The Winter 2025 Anime Preview Guide

Sakamoto Days

Taro Sakamoto was the ultimate assassin, feared by villains and admired by hitmen. But one day, he fell in love. Retirement, marriage, fatherhood, and then... Sakamoto gained weight. The chubby guy running the neighborhood store is actually a former legendary hitman.

Sakamoto Days is based on a manga series by Yuuto Suzuki. The anime series is streaming on Netflix on Saturdays.

I'm going to come right out and say it: the vast majority of the anime this season has been duds. Because of that, I can't be sure if Sakamoto Days is as great as I think it is or if it's simply great in comparison to those shows. Regardless, I feel safe calling this episode the most entertaining premiere of the season.

It's fun from top to bottom. We have the story of Japanese John Wick—a hitman who has resigned and settled down with a wife and child. Of course, there's always someone out there looking to make a name for themselves, Sō Sakamoto's one-time partner, Shin, is sent by a mob boss to kill the retired hitman.

This serves as the setup for the thematic exploration of the episode. As we see in the opening scene, Sakamoto used to be a man who only cared about the job—who killed as naturally as breathing. He was a pragmatic being, pure and simple. However, his time with his family and the normal people around town has taught him kindness.

It is this mixture of pragmatism and kindness we see repeatedly throughout the episode. On one hand, he lets Shin live to find out who is after his life. On the other, he rescues Shin when the mob boss and his goons turn on the younger killer. Sakamoto wants Shin, a kindred spirit, to come to see the truth of the world as he has. This is why Sakamoto invites Shin to have a meal with him—to show him what he is truly missing out on. In the end, Shin starts to get it. While he always saw being an unstoppable badass killer as the greatest thing in life, he now can see how Sakamoto's life as a family man and local handyman might be the superior way to live.

All in all, this is an incredibly fun show. It's got laughs, heart, and a ton of awesome-looking action. The hardest thing this season will be to hold me back from reading the manga and spoiling the big question I have about the series: does his wife know about his past life?

If I were going to watch one violent anime this season, it would be this one. That's not because it's less gory than the other options available, but rather because of the way it's framed. Sakamoto Days is about leaving the violence behind, or at least pretending to, while still keeping your assassination skills up to date and using them to thwart other, worse hitmen while making sure that the world in general and your shabby convenience store, in particular, remain safe. It's violence I can get behind.

It's also very, very silly, and perfectly aware of that fact. Taro Sakamoto, best hitman in the business, has taken a semi-permanent vacation to marry the love of his life, raise his daughter, and eat his wife's amazing cooking. Sure, he's gotten a little (or a lot) out of shape, but he's living his best life as a domestic family man…until his erstwhile protégé Shin the Clairvoyant shows up. Or so you'd think, because this episode is all about the vaguely ridiculous contrasts, meaning that things will not go as Shin or his boss planned. That's less summary and more premise – assassins discovering the joys of an ordinary life, possibly against their will.

It's also a bit thin as a plot, but the way this episode is executed makes up for it. Although I don't love the way the colors or shadows are applied (they're a bit too neat and clean, if that makes sense), the overall use of color is excellent. The episode opens in sepia tones before shifting to bright colors when Sakamoto falls for his wife. His daily family life remains in those bold tones, but when he takes a step back into the world of hitmen, the colors are shaded down into grittier versions of themselves, whites becoming greys and a mildew-like sheen on everything else. It at once emphasizes and ignores the lunacy of Sakamoto fighting guns with cough drops and rubber bands or knocking someone off their game with a well-applied custard cream bun to the face. The fights look serious until you step back and think about them.

Since this is a Netflix release, it dropped with both sub and dub at once, and I think they're both pretty good. I ended up preferring the sub for the voices of Sakamoto's wife and daughter, which sound a little more natural than their too-bright English versions, although that may be a very deliberate choice on the part of the English ADR to emphasize the disconnect between Sakamoto's two worlds. Sakamoto himself barely speaks, and half of his lines are heard telepathically by Shin; at first, I was afraid he was being given a “fat voice,” but I don't think that's the case. Instead, it's a way of differentiating spoken versus thought lines, albeit one that doesn't work exceptionally well.

