Sakamoto Days

Episode 5

After striking a pretty solid balance between action and comedy last week, this week's episode brings us decidedly more mixed results. The action side of things is a bit of a letdown as the show wraps up the fights with Boiled and Obiguro, and neither climax hits quite as well as I'd have liked them to. On the bright side, the episode does at least manage to pick up the slack elsewhere, and in the process, manages to lay the foundation for what's to come.

Obiguro's fight looks pretty passable. While I wish it was a little more animated, it was pretty fun watching Xiaotang drunkenly playing around with Obiguro, while the latter kept getting confused by her mood swings. My actual problem is that once Xiaotang sobers up, the fight just stops, as Obiguro is impressed enough by Xiaotang's display to give up on killing her and Shin. Making enemies into allies is all par the course for shonen stories and all that. Still, I would have liked a few more punches on the way to them making peace, and having it wrap up right as Xiaotang was about to get in a good hit, felt more anticlimatic than funny.

The Boiled fight, on the other hand, has a much more standard conclusion as Sakamoto's return to his prime physique ends up being too hard to deal with, and Boiled is forced to concede. Unfortunately, while the setup here is pretty cool, the animation shortcuts are pretty hard to ignore. There are a lot of speed lines and impact frames to compensate for the parts where the two of them aren't actively moving, and while it doesn't look terrible, they're just noticeable enough to be a bit distracting and disappointing. It at least held up together well enough not to feel like a sign of an impending production disaster. For a scene that was meant to demonstrate Sakamoto's real capability, I wish it looked better.

Thankfully, those only account for about a third of the episode, and the rest of what we get is pretty entertaining. Once he concedes defeat, Boiled attempts to make peace with Sakamoto, but Aoi finally catches onto everything Sakamoto's been up to and starts chewing out the both of them. While Sakamoto is quick to say that he simply doesn't want her to worry about him, Aoi makes a point of reminding him that one of their family rules is not keeping secrets from each other and that they need to get through this as a family. It's a little weird seeing her apply that logic to dealing with the bounty on her husband's head, but it shows that Aoi is committed to making their relationship work. She certainly isn't to be messed with. As Boiled himself puts it: this lady is just as hard-boiled as her husband. 

Things shift to Sakamoto actively eliminating the bounty on his head and we get new information. For one thing, we learn that The Order (the mysterious sect of the JAA that's been keeping an eye on Sakamoto) has another pressing issue they're dealing with. Namely that a mysterious killer codenamed Slur has been performing hits on assassins across the country and has slaughtered roughly a quarter of the JAA's roster. We also learn that the bounty on Sakamoto's head popped up around the same time that Slur started his killing spree, and Nagumo deduces that two incidents may be connected. This makes for a good enough mystery to keep things tense and to drive the story towards a more action-heavy plot. It would also be nice if the rest of that story could deliver better action. While this episode hasn't exactly ruined things for me on that front, I am worried about how well the rest of the show can deliver on it. I hope that my fears will prove largely unfounded. 

Rating:

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Sakamoto Days is currently streaming on Netflix on Saturdays.