When Tokyo Vice (Max) ended its first season with a series of cascading cliffhangers, there wasn’t a lot of confidence — at least in these parts — that we’d ever get resolution, given all of the turmoil and blanket cancellations happening with Warner Bros./Max. But in a victory for wintertime viewing, the sleek and moody T-Vice has survived, and drops its two initial episodes first before switching to a weekly roll out format. Ansel Egort returns as journalist Jake Adelstein, Ken Watanabe is his father figure, Detective Hiroto Katagiri, hostilities continue between rival yakuza clans the Chihara-kai and Tozawa-gumi, and the fortunes of Rachel Keller’s Samanta Porter are tied to at least one of those groups. Rinko Kikuchi, Shô Kasamatsu, and Ayumi Ito also return, while Yosuke Kubozuka and Miki Maya join the cast. 

TOKYO VICE – SEASON 2: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

Opening Shot: Tokyo at night, and a superyacht cruising on the water. This is the Yoshino, the party boat owned by yakuza oyabun Shinzo Tozawa (Ayumi Tanida). Suddenly, the image shifts to surveillance footage of a stateroom below, and a woman being attacked.

The Gist: Jake (Egort), bearing the marks and pronounced limp from his recent beating at the hands of Tozawa’s thugs, is showing the videotape left on his doorstep to Katagiri (Watanabe). The awful footage depicts what seems to be the murder of Polina (Ella Rumpf), a foreign-born hostess at the Onyx Club and Sam’s (Keller) best friend. With Jake writing a story and Katagiri following up with arrests, they can bring down Tozawa and get justice for Polina. But there’s an even bigger problem. The man on the boat with her is Jotaro Shigematsu (Hajime Inoue), Japan’s vice minister of foreign affairs. A big shot. And when presented with still photos and questioned by Jake’s supervisor, veteran journalist Emi Maruyama (Kikuchi), Shigematsu pulls a Shaggy. “It wasn’t me.” No Comment. 

The first season of Vice established how the business of information works in 1999 Tokyo. As a lowly crime reporter, and a Western-born one at that, there are limits to what Jake can access, and to what he can include in a story. Spheres of influence that encompass politicians, police leadership, the editorial focus of a major daily like the Yomiuri Shimbun, and the nexus of graft, drugs, prostitution, and other illegal activities that the yakuza syndicates control. Information is often shrouded in metaphor, or influenced by rigid forms of tradition. And while Jake is a good journalist, he’s also brash and impulsive, qualities that contributed to his beatdown at the end of last season. He wasn’t the only one who took a shot, though. It was the stabbing attack on reluctant gangster Sato (a terrific Shô Kasamatsu) that really left us hanging last time. 

Hauled out of the hospital by the Chihara-kai’s version of the tracksuit mafia, Sato is watched over by Chihara oyabun Hitoshi Ishida (Shun Sugata). The revelation of Sato’s attacker sets up further gamesmanship between Ishida and Tozawa affiliate Yabuki (Kazuya Tanabe), but also figures into Sam’s plans for her new club, which is under construction thanks to Ishida’s funding. Sato was her biggest ally in the gangster world, but now he’s got a long road to recovery, and he’s still questioning his yakuza status. When another killing indicates the true reach of a boss like Tozawa, Katagiri delivers a warning to Jake. “My life, my family’s life, your life, are all in danger. He is watching us.”

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The Netflix thriller Girl/Haji bounces between Tokyo and London as a police officer searches for his yakuza hitman brother. And Midnight Diner: Tokyo Stories on Netflix is always a good spot to observe elements of Japanese culture both social and culinary, all happening overnight in a tiny alley eatery.

Our Take: There is an enveloping quality to Tokyo Vice that’s hard to shake, though it’s not like we’d want to even if we could. This mood is partially by design, because it puts us in the shoes of a Westerner like Jake Adelstein as he navigates the systems of influence and information perpetually at work in Japan. Even as someone who reads and speaks fluent Japanese, Jake is always reminded that he is the other. (Meeting with Shigematsu in the politician’s office, he is not a journalist but a “slovenly foreigner.”) When Rachel Keller’s Samantha Porter contracts with the yakuza to get her nightclub off the ground, how they’ll take it from her is a big part of their diabolical aims. And while Katagiri wants to nab a violent gangster like Tozawa as much as Jake does, he has a greater understanding of what’s moving underneath the surface. To call it simply “the criminal underworld” doesn’t really do it justice. In the late-1990s Japan that Tokyo Vice realizes with such depth, mystery and danger seems to exist at the center of almost everything.

“You did not come to Tokyo for one man,” Katagiri tells the Missouri-born Jake at one point. “There are other stories, other crimes to be exposed.” But what’s so compelling about Vice is how it ties all of its mysteries together. We’re looking forward to bold moves made in the ongoing turf war between two yakuza clans, and what effects spill into the spheres of journalism and policing that Jake and Katagiri inhabit. And once he gets back on his feet, we’re also psyched for the next chapter of Sato’s story, and how it will play into Sam’s, who’s grieving for her friend Polina even as her ambitious new club takes shape.  

Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first episode.

Parting Shot: “This meeting never happened. If you ever say otherwise, I’ll come back. And kill you.” In Vice, the line that separates police work from the criminal world has never been solid. But the ending of season two’s first episode ensures its further obliteration.  

Sleeper Star: The cars! The tech! Tokyo Vice details its 1999 setting with a host of cool little touches, like Katagiri’s red Nissan Fairlady Z coupe, or the boxy, era-specific Toyota Century luxury vehicles driven by the Chichara-kai and Tozawa-gumi. Thrill to the trebly ringtones on everybody’s Kyocera and Nokia mobile phones (no texting up in this, not yet), and get a load of Jake’s word processor-style computer in the bustling, crowded Yomiuri Shimbun newsroom.  

Most Pilot-y Line: When Katagiri reminds Jake of what kind of ultra-connected, totally unscrupulous yakuza they’re dealing with, the detective’s description is apt, based just on the damage Tozawa’s influence has most recently wrought. “Tozawa is an octopus. Tentacles extending everywhere. Cut off one, another grows in its place.” 

Our Call: STREAM IT. Tokyo Vice is stylish, mysterious, and full of powerful acting turns that put a sharp edge on its depiction of the places where crime and violence intersect with tradition and ambition. 

Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.