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Yakuza

The Way of the Househusband, Vols. 2-3

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The Way of the Househusband has the rhythms of a good sitcom: it has a simple, well-defined premise, a few lead characters with strong personalities, and an episodic formula that’s flexible enough to create endless opportunities to tell the same joke in new and surprising ways. In the first volume, for example, almost every storyline revolved around Tatsu’s fanatical dedication to his role as stay-at-home spouse, whether he was bargain hunting at the grocery store or racing to the train station with his wife’s lunchbox. The mere sight of him in an apron, track suit, and aviator glasses was a good sight gag made better by Tatsu’s sheer cluelessness; he never seemed to realize that people were staring at him in the checkout line and the butcher’s shop.

Volumes two and three find Tatsu in equally incongruous situations. In chapter 10, for example, he joins the neighborhood housewives’ aerobics class, flashing his terrifying yakuza sneer every time the instructor commands her charges to “smile,” while in chapter 16, Tatsu demonstrates a hidden talent for spiking and setting when he joins the ladies’ volleyball team. The volleyball game is a great variation on the series’ best running joke. Though most civilians find him a terrifying oddity, the neighborhood ladies’ association looks at Tatsu as one of their own; they include him in activities, offer him tips on how to run his household more efficiently, and even help him impress a former boss with an impromptu display of culinary prowess.

Perhaps the most important development in volumes two and three, however, is the introduction of Tatsu’s old enemies, all of whom are genuinely bewildered by his retirement from the knee-capping business. These exchanges thrum with the comic energy of a Damon Runyon story as Tatsu schools his fellow yakuza on stain removal and dessert making. That Tatsu discusses his career change without apology or explanation is a nice touch, as it throws his opponents off their game and reinforces the idea that he likes being a stay-at-home husband.

My only concern about The Way of the Househusband is that Tatsu’s wife is more a collection of moods and preferences than a fully persuasive character. Miku is marked by extremes: she has an intense, child-like obsession with Poli-Cure, an anime whose core fanbase is about ten years old, but is also a fierce workaholic whose resists Tatsu’s efforts to pamper her with scented candles and scalp massages. Though the gags built around her personality usually land, it sometimes feels like they’d be funnier if we understood a little more about how Miku and Tatsu met, or what keeps them together. From time to time, author Kousuke Oono hints the two have more in common than meets the eye–Miku is handy with a knife and a bat, too–but a little more attention to her character would be welcome.

That said, The Way of the Househusband remains consistently funny three volumes into its run, offering a fresh take on that most timeless of sitcom premises: the fish out of water. Recommended.

VIZ Media provided a review copy of volume two.

THE WAY OF THE HOUSEHUSBAND, VOLS. 2-3 • STORY AND ART BY KOUSUKE OONO • TRANSLATION BY SHELDON DRZKA AND AMANDA HALEY, ADAPTATION BY JENNIFER LEBLANC • VIZ MEDIA, LLC • RATED T+, FOR OLDER TEENS (SUGGESTED VIOLENCE, YAKUZA JOKES)

Short Takes: No Guns Life and Ryuko

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This month’s Short Takes column checks in with two previously-reviewed series: No Guns Life, a sci-fi thriller whose principled hero sounds like Sam Spade and looks like a Remington; and Ryuko, a thriller starring a yakuza assassin who’s hell-bent on avenging her mother’s kidnapping.

No Guns Life, Vol. 2
Story and Art by Tasuku Karasuma
Translation by Joe Yamazaki; Adaptation by Stan!
VIZ Media, 224 pp.
Rated T+ (Older Teens)

After a decent, if predictable, first volume, Tasuku Karasuma finds his groove in volume two of No Guns Life, maintaining a brisk pace while allowing his characters’ personalities to emerge more fully. Though the action occasionally pauses for the characters to expound on important plot developments, these dialogues are less of a drag on the story than they were in volume one; here, they add badly needed layers of  complexity to a familiar noir plot line. Better still, Karasuma introduces several new characters who push the narrative in a more interesting direction, hinting at the power and secrecy of the Berühen Corporation, as well as the general public’s mixed feelings about living alongside cyborgs. If Karasuma engages in a little too much fanservice, or relies too heavily on speedlines and sound effects to enliven his fight scenes, No Guns Life is still entertaining enough to make all but the most discriminating reader root for Juzo to succeed. Recommended.

