Yakuza Fiancé: Raise wa Tanin ga Ii

Episode 12

Yoshino has talked out the shift in her relationship with Kirishima with the two people she trusts most, Tsubaki and Shoma. She's unpacked her rationale and thought process and trepidations with her closest family members, the few peers she has remaining after a relatively isolated adolescence. But isn't there someone she forgot to ask?

Oh right. Her boyfriend.

She'll get to that, but her first order of business: the silent treatment. She's furious at Kirishima for some of the crap he pulled in Osaka, and she's letting him know by withdrawing completely. He tries everything to get her attention: ringing her doorbell, talking to Tsubaki, baking lavish desserts that, as a hobbyist baker, I know it takes an extremely high skill level to pull off. Tsubaki assures him that this is a fairly common tactic of Yoshino's and she probably decided ahead of time how long the punishment would last. This is not helpful to Kirishima.

I'm the kind of person who, when watching anime aimed at teenagers, frets about the relationship dynamics presented as romantic. Do the kids watching it have models for healthy relationships? Do they have sufficient real-world examples to help them distinguish where reality ends and fantasy begins? Not to say that I'm in favor of censorship; I just know that the age group is still negotiating those boundaries and if they lack real-world examples, they tend to look toward fiction. Yakuza Fiancé is incredibly liberating because a) it's aimed at adults and b) Yoshino and Kirishima exist in a space where a healthy, equal relationship is impossible. Instead of thinking, “Wow, the silent treatment is a messed up thing to do to a partner,” I can appreciate the tension it creates in Kirishima, chuckle at his pathetic attempts at getting back in, and understand that she uses these tactics because she's in a situation where she has to assert her power where she can.

It's also a fun opportunity to look at the difference between kinky play and real conflict! One of the yakuza goons points out that this is the sort of thing Kirishima would normally be into since he's aroused by being treated like dirt. He says that it was fun at first, but not knowing how long it would last pushes him past the fun kind of discomfort and into anxiety. Kink has agreed-upon boundaries and expectations; if this were a sexy play, Kirishima would know how long to expect Yoshino to ignore him and/or be able to put an end to it when he stopped enjoying it. This is punishment.

But eventually it ends – hilariously, Yoshino set an alarm on her phone so she would know when to start talking to him again – and the two of them sit down and do something they haven't done yet: converse. Oh, most of the series has been them talking, since the show is all very dialogue-driven, but as Yoshino pointed out, they don't have a lot of conversation about getting to know one another. They talk about how he doesn't plan to formally join the yakuza because he's not liked enough to rise in the organization, and how she didn't have a lot of friends growing up after middle school. She looks stunning in the dress he bought her, but she explains that for everyday wear, she prefers to wear practical casual clothes like jeans most of the time. That… doesn't gel with what she's worn throughout the series, but I suppose we've mostly seen her at moments when she would get dressed up.

Their conversation finally turns to just what it means to be formally dating. I love Yoshino's straightforwardness when she says that she's nervous about the difference in their experience levels. It cuts right through the typical romance faltering, allowing them to get straight to the more interesting stuff like Kirishima suggesting they start with some hand-holding. The camera zooms in tight on their hands, creating a sense of intimacy. Yoshino's are small and delicate-looking while Kirishima's are large and knobbly, criss-crossed with scars from his life of violence and neglect. Hers are cold and his are warm. Kirishima's hands move over Yoshino's, sensual, exploring, the camera's focus on hands mirroring the characters' own, inviting the audience into the moment. You can practically feel the warmth of Kirishima's palms and the coolness of Yoshino's.

But then she offers him some cream for his rough skin. His smile warps when instead of rubbing it into his own hands, he smears it over her palms. As if it didn't look uncomfortably enough like semen, he leans over and licks it, making me wonder if eating his own cum is something he's done with a lot of his previous girlfriends. He swears it's because it looked like whipped cream, which is a load of bull excrement if you've ever seen hand cream. Nah, man. We all know what it looks like and try not to think about it. But once again, I must admire Yakuza Fiancé's ability to shift the mood from intimate to sexy to threatening to comedic without lessening the impact of any of the above. The tone shifted rapidly within less than a minute, and I felt each one fully.

The old men are up to something. Azami got his ass beat.

The episode, and thus the show, concludes with a simple post-credits scene: Kirishima picks up some flowers and pastries for Yoshino, a thoughtful gesture from a boyfriend to his girlfriend. When he brings them to her, he sees her legs, unmoving in the hall. He assumes the worst, leaping over the table to get to her, but she's only fallen asleep on her folded-up futon. He lies down next to her, gazing at her sleeping face. The only sound is her soft, regular breathing.

Yakuza Fiancé has been a wild ride from start to finish. I know some manga fans have been dissatisfied some of the anime's adaptational choices, but as an anime-first, I have no issues. From start to finish, the story has walked a tightrope between schlock and sentiment, never falling into one or another. This constant balance has created some of the most interesting characters of the Fall 2024 season, able to keep Yoshino a guarded girl boss yet still feeling sheltered from the worst parts of the organization, to subtly fill in details about the absolute tragedy of Kirishima's childhood without woobifying, making him likable and charismatic and threatening all at once. I don't know if there will be more Yakuza Fiancé anime, considering they've already covered over half of what's out; the manga is on hiatus, but I hope Asuka Konishi continues it soon.

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Yakuza Fiancé: Raise wa Tanin ga Ii is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.