Someone threw a stone in a pond a long way away and we're only just feeling the ripples.
Giri/Haji (Japanese: 義理/恥, "Duty/Shame") is a British TV show that ran for one season in 2019.
A Japanese police officer Kenzo (Takehiro Hira) goes to London in order to find his missing brother, Yakuza hitman Yuto (Yôsuke Kubozuka). With the help of disgraced British police officer Sarah (Kelly Macdonald) and troubled mixed-race prostitute Rodney (Will Sharpe), he learns about Yuto's involvement with various mob alliances, including a spoiled American millionaire (Justin Long) and a London gangster (Charlie Creed-Miles).
Tropes
- The Alcoholic: Rodney's mother passes out on her couch after drinking a whole bottle of wine. This is implied to be a big reason why he's fled his otherwise comfortable home.
- Ambiguous Ending: The futures of our protagonists are left unclear by the end of the series.
- Will Kenzo leave his wife and stick with Sarah?
- Will Sarah embrace a romance with Kenzo?
- Will Yuto ever reunite with Keiko? Is that really Keiko in his last scene or just another vision?
- Will Rodney get clean and come to terms with his guilt over the deaths of Tiff and Ian?
- Aspect Ratio Switch: The screen shifts much narrower in scenes showing Kenzo's memories.
- Bait-and-Switch: After the big shoot-out at the restaurant, Vickers says that his crime lord father from Pittsburg will soon arrive and try to sort everything out. Instead, he's killed mid-sentence, and his whole plot line is dropped.
- Bilingual Backfire: Toshio casually says that the Englishman Roy "looks like a sex tourist" in Japanese within earshot of him. Several episodes later, a flashback reveals that he actually speaks some Japanese, and we see him get offended at Toshio's insult.
- Bilingual Dialogue: Usually not in play as a trope, as the English characters can't understand Japanese, except Rodney is bilingual and so switches between English and Japanese, especially when he's around Taki (whose English is not as good).
- Britain Is Only London: The only part of Britain we see is London. Kenzo calls the Scottish Sarah an Englishwoman toward the end of the series. When she replies, "I'm not English," he's confused.
- Chekhov's Gunman: Roy, the British exchange officer, turns out to have a larger role than expected.
- Cop/Criminal Family: Kenzo is a police officer and his brother, Yuto, is a petty thief who is drawn into the Yakuza and becomes an assassin.
- Dream Ballet: When Yuki begins to fall off the ledge and all her family rush to save her, the scene pauses and goes Deliberately Monochrome, and all of the protagonists suddenly appear and perform an interpretive dance of their various conflicts. In the end, the scene smoothly transitions right back to where we left off in the real world.
- Evil Parents Want Good Kids: Fukuhara wouldn't have his only daughter be the wife of a yakuza as his own wife was killed by a rival gang, which is why he attempts to have Yuto killed.
- Flashback Episode: Episode 4 is all about Yuto's past with the Yakuza and Sarah's betrayal of her boyfriend.
- Gender Nonconforming Equals Gay: Taki is berated by her mother and grandmother for stabbing a boy with scissors when he tried to kiss/grope her, saying that it shows a lack of decorum and unfemininity. When she runs away to London, she comes out to Rodney and Kenzo, and becomes infatuated with Rodney's friend Annie.
- The Hecate Sisters: The three women in Kenzo's family that stay in Japan: his mother is the crone, as a severe, critical Dragon Lady, his wife Rei is the mother, and his daughter Taki is the maiden. However, Taki leaves Japan and ditches her maiden identity as she comes out as a lesbian, and Rei moves away from it too with the breakdown of her and Kenzo's marriage. Their roles in the duo are replaced in parts by Eiko, who is introduced as the sexual young maiden who needs to be protected, but transitions into a "mother" archetype with the reveal that she had Yuto's son.
- Helpful Hallucination: Yuto has conversations about his feelings with a vision of his lover Eiko.
- Hooker with a Heart of Gold: Rodney is a sharp-tongued and rather cold party boy, but he has a sense of right and wrong and increasingly shows his soft side as the series progresses.
