Sakamoto Days

Episode 6

While it gave us a nice glimpse of where the rest of the show will be headed, last week's episode was enough of a letdown on the action front that I'm glad this one is on the more comedic side. This time, our assassin of the week is Heisuke: a sniper who's extremely down on his luck and is a bit too trusting for his own good. Unfortunately for him, those same traits cause him to get a little too close to the Sakamoto family. While it doesn't lead to any surprising results, they make for a pretty entertaining episode

After learning more about what's going on behind the scenes with the JAA and the billion yen bounty, things more or less go back to normal for the Sakamotos. Said normal involves fending off assassins after Sakamoto's head, and with the amount of damage they're doing to his store, the repair costs are starting to pile up. It's then that Heisuke shows up looking to hunt down Sakamoto. Since he never bothered to read up on Sakamoto's current physique, he takes our main trio at face value when they claim he could be after a different Sakamoto, and that there could be dozens of convenience stores out there run by a guy with the same name. Despite this obvious lie, he ends up taking them at face value, and since they were nice enough to give him food, they're saints as far as he's concerned, and it's pretty funny watching him walk away thinking they're such nice people, while they're mostly just glad that this is the last they'll see of him.

Unsurprisingly, it doesn't take too long for their paths to cross again, as when Sakamoto and the others decide to enter an airsoft shooting competition to pay for shop repairs, they run into Heisuke, who wants to upgrade from living in a tent. Sakamoto and Shin assume that Heisuke is probably as bad at shooting as he is at gathering intel, but they quickly discover that he's handy with a sniper rifle and that his skills are nothing to sneeze at. It's only then that a drunken Xiaotang ends up spilling the beans on Sakamoto's identity, and watching Sakamoto and Shin continue to play dumb while she doubles down on telling Heisuke everything is pretty hilarious. While it still takes Heisuke a little bit to put two and two together, he eventually makes the connection and starts shooting away at them.

As funny as all that is though, the best joke of the episode comes with Heisuke's backstory. He hasn't had it easy in the underworld as he's never been great at anything except sniping. While that's a pretty marketable skill in our world, within the exaggerated reality of this show, he's seen as a one-trick pony. Even when he tried getting a respectable job as an assassin salaryman, his coworkers kept looking down on him, and his lack of versatility ended up costing him his job and leaving him homeless. It's equally silly and sad and would be pretty amusing on its own, but the real kicker is learning that he accidentally narrated all this to Sakamoto and Shin over their radio comms. Once they hear it though, Shin assures Heisuke that there's nothing wrong with an assassin only having one talent. Sakamoto praises him for being the most dangerous sniper he's ever faced, which gives the guy a much-needed boost to his confidence.

I'm glad the comedy could do a lot of the heavy lifting because the fight surrounding it didn't quite pack the same level of punch. It's certainly better than last week's showing. We get a couple of good shots of Heisuke showing off his sniper skills, and the moment when Sakamoto obliterates Heisuke's sniper rifle by throwing a rock is a solid highlight. Still, it wasn't quite enough to wash away some of the lows from last week's display. It's an improvement at the very least, and having Sakamoto and Shin agree to split the prize money with Heisuke, only for him to end up with next to nothing after all the property damage his shooting caused was a pretty killer punchline. I'll admit the post-credits scene of learning how Sakamoto and Aoi met was more cute than funny since there wasn't much to laugh at beyond Sakamoto's look of shock when he felt a romantic spark but it was sweet enough to put a nice bow on an overall solid episode. Given his prevalence in the opening, this isn't the last we'll see of Heisuke, and I'm glad he got such a funny introduction. While he certainly isn't the funniest addition that the cast has had so far, I found him to be endearing, and I'm looking forward to whenever this goofball makes his comeback.

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Sakamoto Days is currently streaming on Netflix on Saturdays.