The Spring 2024 Manga Guide

Mobsters in Love

What's It About? 

Akihiro Kashima is the right-hand man of the Sawatari mob, and he has a secret. He's been hopelessly in love for years—with his boss! As a trusted subordinate, he's subject to the head honcho's unintended acts of seduction. But with Akihiro's position in the group at stake, he couldn't possibly reveal the infatuation that plagues him. Stuck between duty and his feelings, something's gotta give!

Mobsters in Love has a story and art by Chiyoko Origami. English translation by Jan Mitsuko Cash. This volume is lettered and retouched by Vanessa Satone. Published by ‎Square Enix Manga. (May 7, 2024)

Is It Worth Reading?

“Weirdly cute yakuza doing non-yakuza things” is one of the more baffling subgenres of manga out there, but it's hard to complain when they're as silly and good-natured as Mobsters in Love. You could substitute Aki with a high school girl and have almost the same story, but it's simply more entertaining to see a typical manga romance played out by big, dangerous men all trying to sort out their feelings and possibly get into each other's pants.

All of this hinges, of course, on you being okay with a couple of very specific potential ick. The major one is that Sawatari, head of the Sawatari Family, picked Aki up off the street and raised him – something Aki is very clear about. That means that the central romance we're following is about the romantic relationship between two people with major power issues in two senses, because not only did Sawatari raise Aki from his early teen years, but he's also now his boss. Sawatari is a lot older than Aki as well, but at this point, that doesn't feel likely to be the proverbial straw breaking the camel's back. I'm not sure that we needed the husband-raising element of the story, honestly, because Aki working for Sawatari is frankly enough to get the plot moving, and once the crush is established, all we need is a romantic rival or two and we're off and running.

Naturally, we get that in the second half of the book when vice-captain Ritsu returns from an assignment in Hokkaido and turns out to have a horse in this race. (The preview for volume two implies that a second rival may be lurking offstage as well.) Rivals can be obnoxious, but in this case, we needed Ritsu, because Aki is terrified to make a move of any kind and Sawatari is oblivious until forced not to be. Ritsu solves both of these problems, and he does it with what could be described as irritating panache right at the moment when you're starting to wonder how much longer the story can milk Aki's love and insecurity. Not that Chiyoko Origami lets the gags get stale; there's good variation to the ways that Aki stumbles around, and the one that does get repeated – that Aki following or worrying about the boss lands him in the right place at the right time to defend him – is handled differently both times it comes up, and Origami is good at drawing different reaction chibis and faces for every situation.

Mobsters in Love is on the fluffy side, and it's a lot of fun. It has its issues, and you don't come to this looking for serious yakuza action, but it has nice art and a story that's largely funny and cute. I don't know how long it can maintain that before it starts to drag, but it should be good for at least two or three volumes of light BL entertainment.

The way to make a character who will win my heart is to create somebody who presents himself one way to the world but has a tender, gooey center. That's Aki, the lovestruck protagonist of Mobsters in Love. He's the tough, hatchet-faced second-in-command in a yakuza gang, but behind his stern demeanor, he's forever pining for the Boss.

The title implies a love story between plural yakuza, but that's not what's happening here. Not only is this a PG-13 story, but it's also devoid of any overt romance between the primary mobsters in question (outside of interludes in Aki's imagination). As far as Aki and the audience know, the Boss doesn't return Aki's feelings. This is played for laughs, not melodrama, and the humor comes from Aki brute-forcing altercations with rival yakuza through the power of love. One of the funniest scenes occurs when Aki flattens a would-be assailant because they interrupted the Boss when he was about to confess his ideal type of partner.

Before these comic scenes of a hardened yakuza lieutenant daydreaming like a besotted middle schooler can get stale, the manga introduces some competition. We meet Ritsu, another yakuza high up in the ranks, who is temporarily back from a business trip. Without giving too much away, Ritsu is aware of Aki mooning over the Boss where everyone else has mistaken Aki's adoration for plain loyalty—and he's ready to make Aki compete for it. I was expecting a plain love triangle here, but the reveal was much more interesting than that.

Ritsu is only the most overt of this manga's mechanisms to do exactly one thing: make poor enamored Aki suffer in increasingly absurd scenarios. The Boss does his fair share of teasing, like when he strokes Aki's back tattoo in the bath and makes him jump—leading one to wonder if the Boss is quite as oblivious as he seems. These culminate in a status quo-shifting climax, leaving everyone's relationships in question and guaranteeing that I'll be picking up the next volume as soon as it's available.