Tokyo Vice is back this week with an episode whose main goal was to pay off some of the threads set up in the last one, but that as a whole, didn’t exactly move the overall narrative forward. It’s not exactly a filler, but rather a simpler one because it was less ambitious. The show as a whole, as enjoyable as it is, isn’t exactly a must-watch TV, and episodes like this are the reason why.
Jake (Ansel Elgort) has left his bike gang life behind him and is now focused on the most interesting crime story of the past few months. The police are hunting down the different yakuza factions and are making arrests — but no one knows much about it, as the new task force, which Katagiri (Ken Watanabe) is a big part of, is keeping their mouths shut about their methods.
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Written by Ashley Darnall and directed by Josef Kubota Wladyka, “Like a New Man” is mostly preoccupied with following through on the major tease from the previous episode: Tozawa (Ayumi Tanida) is back with a vengeance. He’s healthy now, which not only Misaki (Ayumi Ito) notices, but the crime lord himself tells his archnemesis, Ishida, in a Godfather-esque meeting.
Ishida, in Vitto Corleone style, wants everyone to be on the same page against the impending police threat, but Tozawa is playing a different game altogether. He controls the police and believes he can seize the opportunity to wipe away the competition. His return, of course, has a lot of consequences for a lot of people. Jake is very scared of him, but he also can’t turn a blind eye thanks to his reporter in him.
Meanwhile, Samantha (Rachel Keller) takes the architect up on his offer to cook her dinner, but not before she has a semi-tense conversation with Erika (Hyunri Lee) regarding Sato (Shô Kasamatsu). And speaking of the devil, he’s about to question his loyalties even more. But to discuss this and more, we’ll have to raise a mild spoiler warning for those of our readers who still want to go into the new episode knowing as little as possible.
All in all, “Like a New Man” takes the story into its next logical step, and though there are a few narrative surprises, there is nothing huge hiding inside the new episode, which is why it felt like “one more of these”. The fourth episode of Tokyo Vice season 2 is currently available to stream on Max.
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Minor spoiler warning for Tokyo Vice Season 2
Let’s start with Jake, who spent the majority of the episode chasing down Tozawa through the streets of Tokyo while not raising a single eyebrow from his drivers when he asked to “follow that car”. It was too soon for him to run into the mob boss, but I’m sure this encounter is not too far away at this point. He keeps insisting he will fly back home for his dad’s upcoming birthday party, but how much of his heart is really there? I’m excited to see that side of his life whenever we get to it, though.
Katagiri’s presence in this episode is a bit limited, but Ken Watanabe made every second count. The weight of his decision to go back yakuza-hunting is already taking a toll on him after he realizes that Tozawa is back for real — when he leaves a few threatening pictures of his kids on his car. I hope the new season doesn’t sideline him as much moving forward, because he’s an essential part of the story.
At the same time, it feels like creator-showrunner JT Rogers is aware that the conflicted policeman storyline is something we’ve seen a bunch on TV — so as much as it’s refreshing to see Ken Watanabe play that part, the truth is that it’s all the more interesting to see something we don’t see in American television, like Samantha’s club.
This was another downside of the new episode for me, as I found the way it ended completely underwhelming. All of the tension that had been building throughout the dinner she was invited to was cheapened by the “To Be Continued” message that never even appeared. It felt choppy and extremely anticlimactic. I mean, the dinner had been pretty standard so far, with the usual “Will he catch me in the act?” we’ve seen a million times before. But the architect realizing something was up before Samantha left was at least a new addition to that trope. We’ll see next week, I guess.
Then there’s Sato. The thug is clearly trying to convince himself that he should leave this life behind, so this trip to visit someone who used to belong to the clan run by Ishida was probably something he looked forward to. How did he get out? Of course, it didn’t help that the guy was completely nuts — almost as much as Naoki (Yosuke Kubozuka), who kills him when their “playful” knives-in-hand game went downhill. Sato now has someone to care about — two people, actually, after reconnecting with his brother recently. How will that affect his life moving forward?
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We’ll certainly find out a bit more next week when a new episode of Tokyo Vice season 2 drops on Max. What did you think of episode 4? Were you also a bit underwhelmed, or was it exactly what you were expecting? Do you have any predictions for the rest of the season? Let us know your thoughts on our Twitter and our Discord server!
About Tokyo Vice
Release Date: Feb. 8
Created by: J.T. Rogers
Executive producers: J.T. Rogers, Alan Poul, Alex Boden, Josef Kubota Wladyka, Brad Caleb Kane, Adam Stein, Ken Watanabe, Emily Gerson Saines, Ansel Elgort, Jake Adelstein, Kayo Washio, Destin Daniel Cretton, John Lesher, and Michael Mann
Distribution: Max
Cast: Ansel Elgort, Ken Watanabe, Rinko Kikuchi, Rachel Keller, Show Kasamatsu, Ayumi Ito, Yosuke Kubozuka, and Miki Maya.
Synopsis: Loosely inspired by American journalist Jake Adelstein’s first-hand account of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police beat, season two of the series, filmed on location in Tokyo, takes us deeper into the city’s criminal underworld as Adelstein (Ansel Elgort) comes to realize that his life, and the lives of those close to him, are in terrible danger.
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