Review: BOSS WIFE

 Going by the title alone, you might presume that this is another josei manga about a young working woman who gets swept up in an unconventional romance with a dashing, wealthy man.

Well...you're half right about that.  You're just missing one element: organized crime.

BOSS WIFE (Gokukon: Chodeikiai Yakuza to Keiyaku Kekkon!?), by Mayu Sakurai.  First published in 2019 and first published in North America in 2021.

PLOT:

Hasumi just wanted to be an illustrator.  Instead she's been hounded day and night by the local yakuza thugs for her father's debts and she's exhausted every option she can think of.  By chance she runs into Yamato Kujo, her old high-school crush, and their meeting turns into a one-night stand.  That's when Hasumi discovers that Yamato is not just yakuza himself, but the heir to a powerful family.  He makes her an offer she can't refuse: in return for clearing her debt, he wants to marry her.  

STORY:

"Yakuza romance" and "wholesome" are not two phrases I would expect to go together, but there's no other way to describe Boss Wife.  It's the story of two nice young people who are brought together for somewhat mercenary reasons but stay together because there's a lot of innocent affection between them.

The inherent niceness of both Hasumi and Yamato is both a blessing and a curse.  It makes them both very easy to root for them as individuals and as a couple.  It also makes them a little bit boring.  Once Hasumi's financial problems are taken care of, there's very little in the way of conflict between these two as every chapter ends in cuddles and smiles.  That's not to say that there's no drama, but most of it belongs to Yamato and his family's succession issues.  There's also the fact that he's one of those purely fictional Good Yakuza, the kind who got into it by accident, wants to go legit, and only uses his fighting and intimidating prowess for good.  I have to wonder why Sakurai even bothered with the whole yakuza conceit if she was going to defang it so much.  She could have easily swapped it for inheritance drama in a business family and it would little aside from Hasumi's initial aversion to Yamato's tattoos.

ART:

Sakurai's art adds to the light and cheerful tone of the manga.  Her characters are attractive and slightly more realistic than you tend to see in these sorts of stories, with wide, expressive eyes and mouths.  The panels are pretty tightly focused on those faces, but minimalist backgrounds combined with Sakurai's crisp linework keeps it from feeling claustrophobic.  While Hasumi and Yamato have a lot of sex in this book (at least once per chapter), it couldn't be more removed from the hot and sleazy couplings of something like Yakuza Lover.  We never see anything more explicit than the suggestion of nipples and a lot of embraces and the whole thing is usually over in two or three pages.  I guess she wanted to keep the focus on the feeling between the two instead of the boning.

RATING:

Boss Wife has a hard-sounding title but the contents are soft and sentimental (if a little slight).  It's fine if you want some fluffier josei romance, but it's not quite strong enough to be a must-read.

This series is published digitally by Kodansha.  This series is ongoing in Japan with 7 volumes available.  All 7 have been released and are currently in print on most major digital storefronts.