Tokyo Vice was met with critical acclaim when it premiered.
Season 1 takes the viewer through an unfamiliar world, even for Japanese viewers. The season creates a great story that keeps them glued to their screen.
It peels back the layers of the thriving world in Tokyo’s underbelly in the 1980s through the eyes of a reporter and those close to him.
Even though it’s thrilling in its own right, the season is clearly an introductory chapter.
From Jake Adelstein (Ansel Elgort) to the Yakuza and the Meicho, the season sets up an interconnected world with high stakes and numerous players.
Jake’s coworkers are among some of those players.
In the first season, most characters feel like they’re present to support Jake’s arc. Trendy (Takaki Uda) is one of his coworkers, and the show does not dwell on much in Season 1, but in Season 2, he gets a significant bump in screen time.
With queer representation, the show is not the epitome.
Trendy is the singular queer character who is revealed to be gay in passing in an episode of Season 1. Jake sees him kissing a guy but doesn’t mention anything of it.
The season ends as it sets up the stage for Season 2, and Trendy gets lost in the supersized cast ensemble.
‘Tokyo Vice’ Season 2 Expands to Include Gay Culture in Japan
The second season is much larger in scale as it dives into most of the characters featured in Season 1 to give them more depth.
One of those characters is Trendy, who is much more featured and has a love interest.
Aoi Takeya joins the series as Jason Oki, an American expat who gets roped into Jake’s hunt for the Yakuza and their hidden crimes.
What’s particularly refreshing about the addition is that it feels organic and important to the story.
It doesn’t feel like it’s executed to meet a diversity quota or push a storyline.
Still, it feels like using Trendy’s secret life is important to crack the Tozawa story and, thus, crucial for everything.
It’s a hard balance to strike for most shows, but Tokyo Vice manages.
This is thanks to the exploration of other aspects of Tokyo, like the queer culture that exists, and most people are oblivious to it.
In Season 2, Episode 4, Trendy and Jason go out on a date and end up in a lively gay bar.
The show brushes on the careful existence of queer Japanese men while not exploiting their circumstances.
This gives the arc a deeper feel, so it doesn’t feel out of place even when they smash 💅 in Season 2 Episode 5.
Their story doesn’t end well, but it’s a welcome addition to an exciting show.
Tokyo Vice creators Alan Poul and J.T. Rogers spoke to Variety about the bigger and deeper Season 2. Rogers talked about diving into the subcultures of the city, like the gay scene, saying,
“We’re always looking for subcultures and things we haven’t seen before. We established in Season 1, early on, that Trendy was closeted, because of the rigors of the Japanese culture at the moment where he’d be worried about his job. So that was always in the cards.
“And if I may, Alan was very helpful. I don’t mean that flippantly. It couldn’t just be that we’re gonna see Trendy’s life, or gay subculture. It’s, what was it like in 2000? So Alan was super helpful, because he’s been going back and forth to Japan.”
Poul is queer and understands Japanese queer culture. He talked about that, saying,
“As the queer half of this team, I have to say — tip of my own hat — I was around queer Japan in the ‘90s, and even in the ‘80s. So I was able to draw on some personal experience and also the expertise of friends.
“But also, I will say that, with the help of our incredible location team, we were able to secure full cooperation of the Shinjuku Ni-chōme area, which is a particular area that’s famous for having the gay bars in Tokyo. There are gay bars elsewhere, but it’s the highest concentration.
“We were able to take over a whole bar, and we were able to, in that scene in the bar when Jason takes Trendy out, cast entirely with locals who were recruited from the bar’s regular patrons. So all the way through, we kept things as authentic to the subculture as we possibly could.”
Tokyo Vice won’t return for Season 3 on Max, but the creators say they’re looking for another home for the series.