Yakuza Fiancé concluded its first season, crafting a highly entertaining romance dynamic. The story combines a few different shojo and dark romance tropes to great effect, mixing popular clichés with more underrated ones. Kirishima is a hilarious yandere love interest; he’s toxic, but his darker qualities lend themselves well to a black comedy romance about gangsters.
Yandere love interests rarely take center stage, and many romance and shojo audiences prefer a tsundere or kuudere love interest. Tsunderes can be moody, but they can’t hold a candle to a yandere’s obsessive, feral nature. Though Kirishima is an unlikely love interest type, his and Yoshino’s romance is driven by popular tropes, like forced proximity and arranged marriage.
Yakuza Fiancé Returns to Dark Shojo Romances
Dark Romance Comes with a Certain Set of Conventions & Genre Expectations
It seems like there’s a demand in the market for dark romance in shojo and seinen anime. Yakuza Fiancé isn’t the only new release to attempt the genre, but it seems to pull off the concept the best in recent anime. Other works, like Vampire Dormitory and A Girl and Her Guard Dog, also try to tap into a demand for soapy, toxic romance. These newer series harken back to notorious titles that were popular at their release, like Diabolik Lovers, My Little Monster, and Vampire Knight.
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Yakuza Fiancé: Raise wa Tanin ga Ii Is Not Your Mom’s Yakuza Romance
Growing up in a Yakuza family has its perks, but as Yoshino heads to Tokyo at her grandfather’s insistence, she soon finds out how dark it can get.
Yakuza Fiancé, Vampire Dormitory, and A Girl and Her Guard Dog show a slight shift in the trend where healthy and prescriptive romances were preferred. Healthy, sweet romance anime series certainly aren’t going anywhere soon, but it seems like there’s room in the market for the opposite in a romantic tone. Shojo series that embrace drama and stuff in as many soapy tropes as possible are highly entertaining.
Gothic romances and dark romances have a set of genre conventions, and there are certain character types that are popular for the central love interests. Dark romances have toxic relationship dynamics, gloomy themes like gang violence and family secrets. Dark romances with supernatural aspects feature diabolical creatures like demons and vampires.
Gothic romances specifically follow a young woman who goes to a new and foreboding house filled with secrets and forces that want to consume and oppress her like a murderous ghost or a monstrous new husband. Yoshino seems like a traditional wide-eyed gothic protagonist at first, when she goes to a new home to meet the boy her yakuza grandfather arranged for her to marry. The story takes a gothic romance trope, and adds some nuance to it.
She proves to be a bit more equipped for her new duplicitous and violent world as Kirishima’s bride than she first appears. Her family may have protected her from the realities of being born into a yakuza family, but she still picked up a few cunning skills and her own thirst for vengeance and victory, if she’s goaded far enough. A gothic heroine needs to keep her wits about her if she intends to survive her new home and her new husband, and Yoshino has no plans to fail.
Yanderes Are Rarely the Main Love Interest in Shojo Anime
Yanderes Can Be Hit or Miss Among Romance Anime Fans
The love interest in a gothic or dark romance is nearly always some version of a Bryonic hero; a morally gray man who is troubled and ridden with angst. Tsundere characters are popular across the board in nearly all genres and marketing demographics, and they can fit in well in a dark romance. Tsunderes have explosive tempers. They are overprotective, and they’re given to mood swings and brooding. Kirishima shows just how perfectly a well-written yandere plays the Byronic hero.
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Yakuza Fiancé Isn’t the “I Can Fix Him” Story You’re Expecting
Kirishima from Yakuza Fiancé may be an irredeemable character whose darkness is bringing out the worst in Yoshino.
Yanderes are obsessive about the people they love, and they can be a bit of a loose cannon, to say the least. Stalking, jealousy, and intensity are common habits and character traits. They are not an unpopular character type, but they are rarely the romantic lead. They are kitschy side characters, like Yukako Yamagishi in JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. She stalks, bullies, and even gets violent with her crush, Koichi Hirose.
Kirishima doesn’t get violent with Yoshino, but he absolutely delights in violence — especially if it’s because of Yoshino. When Yoshino threatens to snuff out his life, he’s utterly charmed with her vitriol. When someone hurts or threatens Yoshino, Kirishima’s pupils become pinpricks, like a shark scenting blood in the water, and he annihilates whoever hurts his fiancé.
