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Yakuza Fiancé Anime Premiere is One of the Strongest Contenders for Fall

In the pantheon of great literary love stories, there are enemies-to-lovers, friends-to-lovers, ex-lovers-to-lovers, and about a dozen other combinations on the route to true but unexpected love. Yakuza Fiancé: Raise wa Tanin ga Ii is, perhaps, the most closely related to the first one, if the first one specifically included hyper-toxic organized crime heirs who hated women with every fiber of their being. And refrains of, “But I can change him!” also included petty revenge and—you know what, actually that's enemies-to-lovers to a T.

Yakuza Fiancé, a rizzy romcom whose splashy opening credits include salacious promises of intercourse and steamy courtship, is one of the fall anime season's new titles. Slated to stream on Crunchyroll in October, the series is adapted from the manga by Asuka Konishi, a pen name that obscures much of what is known about the mysterious author. Produced by Studio DEEN, the series composition and script is by relative newcomer Rika Takasugi, with direction by Toshifumi Kawase, who's had a long career in everything from storyboarding to directing.

The audience crammed into the small panel room at Anime NYC didn't quite know what to expect from Yakuza Fiancé—most of the room dutifully “Oooh'd" like teenagers when the implied sex scene appeared in the opening. Meanwhile, the girl behind me—a cosplayer dressed as the Hamburglar cradling a severed Ronald McDonald head in her lap—kept saying, “Wowwwwwww” whenever something audacious was uttered on screen. It happened frequently—lead character and male love interest Kirishima Miyama is (intentionally) one of the worst anti-heroes to grace a TV pilot in a while. He's the grandson of the Tokyo yakuza clan leader, and although his family ties appear to be an open secret at school, he's very beloved by a core group of mean girls who seem to like him both for his family power and his handsome looks.

Enter main girl Yoshino Somei, a sweet girl who snaps into mega-main character energy so fast that it had the entire room cheering. She's the granddaughter of the Osaka yakuza clan, but in order to heal the beef between the two families, she's been shuffled off to Tokyo with a promise of betrothal to Kirishima. She ends up living in their freshly renovated tearoom wing, which immediately gains the ire of the mean girls at school who don't want her anywhere near their prized man. Before long, she quickly sees that Kirishima has a dark side. Not only is he quick to extreme violence, graphically pulping the face of a man who dared look in Yoshino's direction—but he truly relishes his yakuza birthright. In the grand scheme of rom-com archetypes, the “heir to the powerful clan of bad guys” is usually one of two types—the sweet man who is uncomfortable with his family business and power or the evil guy who can't wait to ruin someone's day. Kirishima is the latter. Before long, he sniffs out Yoshino's weaker, more timid nature and snarls that she would only be useful as a prostitute. The Hamburglar behind me did not like this at all.

Without spoiling too much from the pilot, which might be one of the strongest contenders of the fall season, Yoshino is advised by her grandfather that the only option she has left that will allow them to keep their family honor is to make Kirishima fall in love with her and crush his heart like an insect after a year. She steels herself, makes a phone call, and pulls off a move so brazen, gutsy, and unexpected that the entire room erupted into loud cheers. The Hamburglar, of course, let out a long “Woooooooow.” And it really was a “wow” moment.

I generally have mixed feelings about this particular flavor of Enemies to Lovers. Kirishima is a level of toxic that had hundreds of fans squirming uncomfortably in their seats. But at the end of the day, he is the future leader of a violent crime syndicate, so maybe it's not terribly unexpected. Yoshino, though, she's cool. The moment she needs to dig deep and find her strength, she transforms into a stone-cold force of nature that has even Kirishima shaken up. She alone is reason to watch Yakuza Fiancé, and the reason this series has so much potential. Pay no mind to the haters who claim the show is aesthetically weak—yeah, maybe it's true. Maybe the characters' thick necks, buggy eyes, and alien giraffe-like limbs aren't the most beautiful, but Yoshino should more than make up for it. Am I in love? Maybe.