VIZ Media provided a review copy. Click here to read my review of volume one.

Ryuko, Vol. 2
Story and Art by Eldo Yoshimizu
Translation by Motoko Tamamuro and Jonathan Clements
Titan Comics, 226 pp.
No rating (Best suited for older teen and adult readers)

Paging the exposition police! The second volume of Ryuko has all the swagger of the first, but leans more heavily into Talking Points Conversation to help expedite its resolution. In some respects, these exchanges are a welcome development, as they clearly—one might say baldly—delineate the various factions’ interest in the Golden Seal, an object whose significance was glossed over in volume one. These passages also help the reader untangle the complex web of relationships among the characters, making it easier to grasp why Ryuko forges an alliance with an avowed enemy and why US military forces are trying to manipulate the outcome of her feud with the Sheqing-Ban. These conversations would feel less forced if the pacing were more even, but the two-volume format is too compressed for such an ambitious, labyrinthine plot to unfold at a reader-friendly pace.

Volume two’s chief attraction is the same as volume one’s: the artwork. Eldo Yoshimizu has a flair for staging car chases, fist fights, gun battles, and dramatic escapes, immersing the reader in the action with his creative use of perspective and fastidious attention to detail; Ryuko’s leopard-print catsuit is practically a character in its own right. In less capable hands, this maximalist approach might be overwhelming, but Yoshimizu’s layouts have a strong narrative pull that leads the eye across the page at the speed of the action, creating an almost cinematic experience. The final confrontation between Ryuko and evil American operatives is a show-stopper involving a motorcycle stunt so outrageous that even Jackie Chan would be impressed with its audacity. None of the story makes much sense, but Yoshimizu’s energetic, bold, and—yes—sexy artwork is cool enough to carry the day. Recommended.

Click here to read my review of volume one. 

The Way of the Househusband, Vol. 1

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If you’ve seen Lillehammer or My Blue Heaven, you’ll immediately recognize the foundation on which The Way of the Househusband is built: a mafia don or hit man renounces his old life and joins the ranks of ordinary civilians working nine-to-five jobs, mowing lawns, and attending school plays. Predictably, the transition from whacking rivals to whacking weeds is a bumpy one, as the former criminal discovers that the skills he acquired in his old line of work haven’t fully equipped him for a more prosaic existence; seemingly benign interactions at the principal’s office or the post office are fraught with peril, as they’re guided by unfamiliar social codes. Then, too, there’s the specter of his old life—the possibility that a former associate might recognize him or seek him out for one last job.

The Way of the Househusband covers all of this well-spaded ground, earning its laughs by putting fresh twists on familiar scenarios. Its protagonist, the stone-faced Tatsu, is a former yakuza boss-cum-househusband who spends his days making elaborate bento boxes for his wife and scouring the grocery store for bargains. As is standard for this particular fish-out-of-water genre, Tatsu’s sangfroid is sorely tested by the minor annoyances of civilian life: a visit from the neighborhood association president, a trip to the mall.

When a knife salesman knocks on Tatsu’s door, for example, author Kousuke Oono teases the idea that his characters’ interactions might end in violence or a harrowing demonstration of Tatsu’s knife-wielding skills. Instead, Tatsu has an opportunity to show off his culinary prowess, winning over the understandably nervous salesman with his “patented hamburger steak plate.” The salesman’s rhapsodic expression and interior monologue put the gag over the top, as the salesman identifies the dish’s secret ingredient—“minced fish paste”—and muses that its flavor “takes me back to my hometown.”

Strong artwork is essential to selling a slapstick premise like Househusband’s, and for the most part, Oono succeeds. Oono’s characters have distinctive appearances that makes it easy to “read” their comic function–the suspicious neighbor, the former crime associate–but Oono never relies on this technique alone, often giving bit players an unexpected moment of steeliness or resourcefulness that nudges the joke in an unexpected direction. The salesman, for example, looks like a soft, middle-aged man, but turns out to be stronger, pushier, and more determined than his initial reaction to Tatsu might suggest, quickly recovering his composure after Tatsu answers the door wearing a bloody apron. (“I was just, uh, doin’ a little butcherin’,” Tatsu explains sheepishly.)

