I felt I should have been making a diagram to follow all the shifting alliances after a while.

These just keep getting better! There's a lot more complexity to the alliances the characters are involved in, so constant attention is required. Still, that's part of the fun of this series. Apart from that, there's a whole lot of betrayal, scheming, (botched) assassinations and finger cutting. Pretty badass, all in all.

I am seriously getting a headache from the amount of japanese gang and character name's this series rapidly throws at me. It does not stop. A toned-down death rate in this one just amplifies the problem.

Part three of Kinji Fukasaku's five-part Yakuza Papers series is less sprawling and easier to follow than the first part. The point of these violent chronicles is an attempt to reconcile the rise of the Yakuza with Japan's struggle to rebuild itself after World War II. This entry in the series draws a parallel between the American and Russian proxy wars that scattered the globe and the rival families who use smaller satellite operations to obtain influence in outlying territories.