the family business, get sucked into gritty, violent reality, Nothing.
While the first episode was mostly dedicated to establishing Yoshino and Miyama’s dynamic and creating a sense of unease, the second episode feels like a more representative sample of what to expect from the story, episode by episode. Yoshino finds herself unable to escape her overeager fiancé, who turns out to have a tracker implanted in her electronic dictionary. But it doesn’t matter – after the 20-year-old subordinate’s daughter disappeared, Yoshino was ordered to guard Miyama 24 hours a day for protection. Yoshino isn’t too happy because her determination to impress him isn’t entirely emotional.
This is a dialogue-filled episode that uses the missing girl’s situation to address some details involving inter-tribal politics and territory, as well as introduce Miyama’s backstory. Most of the first half consists of Miyama and Yoshino talking about the situation in various locations; luckily Miyama is played by Akira Ishidaone of the best voice actors working today, and while I still don’t believe he’s a high school student, his performance as Miyama is vaguely menacing even when he’s explaining things genially and taking Yoshino out to dinner, which makes Things become less boring.
Things change when Yoshino goes out to buy a new hair dryer and discovers that the missing girl has entered the club. The club is on someone else’s property, and normally it would be troublesome to find her, but luckily, it belongs to a small group of the Somei family. Yoshino can get her and Miyama to join the club by calling her family. This scene exemplifies what an interesting character Yoshino is – she may have the energy of an ordinary girl and have ordinary needs, like needing a new hair dryer when her old one blows out, but she can turn around and call her gangster Families obtain permission to enter the club. When she enters the club, she’s uncomfortable with the booming bass and sexually charged atmosphere, but she’s also willing to throw herself into a fight when the going gets tough.
Look, there are so many missing girls Akaza Shiori no She’s an ordinary girl but a spoiled gangster princess who screws up after she’s caught cheating at an underground baccarat table run by the Philippine Mafia. oops. She planned to leave the country for a while until things calmed down, but uh oh! Miyama comes and ruins everyone’s day. This is a perfect example of him being the opposite of Yoshino. Even though he was acting casual and smiling, there was something off about him. No sane person would think it’s okay to put his arm around a stranger and start eating from the bowl she’s holding, and this casual violation of boundaries makes him extremely threatening. It asked: “What are you going to do?”
Because when people react in any other way than freezing in fear, it affects them adversely. The human mind often limits our power. When these limits are broken, the results can be dire. Miyama simply doesn’t have these limitations. This led to him breaking the bones of 20 other kids by the age of 12, and now he’s beating up some little thugs. While Yoshino isn’t nearly as vicious as he is, she holds her own in the fight, shattering a man’s skull with her brand new hair dryer when she’s pushed away.
The ending has a weird “nothing comes easy” vibe, with Miyama and Yoshino talking about the outcome of their adventure in class, as if the story doesn’t end with at least one person permanently disabled and Miyama covered in bandages. The tonal incongruity is the show’s selling point and a big reason why it stands out. We are not here to dwell on violence or relax with pleasant people. We’re here to have a dirty good time, unencumbered by conventional morals.
It looks like next week we’ll find out who the tattooed, six-pack guy is in the opening scene.
grade:
Yakuza’s Fiancé: Raise wa Tanin ga Ii Currently streaming on Crunchyroll.
