Hello and welcome to the Casual Chat!

Today we are going back to a bit of experimentation with blog types and I’ll be talking about something that I’ve just watched, talk about the premise, and what I feel about that piece of media.

I have decided to start with the first two episodes of an anime that has just recently started airing called Sakamoto Days!

CAUTION: SPOILERS

Episode One

The first episode of the show opens up with our titular character, Taro Sakamoto, going through a building and systematically killing a bunch of gangsters, while narration talks about how Sakamoto is the best hitman in the world.

That was until one day he met a woman named Aoi, fell in love, gave up the life as a hitman, got married, has a kid named Hana, and opened up a convenience store.

All goes well until a young man by the name of Shin comes by, looking for Sakamoto. Shin is known as “The Clairvoyant”, and it is apparent when he reads Sakamoto’s thoughts as he deals with a man who is about to hit a child.

While Sakamoto had the thought of killing the man, he didn’t go through with it, only stopping the man from hitting the child. Shin is in disbelief of Sakamoto, who has only been out of being a hitman for five years and has already gained quite a bit of weight, and almost doesn’t believe that it is him.

Sakamoto shows that he is still capable, one by cutting Shin’s cigarette to stop him from smoking in front of the store, and by following Sakamoto around the town as he helps people.

Shin leaves, and just as he is gushing how cool Sakamoto still is he gets a phone call from his boss, a member of the yakuza. The boss says that if Sakamoto doesn’t want to come back, then Shin has to kill him.

Shin is hesitant, but the boss says that someone who leaves without telling anyone must be killed and if Shin doesn’t want to do it then he’ll send someone else to do it, and Shin reluctantly takes the job.

However, Sakamoto proves to still be a very capable individual and is able to handle Shin quite easily, knocking him out. As Shin comes to, Sakamoto’s family treat Shin to a hot meal and Shin sees why Sakamoto gave up the hitman life, and that is to be with his family.

Shin leaves, and Sakamoto invites him to come back again. Shin, however reports that he was unable to kill Sakamoto, and offers up his life in exchange for Sakamoto’s. The boss agrees, but Shin reads his mind to hear that he’ll still kill Sakamoto.

Shin then points the gun at the rest of the gang members and begins to take them out. Shin has a strong showing, using his ability to read minds to his advantage. However one lucky shot incapacitates Shin and just as he is about to be shot, Sakamoto comes in to rescue him.

Sakamoto then takes down the gang members, revealing that he knew that Shin was in trouble by bugging Shin’s gun, and then offers a job to Shin which he accepts. Shin shows that he is a capable worker, and Sakamoto threatens Shin to not reveal what he actually is.

Episode Two

The episode begins at the convenience store, and Shin starts to praise Sakamoto for killing the gang members, with Aoi in the vicinity to hear. She asks Sakamoto if he’s gone back to killing people, which he denies, revealing that he took the gang members out nonlethally.

Aoi then reminds Sakamoto that if he does go back to killing and breaks the family rules, she will divorce him, and after another assurance that he won’t kill, Aoi goes along with her day.

Sakamoto and Shin then go to Niikita Chinatown to pick up some supplies and some pork buns for Hana and Aoi, when a young woman by the name of Lu Xiaotang literally drops on them while she is avoiding some men chasing after her.

She handles herself well, but when she does get caught Sakamoto and Shin come to help her out. As more men approach, the three flee as we cut to a man berating a henchmen for letting Lu running away, and after dismissing him another man cuts the henchman’s head off while his brother berates him.

This is Son Hee and Bacho, a pair of serial killer brothers who are assigned to get a key that Lu has to her family’s vault and bring it back to the mob boss, killing whoever stands in their way.

Lu brings Sakamoto and Shin up to speed, and while Lu doesn’t want to get the two involved, Sakamoto says that he and Shin will help in exchange for her making some meat buns.

The trio are jumped by the brothers, knocking Sakamoto away for a moment, and after Shin has a quick exchange with the two, Lu is about to get sliced when Sakamoto comes back and retaliates with enough force to collapse a building’s roof.

