I was crying and smiling the whole time lol Like yeah, the two MCs are dumbasses, but this has been one of the most realistic yakuza manga I’ve read. It handles heavy topics without being overdramatic, and it's paced pretty well. My only complaint would be that there are too many side characters lol.
Also, the manga brings up so much heavy shit like child prostitution, pimping, drug dealing, murder, gang nonsense, familial sexual slavery, and rape, all things people forget when they glamorize gangs, the yakuza and the mafia. Honestly, saying these topics weren't "handled with care" is just being willfully media illiterate. They aren't writing this story as a PSA cause they assume you already know it's wrong. They're just trying to showhow a chain of violence and abuse comes back to further victimize vulnerable people who choose to fight back or use violence themselves. Often times way more than the perpetrators. Through the three boys, you see that no matter your upbringing, life is just fucking hard with varying difficulty. Look at Seven and Eight being born into shit circumstances. Eight even more so with his literal dad pimping him out, and Seven’s loving dad still engaging in the criminal world, knowingly endangered his family. And although Akamatsu was born into an extremely privileged situation, being a sexual minority still means his life is hard. Not as hard, but still hard. I feel like the whole message is 'yeah, life's shit, but live, love, and let die.'
I was crying and smiling the whole time lol Like yeah, the two MCs are dumbasses, but this has been one of the most realistic yakuza manga I’ve read. It handles heavy topics without being overdramatic, and it's paced pretty well. My only complaint would be that there are too many side characters lol.
Also, the manga brings up so much heavy shit like child prostitution, pimping, drug dealing, murder, gang nonsense, familial sexual slavery, and rape, all things people forget when they glamorize gangs, the yakuza and the mafia. Honestly, saying these topics weren't "handled with care" is just being willfully media illiterate. They aren't writing this story as a PSA cause they assume you already know it's wrong. They're just trying to showhow a chain of violence and abuse comes back to further victimize vulnerable people who choose to fight back or use violence themselves. Often times way more than the perpetrators.
Through the three boys, you see that no matter your upbringing, life is just fucking hard with varying difficulty. Look at Seven and Eight being born into shit circumstances. Eight even more so with his literal dad pimping him out, and Seven’s loving dad still engaging in the criminal world, knowingly endangered his family. And although Akamatsu was born into an extremely privileged situation, being a sexual minority still means his life is hard. Not as hard, but still hard.
I feel like the whole message is 'yeah, life's shit, but live, love, and let die.'