Jiro Tanaka (田中ジロー, Tanaka Jiro) is Misaki's adoptive father and a member of the Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens baseball team. He is the owner of Bar Babylon, out of which he runs an avenger business.
Characteristics[]
Appearance[]
Jiro has short brown hair, blue eyes, and a small goatee. He wears a white, striped shirt with a blue collar buttoned low over his chest. He hooks suspenders to his dress pants, with the right suspender over his shoulder and the left suspender hanging down around his waist.
Personality[]
Jiro is an okama and behaves and speaks in a stereotypically feminine manner. He holds an interest in fashion and style and is noted by Misaki to enjoy shopping.
Background[]
Jiro formerly worked as a beauty artist and lived a normal, quiet life with his lover until his partner was murdered by a crazed killer. Desperate for revenge, he approached the Niwaka Samurai to track down and kill the murderer. Once the deed was done, Jiro reflected on his actions and how satisfying it was to get vengeance. It was shortly after this that he decided to start his avenger business, taking requests to avenge those who do not have the means to do it themselves.
Not long after he began this new line of work, he received a job to punch an abusive man to death. Just as he finished his job, he spotted a four-year-old Misaki hiding in the closet, watching him. He prompted her to come out and reassured her that he would not do anything to her, although he considered killing her as a witness, until she thanked him for killing her stepfather.
Jiro took Misaki home and cleaned her up. After taking her to see Saeki to have her more recent wounds treated, he brought her to a restaurant to eat. There, he decided to adopt Misaki, telling her that she could relax around him and that she would now be part of his family. At some point during his avenger work, Misaki approached him with the desire to help with one of his jobs. He was reluctant at first, but after hearing Misaki's plan to deceive his target, he let her. Since then, he has allowed her to tag along on some of the less dangerous requests he accepts.
Synopsis[]
Mayor Harada Scandal Arc[]
Jiro receives two job requests for his avenger business: to kill the person responsible for mutilating a home-owned cat, and to beat another to death for the unprovoked assault of a foreigner. Jiro takes Misaki with him to capture them. By roleplaying as new neighbors, they manage to infiltrate the Yamazaki house and find a black cat in the bathroom. Jiro relays information to Shota Yamazaki about his previous victims, and when he realizes why the avengers are there, he passes out. They bind him and place him in their van. Misaki rescues the black cat, and after some pleading, she is permitted to keep it. The pair then heads to the home of their next target, Jun Murase. A man answers the door, and when he replies that he is Murase, Jiro punches him in the stomach and Misaki binds him. Jiro drops her and the cat off before taking his two targets to a warehouse located along Hakata Bay.
Jiro's helper and long-time friend, the torturer José Martínez, is waiting for them to arrive. Jiro films Martínez and Shota while the hours-long torture is going on, and once Shota acknowledges the pain he put the cats through, he is decapitated. Shortly after, Jiro receives a request from their friend Yamato and asks Martínez to take care of it. As he prepares to torture Jun Murase, he discovers that the man's real name is Saitoh and he is an employee for Murder, Inc. He immediately releases Saitoh and gives him his business card, offering him a discount for future services for the trouble.
The next day, he receives a call from Saitoh, who informs him that Jun Murase had died. Saitoh asks him if he was behind his death, but Jiro denies this and returns to his bar tending duties for the rest of the day. The day after, however, Saitoh rushes into his bar, requesting his assistance. After hearing from Saitoh about the body he had woken up next to, Jiro assumes Saitoh has been framed. He allows Saitoh to hide out in his bar as his friend Shigematsu is with the police and would not come looking for a suspected murderer there. Jiro accepts Saitoh's request to avenge him and heads to Saeki's office to drop off Shota Yamazaki's body. There, he encounters his friend Zenji Banba. The events of Banba's past few days correlate with Saitoh's framing, and Jiro learns that the culprit behind Saitoh's framing is likely someone working for Mayor Harada. Banba and Jiro agree to team up to enter Yusuke Harada's apartment and meet outside, bringing Saitoh and Lin. Banba calls Reiko Asakura to prompt her to open the door. Saitoh confirms Reiko was the woman he ran into the night before he woke up in bed with Qiaomei's corpse, and Jiro knocks Reiko unconscious shortly after. Afterward, Jiro drops Saitoh off and takes Reiko to Shigematsu, who assists him in framing her for the crime she had framed Saitoh for, thereby fulfilling Saitoh's revenge request, and sending her to prison.
A week later, Jiro drives Saitoh and several other members of the Tonkotsu Ramens to their first game with a full team, introducing the new pitcher to their coach and helping him warm up. When the Ramens are up to bat, Saitoh is struck in the head by the opposing team's pitcher, and Jiro apologizes.
