Score: 4/5
“Sakamoto Days” is a new action anime that follows Taro Sakamoto, voiced by Tomokazu Sugita, who used to be a legendary hitman. However, he falls in love with Aoi Sakamoto, voiced by Nao Toyama, and now works at a convenience store and has forsaken his life of crime in some ways. The first episode was released on Jan. 11, with weekly episodes available to stream on Netflix.
In the first three episodes, “Sakamoto Days” portrays jaw-dropping action, with Sakamoto using cough drops as projectiles or even pencils as weapons, like in the John Wick franchise. Overall, the theme of action surrounding the show is the main reason to watch it.
The show also includes many humorous moments, sometimes even during action scenes, with one of the common ones being Sakamoto imagining killing Shin Asakura, voiced by Nobunaga Shimazaki, a mind reader, but not going through with anything.
Overall, the animation for “Sakamoto Days” stands out, with each scene being vibrant in coloring and dynamic in the action scenes. The character designs are adapted faithfully from the manga, and the show goes above and beyond when adapting the action scenes. In some of these scenes, the show employs effects from light and dust particles and even has more detailed backgrounds in comparison to the manga’s less action-oriented scenes.
The music for all of the action scenes, and in general, is also extremely well done. The music also blends into the action scenes to the point where viewers may not even recognize it playing.
However, the show isn’t perfect. One of the issues with “Sakamoto Days,” and probably any show in the same genre, is setting up proper stakes throughout the show and ensuring that the viewer gets some emotional impact aside from the humor and action scenes. The show did a good job of this in episodes one and three, where the reader can visibly see Shin’s mentality and emotions beyond just a gag.
However, in episode two, when a character should’ve been enraged because she just found someone who killed many people close to her, the show simply portrayed the character as calm and composed. Instead of showing her emotional turmoil, the directors included all of the damage offscreen. Although “Sakamoto Days” is, at its core, an action and comedy show, I think that the audience should’ve been shown the development of the characters instead of just cutting it offscreen.
Another issue, albeit less important, is that the show almost completely cuts chapters two and three of the manga. This isn’t as big of a deal because these two chapters didn’t add as much content and the anime made sure to smoothly introduce some details in those chapters by moving around content from other chapters. However, it still takes away from the source material that the manga medium had to offer.
Overall, “Sakamoto Days” is a very good show to watch if you are fine with having less of a plot-based show and just going along with the flow of it. Its action is very dynamic and fun, but if you are looking for a lot of emotional depth in the characters, this might not be the show for you.