- It's Personal:
- The Tokyo police chief discovers that Fukuhara is having an affair with his wife, so he arrests Fukuhara's bodyguards in the middle of the gang war in hope that the rival clan will assassinate him. It only makes the gang war bloodier.
- Fukuhara is personally motivated to find Yuto because he carried on an affair with Fukuhara's daughter, and Fukuhara vowed to never allow his daughter to marry a gangster.
- Killed Mid-Sentence: Vickers, in the middle of reminiscing about his crime lord father.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Rodney tells Taki he's doing "the right thing for once" when he steals the drugs back from Sarah and plants them on her stalker ex. It turns out that not only was the stalker ex not harassing her, he agreed that he wouldn't go to the police about her harbouring a fugitive. And, as a result, Rodney got him killed.
- Look Both Ways: Sarah's ex is killed because he backed away from his arresting officer...right into a speeding car.
- Karma Houdini:
- Rodney suffers no external repercussions for accidentally getting Sarah's ex-boyfriend killed.
- Yuto ends the series on the run again, having escaped the law and with the Yakuza no longer hunting for him. However, it's left ambiguous as to whether he'll ever reunite with his family.
- Mafia Princess: Eiko is the daughter of a yakuza boss and has a child with his subordinate.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Kenzo is The Stoic until his and Yuto's father dies, and he melts down at Yuto over how, because of Yuto, Kenzo wasn't with his father at the deathbed.
- Parental Favoritism: Implied. Kenzo and Yuto's father only asks for Yuto as he lies dying.
- Pragmatic Villainy: The Yakuza are extremely resistant to wars between clans, since it's bad for business. When Fukuhara and Shin Endo get into a war, the other clans want it ended as soon as possible. In the end, they broker a peace deal between the two clans that actually ends with both clans being wiped out. They really don't like wars.
- Queer Establishing Moment: In Tokyo, Taki seems to be curiously alienated from her classmates. In London, Rodney brings her to a dance club, where she ogles Annie, establishing her as gay. Rodney picks up on the attraction immediately.
- The Reveal:
- Rodney, an adopted, gay, Asian, addict prostitute, is revealed to have a fairly normal, middle-class white mother who supports his sexual orientation. In fact, she's too supportive of his party-boy lifestyle and is revealed to be something of a alcoholic Stepford Smiler.
- Yuto knew that Kenzo committed murder on his behalf. He's just been waiting for Keno to admit it.
- Romantic Rain: It's raining heavily when Kenzo and Sarah finally have sex.
- Shoot the Shaggy Dog: Rodney tries to help Sarah by planting drugs on her ex, who had already promised her he wouldn't go to the police. He gets arrested and backs into traffic, which gets him killed unnecessarily. Sarah and Rodney are horrified by their parts in it.
- Stepford Smiler: Rodney's mother is loving but emotionally unavailable, urging him to "be happy" rather than seek her emotional support because it would make her sad.
- Suspicious Missed Messages: That Eiko won't answer her phone is presented as an immediately suspicious indication that her father is about to get himself killed. Or try to, anyway.
- Tattooed Crook: Curiously, we only briefly see one Yakuza's tattoos throughout the whole series. Yuto, in spite of joining Fukuhara's Yakuza clan, is frequently seen bare-chested without a single tattoo.
- Uncertain Doom: Annie. The last we see of her is screaming in horror as a friend of hers gets murdered beside her. The Yakuza claim that she's fine, but that seems unlikely.
- "Well Done, Son" Guy: Vickers is motivated to prove to his crime lord father that he's worthy.
- Woman Scorned: Sarah informed on her boyfriend Ian's corruption not because she cared about the corruption but because he was cheating on her.
- Yakuza: Yuto works for a Yakuza crime family and so the Yakuza demand that his brother goes to find him in London.
- Yubitsume: Yuto is forced to cut off a finger to pay for killing a rival Yakuza member. Later, Fukuhara is forced to perform the same ritual to end the war between him and the rival gang. After Fukuhara chops off his pinky, the rival leader demands a second finger. And even that's not enough.
