REVIEW: ‘The Yakuza’s Guide to Babysitting,’ Episode 10 – “A Bad Person”

The Yakuza’s Guide to Babysitting is a slice-of-life anime produced by Gaina and feel. With a successful birthday celebration behind them, the Sakuragi Family heads home for the night. But unbeknownst to them, someone has taken note of Kirishima’s fondness of Yaeka, which could spell tragedy in The Yakuza’s Guide to Babysitting Episode 10.

This story opens with a trip to the park for Yaeka, Kirishima, some of Yaeka’s newfound friends, and a couple of other members of the Sakuragi family. This sequence delivers more of the show’s goofy nature while subtly reminding the viewer of the reputation Kirishima has earned for himself. This delicate blend of innocent fun and carefully placed reminders helps to prepare the viewer for what the thrust of this episode story dives into.

This episode’s major elements have been brewing under the surface of this series since its first entry. Kirishima’s past, and the brutality it is filled with, is catching up with him. While it is easy enough to feel terrible for Yaeka as she gets dragged into the mess, I cannot manage to decide how the show wants me to think about Kirishima himself.

While the series has tried to soften its lead protagonist over the past nine episodes, Kirishima is still not a good person. At least if the Little Miss is out of the room. This duality of Kirishima’s personality makes it hard to feel too deeply for him as the ramifications of his actions hit home. While the moments The Yakuza’s Guide to Babysitting Episode 10 delivers find me in a conflicted state over the series lead, I hope that by the end of the story, it will use these moments to deliver some strong character growth for Kirishima and move him past his situational goodness.

While Kirishima is the focal point of The Yakuza’s Guide to Babysitting Episode 10’s narrative, nothing in this world occurs in a vacuum. The rest of the Sakuragi family is hit hard by the episode’s events, and The Boss starts taking steps to rectify the situation, which includes trying to keep Kirishima from making an already bad situation worse.

This side of the plot also lends my biggest concern for the story as it continues. While there is worry over Kirishima and, most specifically, what he’ll do next, there is no acknowledgment or frustration about how the character’s past over-indulgence in violence has led them to this point. It will feel disingenuous if the series looks the other way on why rival yakuza members would go to such lengths as we see here to hurt him.

The visual side of The Yakuza’s Guide to Babysitting Episode 10 delivers its moments skillfully. While the show never allows its harsher moments to become too graphic, it nevertheless manages to provide the severity and weight of the situations its cast faces.

When all is said and done, The Yakuza’s Guide to Babysitting Episode 10 delivers a painful story that will contrast sharply with much of what viewers have grown accustomed to from the series, despite the obvious setup for these events from the beginning. How well these moments ultimately land will depend mainly on how the series plays them out and what its cast takes away from them.

The Yakuza’s Guide to Babysitting Episode 10 is streaming now on Crunchyroll.