Appearance-wise, Oono does a great job of making Tatsu look utterly incongruous with his surroundings. With his pencil-thin mustache, scarred face, and aviator sunglasses–not to mention his black suit and tattoos–Tatsu cuts a striking figure in the supermarket and on the street. Oono invigorates this obvious sight gag by swathing Tatsu in housewife “drag,” outfitting him in a kerchief and apron emblazoned with a shiba inu to further emphasize just what a fish out of water Tatsu is. That same attention to detail extends to the way that Tatsu moves; Oono draws him like a human cobra whose sinewy, explosive movements strike terror into his enemies’–and his neighbors’–hearts.

Sheldon Drzka and Jennifer LeBlanc’s skillful adaptation of the script is the icing on the cake, giving every character a distinctive voice, and every exchange the pleasant zing of a good Saturday Night Live or Key & Peele sketch–no mean feat, given the cultural specificity of the jokes.

As good as the script and art are, however, I have a sneaking suspicion that Way of the Househusband might run out of gas after three or four volumes unless Oono pivots the storyline in a new direction–say, by introducing a baby into the picture, or revealing that Tatsu’s hard-charging wife has a secret past of her own. But for now, I’m happy to continue reading any series that pits a former yakuza boss against a Roomba and a frisky cat, or depicts a manly man going to extreme lengths to ensure that his wife has a tasty lunch. In the immortal words of Paris Hilton, that’s hawt. Recommended.

VIZ Media provided a review copy. Read a free preview here.

THE WAY OF THE HOUSEHUSBAND, VOL. 1 • STORY AND ART BY KOUSUKE OONO • TRANSLATION BY SHELDON DRZKA, ADAPTATION BY JENNIFER LEBLANC • VIZ MEDIA, LLC • 166 pp. • RATED T+, FOR OLDER TEENS (SUGGESTED VIOLENCE, YAKUZA JOKES)

Ryuko, Vol. 1

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If you’ve been jonesing for a stylish thriller that doesn’t take itself too seriously, Eldo Yoshimizu’s Ryuko might just fit the bill: it has the pulpy soul of a Kazuo Koike manga and the brash attitude of a James Bond flick. And while Ryuko never quite achieves the simmering intensity or cohesion of Lady Snowblood and Crying Freeman, it does hold its own against Koike’s best work thanks to its audacious action sequences and cool-as-ice heroine who’ll stop at nothing to avenge her mother’s kidnapping.

Running in tandem with the kidnapping storyline are four —maybe five — other subplots, all connected to the Soviet-Afghanistan war. There’s gun-running and opium harvesting, Soviet malfeasance and CIA chicanery, and some other elements that, frankly, don’t make a lot of sense, though they provide sufficient justification for the imaginatively staged combat. Anyone hoping for a few helpful lines of expository dialogue will be frustrated, as the characters are so laconic they seldom utter more than a few words before throwing a punch or brandishing a gun.

The real star of Ryuko is Eldo Yoshimizu’s artwork, which deftly synthesizes Japanese and European influences without slavishly copying them. His female characters, in particular, have the undulating hips, flowing locks, and determined scowls of Leiji Matsumoto’s most lethal heroines, while the male characters’ appearances owe a debt to the rugged manly-men that stalked the pages of Hugo Pratt, Takao Sato, and Goseki Kojima’s adventure stories. Not surprisingly, Yoshimizu lavishes his greatest attention on Ryuko, swathing her in barely-there dresses and leopard-print catsuits–an artistic decision that makes her look cool, but seems impractical for dodging bullets and karate-chopping enemies.

But oh, Ryuko’s fight scenes! They’re worth the price of admission, as they showcase the full range of Yoshimizu’s talents as a draftsman, veering sharply between naturalism, suggestion, and pure abstraction. In this sequence, for example, we see the young Ryuko ambushing a group of Soviet soldiers:

In the first panel, the tank is drawn with utmost specificity, allowing us to appreciate its sheer mass and its weaponry. The subsequent panels, however, are more gestural than the first, as we glimpse Ryuko silhouetted against the explosion, her age and gender completely obscured by the brilliant flash of light behind her. In the final panel of the sequence, Yoshimizu uses two horses to frame the action, rendering them as bold patches of black, with just a suggestion of a nostril and an eye, their demonic appearance echoing Ryuko’s own fierce resolve. Other sequences, such as this one, are even more abstract, dispensing with a grid in favor of fluid, overlapping images; in a particularly effective gambit, Ryuko’s arm forms a kind of panel boundary between the first stage of the attack — a knee to the stomach — and the second, in which she flips and pins her opponent:

Even Ryuko’s hair plays an important role in helping us understand what’s happening in this confrontation. In the first sequence, her hair swings around her face and shoulders in a naturalistic fashion, but in the final panel, her hair looks like a furious nest of snakes, each poised to strike her victim. That shift is subtle but important, a nifty metaphor for just how quick and lethal Ryuko can be.

For all the verve with which these scenes are drawn, Ryuko‘s characters never quite register as flesh-and-blood people. Yoshimizu has provided them with backstories, but the characters’ behavior is so steeped in action-movie cliche that their motivations for shooting and punching are almost immaterial. The story’s breakneck pacing doesn’t allow anyone much time for introspection, either; the few flashbacks to Ryuko’s childhood separation from her mother are the only genuinely emotional moments in the story. Still, no one reads trashy thrillers for a deep exploration of the human psyche; they’re looking for an over-the-top story that serves up generous helpings of car chases, gun battles, and fist-fights, the more outlandish, the better. On that front, Ryuko performs admirably, infusing a shopworn revenge plot with the sensual swagger of old-school classics like Lady Snowblood and Lupin III. Recommended.

RYUKO, VOL. 1 • ART AND STORY BY ELDO YOSHIMIZU • TRANSLATION BY MOTOKO TAMAMURO AND JONATHAN CLEMENTS • TITAN COMICS • NO RATING (PARTIAL NUDITY, VIOLENCE) • 256 pp.

Yakuza Cafe

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Yakuza Cafe is a pleasant surprise, a cheerful, smutty send-up of gangster manga that playfully mocks maid cafes, foodie manga, and yakuza culture.

The titular gangsters are the Fujimaki Clan, a once-feared crime syndicate who’ve launched a legitimate business: a yakuza-themed cafe, staffed by the clan’s former foot soldiers. Though the food is tasty, and the waitstaff comely, the cafe is all but deserted — that is, until Shinri, the clan leader’s only son, discovers the root of the problem: no one can brew a decent cup of tea! Not to worry: Shinri just happens to be an expert on the subject, thanks to his grandmother, a tea connoisseur so dedicated that she grew her own leaves.

Of course, Yakuza Cafe is yaoi, so there’s also a romantic subplot running in tandem with the shop’s rehabilitation. That storyline involves Shinri and a brooding, muscle-bound thug named Mikado, who’s famous for his fiery temper. Though others warn Shinri not to become emotionally or physically involved with Mikado, Shinri finds himself irresistibly drawn to Mikado and his elaborate dragon tattoo. (The tattoo, it should be noted, is almost a character in its own right.)

Yakuza Cafe has three things working in its favor: a cast of handsome men, a clever premise, and a deep affection for the genres it parodies. Shinano Oumi draws elegant, if generic, characters in a variety of pleasing shapes and sizes: broad-shouldered types for readers who prefer rugged men and slender, snappy dressers for those who favor metrosexuals. Oumi doesn’t just populate her story with attractive characters, she inserts them into a situation that’s ripe with comic potential: what could possibly go wrong when former hit men serve tea and pastries to teenage girls? Of course, none of these scenarios would be funny if Oumi overplayed them, but she uses a light touch throughout the story, whether she’s borrowing ideas from The Drops of God — grandma’s tea expertise could easily spawn a manga of its own — or putting a BL spin on a gangster manga cliche. (Mikado tries to slice off his own pinky in order to atone for his relationship with Shinri.)

The main drawback to Yakuza Cafe is the romance. Shinri and Mikado’s attraction is explained by means of a very tired shojo trope — The Handsome Senpai From My Childhood — and never properly developed. That’s a pity, because the other lengthy story in Yakuza Cafe, “The Crimson Seal,” achieves a much better balance between the main story and the budding relationship between a college grifter and a Fujimaki foot soldier. “Seal” also offers the manga’s only really emotional moment, culminating in a Tragic Death as sincere and silly as anything in Crying Freeman. (I say this with love.)

