Fanfic / The Neverending Hell

The Neverending Hell is a Lycoris Recoil fanfic that is a remake of the movies Infernal Affairs and The Departed. While it largely adapts from the latter, elements from the former that did not make it into its American remake are also added. Additionaly, the original plot of Lycoris Recoil goes on in the background and impacts the story as it goes on, with several scenes occurring around the same time and even the same location as scenes from the anime.

In Tokyo, notorious Yakuza boss Fernando Koyama, a Japanese Brazilian dekasegi, instructs several orphans, including the recently-orphaned Yumeko Kamimura, to infiltrate Direct Attack and become Lycorises. Yumeko, herself also descended from dekasegi like Koyama, rises through the rank and file, becoming a 1st Lycoris and garnering a reputation as a hard worker and an effective Lycoris. She manages to get herself placed on an investigation unit that is working with the National Police Agency (the Japanese equivalent to the FBI) to bring down Koyama, and intends to sabotage it.

Meanwhile, Sayaka Tamaki is a 2nd Lycoris in Direct Attack who has a family history of involvement in organized crime and ties to Brazil. DA Intelligence Officer Mizuki Nakahara, 1st Lycoris Chisato Nishikigi, and 2nd Lycoris Saeko Degawa meet with Sayaka and inform her she cannot remain a Lycoris, but offer her a chance to go undercover in Koyama’s gang, which she accepts. She is subsequently kicked out of DA, imprisoned in a juvenile detention facility for a battery charge to build street cred, and enrolled in a regular high school upon release.

When both sides of the law realize what is happening, both Yumeko and Sayaka attempt to discover the other mole's true identity before being found out. Meanwhile, an older Yakuza family, the Nitta family, attempts to bring down Koyama and wage war on DA and the police after he has Yumeko assassinate their leader and his direct family, angered that he had betrayed and usurped them as a dominant player in organized crime in Tokyo after they had initially taken him under their wing in the past. At the same time, Koyama is selling microprocessors and drugs to the Russian mob in exchange for money and drugs, which the Russians intend to turn over to their government to help in their war against Ukraine, and both DA and the NPA attempt to stop the transaction.

The Neverending Hell contains examples of the following tropes:

