Sakamoto Days

Episode 4

Between its core premise and grungy visuals, it can be easy to forget that Sakamoto Days can be a very silly show. Sure, Sakamoto is this show's equivalent of John Wick, and most of the appeal is seeing him do cool action movie stuff, but this is also a world where more run-of-the-mill assassins run around dressed as pizza delivery guys or janitors. Hence, this week's episode is sillier than what we've gotten up till now, and while that might sound negative, it made for the show's funniest episode so far.

The bits of lore following Shin's duel with the knife guy reveal that Shin and Sakamoto are connected to the Japanese Assassin's Association or JAA. It's a powerful organization that employs over 400 pro-killers across Japan and has a lot of control over the criminal underworld. While that all sounds pretty par for the course with this kind of setting, what makes it particularly funny is learning that the association members carry ID cards like driver's licenses. The organization even has giant training facilities that are out in the open. Being an assassin is the same as any other respectable profession in this universe and that concept is so absurd that it circles back around to being hilarious. It makes the world feel a bit goofier. Still, it gives more credence to some of the weirder assassins we've come across so far and cements the idea that while Sakamoto might be superhuman even by this world's standards, his antics aren't all that unusual.

Equally funny are the new assassins targeting Sakamoto this week: Hard-Boiled and Obiguro. Hard-Boiled is a dude who looks like he walked out of an 80's action flick and has the attitude to match, while Obiguro gets a thrill out of fighting strong people, and has a crush on Hard-Boiled because she secretly finds his gimmick to be cool. The two of them make for a pretty fun duo. Hard-Boiled steals the show as he and Sakamoto have some history. In a more typical show centering around assassins, you might expect said history to involve a botched job, or them falling for the same woman or something. The truth is much more ridiculous. Back in Assassin High School (a real thing in this show's universe) Hard-Boiled became drawn to Sakamoto thanks to his cool demeanor and figured that the two of them were kindred spirits when it came to being lone wolves that everyone kept their distance from. In reality, Sakamoto was pretty popular with all the assassin girls. When Sakamoto off-handedly reveals that he never even bothered to remember the poor guy's name, it left Boiled with a grudge that he's been nursing to this day.

That comedy is sprinkled into their fight as Hard-Boiled drops as many cool one-liners as he can to get Sakamoto to remember him, while the big guy just wants to knock his lights out. It isn't until Hard-Boiled brags about naming his weapons things like Super Ball Bombs and Rocket Dynamite Punch that Sakamoto's memories are stirred, and even then, it's mostly just the memory of how bad he thought his naming sense was, which feels pretty on brand for him. While that's going on, Shin and Xiaotang face off against Obiguro. With Shin out of commission and held up by a chainsaw killer, it falls to Xiaotang to deal with. Fortunately Xiaotang is drunk off her high horse during all this, and we learn that she's pretty skilled using the Drunken Fist. Un-fortunately, she is too drunk to comprehend that Shin's life is in her hands, even when he's inches away from getting his face shredded, which made for one of the best visual gags in an already hilarious episode. While a lot of this is steeped in comedy, we still get a couple of good action sequences. With Hard-Boiled pushing Sakamoto just hard enough to revert him to his prime assassin physique, the action is bound to crank up even further when we get the rest of that fight next week. In the meantime though, it was nice to see how well this episode could balance both the goofy and cool aspects of this show's setting.

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Sakamoto Days is currently streaming on Netflix on Saturdays.