Jouji Akutsu was a yakuza like no one ever was. A bold, strong man with a sense of justice very different to that of any other yakuza.. He was shining bright like a diamond, and he wore his honesty on his chest. That is until ten years later, and he's.. to put it simply, a bum. A bum, who never achieves anything in his life. After being hunted down by the men he terrorized in the past, he ends up dying alone, a miserable death in the middle of nowhere.. Until he gets teleported back to ten years in the past, when his first fightin the yakuza started. "It's very much like a dream!" he thought. "I'll start anew!"

To put it simply, Emblem Take 2 is the closest thing the 'Yakuza' series has to a manga. You know, Kiryu Kazuma and Kasuga Ichiban? Those two guys? Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised at all if this manga influenced that series in a pretty important way. Not only is this series famous for it's more honest, real take on the Yakuza, it's also noticeable for it's.. quite perverted and sometimes off-the-walls humor. Not an issue for me, though!

For real, though. Emblem Take 2 is quite honestly, one of my favorite depictions of the yakuza in fiction. Atleast from what I've read and seen. It's oddly realistic. There's no punches or hierarchy or whatever, it's just straight up gangs going at each other. And I'd be lying to you if I thought that wasn't cool as shit, either. There's guns, sex, violence, terrorists taking over Tokyo, prison escapes, conquering the yakuza world, killing former yakuza bosses, betrayal and it's all fucking AWESOME. That is the best way I can describe it all. Emblem Take 2 is quite bluntly, one of the most awesome, manly manga I've read.

It's got everything you could ask for. Not a single moment went without me being invested in this series, every single bit of action was cool as hell, the American Terrorist Arc at the end was cool as fuck, the Prison Arc got me chuckling, the fights were awesome, and it was a incredibly thrilling ride, fitting for a manga about the yakuza. It's one of the better examples of GAR in my opinion, manliness without needing muscles. Jouji himself is quite a loveable character, you WANT to see him succeed, you want to see him avenge Yasuo and Tadayoshi, you want to see him avenge his comrades, and you wanna see him win those awesome gun fights. He's such a loveable guy.

One trait that I found quite interesting in the RAWs I've read, is that the start of the volume has gravure in it. Like, real gravure. I'm talking REAL women getting with the fictional men in the manga while showing their pussy and boobs. Did I mind this? Nah, I found it quite funny. They're usually three pages long, and don't really take any space in the manga, but I find them funny to be here, honestly. Adds more to the 'yakuza' comparison, this manga's not afraid of being wacky (heck, the prison arc had one of the characters getting metal balls inserted in their penis to help Jouji and friends escape prison) and it shows.

My only issue here is how they handle Jouji Akutsu's mystery. There are two core aspects to this series. Jouji Akutsu as a yakuza, and Jouji Akutsu, the man who travelled ten years in the past. The first gets addressed, but the second.. boy. That was shit writing, and I loved the rest of this manga. Imagine this. You have a mystery revolving around how the main character managed to time travel ten years in the past. That's good. You don't answer in the sixty-two volumes of this chunky, hefty manga. Okay? You reveal it on the last chapter. Huh. I wonder what it is.

It turns out, Jouji Akutsu (and the entire world of Emblem Take 2, as a matter of fact) is a NES videogame played by two kids, and the reason on why Jouji Akutsu always time-travels ten years, is because each time he's on his first fight, his world resets as he goes onto a 'New Game+' state, very much like a videogame.. This ending was.. very out of place, it never showed a single sign of happening. And I took notes out of everything, since I was invested in the mystery too! It's not like this isn't a bad ending, since Jouji retains his memories of everything he went through and cheerfully gets up, willing to try everything again, but like.. C'mon, man.. I wouldn't have minded some supernatural mystery! It feels really lame to cut down such a cool mystery by just saying "yeah this whole manga takes place in a videogame. Suck it." Even something as simple as putting RPG-like boxes in certain actions would've atleast made me think "huh. this makes sense. why didn't I think of it like this before?"

Now, knowing this ending, I'd still gladly recommend this manga. I found it fun to read, and I had an absolute blast reading it, which are two aspects that I feel like are worthy of recommending to someone because.. C'mon, not everytihng you read has to be philosophical or life-changing. Sometimes, you just wanna read a manga about yakuza beating the shit out of each other! Obviously, this series isn't gonna get translated in a long time. As far as I know, it's only got one single chapter translated. But it is worth it each and every single second. Not only is the author's art evolution really good, it's just a damn good manga about the yakuza! And you can't go wrong with that!