1 February, 2004
FAKE, Vol. 5, Sanami Matoh (186 pp, PB, 1998)
Vol. 5 lends much support to my contention that this series is properly classified as a cop story featuring two guys who are in love, rather than as a romance story featuring two guys who are cops. This book contains three chapters/"acts"/whatever, which I'm going to discuss in reverse order.
The third chapter is a slight Carol-Bikky adventure, which confirms my guess that their friends Lai and Lass are crossover characters from another manga. This one's heavy on action and light on character; with Lai and Bikky falling afoul of some guys who want to extort money from Lai's brother. There's not much more to say about it.
The second chapter puts Dee and Ryo in the back seat, and focuses on secondary character J.J. Adams. JJ is reunited with a good friend from his academy days. At first, he's really happy to see Max, but it soon becomes clear that this isn't the cheerful, optimistic Max he remembers. After spending a stint in LA, Max has become bitter and cynical (and, as we later discover, somebody of whom the Internal Affairs division wouldn't approve). Hey, I can relate. Throughout the series, JJ has served as little more than irritating comic relief, so I was surprised that Matoh decided to put him in a serious story, and impressed that she was able to pull it off. I actually felt sympathy for him.
The real meat of the book is the first story, which takes up half the volume. As I intimated above, it could be recast as a straight (pun intended) cop story with very little alteration. It starts with the guys going out on a homicide call. It's a drug-related mob killing connected to a series of similar incidents stretching back over a decade, one of which is -- ta-da -- the unsolved murder of Ryo's parents.
Ryo is typically a very cool and restrained guy, but it's well-established that he's prone to occasional emotional outbursts when he's under pressure. I've suspected that if he ever did crack, it would be ugly. Well, when he uncovers a strong lead, only to have the higher-ups in the department remove him from the investigation, he cracks, and it's ugly.
We've all seen this one before: the cop doesn't accept getting sidelined, and pursues the case on his own time. His partner tries to rein him in, to stop him from going off the deep end. Not wanting to be stopped, the cop pushes his partner away, or sneaks around behind his back, while he tracks down the killer. Here, the plot reaches its climax in a nicely-drawn Mike Kellerman-Luther Mahoney-type confrontation [1] between Ryo and his parents' murderer (who is now a big-time crime boss). The situation washes out differently from the Homicide episode, and Dee is able to stop Ryo from crossing the line. (The way he does so is very much in character, I might add.)
In any buddy-cop adventure, the plot formula is secondary to the characters; it serves to provide a framework for exploring/illustrating their personalities and their friendship. This chapter of FAKE is no different. Obviously, with everything Ryo goes through in this episode, we see quite a lot of his personality -- most of it not flattering. But, even though the plot is Ryo-centric, it's just as much about how Dee reacts to his partner's problems. And how he reacts is: beautifully. This story demonstrates how completely devoted he is to Ryo. Ryo treats him quite badly throughout the chapter, and one might expect an excitable, emotional guy like Dee to get pissed off and tell him to go hang. He does get pissed, but he never gives up on his friend. Mind, it's not any cheesy, Tammy Wynette, stand-by-your-man unjudging devotion, it's more like, "You're my friend, I love you, and I will not let you destroy yourself."
Needless to say, the final scene, in which a still-shattered Ryo makes Dee a wrongheaded offer of sex, and gets flat-out turned down, would not appear in a conventional cop story. Doubtless, it would be replaced by something involving the Gratuitous Love Interest. Most stories of this type have a Gratuitous Love Interest who's introduced for the sole purpose of establishing that the main characters don't like each other that way, not that there's anything wrong with that. Well, that and sometimes providing the bad guys with a convenient hostage. Making the partner and the love interest the same person provides for nice economy of story.
[1] For anybody who's unfamiliar with the show Homicide: Life on the Street [2], here's how it went down: the squad in general, and Detective Kellerman in particular, had been trying to get one of Baltimore's biggest drug lords, Luther Mahoney, for a long time, but he kept slithering away. During the episode in question, Kellerman and his partner, Meldrick Lewis, went to arrest Mahoney for something or other. Mahoney got ahold of Lewis's gun, and leveled it at him, while Kellerman threatened Mahoney with his own. Mahoney lowered his gun, and proceeded to mock the detectives, saying he'll just get off again, blah, blah, blah, and then Kellerman shot him dead.
[2] If you haven't watched Homicide, for shame. That was one of the best shows of the 90s. Go find some reruns and watch them, or rent some DVDs.