Sakamoto Days

Episodes 1-2

All right, so I should probably kick off these reviews with a bit of a disclaimer: I am currently caught up on the manga for Sakamoto Days and have been reading since its debut back in 2020. While I wouldn't quite list the series among my favorites of the current Jump roster, it's been an undeniably fun manga to read on a week-to-week basis, and I've generally had a pretty good time with it. In that time though, the series has built up a pretty high reader base, especially among Shonen Jump fans here in the west, and people have been clamoring for an anime adaption for quite a while now. After a long wait, we've finally got an anime adaption courtesy of the folks at TMS Entertainment, and picked up for streaming by Netflix, who has not only been pushing it considerably harder than many of their other anime offerings, but has even been trying to promote it to general audiences rather than just anime fans. With all that in mind, it goes without saying that there's probably a lot of pressure for this to result in a hit, but has what we've gotten so far lived up to the hype?

So far, I'd say…mostly. The series has a very simple hook: Taro Sakamoto was once feared and revered as the greatest assassin in the underworld, until he fell in love and decided to leave his life of crime behind. Now he lives out his days quietly as a convenience store owner alongside his wife Aoi and his daughter Hana, until the day a telepathic hitman named Shin appears with a mission from his superiors: to either drag Sakamoto back into the assassin's life, or kill him for leaving. As Shin soon finds out, though, just because Sakamoto's gotten out of shape doesn't mean he couldn't kill him six times over, and when Sakamoto decides to not only spare Shin's life, but offer him a job, Shin starts working as an employee at Sakamoto's store. We later see him extend a similar job offer to a mafia heiress named Lu Xiaotang, and he welcomes the both of them into his family under the condition they follow his “no killing” rule. Unfortunately for Sakamoto, the underworld has no intention of letting him live quietly, and all kinds of assassins are now looking to claim the massive bounty on his head.

It's a pretty good set-up for an action-comedy, and so far I'd say it's handling the comedy side of that equation pretty well. The comedic timing throughout these first two episodes is pretty solid and the show does a good job of nailing little gags like all the ways Shin imagines Sakamoto killing when trying to read his thoughts, or Sakamoto's visible panic at the thought of Aoi divorcing him if he kills people. I also like what I've heard of the dub so far. I was a little worried when I saw how much the announced dub cast were stars from live-action properties, since those talents don't always translate well into voice acting, but Dallas Liu does a good job of making Shin come off as pretty earnest, and helped me buy into Shin deciding to leave his old life behind to live with Sakamoto's family. Matthew Mercer, on the other hand, is certainly no stranger to anime work, and he does great at showcasing Sakamoto's no-nonsense attitude towards Shin and making their dynamic consistently funny. I'm a bit more mixed on Rosalie Chiang as Xiaotang, as she sounds a bit more stilted compared to the rest of the main cast, but she does a decent job with the scenes where Xiaotang gets lost in the memory of her parents, so she might grow into it a bit more in the coming episodes. I also appreciate the dub softening some of the fat jokes about Sakamoto, as that's easily one of the weakest components of the early part of the story, and while that's not totally absent, it's a bit more tolerable. I'll have to reserve some judgement until we hear more of the cast, but at the moment it seems like it'll be pretty solid

But I imagine it's the action part of this action-comedy that you're all here to judge, and when it comes to that part of the show…I'm kinda of two minds on it. In the months between the anime's announcements and its airing, there's been some controversy among fans for having such a hotly anticipated shonen action title being given to a less action focused studio like TMS as opposed to, say, Madhouse or MAPPA, and the footage from the early trailers didn't seem particularly inspiring. As a casual fan of the manga, I can't say I wasn't a little worried about what we were gonna get here, but so far the results seem…more or less fine. Not super impressive, but certainly not anything I'd consider an active trainwreck. Masaki Watanabe may not exactly be a high profile anime director, but he's been around for a long time, and that experience shows. The action sequences in these do a good job of visually portraying how cartoon-like of a superhuman Sakamoto is, and whether its him deflecting a bullet with a piece of candy or overwhelming a bunch of goons with his insane levels of agility, he always comes off as an unstoppable force of nature. While the animation on display isn't very fluid, all of the action flows pretty well and the show manages to make up for any animation deficiencies through some clever editing and cool impact frames.

Of course, when compared to other recent high-profile Jump adaptations like Jujutsu Kaisen or Kaiju No. 8, the difference is pretty notable, and I sympathize with fans who are upset that this didn't get the same level of treatment with its production. At the same time, though, I'd be lying if I said I didn't also have mixed feelings on the recent trend towards high profile battle shonen adaptations, as they haven't been free of problems either, whether it be with pacing, or crunching animators on nightmarish production schedules. Between the trailers showcasing plenty of footage from later episodes, and the fact that this has a same-day simuldub, it's at least safe to say that the show is on track with its production, and likely isn't being crunched out, so if it's between something like this, or getting something gorgeous, but so poorly scheduled that the animators are drawing their studio getting destroyed, I'd kinda consider this the lesser of two evils. Plus if I'm being honest, having grown up on popular shonen adaptations with far more middling productions than what we've gotten in recent years, this is at least a couple of notches above those, so while this certainly could look better, I don't think it'll have too big of an impact on the show's overall popularity. I'll fully admit I might feel a lot more judgemental if the manga were higher up on my list of Jump favorites, and if the production does start visibly melting, I certainly won't hesitate to complain about it, but until then, I'd rather avoid judging this too much on what it isn't.

Getting all that out of the way, though, I had a pretty fun time with these first two episodes. It was pretty neat to revisit the more comedy centered parts of this story, and I like the whole found family dynamic between Sakamoto and his wards. It's also done a pretty good job of presenting Sakamoto as a likeable lead, as beneath his gruff exterior, he's a guy who looks out for the people around him, and we see that with how he doesn't hesitate to help Shin and Xiaotang, even after the former tried to kill him. Since those elements are pretty key to what makes this series work, I'm glad to see that it was left intact here, and hopefully we'll see that same spirit maintained as things start escalating. I'm definitely curious to how well this adaptation manages to handle the story's slow transition into becoming more action focused, but for the moment it seems to be handling that side of things well enough that while I wouldn't say I'm super impressed, I'm at least having a good time with it. This might not be a blockbuster adaptation, but it seems like it'll at least be a solid one, and if it can manage to hold steady, then I'm hopeful that both fans and newcomers will manage to have fun with it.

Rating: