Legendary hit man Taro Sakamoto abandoned his dangerous job after falling head over heels in love. Now, he’s put on some weight and is living his best life as a family man, operating a convenience store with his wife Aoi and their child Hana. But when a mysterious bounty of one billion yen is put on his head, his peaceful life gets disrupted by glory-chasing assassins.
With the help of the psychic Shin Asakura and Chinese-mafia descendant Lu Shaotang, Sakamoto fends off his enemies while sticking by one rule: do not kill anyone in the process. As the crew encounters more foes and also crosses paths with Sakamoto’s old colleagues in the Japanese Association of Assassins, they slowly become aware of a mysterious threat by the name of Slur, who has been slaughtering assassins across Japan.
For the past two months, Saturdays for me have been synonymous with Sakamoto Days. I’d knock on my younger brother’s door each Saturday morning to signal our designated Netflix time, and for 20 minutes we’d gape at the Sakamoto crew’s incredulous antics, indulging in the sheer absurdity. Overall, the production of the show engaged me enough to keep up this routine, but as the season went on, I couldn’t help but feel like I wasn’t as enthralled with the story as I’d hoped to be.
Some viewers of the show seemed similarly disappointed with the long-awaited anime, noting that the animation quality didn’t meet their expectations or that the anime skipped too many manga chapters, therefore diluting the story. Since I hadn’t read the manga before watching, I later read the parts the anime covered (up to chapter 37, for anyone wondering!) and found myself disagreeing with both of these complaints. While the animation is definitely uninspiring at times, the fight scenes amp up the tension, providing punchy, fast-paced action that’s further accentuated by the slow-motion shots in between. The rough, angular nature of the character design captures the original art’s essence quite well, and the slightly oversaturated color scheme complements the storyline’s comical departure from realism.
Not many manga chapters are left out either, though the ones that were cut featured scenes of Sakamoto spending time with Aoi and Hana. Since Sakamoto is a pretty static character to begin with, I can see how removing the scenes that highlight his primary trait of being a “family man” further diminishes his character, even though he is the show’s eponym. But as an anime-only watcher, I didn’t feel like any important scenes were missing — I just felt that more important things should have happened. Throughout the 11 episodes, the plot rarely seemed to move toward a bigger objective.
This became the most obvious to me in episodes 7 through 9, when Lu is kidnapped and taken to the Okutabi Lab where Shin (accidentally) gained his psychic powers. Here, I expected an exploration of the morality behind the lab, or an intense existential crisis from Shin about his psychic abilities. Luckily for Shin, his experience didn’t impose too much trauma; at the end of the arc, he reconciles with his unintentional “creator” Asakura and the people at the laboratory.
As an audience member, however, this happy ending left me unsatisfied. This would’ve been a perfect moment for a shift in tone, a life-altering event or discovery that indubitably connects the fates of Shin and Sakamoto to Slur — maybe something akin to Jujutsu Kaisen’s heartbreaking arc with Itadori and Junpei, which starts in episode 9 of its first season and completely alters Itadori’s worldview. Not all stories have to have such a serious shift, but given some of Sakamoto Days’s more grotesque elements, it would’ve made sense to lean into the darkness further. Instead, the status quo remains unshaken; the scientists at the lab don’t end up as the big enemy, all the characters go back to their everyday lives, and the one glimpse we get of the mysterious Slur is easily forgotten in the next episode.
This encapsulates my main gripe with Sakamoto Days so far: none of the main characters undergo any significant development, and therefore the plot feels just as stationary. Sakamoto is an OP ex-hitman whose motivations are rather simplistic, Shin’s backstory doesn’t provide a newfound understanding of his motivations, Lu feels heavily underutilized as a member of this found family, and the rest have yet to be given their time to shine. Only the number of assassination attempts has grown, and even those don’t feel substantial in their flurry. And while episode 11 gives us a taste of the sinister events to come, the main antagonist Slur remains an enigma whose malice we’ve yet to fully grasp due to a lack of confrontation.
Episodic storytelling is nothing new, and all stories need to provide exposition, so it’s understandable why the anime formats the first cour in this way. Still, the end product leaves much to be desired. Maybe a more dynamic production could’ve made up for the lack of plot progression, but ultimately I think my main issue lies less in how the story was executed through the animation and more in the pacing of the story in general.
Despite all these critiques, I did still thoroughly enjoy watching the show. Sakamoto Days benefited from the weekly-release model in that by the time another Saturday rolled around, enough time had passed that I’d be able to humor its somewhat repetitive gags. For example, the anime is excellent at capturing the townspeople’s nonchalance in the face of immeasurable ludicrousness. From the battle on top of a rollercoaster with oblivious riders in episode 3 to a waitress taking Sakamoto’s order while a half-alive Lu Wutang contorts on the table in episode 10, the complete lack of attention from bystanders makes the protagonists’ impossible moves even funnier. Whenever I saw another person get pummeled in broad daylight in the show, I’d turn to my younger brother and we’d both point at the screen in disbelief. No one saw that? Just us? It’s the one gag that doesn’t get old for me.
What the animation might lack is made up for by the phenomenal auditory experience of this show. For as much flak as I gave the Okutabi Lab arc, I have to admit it’s still one of my favorite arcs of the show, purely because of the voice acting. Nobunaga Shimazaki is half the reason for Shin’s charm, capturing his dumbfounded silliness while still maintaining a solemnity the circumstances demand. The monotone-and-mocking interplay between the Order members Osaragi and Shishiba similarly balances humor and eeriness, and Natsuki Seba’s low-pitched charisma was so entrancing in its apathy that I could not believe that the voice actor was Nobuhiko Okamoto of Bakugo fame.
The stellar soundtrack further adds to the show’s intricate soundscape. The distorted strings in “Cornered” trigger a fight-or-flight response with their three-note motif, sucking the air out of each battle before flooding the stage with momentum. “Drunken Boxing,” which plays during Lu’s tipsy brawl with the Dondenkai assassin Obiguro, interlaces Latin music, traditional Chinese instruments, and a trap beat — and somehow, it sounds good? Composer Yuki Hayashi is truly a master of his craft, and he manages to experiment with various distinctive genres in a way that amplifies the animation’s staging.
All of these parts together balance each other’s strengths and weaknesses, amounting to a show that is overall entertaining to watch. Sakamoto Days recognizes its ridiculousness and exaggerates it further, which makes it amusing despite its potential to be overly cliché. At the end of the day, the characters are lovable, and the story has an interesting premise — and maybe that’s why I wish it had even more to offer.
Sakamoto Days resumes in July, and the first eleven episodes have intrigued me enough that I plan to continue watching — but the plot will need to do more of the heavy lifting in the second cour if it hopes to maintain the audience’s attention.
