A Match Made in a Nightmare

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Yakuza Fiance is about Yoshino Somei, the granddaughter of the head of a Osakan crime family, and Kirishima Miyama, the grand-nephew of the head of a Tokyo crime family, considering getting engaged, as a sort of peace accord between eastern and western Yakuza.

In the first volume, Yoshino a year in Tokyo as sort of a "get-to-know-you" thing with Kirishima, even attending the same school, leaving her in an unusual position. On the one hand, people here don't avoid her like they did back home, because none of the students know she's essentially a mafia princess. But it also means the girls that swoon over Kirishima feel free to bully and gossip about the new girl that everyone apparently thinks has call girl, or 'divorced mom'(?) looks. And Yoshino is in enemy territory, so to speak, with no friends or family, no one to rely on but Kirishima. And while he smiles pleasantly a lot, every so often she catches a glimpse of something that makes her wonder.

In those scenes, writer/artist Asuka Konishi typically either shades Kirishima differently, or replaces his typical, closed-eye smile with one where his eyes or narrowed. Or, once he reveals his true colors after saving Yoshino from some creeps, draws him with one eye narrowed more than the other, like he's either in pain or nuts (see the image at the top of the post.)

Shaken by what she's learned and been told - Kirishima explains he's bored of her already, because she's not the vicious bitch he hoped for, and suggests she sell her body to be useful - but ordered by her grandfather to hang in there for a year, Yoshino finally shows her own true colors. Konishi's kept her being extremely polite with Kirishima and everyone else, but the scenes of her with her grandfather showed she's prone to dramatic reactions. Still, with no choice but to meet Kirishima's crazy with her own, Yoshino responds with a move that made me stop and go, "Oh shit." Unfortunately, that only convinces Kirishima she really is the kind of girl he hoped for, and now he's infatuated.

(Konishi will undercut Yoshino's big moment in a couple of volumes, which was disappointing, but probably a wise decision in the long run.)

Yoshino hasn't exactly leveled the playing field, her internal narration and behavior still shows she's extremely nervous around this lunatic masochist, but she's not holding herself back out of fear of disgracing herself. Konishi has her slip into less formal speak - the word "youse", for example - as a sign of her Kansai dialect, or shorten words by leaving off the "g", which is what Kiyohiko Azuma used for Yotsuba's grandmother. (The English dub of Azumanga Daioh gave the character from Osaka a Texas accent to distinguish her speech from the other characters.) Konishi also adds either a dark aura around Yoshino, or covers the background in shadows that seem to bleed down the panel.

The story's concept is interesting, although Kirishima is so off-putting, even after he's smitten, that it's hard to want to see he and Yoshino interact. Putting a tracker in her electronic dictionary is just creepy, and since Yoshino yelling at him doesn't seem to produce any noticeable change in behavior, it's not exactly satisfying. But I do like Yoshino, who seems kind, but with a stubborn and contrary nature that makes her fun to read about.