After serving nine years for a crime he didn't commit, Hachiya Ken is free—but his past is far from behind him. Released from prison, he's confronted by Hana, the fiery daughter of a ghost from his past. Together, they're forced to navigate a deadly web of betrayal, yakuza power, and political corruption.

As they uncover a conspiracy that runs deeper than either could have imagined, Ken must confront his own demons—and decide how far he's willing to go for redemption.

Stray has story by Ryū Kamio and art by Yu Nakahara. English translation is done by Molly Rabbitt and lettering by Tom Williams. Published by Titan Manga (December 2, 2025). Rated M.

Erica Friedman
Rating:

If you like political drama, crime shows, or heart-warming snotty brat and dysfunctional dude stories, you'll probably like Stray. This one-shot covers a lot of ground, from code of honor betrayals in a layered yakuza story, with the requisite corrupt cop and politicians that make all that work, to a weirdly functional temporary alternate family situation. This latter, at it's peak, includes too-clever 9 year-old girl, a betrayed by his own principles jaded yakuza ex-con, a cop learning of the deep corruption in her own department, and a psychotic killer. They make a good team, uncovering the truth behind the death of Ken's mentor Touji, what happened to his wife and kid, and the sick and twisted plans a corrupt politician have for the country. The one really weak point of the story is the end, when the information is made public, the politician goes down. It is a fantasy after all.

This is followed by another short yakuza-sees-the-light story in which a young yakuza saves his friend, a professional pitcher, from having to throw the big game by rescuing his wife and daughter who were kidnapped. It's all about the heart of baseball, friendship and, once again loyalty to one's real family and one's ideals. As a crime thriller, this story trying very hard to do a lot of things at once. Everyone is corrupted, betraying their oaths, both cops and yakuza.

An interesting leitmotif about the purity and honor of fighting only with bare hands interested me greatly. The first sign of the degradation of Ken's former yakuza family is that they now use weapons to fight.

The art in this book is very reminiscent of the art in Keisuke Itagaki's Baki The Grappler, especially in the fighting scenes. For a one-shot yakuza story, it's a pretty solid read, especially if you like dudes protecting kids or dog-type stories.

Rebecca Silverman
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Stray is not Ryo Kamio and Yu Nakahara's first manga - according to nearly all of the promotional materials from publisher Titan, they're also the creators of Lost Inning, a baseball manga not available in English as of this writing. That may seem like it doesn't matter in the context of Stray, which is about yakuza and political corruption, but I suspect that it actually does, because the short story in the back of the book seems to link the two series. Why else would a baseball story with no obvious ties to Stray be labeled its “outro?” Although it was doubtless included in the Japanese edition, I can't help wishing it hadn't been in this one, because it provides not so much context as that horrible feeling of missing something.

Since Stray is otherwise a good read, that makes for a very unsatisfying finish. Ken, the protagonist, is by no means a perfect person; when we meet him, he's just getting out of a nine-year stay in prison. His crime was killing one of his fellow yakuza, the man he looked on as an older brother, so there's clearly something more to the situation. That begins to come clear when the person waiting to pick him up is a random nine-year-old girl named Hana – the daughter of the man he killed. But far from wanting revenge, Hana wants his help trying to find her mother, Haru, a journey instantly complicated by the arrival of not just cops, but also corrupt yakuza members of the same group Ken belonged to.

While “corrupt yakuza” may not sound exciting, the story works hard to make it clear why it actually is. Everyone apart from Ken, Hana, and later a police detective and an unlicensed doctor is filled to the brim with corruption, all tracing back to a single ambitious politician who has managed to drag everyone down to his level. It's all tied into the murder Ken committed, which was based on a murder he believed his brother had pulled off, and the story shows the layers of evil quite well, along with the horrible realization that the people the adults trusted were in no way worthy of that trust.

There's also an interesting throughline about children abandoned by adults. Hana was left by Haru at an orphanage, and part of what drives her is the need to know why. Ken, meanwhile, was abandoned by his parents when he was fifteen, which led to him being taken in by the yakuza. Both he and Hana are tough in different ways, and it's a toughness born of necessity – if they didn't face up to their situations, they wouldn't have survived. What I wish the outro had been was an update on how they managed after the main story, because that's what I feel is really lacking from this otherwise exciting adventure.

Kevin Cormack
Rating:

Complete in only a single volume, Stray is an outlier amongst its other Manga Guide peers, many of which are but first chapters in much longer tales. That's its strength though. It tells a well-plotted, mostly satisfying story that doesn't require a vast investment of both time and money from the reader.

Stray feels like a throwback to a different era of crime manga storytelling, with its focus on organized crime and a protagonist who insists on following his own interpretation of the “honorable” Yakuza code. In this case, that means Hachiya Ken prefers to solve disputes with his fists rather than weapons or dirty tricks, and eventually leads to him spending nine years in prison for landing a killing blow on his Yakuza “brother,” whom he thought had betrayed their boss.

Now on the event of his release from prison, he's approached by Hana, a little girl who claims to be the daughter of the man he killed, and she asks for his help in unraveling a conspiracy that encompasses Yakuza intrigue, police corruption, and high-level politics.

Taking the form of an extended chase, Ken and Hana must evade attention from both police and the Yakuza, whose motivations for finding them both are far from pure. Along the way, mysteries are revealed and allegiances shift. At times, plot developments can seem a little contrived, but they keep the pace clipped and efficient.

The art also has a distinct retro feel, with character designs somewhere between Katsuhiro Ōtomo and Naoki Urasawa. It's a compelling read, although the ending feels just a little rushed. An epilogue chapter is anything but – it doesn't even seem to feature any of the same characters and tells an unrelated short story with only some thematic similarities to the main tale. Still, fans of twisty crime dramas could do a lot worse that Stray.