Niwaka Samurai Impersonator Arc[]
Early in the story, Jiro is contacted by the driver of a car that was hit when Yamamoto drove between lanes of stopped traffic on Watanabe Street, and he begins his nearly impossible search of a stolen white van. Later, he goes to a bar to meet Kaori, and she relates the story of falling in love with Tadafumi Izuku and planning their future together. Empathetic to her situation, Jiro promises to avenge Tadafumi's murder.
As Jiro and Yamato are eating ramen at Gen-chan and grumbling about their tasks, they notice similarities in their stories. They show each other photos they have of the same white van, and Genzo recognizes the two drivers as his former killers, Abe and Yamamoto.
Jiro has Martínez bug the van so that he can track it, and he approaches the two men with Misaki, who asks Abe to play with her, making him drop his guard. After she injects him with a paralyzing serum, Yamamoto runs to the van and tries to flee, and Martínez crashes into it. Jiro gives Yamamoto to Enokida so that he can be killed in a case of mistaken identity, fulfilling both requests for revenge.
Shou Wang Arc[]
In early August, after the story's conclusion, Jiro cuts Lin's hair into a short bob with great hesitation. A month later, he invites the Tonkotsu Nine to meet in his bar before leaving for a fireworks festival together. Jiro outfits Lin with a yukata and styles his growing hair before leading Misaki to the festival.
In the anime, Jiro has a more active role in the story, coming with Martínez and Misaki to encourage Lin and infiltrating the Kakyuu Association headquarters with Misaki.
.mmm Arc[]
Jiro is a proud and excited father when Misaki tells him that she has been cast as the heroine in her class play at school, and he immediately gets to work, using his skills as a former beauty artist to make her a costume fit for a mushroom princess. The next day, he is nervously excited to show Misaki the completed outfit when she announces that the class play has been called off and apologizes for wasting his time. Sensing her guilt, Jiro comforts her and promises to attend her class recital. With the outfit no longer needed, he mischievously gives the blond mushroom-cut wig to Martínez to pass on to Enokida, in case the mushroom-headed info broker ever has a bad hair day and needs a spare.
Avengers Arc[]
The avenger skips baseball practice to help Misaki work on a school assignment, where he tries to help her think of what she wants to be when she grows up. The next day, when he picks her up from school, her homeroom teacher informs him that Misaki is having trouble connecting to her classmates. That evening, Jiro asks his teammates for parenting advice at Genzo's ramen stand, worried that including her in his avenging work is preventing her from having a normal childhood and learning to connect with children her age. The others agree, the present him with the choices of continuing to raise Misaki as an avenger, giving up his career to raise her normally, or giving her up to a foster family to live a normal life.
Jiro refuses to bring Misaki along to his next job, a meeting with a client at the bar Smokin' Hot. The meeting turns out to be a setup by the Mutagawa Group, who are seeking information on the death of the high schooler Shota Yamazaki a year prior. Jiro denies knowledge of the murder, and Hiroshi Ishihara, leading the questioning, shoots him in the arm. When the mysterious clown Méqué enters the bar and begins killing the yakuza members inside, Jiro escapes out of the back and goes straight to Saeki's clinic, where he has the doctor clean and bandage his wounded arm. He passes out and awakens the next day, returning home to find Misaki's farewell note, and he enlists the help of Banba, Lin, and Enokida in finding her. As he worries that she might have gotten involved in the yakuza shootout the previous night, Jiro regretfully realizes that by trying to force Misaki out of the underground, he has been reinforcing the small, alienated circle that she lives in: not fully welcomed in his world, but unable to fit into normal society.
Enokida tracks Misaki's location to a local festival, where they find her phone and Enokida's transmitter lying in an alley. The hacker is able to track the car she had been abducted in using local surveillance, and the three killers rush toward the Mutagawa Group's warehouse, stopping a departing truck. While Banba stays behind to fight the Mutagawa Group's freelance hitman and alert to police to the children locked in cages inside, Jiro and Lin torture information out of the Mutagawa underling and rush to Ishihara's apartment. Entering without invitation, they find the large man beating Misaki, and Jiro flies into a rage, beating Ishihara past unconsciousness to the point where his injured arm reopens, and he carries Misaki out, resolved to give her up for adoption to allow her to live a safer life than he can give her.
Within a week, Jiro has chosen a set of foster parents who appear to be able to give Misaki everything she could need. He drugs Misaki's juice at dinner, and, unable to say goodbye, has Lin bring Misaki to meet her new parents. While Jiro is crying over his beer in Genzo's company, he receives a call from Misaki and immediately goes to retrieve her. When he finds her alone in a warehouse, surrounded by bodies, he is set with a deeper regret for putting his daughter in yet another dangerous situation. Unlike her father, however, Misaki has made up her mind on where and who she should be, and when Jiro is convinced, they return home.
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- Though the light novels and manga present his given name in katakana, on his business card, his name is written in kanji as 田中次郎 (Tanaka Jirou).