Still, this is off to a promising start. As with my feelings about the first volume of the manga, I'm not sure how long this can maintain an actual plot beyond “Sakamoto rehabilitates hitmen into convenience store clerks,” but it's hard to beat its understanding of its own inherent contradictions, and in this episode at least, it's a lot of fun.

This season has honestly felt a bit dire so far, given how few shows have managed to stand out from the crowd, even after dozens of premieres have already gone by, and that's to say nothing of the alarming number of new anime that just downright suck. There have been a couple of decent showings, though even standouts like ZENSHU. and I May Be a Guild Receptionist…, while very good for what they are, aren't the kind of series that I would run out and recommend to any random stranger on the street. At long last, though, Sakamoto Days has arrived to show these amateurs how a true professional gets the job done.

The number one rule that any action-comedy has to follow is that you can't half-ass either of the two genres' elements. If the comedy is great, but the action sucks, then all you've got are a bunch of funny jokes with nothing to hang them on. Conversely, an action anime that is chock- full of terrible gags will just end up with its audience cringing too hard to enjoy the ass-kicking. This is where Sakamoto Days truly shines. As a comedy, it is already operating on a pitch- perfect premise: The world's greatest hitman has retired to start a family and run a convenience store, all while gaining the weight that comes with having unlimited access to yummy snacks and convenient instant ramen. The best jokes in the show don't just come from the naturally funny contrast of seeing this pudgy older guy get pulled back into the life of contract killers and organized crime, but in how much effort and resources have gone into making all of the shootouts and fistfights look really freaking cool.

It's one of my favorite kinds of anime comedy, where the absurd over-animation just makes the stupid nonsense happening on screen that much funnier. It also has the bonus effect of making Sakamoto seem genuinely badass and inspiring, even in his retirement years. It makes sense that a kid like Shin would come to respect the guy enough to be willing to trade places on the chopping block with him. I, too, would do anything for the kindly old shopkeep who could kill me with a piece of candy and a rubber band as easily as he could change my life with his wife's otherworldly home cooking.

Sakamoto Days is easily the first premiere of the season that I would wholeheartedly recommend to pretty much anyone looking for a good time on television. You don't even need to be an anime fan to appreciate this material, especially since the English dub on Netflix does an exceptional job of translating both the humor and the drama of the premiere. It's got thrills, it's got laughs, and it's got heart to spare. What more could you ask for?

Some interesting choices have gone into the adaptation of the hit Jump manga Sakamoto Days. Rather than the high-gloss production of shows like Jujutsu Kaisen or SPY x FAMILY, TMS Entertainment went in a different direction. The art is characterized by thick outlines, a gritty filter, and slightly muddy coloring choices. That, plus its streaming on Netflix, gave me unpleasant flashbacks to series like Backstreet Girls, with its barely-there animation and filters made to hide poor compositing.

But then the action kicked in, and I could see that wasn't the case. While the scenes of Sakamoto chilling behind the counter and spending time with his family may be minimally animated, the fight sequences have all the juice. As Shin ducks and dodges around the corner shop shelves, Sakamoto utilizes the various sundries he stocks, such as cough drops, as improvised weapons. It's cleverly choreographed, and the animation has just the right amount of weight, all scaffolded by Yuki Hayashi's score. I also realized that I'm starting to be able to recognize his style before knowing his involvement!

But I just don't think the story has enough draw for me personally. There's nothing wrong with it! It's not bad or anything! But judging from the credits, more former assassins are going to be coming under Sakamoto's wing, and wouldn't you know it, I already have a heartwarming comedy about an improvised family of broken weirdos slowly coming to terms with the joys of domesticity punctuated with action. Sakamoto is the kind of character who is interesting in the short term but fails to take hold of me in anything longer form: silent and stoic, with a few silly character traits who quickly turns into a badass. I do appreciate his design as a believable depiction of a powerful man who has largely gone to seed but is still strong under all that fat.

So, is Sakamoto Days good? Yeah! It's fun and solidly animated. Am I going to watch more? Nah, probably not.