The Spring 2021 Manga Guide

Yakuza Lover

What's It About? 

When feisty college student Yuri is attacked at a party, she's saved by Toshiomi Oya, the underboss of a yakuza syndicate. Despite her obvious attraction to him, she convinces herself that she's not in the market for a bad boy type. But when they meet again, she finds herself irresistibly drawn to him—kicking off a steamy and dangerous love affair that threatens to consume her, body and soul.

Yakuza Lover is scripted and illustrated by Nozomi Mino and Viz released the first volume in print on June 1 for US$8.99.

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Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

Reading Yakuza Lover is a combination of the thrills of reading a slightly cringey romance novel and watching your friend make a terrible relationship decision. If that sounds like your idea of fun, welcome! Because this really is the best of both of those scenarios. The story follows Yuri, a twenty-year-old university student in search of a boyfriend. She makes the mistake of going to a party at a random stranger's house, where she gets lost trying to leave and ends up in a room hosting a shady drug deal. She's busy defending herself and her friend when Mr. Oya walks in and saves the day. The problem? Oya's the underboss of a yakuza family, which doesn't stop he and Yuri from falling in...something. The book tries very hard to sell it as love, but honestly, it's looking more like lust from where I'm standing.

From that point, Yakuza Lover embarks on a torrid narrative of a potentially doomed love between a yakuza man and a young woman who is purportedly smarter than this. It's filled with sex (this is Viz's most explicit josei release to date, even counting those two Tomu Ohmi series), truly embarrassing dialogue, and a dude getting his eyeball shot out. In some ways it really does feel like Viz's answer to Seven Seas' release of Fire in his Fingertips, albeit on a lesser scale, since this was serialized in Cheese!, meaning that it doesn't have license to be nearly as explicit as TL manga. But given that Yuri and Oya barely interact before hopping into bed, the focus is on a physical relationship rather than an emotional one. There are token statements about how they love each other, but again, there's no real sense of that because they're basically cardboard cutouts as characters.

But really, this isn't the sort of book that's looking for you to analyze it as you're reading. Instead it's absolutely the sort of book meant to be read under the covers with a flashlight while giggling like a ninny, sweeping you up in its story of a man who ends every interaction with “I'll call you later if I'm still alive” and the sense that one day he really may not come back to Yuri. I do have to give it credit for presenting a more violent picture of yakuza than many other yakuza manga; Oya's lines may be cheesy, but there are multiple gunfights and threats made over the course of the volume, and Yuri's definitely in peril as Oya's girlfriend, because the guys he interacts with are not above using her to get to him. This could go from silly romance to something else very quickly, and while I don't quite see that happening yet, I also wouldn't be surprised.

So where does that leave us? Well, I can't call Yakuza Lover an objectively good book. It risks delighting in putting Yuri in danger and is cornier than any Harlequin romance I've ever read. But I can also say that I had a lot of fun reading it, and at the end of the day, that's probably all that matters – for this volume, at any rate.

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Lynzee Loveridge

Rating:

Alright children, cover your ears. This is a story for grown-ups. I mean that quite literally; we're not talking about disturbing or mature themes or content that I otherwise wouldn't recommend for kids. Yakuza Lover is softcore porn. So I will be considering its merits based on how well it does its job which by and large is always a matter of personal taste.

This is a manga from Cheese! magazine which I'm familiar with as the home for lady smut. I've browsed a number of these series, like Midnight Secretary and Happy Marriage!?. Just like their male-targeted counterparts, this variety of smut has well-established tropes. You can expect plenty of damsel-in-distress scenarios, a poor girl getting roped in as the lover/fiance/personal employee of wealthy, handsome, and sexually demanding man, and plenty of “no, we mustn't!”

Surprisingly, Yakuza Lover sidesteps some of the more questionable tropes to create a series that is fresh while still delivering the goods. The first sign that things weren't going to be business as usual is the introduction of the heroine, a college student named Yuri. Yuri is model-level gorgeous where as I'm used to these stories featuring a “plain” girl who gets a sophisticated makeover thanks to her new lover's immense wealth and resources. For Yuri, her looks haven't roped her much romance. She's not a fan of the pushy guys she attracts and instead becomes smitten with Oya—a yakuza underboss.

Oya himself occupies a unique character type variant. The “Dangerous Lover” is well-trodden but Oya is slight in frame and wears glasses. He looks more like effeminate rock star type. He commands respect within his gangster circle but he has a completely different approach when it comes to Yuri. He lets her set the pace, he minds her boundaries, and he's open to letting her do the ravishing. I haven't browsed a ton of titles, but Yakuza Lover is the first one I've read that was made for women that made a point about the female power dynamic of topping a tattooed tough guy.

So while the couple adds some nice variety to the formula, I will acknowledge that there are parts that really, really cheesy. The displays of excess wealth are the main issue. I get that it's a fantasy to find an extremely attractive man that will provide the woman with every little thing her heart desires but it's a wee bit over the top. Also fireworks at THAT moment.

Otherwise, if all the above sounds like a good time to you, the art is very nice and the sexy scenes are interspersed reasonably. Enjoy.