For the umpteenth time, I certainly don’t know enough about the insider workings of the yakuza to know how realistic The Fable is in that respect. But I can say that to me at least, it feels pretty real. Akira himself is an absurdist creation, and the whole mythical hitman organization angle plays like a dramatic MacGuffin (and a good one). But the “mundane” elements of mob existence are another matter. One can easily imagine this is how is works, more or less, and that the average low-ranking hood isn’t far off how they’re depicted here.

What helps in that respect is how nonchalantly The Fable plays most of this stuff. The minimalist production is obviously mostly a cost-saving measure. But there are times when a lack of style can actually be a style (whether intentionally or not). And this episode is a case where that happens in very effective terms. The lack of flourish – soundtrack, effects, tricksy cinematography – makes the horror of what we’re watching play out that much more affecting. It’s just life on the other side of the curtain. Rules are rules.

Sunagawa is  certainly emerging as a critical figure for the second cour. We still aren’t told who the target of his second assassination contract is, but it’s a big enough deal that he’s killing people (like Misaki’s would-be rapist) who know about it. The mind wanders – maybe it’s the Maguro boss, and Sunagawa intends to make a play to take over the group. In any event he now knows or suspects not just about the existence of Fable but some of the details, and that makes he himself a guy who knows too much (as Ebihara makes clear to him).

Rules are rules. It seems pretty clear that Ebihara took out Kojima as a means of making peace with Sunagawa – a tacit admission that Kojima had taken out Sunagawa’s business partner. Ebihara stone-faces his way through this ugliness, but he’s not a robot – this had to cut him pretty deep. Ebihara is demonstrating his loyalty here – the family over his family. He probably knew all along that it would come to this eventually – that his brother was an irredeemable troublemaker and that most of the trouble would land on him.

The most impactful part of this for me was his asking Akira “What do you think?” – and Akira’s lack of response. Ebihara is expressing grief in the only manner he feels he can, and trying to understand just what sort of man Akira is. And Akira has no answer for this – he simply doesn’t operate on that level. Eventually he gives a practical, detached reply – and that answers Ebihara’s questions about him. But Akira did what he promised to do – a promise Ebihara knows was not his to extract, a violation of the terms his group had agreed to with Fable.

Ebihara makes it clear that Misaki is to be left alone – perhaps a bit of sentimentality here. It’s also clear that Ebihara (he says so in so many words) believes there are lines yakuza shouldn’t cross. Kojima served 15 years because he crossed one, and messing with a “nice girl” like Misaki is definitely a red card. Misakki still doesn’t seem to have connected the dots with Akira and her rescue, but she does find his drawings of her charming. Until that is she reaches the ones he drew after she passed out in the bath, which Akira simply lacks the emotional literacy to realize were not ones he should have made.

With Kojima out of the picture, the focus now turns to Sunagawa – both in terms of his second target and his unhealthy interest in Fable. And then there’s Kuro, who despite orders from Ebihara immediately starts grilling Takahashi and Kickboxer (does he have a name?) about the mysterious hooded hitman. Kuro’s interest is purely personal – he has a man-crush – but it still has the potential to create enormous problems both for himself and for Maguro.