‘Tokyo Vice’ Season 2, Episode 2 Recap: Bōsōzoku Empire

Just when I thought Tokyo Vice’s brand of nostalgia for a time and place I never even visited couldn’t be more appealing to me, they add biker gangs.

I mean, there’s no reason not to make Jake Adelstein’s next investigation lead him to the world of the bōsōzoku, gangs of young speed demons who both ride motorcycles and steal them for parts. It’s safer than another potential yakuza investigation, which he gets offered by Emi after three months of good solid work. (It will almost certainly lead him back to the yakuza anyway, but that’s for the future.) 

It just also so happens to remind me — and many other viewers I’d imagine — of a major plot thread from Akira, Katsuhiro Otomo’s double-barreled masterpiece of manga and anime. If Tetsuo and Kaneda’s crew the Capsules is as far as your familiarity with Japanese biker gangs goes, as is the case with me, I still can’t help but feel like writer Karl Taro Greenfeld and director Alan Poul were throwing folks like me a bone with this particular blend of local flavor.

At any rate, Jake’s bunch are a friendly enough sort. At first they’re just taking advantage of him for an expense-accounted dinner. Then they try to beat him up for not leaving enough money to cover it. But when Jake uses his martial-arts training to handily defeat leader Tats (On Nakano), the biker takes a shine to the reporter and gives him the okay to basically embed within the group. Before long Jake’s running interference with motorcycle owners while Tats steals the bike around the corner. 

Please note that none of this less dangerous work stops Jake from starting an affair with Boss Tozawa’s mistress!!! Jake, what are you doing?

Anyway, Katagiri’s new job is a lot less exciting. He’s taken the rap for his partner Miyamoto’s death and been demoted to a job fielding nonsense complaints from daffy old ladies. His hope is that his wife (Yuka Itaya) and kids will move back in with him now that the Tozawa business has died down and he’s far from the yakuza beat, but she’d rather him retire and move to where she’s currently living since she knows his new gig is making him miserable.

She’s right about that much, anyway. The conversation spurs Katagiri to take a job on a newly formed anti-yakuza task force led by Shoko Nagata (Miki Maya). A high-ranking cop who asked for him by name for his extensive knowledge of the enemy, she nevertheless wants him to abandon his old ways of fighting for balance between the factions to keep the bloodshed down. What does she care if yakuza kill yakuza? She’s out to destroy them forever, using techniques, she says, that have succeeded elsewhere. I guess both we and Katagiri will see about that.

Within the yakuza ranks, big things are happening. With Tozawa now missing for three months, Boss Ishida sees this as Chihara-kai’s opportunity to reclaim territory he stole from them. This sits well with Hayama (Yosuke Kubozuka), Ishida’s right hand man and Sato’s new boss. Recently released from prison, he thinks Chihara-kai’s gone soft, and he’s itching for war. (He’s Phil Leotardo, basically.) This all spooks the shit out of Sato, who’d just as soon be selling a warehouse full of sneakers online with the help of his kid brother Kaito (Atomu Mizuishi). 

So Sato commits a big no-no and buys a gun, which he hides in Samantha’s club. Ishida, and the yakuza in general, have the same attitude towards guns as Batman in The Dark Knight Returns or Obi-Wan Kenobi in A New Hope: They’re for morons and cowards. Considering how strictly Ishida adheres to his code — he spared a traitor’s life because Sato, the victim, asked him to — both the gun and Sato’s overall conflict with Hayama are likely to cause trouble down the line.

I kind of get the same feeling from Inaba (Miyuki Matsuda). A wealthy architect and regular at Samantha’s newly christened Club Polina (awww), he’s a regular of a British hostess at the club named Claudine (Nadia Parkes). Sam catches Claudine stealing and gives her the boot. Despite the blow to the bottom line, the ire of the Chihara-kai, and even the direct orders of Ishida (relayed by Sato, who like Jake only seems to show up in her life when he’s trying to do her a favor that sure feels like trying to get something out of her), she won’t hire the woman back.

Instead, she hires her old mama-san Erika (Hyunri Lee) to be her new number one girl, and winds up taking on Inaba as a client herself, at his direct request. I’d say “what could go wrong,” but you’ve seen this show, you know quite well.

Not much is going wrong with the show itself at the moment. I admire the relay from the Season 1 finale to the Season 2 premiere, and the long jump between the Season 2 premiere and this episode. That’s a deft way to use cliffhangers but still set us up with a new status quo for the bulk of the new season. 

The writing is funny and clever throughout. Did you notice how the fearsome biker gang really didn’t want to leave the restaurant without paying in full? Or how Tats’s credo — “I’d rather get high, fuck girls, and steal bikes than live like [normal people]” makes him sound like the hero of a Hal Ashby movie? Or sweet and silly back-and-forth between Emi and her Korean-Japanese husband Shingo (Shoji Arai) when he calls her “a tigress” after sex and she busts his chops for sounding like “a bad romance novel”? Or the way they still have Jake carrying a backpack, used in tandem with Ansel Elgort’s floppy hair, lanky build, and goofball smile to make him look like an overgrown kid? Or even the smart and sexy way Sam wins over self-professed “confidence man” Inaba by saying her club is “a place where confidence men can come and be honest”? That stuff is good, quite good.

There’s a lot to be bullish about here overall. Katagiri and Jake may not be quite sure where they’re headed, but I’ve got a good feeling about the show they’re in.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.