As everyone collects themselves, the brothers attempt to taunt Lu into attacking preemptively, but Shin and Sakamoto stop her, while Sakamoto catches a knife to stop it from hitting her.

Lu asks why Sakamoto is helping and we are greeted with a flashback of when Sakamoto was getting a gift for Aoi, but he is covered in blood. Aoi, tired of Sakamoto killing people, decides that she is done with him and jumps off a ledge.

Acting quickly, Sakamoto comes to her rescue, and manages to land the both of them in a snow bank. Aoi explains that this was to show that he would have been sad if she had died, and that people would feel the same way if someone they cared about would be killed.

Aoi then has Sakamoto vow to never kill again, and to make up for the people he has killed, he would help people instead.

Shin is overwhelmed with emotion as he saw the flashback that Sakamoto experienced, and the two fight the brothers. They manage to defeat the two without killing them, and take them to the mob boss.

Lu threatens the boss and beats him up, but doesn’t kill him, saying that if she killed all the people who had wronged her she wouldn’t stop killing people.

She opens her family vault, and after going through some treasures, she finds something that her father left for her. It was some alcohol the two of them would share when she turned of age, and after some happy tears, offers some to Shin and Sakamoto.

The next day the two go back to work, Sakamoto a bit hungover, and Lu arrives shortly after to start making buns for the convenience store. Sakamoto then shares the family rules with the two, with the number one rule being to not kill people.

There is an end credits teaser of some shadowy organization putting up a bounty for Sakamoto for 1 billion yen, which will inevitably be what the show is about going forward.

Positives

I do like the premise of the show. An action comedy of a hitman who is out of the life and wants to be a family man as their former life tries to bring them back in is not the newest premise, but the show runs with the premise well.

The animations is fluid and well done, with the fights easy to read and the character animation being expressive for most characters.

I also like that Shin and Lu are very competent characters. A lot of times in shows like this, the side characters may have one thing they specialize in where they excel at, but need the help of the main character to finish things off.

Shin and Lu both show how capable they are, and while yes Sakamoto does come in to help them when the enemies get a lucky shot in, they very well could have taken care of the situations they were in by themselves.

I also do like that Aoi is very much aware of what Sakamoto was in the past. Normally in a premise like this, the former hitman would do everything in their power to prevent their significant other from learning about their past life as a future plot point to be discovered.

Not only does Aoi know, she is a foundational part of the premise of the show, in that Sakamoto has to deal with being a former hitman by having people try to kill him, but he cannot kill them otherwise Aoi will take Hana and leave.

Critiques

While there was a lot to like about the show, I did have some issues with it that kept me from loving it completely.

One of my main concerns with the show concerns the main character of the show, Sakamoto. He is a quiet, stoic character which is fine for the introduction, but currently there needs to be more.

He is a devoted family man who loves his wife and daughter, occasionally has the thought of killing Shin to get his attention or to stop him from going too far, and he loves to eat. That’s not too much to go off of, but I do think that is something that the show can develop as it goes on.

While I like the opening and ending fine, the rest of the music wasn’t too memorable. The music in the first scene of the show where a younger Sakamoto is killing henchmen reminded me of music from My Hero Academia, and that was very distracting, while no other piece of music really stood out for me.

I can see the running joke of Sakamoto thinking of ways to kill Shin getting stale really quickly, and there were some jokes and gags that didn’t really land with me.

Rating

Overall the show has a decent start and is very interesting, with some nitpicky things keeping me from gushing over the show.

The premise is good and a majority of the characters are interesting, with some room for development for Sakamoto for me to like him as the show goes on.

The animation is solid while the music is average, the dialogue is snappy, and while some of the jokes don’t land there are plenty that do.

Overall: 8/10, solid but could use some slight improvements.

Thank you for reading, hopefully this was something that you all want to see in the future.

Until then, see you next time!

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual

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