A retired yakuza named Haraguchi Hideki is released from prison after serving eighteen years for a high-profile shooting. He returns to a world he barely recognizes, as decades of anti-organized crime legislation have reduced the yakuza to a shadow of their former power. Membership has dropped to a fifth of what it once was, and the honor and action of his youth have been replaced by mere monetary greed among the remaining members. Disillusioned but carrying a boorish smugness and rugged weariness, he convinces a young modern protégé to join him in one last deadly holdup that defies the new status quo.

The story is an anthology, shifting its focus across several aging gangsters struggling to find their place in a modern Japan that has left them behind. The series explores the concept of ochikobore, meaning leftovers or dropouts, through each protagonist. In the second story, a once-famous leader named Kouda Heizou lives a lazy, dull life with no wife, family, or work. During a trip to a bathhouse, his fearsome tattoos contrast with his potbelly, and he is confronted by how everyone else has moved on, with his own partner now working a humble part-time cleaning job. Feeling like a smoldering flame with nothing left to lose, Kouda decides to make his final flower bloom, donning his old gangster clothes and taking to the streets with his partner for one iconic showdown.

The longest arc follows seventy-two-year-old Ogata Souichi, an advisor to a mid-sized organization who still lives proudly by his own values. He is cared for by his loving wife of fifty years, Chiyoko, who tends to his suit and tie each day. When a faithful member is released from a twenty-year prison sentence, Ogata plans a party only to be reminded that even five yakuza gathering in public could trigger arrests. He becomes entangled in a mess when the old ex-convict unexpectedly draws his gun and shoots, landing himself back in prison and getting Ogata excommunicated from the family. In apology for her husband, the dutiful and unflinchingly loyal Chiyoko performs yubitsume, the ritual cutting off of her own finger, to atone for his actions. In the final arc, fifty-six-year-old Suzuki Taketoshi finds himself unemployed with no qualifications or savings after his local family dissolves following the death of their leader. After some soul-searching, he adopts a you only live once mentality, finding meaning in the illuminated windows of a high-rise apartment building.