Review of The Yakuza Boss’s Beloved / 極道上司に愛されたら

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

When it comes to blogging, or even watching movies and whatnot, I’ve been in such a weird headspace lately. I started a new job after quite a bit of a spell of not having any besides freelance and contract work, and now that I am actually working, I’m not watching as much as I used.

Part of it is fueled by my newfound YouTube addiction, but part of it just is that I can’t stay awake long enough to get everything I want done. I haven’t even been going to the movies lately to see them in-person because I simply am just tired after I get everything else done.

Call this a regular phase of corporate America and adulting, but I want to find a balance and go back more to the things I love. Sometimes life is simply trying to find a balance between the things that keep you alive, providing food, shelter, and warmth, and the things that you actually want to spend your life enjoying.

When I do watch television, I’ve been on such a Japanese drama series kick. Whether it’s a Japanese and Korean crossover series, or a straight up classic Japanese series, I’ve been wanting to watch them all on Netflix and Viki. That’s where I found The Yakuza Boss’s Beloved.

I binged watched this in a short amount of time. I think it was like three days if we’re going to get specific, but the episodes were short and that made it a lot easier to watch this in small bursts.

Let’s get into the review!

After her boyfriend cheats on her, one employee finds love in her boss—who happens to be a yakuza member boss, too.

Our main character in this show is Makoto. She’s 29 and lives a fairly standard life at the beginning of the show, especially when it comes to her career and boyfriend. Her job at an advertising agency is pretty comfortable, and although we can see her boyfriend Hayato is a terrible person, she’s happy with.

Heck, she’ll even bend over backwards if it means appeasing him. But one day she discovers something awful: he’s been cheating on her with another colleague, one who’s younger. And because Makoto and her boyfriend live together, she’s forced out by the situation and has no where to go.

This will also make her personal life uncomfortable, but her professional one as well because all three of those involved are working together at the same company. But things look up for Makoto when Odagiri, someone higher up at the company and the department manager, has a keen eye and sees what’s happening to her.

He offers to let her live with him at his apartment, which totally isn’t weird at all at first. People at work tend to call him cold and someone who seems like he works with the yakuza, which is true—they just don’t know that, including Makoto. He’s nice to her and very kind, making food and offering her company when her situation is poor.

Romance is going to strike between the two, but there’s still something major Makoto is missing: she doesn’t know he basically is the yakuza. This is wild to me because the show depicts these sex scenes between the two characters, yet whenever they do the deed she never sees his massive back tattoo.

We, as the viewers, get a glimpse of it because god forbid we forget that he’s a gang member, but Makoto somehow misses all of this in the mean time. We also see some drama between her and her former romantic rival (aka: the girl her boyfriend cheated on her with), as well as how Odagiri steps in whenever he feels fit.

Eventually the truth has to come out, and things might not end well for Makoto…

Overall Thoughts

Anyways, this was a fairly straightforward series. It was entertaining for me, but I also didn’t take it too seriously because of how fast the plot flew by and how ridiculous some of the situations these characters ended up being in. I was really interested in the premise, but felt like that the main female lead was a bit wooden (I saw something else with this actress recently and felt similarly—I think her acting isn’t the best).

That said, I did have fun with this though, as I mentioned how entertaining it was before. Sometimes the greatest shows to watch in the moment have some sweet moments, but also corny ones as well. I did laugh at some of the scenes packed into this show because they felt a little too stretched for me.

I say watch this if you’re interested! It’s not too big of a time commitment, and I could see someone else really liking this show. I would say I’m fairly ambivalent about this overall, but wouldn’t necessarily call it something I wouldn’t watch again in the future.

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