There was a lot going on in this taut crime drama, Tokyo Vice. It is the last on my list of HBO Max shows, for now, and this show delivered a strong finish.
I think what was most baffling to me was that this series was based off the memoir by Jake Adelstein. Like, how did this guy not end up dead?! I don’t know how much fictionalization was done for the series, but if even half of this stuff happened, it’d still be pretty wild. Jake is a newly hired, and first foreign born employee, of a prestigious Tokyo newspaper. With that being said, they put him at the absolute lowest end of the totem pole, and he’s assigned the crime beat. While reporting on a stabbing, but not ultimately reported as a murder, Jake finds a strange symbol that starts popping up in shady places across Tokyo.
He also makes friends at a local club with Samantha, who is a top hostess and deals with the extremely wealthy along with the yakuza. I’d liken them to the Japanese mob, and they’re the other central key to this story. Two rival yakuza gangs make a lot of noise over the course of this series, but I enjoyed seeing the growing pains, but ultimate rise of young member, Sato. You can really see him struggle to become what the gang wants him to be. He’s actually a fairly sweet person. That’s why even though it should be really uncomfortable that he befriends Jake for a while and dates Samantha, it actually makes a lot of sense.
Jake makes surprising connections with several members of the Tokyo police, but his most promising and fruitful relationship comes with that of vice squad detective Katagiri. The two manage to help each other out a lot over the course of the show. All those good relationships though were bound to turn sour at some point, and that really ends up changing Jake’s nature a lot in the penultimate episode. A lot goes down in the season finale, but let’s just say I’m glad this got picked up for a second season! A lot of threads got resolved, but it opened the door to a lot of questions really. I suppose if it hadn’t got renewed I could have checked out the memoir to get some insight.
All in all, this was a pretty gripping series with some shocking twists and really rich visuals. From what I’ve read, Ansel Elgort did a good job in learning Japanese for the series, too. Of the eight episodes on offer, the Backstreet Boys named episode, “I Want it That Way,” was a real standout. It showed Jake kind of letting his guard down a little bit and making a friend in Sato. Lots of likeable characters in this show for such a shady topic. Give this series a shot!