Tokyo Vice: The whole season including the book Books Included

April 12, 2022 1:01 AM - Season 1 (Full Season)

In 1999, American student Jake Adelstein has relocated to Tokyo and must pass a written exam in Japanese to have the chance to join the staff of a major Japanese newspaper. He succeeds in becoming their first foreign-born journalist and starts at the very bottom. Taken under the wing of a veteran detective in the vice squad, he starts to explore the dark and dangerous world of the Japanese yakuza.

Based on the memoirs on Jake Adelstein and produced by Michael Mann, who also directed the first episode. [The book previously on MetaFilter]

posted by dominik (8 comments total)

I got very excited when I saw the Michael Mann credit in the premiere, but he only directed the premiere, it seems. I'm three episodes in and I'm hooked. I can't quite figure out what's going on with the American hostess who's looking after the other women in the club. Honestly, it's all baffling to me. A timed entrance exam to work for a newspaper? Whatever, I'm really liking it.
posted by emelenjr at 3:48 PM on April 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

This is great. When there are new episodes, I want to watch them and they are entertaining. There are some very good shows that I don’t enjoy this much. I guess we’ll see what happens in the last episode!
posted by snofoam at 4:18 PM on April 23, 2022

Well, it's an attractive show. After watching the first episode I was mostly thinking about how I didn't like HEAT very much, how the sort of spell of style just utterly failed for me. The characters in HEAT are completely uninteresting. Not that heist/crime stories are known for deep side characters, but they at least are shallow in interesting ways, but everyone in HEAT was so cookie-cutter that the style didn't work, in a way that Friedkin's TL&DiLA totally did. I mean I guess Peterson and Dafoe had better stuff to work with than DeNiro and Pacino who were just low-wattage and clownish respectively.

Anyway EP1 was a little similar. I like the style, I like what's getting put on camera. It's good storytelling, I think. But the story and the characters.

Elgort is emoting way too much. I wish his character was more cryptic and savvy or something.. he's trying to carry the show too much on his face and it's not great.

Also given the earlier therads... I hope the show veers far away from the truth and tells its own story, eesh.
posted by fleacircus at 4:35 PM on April 25, 2022

In the middle of the final episode. This show got very dumb.
posted by fleacircus at 8:51 PM on April 29, 2022

It's an enjoyable show but this is worth reading: Insiders Call B.S. on ‘Tokyo Vice’ Backstory - The larger-than-life exploits chronicled in American journalist Jake Adelstein's memoir are the basis for the new crime drama from Endeavor Content and HBO Max, but insiders have doubts about the veracity of some of his tales: "I don't think half of that stuff in the book happened."
posted by peeedro at 2:29 PM on April 30, 2022 [3 favorites]

Yeah he seems like a fabulist all right.
posted by fleacircus at 3:47 PM on April 30, 2022

It doesn't really matter whether Adelstein's a liar or not, that's his problem. As a story it's entertaining enough. Not great, not terrible, got kind of dumb towards the end.

I did like how Katagiri was trying to inconspicuously stake out a remote run-down dock warehouse in his bright red fancy sports car.
posted by star gentle uterus at 5:28 PM on May 2, 2022

What in the world was that final episode? So incredibly disappointing, even if there is supposed to be a second season.
posted by knownassociate at 5:38 AM on May 26, 2022