• Adaptation Expansion: Though the fic is mostly based on The Departed, it also adds in numerous elements and scenes from the Infernal Affairs trilogy that did not make it into its American remake, such as the radio shop and audiophile scenes, Fernando’s interrogation and release after his arrest following the Russian deal (which is combined with dialogue from a similar scene from The Departed where Queenan and Dignam confront Costello at a church gathering outside), the entire plot involving the Nitta family (inspired by the Ngai Triads from the second Infernal Affairs film), Ken’s death while driving Sayaka away after the deaths of Mizuki and Hibana, Kousuke writing a novel and subsequently being unable to finish it after he finds out his girlfriend Yumeko is the mole, and some dialogue added to Fernando’s death from Hon Sam’s death scene.
• Adaptational Nationality:
  • Takina is half-Chinese in this fic.
  • The main mafia in question is Brazilian-Japanese instead of Irish-American.
  • The criminals who want the microprocessors are Russians who want them to help in the Russo-Ukrainian War instead of Chinese who want them to help the Chinese government build better weapons.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: Chisato and Takina do eventually end up in a romantic/sexual relationship before Takina is killed.
• Adaptational Sexuality: Chisato is explicitly bisexual while Takina is a lesbian.
• Ate His Gun: Luis Kishio commits suicide after being shot nine times by Lycoris agents and NPA officers while crashing his car into an NPA van during the final shootout, adamant on taking as many of them as he can with him before putting a gun to his chin and pulling the trigger.
• Armored Closet Gay: Yumeko adamantly denies being bisexual several times, and while arguing with Chisato after Mizuki and Hibana’s murders, she calls her several homophobic slurs, prompting Chisato to proclaim Yumeko was in the closet. Despite this, she is seen admiring the female form several times, most notably when she is watching hentai in a porno theater while waiting to meet with Fernando. In the end, she eventually comes out as bi when Sayaka forces her to admit as such when she calls her. This is all in stark contrast to Sayaka, who is openly bisexual for the entirety of the fic and makes zero effort to hide her attraction to other girls alongside boys.
• Batman Grabs a Gun: The normally less-than-lethal Chisato uses actual bullets when killing Yumeko.
• Bittersweet Ending: Almost everybody dies. Mizuki is thrown off a building after being beaten by Fernando’s gang, after which Hibana is shot and killed in a shootout with the gang. The entire gang is almost entirely killed by Lycorises and NPA agents, with any survivors being arrested. Yumeko personally confronts and kills Fernando after finding out Fernando was informing on the NPA and the FBI and fearing he’d rat her out (If he had to he probably would have, given the tapes he made of their conversations.), as well as a partial desire to abandon her life of crime. Saeko goes to confront Yumeko in her apartment, only to be killed by her and falsely accused of trying to murder her and soiling her reputation as a Lycoris. Sayaka, after outing Yumeko, is killed by the other mole, Ren, who Yumeko did not know was working for Fernando too, before she murders Takina, who was going to assist Sayaka. Yumeko kills Ren to cover her tracks since Direct Attack is unaware there is more than one mole. A grief-stricken and angry Chisato then kills Yumeko, after which Sayaka’s therapist Sau-ching helps her cover her tracks. All the bad guys are either dead or in jail, but a lot of the good guys had to die to achieve that.
• Bloodier and Gorier: While Lycoris Recoil isn’t afraid to show violence, this fic has far more instances of violence and onscreen character death than the anime it’s based on, including fic-canon and anime-canon major character death, nor does it shy away from describing the brutal details of its deaths.
• Boom, Headshot!: Sayaka, Takina, and Ren all get one in a single scene. Yumeko herself gets one courtesy of a vengeful Chisato at the very end.
• Cluster F-Bomb: The fic has even more uses of the word ‘fuck’ than The Departed, clocking in at a whopping 638. Many come from Sir Swears-a-Lot Saeko Degawa, much like her counterpart Sean Dignam, but practically every character says at least a few, with even Chisato letting out a bunch while arguing with Yumeko after Mizuki and Hibana’s murders.
• Crusading Widow: After Yumeko kills Takina, who had become Chisato's girlfriend, Chisato kills Yumeko in revenge.
• Death by Adaptation: Mizuki, Hibana, and Takina end up dead by the end of the fic.
  • Additionally, one half of the two characters who play the role of Sean Dignam in The Departed, Saeko, is killed by Yumeko in a confrontation near the end of the story, although Chisato survives and later kills Yumeko just like how Dignam killed Colin Sullivan.
• Decomposite Character:
  • The role of Sean Dignam is split between Chisato and original character Saeko Degawa, with Saeko getting most of Dignam’s abrasive personality and crude language while Chisato gets his role later on in the story after Mizuki’s murder, with both of them helping Mizuki supervise Sayaka.
  • The role of Madolyn Madden, meanwhile, is also split up into two characters, that being Yumeko’s boyfriend Kosuke and Sayaka’s psychiatrist Wong Sau-ching. Ironically, Madolyn herself was a Composite Character of three different characters in Infernal Affairs, that being Mary (Lau’s fiancée), May (Chan’s ex-girlfriend), and Lee Sum-yee (Chan’s psychiatrist). The love triangle between Madolyn, Sullivan, and Costigan also doesn’t exist here, as Sayaka never has any stated attraction to either Kosuke or Sau-ching, although she attends the same high school as the former.
• Demoted to Extra: While still important characters, Chisato and Takina are no longer the protagonists, while Kurumi, Mika, and Majima only make a handful of appearences.
• External Combustion: Tokyo Metro PD Detective Tetsuya Matsuoka, an ex-boyfriend of Mizuki’s, falls victim to this thanks to the Nitta family following their declaration of war on the police and Brazilian-Japanese Yakuza after Yumeko killed their patriarch Jin Nitta.
• Fingertip Drug Analysis: Despite some initial hesitation from the other gang members due to her age, Sayaka ends up testing the cocaine offered to the Russians alongside the microprocessors with a quick snort.
• Gratuitous Foreign Language: Since many of the characters have Brazilian descent, there is quite a bit of untranslated Portuguese used throughout.
• Hotter and Sexier: While no explicit sexual content is shown, the characters' sex lives are frequently discussed and implied, compared to the relatively chaste anime. Additionally, there are several scenes that take place either right before or right after characters have sex, as well as scenes containing mentioned nudity and an adaptation of the porno theater scene from both movies the fic is based on.
• The Mole: Yumeko is a mole planted by Koyama to be his informer within Direct Attack, while Sayaka works the other way as a mole planted by Direct Attack to be an informer within Koyama’s gang. This gets more complicated when we find out that Koyama is an NPA and FBI informant, while Ken Miyashita, one of his mooks, may have been a Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department mole. Later, Sayaka has no time to realize that Koyama also had a second mole among the Lycorises, Ren, who was there to keep an eye on Yumeko.
• Next Sunday A.D.: Originally written from 2022 to 2023, the fic takes place primarily during 2024 to 2025, with some flashbacks from before.
• Ruder and Cruder: While the anime used profanity on occasion, the influence from The Departed results in a far more profane fanfiction, with over 600 usages of "fuck", along with other swears.
• Ruthless Foreign Gangsters: The Brazilian mafia