Sakamoto Days

The name Tarou Sakamoto once instilled fear in every villain. No other professional hitman matched his prowess, and fellow assassins revered him. However, Sakamoto fell in love. In five short years, he married, became a father, put on some weight, and traded his weapons for an apron as he became the owner of a humble convenience store.

Although Sakamoto is decidedly retired, he finds his old life of crime hard to shake off. His former partner, Shin Asakura, reappears and resolves to stay with Sakamoto's family under their strict no-kill rule. To make matters worse, a large bounty is placed on Sakamoto's head. Numerous assassins now pursue him—but they are in for a surprise. Sakamoto has not lost his edge, and no matter what tricks his enemies pull, he will fight off every last one to protect his dear family.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Sakamoto, Tarou Main

Sugita, Tomokazu Japanese

Asakura, Shin Main

Shimazaki, Nobunaga Japanese

Nagumo, Yoichi Supporting

Hanae, Natsuki Japanese

Osaragi Supporting

Hayami, Saori Japanese

Takamura Supporting

Ootsuka, Houchuu Japanese

Mashimo, Heisuke Supporting

Suzuki, Ryouta Japanese

Shishiba Supporting

Yashiro, Taku Japanese

Uzuki, Kei Supporting

Namikawa, Daisuke Japanese

Lu, Shaotang Supporting

Sakura, Ayane Japanese

Seba, Natsuki Supporting

Okamoto, Nobuhiko Japanese

Watanabe, Masaki Director

Aketagawa, Jin Sound Director

Vaundy Theme Song Composition, Theme Song Performance, Theme Song Lyrics

Conton Candy Theme Song Performance

Reviews

Mar 15, 2025

Stark700

Recommended

Sakamoto Days evokes a feeling of familiarity, back in a time when anime felt more old school with cartoonish humor. It ditches trashy fan service in exchange for a blend of engaging adult cast and mature setting. Despite that, Sakamoto Days both takes itself seriously and have fun with what it brings to us.

Outside of his participation related to One Piece and other one-shots, Sakamoto Day to date is Yuuto Suzuki's most known work. What started back in 2020 became a sensation as we follow the everyday life of Taro Sakamoto. As a retired hitman with a reserved personality, Sakamoto is protrayed as a fat ... man in stereotypical fashion of having the 'Dad Bod'. This is exmplified to show that he has ditched his former life as a hitman in favor of raising a family with his wife Aoi. It's not soon after that hitmen from his previous life puts his family in danger where Sakamoto has to rely on his skills to protect what he loves.

Drawing from influences such as the John Wick franchise, Sakamoto Days' story typically revolves around Sakamoto's daily life, his family, and friends. When imminent danger is absent, the anime can feel like a sitcom. The colorful cast adds flavor to this show with its diverse range of personalities. I confess to say that among its cast, the character chemistry feels natural and flourishes through their conversations and weekly segments. While Sakamoto himself is a man of few words, others such as Shin, Aoi, and Shaotang brings out the best out of him and each other. Shin Asakura is especially important to pay attention with his status of an ex-hitman. As someone who is loyal and confident, he remains an important ally and friend to Sakamoto. The term of loyalty also symbolizes the relationship between Sakamoto and his wife Aoi. Through background storytelling, we learn why Sakamoto quit being a hitman and settled down with a humble family. Make no mistake however, as Aoi herself is a strong willed woman who isn't afraid to take risks. Despite having different personalities, the two are fated seems to be with each other.

Even with its weekly sitcom segments, this anime does have an overall plot. It fundamentally tells how Sakamoto lives his life while we see events from the underworld and gangs. The contrasting protrayal of his character going from an obese man to a will-fit hitman is a recurring plot element used throughout the story. It also cleverly mixes in lighthearted moments of humor while adapting shocking violence, done just right. It doesn't explicity glorify violence to stay in touch with gang and hitman related themes. It respects its plot themes while always focusing on Sakamoto's double life. The maindraw back of this season is its attempt to stay consistent. By that means, there are over 200+ ongoing chapters and one season of 11 episodes is far from reaching its full potential. This adaptation only touches the tip of the iceberg and fundmentally adapts the overall tone of the series. Luckily, we do have another cour already announced and through this franchises' popularity, we should expect more.

