General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

The Blood of Wolves II

The Blood of Wolves II (Korou no Chi LEVEL2, 孤狼の血 LEVEL2; English title Last of the Wolves) is a 2021 Japanese yakuza thriller directed by Kazuya Shiraishi, the sequel to his 2018 film The Blood of Wolves. Released by Toei on August 20, 2021, it runs 139 minutes and carries an R15+ rating in Japan.¹^•² The film continues the story of detective Shuichi Hioka in the fictional Hiroshima city of Kurehara, but it is an original screenplay rather than an adaptation of the second novel in Yuko Yuzuki's trilogy, because the first film had already departed from the novel's ending.³^•⁴

Key fact	Detail
Release	August 20, 2021, Toei; 139 minutes; R15+¹
Director / writer	Kazuya Shiraishi; screenplay by Junya Ikegami¹
Setting	Kurehara, a fictional city in Hiroshima, three years after the first film, in 1991, the year before the Anti-Boryokudan Act took effect³^•⁵
Lead roles	Tori Matsuzaka as detective Shuichi Hioka; Ryohei Suzuki as the gangster Koji Kambayashi⁶
Story status	Entirely original to the film; not an adaptation of the second novel Kyōken no Me³^•⁴
Awards	13 categories honored at the 45th Japan Academy Prizes (2022), including Best Supporting Actor (Ryohei Suzuki) and Newcomer of the Year (Nanase Nishino)⁷^•¹

Spoilers

Story

Three years before the sequel's events, Hioka secretly brokered the peace settlement that ended a gang war between the Odani group, based in Kurehara, and the Hiroshima Jinsei-kai, the largest syndicate in the prefecture. In doing so he arranged the death of Irako Shohei, the Irako-kai boss, at the hands of Odani boss Ichinose. Since the murder of his mentor, the veteran organized-crime detective Ogami (Koji Yakusho), Hioka has taken over Ogami's role: he keeps ties with the yakuza, uses illegal investigative methods when his purpose requires, and is recognized on both sides of the law as the man who maintains Hiroshima's uneasy order.⁶^•⁷

The balance collapses when Koji Kambayashi (Ryohei Suzuki), Irako's devoted lieutenant, leaves prison after serving a seven-year term. Kambayashi vows to avenge his boss, turns on the syndicate leadership that wants to avoid another war, and kills rivals and superiors alike with what the official site calls a bizarre, grotesque violence. His investigation eventually leads him to the truth that Hioka was the mastermind behind Irako's death, and the two men move toward a confrontation.⁷^•⁶

Hioka plants Chinta (Nijiro Murakami), a young member who idolizes him, as a spy inside Kambayashi's gang, while police superintendent Daisuke Saga (Kenta Kiritaka, played by Kento Takagi's fellow cast member Takito Kenichi) resents Hioka for holding a weakness over him and works to push him out of the force. A bizarre murder case opens the film's investigation, and the pressure from the gangs, the police hierarchy, the press, and Kambayashi drives Hioka into a corner.⁶^•¹

Cast and characters

Matsuzaka Tori returns as Hioka, a role he had played as a rookie elite detective in the first film; the sequel presents him three years later as a hardened, dirty organized-crime detective in the mold of the man he succeeded.⁵ Ryohei Suzuki plays Kambayashi as the film's central villain. Shiraishi's offer to Suzuki came with the request to make Kambayashi "a villain that will remain in Japanese film history"; Suzuki has said he decided the character's menace came from a man who does not consider himself evil.⁷

The supporting cast includes Kiritaka Kenichi's colleague roles filled by Takito Kenichi as Saga, Yajima Kenichi as the section chief Yuzutake, Nakamura Baijaku as Hioka's new older partner Sejima, Murakami Nijiro as Chinta, Nishino Nanase as the mama of a snack bar connected to Hioka, Katase Rino as Irako Tamaki, the widow of the murdered boss, Yoshida Go Taro as Jinsei-kai chairman Wafune, Terajima Susumu as the second Irako-kai boss, Saito Takumi as Odani wakagashira Tachibana, and Nakamura Shido and Zaizen Gi among the gang members.¹^•⁶

Production and setting

Shiraishi deliberately set the film in 1991, the last period in which a yakuza film of this kind could claim realism, before the Anti-Boryokudan Act (暴力団対策法) took effect in March 1992 and changed the legal environment for gangs.⁵ Unlike the Battles Without Honor and Humanity series, which completed in 1974, the year Shiraishi was born, and shot most of its locations in Kyoto, this production filmed on location in Hiroshima, including the city of Kure, whose streetscapes the director said preserved the period feel needed for the 1991 setting.⁸ A rooftop amusement park from 1991 Hiroshima was rebuilt as a set.⁹

The film's lineage is explicit. Yuzuki's original novels were written as homage to Kinji Fukasaku's Battles Without Honor and Humanity series and Cops vs. Organized Crime, and critics have positioned LEVEL2 as Shiraishi's own version of Battles Without Honor and Humanity: Hiroshima Death Match.³

Reception and awards

At the 45th Japan Academy Prizes announced in 2022, the film received awards in 13 categories, the most of any film that year according to the official site's news post. Ryohei Suzuki won the Outstanding Supporting Actor award (最優秀助演男優賞), Nanase Nishino won Newcomer of the Year, and the film took Excellence Awards for Picture, Director, Screenplay, Lead Actor (Matsuzaka), and technical categories including cinematography, lighting, music, art, sound, and editing.⁷^•¹

Critics singled out the two leads. Reviews describe Suzuki's Kambayashi as a villain of overwhelming, impulsive violence who dismantles the balance Hioka built, and Matsuzaka's Hioka as a man isolated by the police hierarchy he once served, wounded and desperate by the climax.³ The film's violence is severe enough that the distributor rated it R15+, restricting admission to viewers 15 and older.¹⁰

Series context

The film is the second in a series based on Yuzuki's trilogy The Blood of Wolves, Kyōken no Me, and Bōkō no Kiba. Because the first film invented its own ending instead of the novel's, in which Hioka is transferred to a rural police box, the sequel was written as an original story rather than an adaptation of Kyōken no Me.³^•⁴ A third film, Level 3, was anticipated in Japanese film commentary after this release.¹¹

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026