Back Street Girls


Back Street Girls is a Japanese manga series by Jasmine Gyuh. It is about three yakuza men forced by their boss to become a female idol group. It was serialized in Kodansha's seinen manga magazine Weekly Young Magazine from March 2015 to September 2018 and was compiled into 12 volumes. The manga is licensed in English by Kodansha USA. A 10-episode anime television series adaptation, produced by J.C.Staff and directed by Chiaki Kon, aired from July to September 2018 on BS11 and other channels. A live-action adaptation, , was released in February 2019.

Plot

After a major failure, Yakuza underlings Kentaro, Ryo and Kazuhiko are forced by their boss, Inugane, to either commit seppuku and sell their organs or go to Thailand to undergo gender reassignment surgery, and train to become idols. They choose the latter and debut as Airi, Mari and Chika, the Gokudols. They suffer abuse from Inugane as he trains them to become idols. Still, their hearts are Yakuza and their brotherhood is strong.

Characters

;Airi Yamamoto / Kentaro Yamamoto
;Mari Tachibana / Ryo Tachibana
;Chika Sugihara / Kazuhiko Sugihara
;Lina / George
;Kimanjiro Inugane
;Mandarin Kinoshita
;Kōji Nagata
;Kimura
;Natsuko Tanaka
;Yui Nakamura

Media

Manga

Back Street Girls is written and illustrated by Jasmine Gyuh. It was serialized in Kodansha's Weekly Young Magazine from March 16, 2015 to September 15, 2018. Kodansha published 12 tankōbon volumes between August 6, 2015 and January 3, 2019. The manga is licensed in English by Kodansha USA.

Anime

An anime television series adaptation, produced by J.C.Staff and directed by Chiaki Kon, aired between July 4 and September 5, 2018 on BS11 and other channels. The scripts were handled by Susumu Yamakawa, and sound direction was handled by Jin Aketagawa. The anime has been licensed by Netflix.

Live-action

A live-action film, titled Back Street Girls: Gokudols and directed by Keinosuke Hara, premiered on February 8, 2019 in Japan. The staff and cast of the film also returned for a six-episode live-action television series that premiered on February 17, 2019.