AKA: サカモトデイズ

Genre: Action/Comedy

Length: Television series, 11 episodes, 23 minutes each

Distributor: Currently available streaming on Netflix.

Content Rating: TV-MA (Violence, mature situations.)

Related Series: N/A

Also Recommended: Spy x Family

Notes: Based on manga by Yuto Suzuki, Tetsu Okawa, and Renka Misaki, published by Shueisha

Rating:

Sakamoto Days

Synopsis

Taro Sakamoto was once the best hitman of all time, but he has become a rotund family man (with a wife and a 6-year-old daughter) running a convenience store. However, he suddenly finds himself with a high price on his own head. Fortunately, his fighting skills have diminished little- and he's got a couple of youngsters to help out, too.

Review

While Orb was, in my opinion, the most profound and admirable anime of Winter 2025, this one I found the most FUN.

I wondered if there was some connection between this and Haven't You Heard? I'm Sakamoto, since both shows have a leading character of that name who can effortlessly (and usually impossibly) avoid injury by anyone else, AND bring their opponents around to actually supporting THEM. (Some here even become employees at Sakamoto's convenience store.) But the shows don't share anything beyond the lead's name and his outrageous physical prowess.

The show's breezy, over-the-top violence, and eccentric assassins now targeting Sakamoto, get played for laughs and thrills (one story arc takes place in an amusement park.) It can handle this with a light touch because, on the ONE hand, nobody can seem to damage Sakamoto, despite his current appearance (sometimes he somehow spontaneously reverts to his youthful, fit appearance-not sure how that works); while on the OTHER hand, Sakamoto promised his wife, as her condition for marrying him, that he would never kill another person. (In one episode, during a road chase, Sakamoto sends the bad guys' vehicles crashing into a retaining wall (and erupting in fiery explosions), but we'll have to take the show's word that Sakamoto kept his promise and, somehow, didn't actually KILL them, however likely THAT seems.) The pacing, the playing of the violence for laughs, and having a mind-reading character, reminded me of Spy x Family, so I've made that the Rec.

The first of the new sidekicks that Sakamoto acquires is Shin Asakura, AKA Shin the Psychic, a young hitman who's also a telepath, due to an accident in the lab where he grew up. (We'll get a story arc visiting the place, and explaining his backstory in detail.) Unlike Sakamoto, Shin can't seem to dodge everything (despite being able to read the bad guys' minds), but he's durable enough to somehow survive being poisoned and stabbed. I felt sorry for the abuse the guy endures- even if he WAS originally interested in taking out Sakamoto himself for the payout. Sakamoto becomes kind of a father figure for him- a father figure who keeps his "son" in line by imagining killing him. (He knows Shin can receive that message loud and clear, without a word being spoken.) The two often have to combine Shin's telepathy with fighting cues from Sakamoto.

Sakamoto and Shin then add another youngster to their team (and to the convenience store staff), a girl named Lu Xiaotang. Lu's the heiress to a Chinese mafioso, and we'll later find out that another member of that gang has a longstanding crush on her. (Following Shin's arc, we begin one for her.) Lu seems pretty casual and laidback; though she and Shin do quarrel, we also discover that she has some genuine affection for him.

Then there are the other assassins- some who reconcile with Sakamoto, some still enemies. Apparently, many are alumni of the same assassination school that Sakamoto attended, where he was the top student. (He was also popular with the ladies: "I had to turn down girls from the Poisons Department", he says, which itself proves his bravery.) My favorite of the hitmen trying to take down Sakamoto was Heisuke Mashimo, who becomes a supporter of Sakamoto in spite of the embarrassing ending to his own attempt to take Sakamoto down. He's chronically broke, despite being such a skilled sniper that he can take out targets with ricochets as well as with direct shots. He keeps a parrot, and prioritizes feeding the bird over securing his own meals.

A latecomer assassin that I liked is named Osaragi. The Wiki article on the show describes her as "childish, mischievous, often fretful, and rather gullible", which makes her sound like Spy x Family's Anya, but that's not the impression I had: I found her a Goth-dressing kuudere who, admittedly, gets a strange sudden crush on Sakamoto- the current Sakamoto, whom she likens to a teddy bear. (Sakamoto might have actually FOUGHT bears at one time- he says that he was "trained in human-animal combat." Nothing like a thorough education in your field, of course.)

The show does end in the middle of an arc, but not to worry; Season Two is already scheduled for Summer 2025. I'll be there.

Quite a colorful cast of killers (though they're only WOULD-BE killers, when up against Sakamoto.) I genuinely liked Shin, and really hope that he and Lu become a couple; he needs SOMETHING to recompense him for so often being the fall guy here. — Allen Moody

Recommended Audience: Neflix says TV-MA, for "gore, smoking, violence." There's certainly a lot of violence; I guess for gore they mean some hitmen who've done some unspeakable things to their OWN bodies, to become more capable assassins.