I was wrong. This isn't a trilogy. There are at least four Red Dragon Club films. I overlooked the second one (The Game of Jou-ou Chapter 2: Women of the Underworld's Battle, 2015), but I haven't yet found a copy of that. This is thus the third film in the series, but it's also a direct sequel to the 2014 film after Iori Kogawa missed the second one. Chizuru (Iori Kogawa) has returned to the Red Dragon club, having become a bit of a legend in the intervening three years. She's still a sympathetic protagonist and there's still a lot going on in her life (including a day job as a waitress), but she's got tougher. She coolly watches a woman getting stabbed and almost seems to be smiling. Later, a girl who tries to bully Chizuru gets her face smashed into a locker.

More importantly, though, the film's a narrative loop. I'm not sure if there's timey-wimey, or if Daisuke Yamanouchi's playing with ambiguous storytelling and/or non-linear narrative. Possibly all those. You might not expect magical realism in a brutal, off-putting tale of a sleazy industry whose workers can cross over into prostitution... but that's Yamanouchi for you. Everything revolves around an uncertain death. Mikayo (Kizuna Sakura) gets stabbed by a customer at work. Does she die? There are an alarming number of stabbings in this film (NOTE TO SELF: DO NOT VISIT CABARET CLUBS IN ROPPONGI) and some of the victims survive, albeit possibly in wheelchairs. I couldn't decide what had happened to Mikayo. There's an "I'm your son" reveal that would fit perfectly with this, except that Kizuna Sakura's too young to have an adult son (but, again, I'm not ruling out time loops).

"Mother died six months ago. I first learned about you a month before that. She'd always told me that my father was dead."

Extremely bad things will happen, but there's also romance, albeit under difficult circumstances between unromantic people. (This includes yakuza, attempted rape, garrotting and stabbing to death... and that's just with Chizuru. She won't be returning to the Red Dragon club in the third film. "We'll need to go on the run.") There's also a strong candidate for world's worst married couple. The wife's been working as a prostitute, but the (yakuza) husband will still get ready to sever fingers if he finds her shagging another man at home. Meanwhile, the lady herself shows no reaction or remorse (despite being the one who brought home this man) and tells off the screaming victim for being noisy. She even passes her husband his (enormous) knife.

Incidentally, I wonder if the Chizuru in these two hostess club films (2014 and 2016) is meant to be the same character as the protagonist Chizuru (again played by Iori Kogawa) of two of Daisuke Yamaouchi's Female Loan Shark films (2017 and 2019). So far I've only found a copy of one of the latter, but I suspect the answer to my question might be "yes".

Again, this one's surprisingly good. I have no interest in kyabakura, but I watched this series because of Daisuke Yamanouchi... and, yeah, he agrees with me about the industry. But the stories he tells about it are more horrific than mine would ever be.