Whether you’ll enjoy Yakuza Cafe boils down to a simple test: do you read yaoi for the stories or the pictures? If the former, you’ll find it entertaining, with passably exciting bedroom scenes; if the latter, you may not find enough visual stimulation to hold your interest through all the maid cafe and yakuza jokes.

Digital review copy provided by Digital Manga Publishing.

YAKUZA CAFE • BY SHINANO OUMI • DMP • 168 pp. • RATING: MATURE (18+)

Yakuza Moon: The True Story of a Gangster’s Daughter

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In the popular imagination, the yakuza are modern-day samurai, observing a rigid code of honor, decorating their bodies with elaborate tattoos, and meting out swift punishments to anyone who encroaches on their territory. When women appear in yakuza stories, they are usually unwitting victims of clan warfare or temptresses whose sexual allure threatens the established order; they are seldom leaders or soldiers in their own right.

Small wonder, then, that Shoko Tendo’s Yakuza Moon: Memoirs of a Gangster’s Daughter (2007) caused a mild sensation in Japan when it was first published, as Tendo gave a voice to all the women who had been relegated to the margins of yakuza stories. In direct, unembellished prose, she described the devastating impact of her father’s criminal activities on his family. She cataloged her father’s drunken rages and dalliances with hostesses; recounted his subordinates’ unwanted sexual advances; and recalled the taunts and gossip that swirled around her family after her father’s incarceration.

Tendo turned an equally unsparing eye on herself, documenting her increasingly self-destructive behavior. At twelve, she joined a gang and skipped school; by her sixteenth birthday, she’d been arrested and imprisoned for fighting, and by her nineteenth birthday, she’d become addicted to speed and enmeshed in several violent relationships with married men. Only after a string of near-death experiences was Tendo able to break the cycle of abuse and addiction that had reduced her to a eighty-seven pound skeleton with scars and false teeth.

From this blunt, vivid narrative, Sean Michael Wilson and Michiru Morikawa have fashioned a curiously flat graphic memoir, Yakuza Moon: The True Story of a Gangster’s Daughter. Wilson, the script writer, hews closely to the structure of Tendo’s book, preserving the chapters and the major events of Tendo’s narrative. Yet for all his fidelity to the original, the results are uneven. Most of Tendo’s siblings and lovers, for example, are reduced from major characters to walk-on roles. To judge from Wilson and Morikawa’s adaptation, for example, Tendo’s older sister Maki was a casual acquaintance, yet in Tendo’s memoir, Maki occupied an important place in her sister’s life: first as an idol, someone Tendo emulated, then as a cautionary tale, someone Tendo feared becoming. Tendo’s other family members fare worse than Maki; readers could be excused for wondering how many siblings Tendo has, as her older brother and younger sister are mentioned only in passing late in the book, with little discussion of how their father’s lifestyle affected them.

Equally frustrating are the layouts: Yakuza Moon looks more like an illustrated novel than comics, with words carrying the burden of the storytelling and pictures playing an ancillary role. Only in Tendo’s sexual encounters does the artwork take a more prominent role; through nuanced facial expressions and body language, Morikawa speaks volumes about Tendo’s complicated relationships with men. We immediately sense which partners were bullies, and which were kind; which used physical intimidation to control Tendo, and which used emotional manipulation; and which she feared, and which she loved. There’s a frankness to these scenes that’s missing elsewhere in the book; Morikawa never shies away from depicting ugly or uncomfortable moments, but shows us what’s happening from Tendo’s point of view, rather than her partner’s.

And that, perhaps, is this graphic novel’s greatest strength: whatever compromises Wilson and Morikawa made in translating Tendo’s prose into images, the focus of the story remains squarely on Tendo. Yakuza activities — drug dealing, loansharking, beatings — take place off camera; we only see the terrible consequences, reminding us that no matter how elaborate the yakuza code of conduct may be, there’s no real honor among thieves.

YAKUZA MOON: THE TRUE STORY OF A GANGSTER’S DAUGHTER • BASED ON THE BOOK BY SHOKO TENDO, ADAPTED BY SEAN MICHAEL WILSON, ILLUSTRATED BY MICHIRO MORIKAWA • KODANSHA USA • 192 pp. • RATING: MATURE