Perhaps the hardest thing about this month is finding romance manga that are messed-up enough to fit the theme but aren't awful.
This year, I managed to find one.
YAKUZA FIANCE (Raise wa tanin ga Ii), by Asuka Konishi. First published in 2017 and first published in North America in 2022.
PLOT:
Yoshino is the granddaughter of an Osaka-area yakuza clan, but all she wants is a normal life. That's why she's so frustrated when she learns from the local tabloids that she's being engaged against her will to Kirishima, the grandson of a Tokyo clan.
At first, Kirishima seems too good to be true: handsome, polite, and attentive. Then the mask slips and the real Kirishima is revealed, a cold, cruel, sadomasochistic enforcer. At first Yoshino is frightened, but then resolves to scare him off with a stunt of her own. Who could have guessed that it would backfire and that Kirishima would end up genuinely smitten with her as a result?