Where a tsundere is hot and cold about their love interest because they’re frightened of the emotional vulnerability that comes with falling in love, a yandere is a hundred percent committed. Yoshino may not believe the strength or longevity of Kirishima’s ardor, but he’s completely into her. Even if it pains him to love her, Kirishima doesn’t care, and he’s not even remotely self-conscious or prideful about his feelings.
The more Yoshino spurns him, the more Kirishima’s determined to prove himself to her. Understandably, Yoshino cannot decide whether that’s a reflection of how serious he is about her, or a reflection of how chaotic he is. There’s evidence that supports both theories. Kirishima’s never believed himself in love with a woman before, so he doesn’t have a pattern of falling in and out of love with women.
On the flipside, Kirishima set a poor precedent by rejecting Yoshino in the beginning because she was too “boring.” It begs the question whether Kirishima will lose interest in her the moment that she genuinely falls in love with him. His yandere nature isn’t just dramatic and entertaining, it presents a real emotional conundrum for Yoshino.
Yoshino’s Caught in a Love Triangle with Kirishima & One Other Guy
Yoshino Has a Past with Shoma
Love triangles are a common shojo and romance trope. It weaves an added layer of tension to a love story and presents an opportunity for fans to discuss and decide who their favorite love interest is. Love triangles can get taxing so easily in a story, if one element is out of balance. Some audiences even avoid anime with love triangles, but it’s all too common for love triangles to just be frustrating plot fodder and nothing more.
Yakuza Fiancé has a central love triangle, but it’s well-written on several fronts. Yoshino and Kirishima don’t have a remotely conventional courtship or relationship, because they come from such an upside-down world. Yoshino grew up around a paternal figure who routinely strayed in his relationships with one affair after another. Kirishima also has strange preferences in women. He carries around with several girlfriends, all intelligent and conventionally beautiful, but he wants to settle down with someone who would “ruin his life” (in his own words).
Having a tempestuous and unconventional courtship makes the love triangle feel less unkind. It remains to be seen whether Kirishima would be loyal to her if she allowed him to be her boyfriend. He seems pretty convinced he won’t stray, because he begs Yoshino over and over to marry him, or to even just exclusively date him. He’s kind and relatively respectful (for him) to his paramours, but that’s paltry compared to the way he begs Yoshino for a crumb of attention.
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Kirishima & Yoshino’s Relationship Will Heat Up When Yakuza Fiance Anime Ends
Yakuza Fiancé Episode 12 sees Yoshino and Kirishima’s relationship deepen, with atonement, punishment, and tender moments shaping their next chapter.
Yoshino doesn’t have a string of boyfriends leading up to meeting her fiancé, as Kirishima does. She has something that Kirishima thinks is far worse — she has a sincere and intimate friendship with Shoma. Shoma and Kirishima plainly hate each other, but they don’t fight like meatheads. Their jockeying is far more interesting as they bear a simmering antagonism towards one another.
Not only are both rivals equally attractive and interested in Yoshino, she has a romantic chemistry with both of them. Shoma and Yoshino plainly have feelings for each other beyond their friendship. When Yoshino asks Shoma for advice about who she should marry, he tells her she should marry someone who can kill him — implying that he couldn’t handle standing by as she swore her heart to someone else.
Shoma and Kirishima have different personality types; Shoma is stoic while Kirishima is like a wild dog. Both are incredibly protective of Yoshino, and they take turns brawling and fussing over her, especially when she gets hurt trying to break up one of their fights. An effective love triangle should have love interests that the protagonist has believable feelings for. It should have fans debating over who should be the endgame love interest.
Both Shoma and Kirishima are as flawed as they are devoted to Yoshino. Their toxic flaws are a feature and not a bug of the subgenre. Yoshino and her two suitors’ zany eccentricities are part of the fun. Kirishima shows how effective a well-written yandere can be in a gothic/dark romance. Audiences laugh rather than cringe at his antics because Yoshino is determined to rise to the occasion. If she were an easily hurt or timid love interest, the dynamic wouldn’t work at all. The toxic characters and the love triangle blend perfectly to make an enjoyably dramatic and tropey romance.
- Release Date
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October 7, 2024
- Seasons
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1
- Studio
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Studio Deen
- Creator
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Asuka Konishi
- Number of Episodes
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12
- Japanese Title
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Raise wa Tanin ga Ii
- Based On
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Manga