On the technical front, Sakamoto Day adapts a stylish way of action sequences and fast paced combat. At times, it looks like a comic book coming to life when flipping its pages. Rather than giving characters powers, characters fight with superhuman-like movements. Sakamoto's transition is the most fascinating as if he's built like a lab experiment. Indeed, the early episodes of this series especially impresses with its battle chereography. The layers of body movements and expressions captures the beauty of this show.

It's the perfect storm for a show with an adult cast featuring our title character Sakamoto. There's no one better to protray him and when we watch carefully, his life is quite normal outside of the hitman shenanigans. Anime like this often takes a more mature approach at storytelling but this show keeps it light and simple. It really can be enjoyable when you know what you see.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Mar 15, 2025

Supersonic_Pain

Mixed Feelings

The tone is just completely off for me

I've heard the manga praised consistently for having cool fights and choreography but honestly, I can't take the fights seriously.

It's like Spy x Family if it wasn't funny, cute, and it was instead filled with nominally cool fights that do absolutely nothing for me

It's this hitman show but nobody dies from anything unless they're disposable baddies killed by DA Order or *checks notes* Slur? Are you fucking kidding me? Your main bad guy is named after demeaning epithets?

Sakamoto goes "oh, I can't kill anyone because my wife made me promise" because blah blah, everyone has a family/someone who'll ... grieve for them and, like, bro, you're a hitman. If you're just killing a politician, that's one thing (technically, you could argue depending on their policies, they are killing people, but for simplicity's sake, I'll just say it's not like they're actively shooting people) but you're fighting people in this show that have no qualms murdering people, throwing bombs at them, trying to kill YOU.

And not only that but Sakamoto does so much shit that should kill people but because it's this kiddy gag manga, nobody dies. He drops an entire refrigerator on someone and they're just fine. People jump like 50 feet in the air and skydive onto roller coasters and they're perfectly fine. Someone is punched from the ground to the top of a ferris wheel and it's fine and dandy. Sakamoto tanks a faceful of bombs and sniper rifle shots (which doesn't even go into how the sniper has such good bullets and aim, he can use ricocheting bullets to cover the entire city and yet not hit any bystanders) and not much happens as a result.

It makes all the fights have little to no stakes when you can take any wound and shrug it off like "lol, guess I'm gonna have to buy some pain ointment at the store later".

I get that pretty much every battle shonen has people taking hits that'd normally kill them but they either 1. Take extended breaks to heal or 2. have such supernatually powered bodies, it makes sense for them to do that stuff. If you're firing laser beams out of your sword against a guy who can summon a million tiny swords, I'm a bit more inclined to give you slack when you tank a couple sword slashes.

Sakamoto Days leans too far into the gag manga realm for me to take its battle shonen fights seriously.

Sakamoto even goes back to his thin form for a couple of fights and, like, WHY? Isn't the whole point of having a tubby fatass as your MC that it's comedic to see him kick ass in that form? Why are you giving him his badass form back? How does that even work? Does his body know to just melt off the fat whenever he's ~serious~? It seems he just rapidly gains the weight back after but how is he losing the weight? Wouldn't that be hell on his body to rapidly lose and then gain weight anyway?

I guess this is a good time to bring up the animation. I personally didn't really have that big of a problem with it usually (although some shots, like when Sakamoto uses pool balls to attack the enemy, it's not all that impressive when they skimp out on actually showing the ricocheting of the balls, it's just kind of pictures with the path outlined) but it's not Demon Slayer or JJK or even the level of some of the lower level shonen like Undead Unluck (not that David Pro didn't cook with that series but it unfortunately did not catch on as much as Demon Slayer or JJK).

The characters are kind of boring. I don't have much to say about Sakamoto or Shin (except, again, the tone. Why is Shin, like, the only supernatural person in the show? There's, like, a human weapon and a guy who basically has Flash Step and really good impersonation skills but Shin is the only one who has like explicit superpowers), Lu Shaotang's just annoying, and... I actually kind of liked Heisuke but he doesn't get nearly as much to do and for some reason, they don't give him a job at Sakamoto's? Like what did he do to not deserve a job?

The villains are weird. We see 4 at the end and their names are, like, Dump, Saw, Apart, and Minimalist. There's a guy named Boiled (with an admittedly cool weapon but an AWFUL gimmick, I hated how he acted in the show), as mentioned before, the main villain is named SLUR. There's a guy dressed as a reindeer but he just takes the mask off when he has to fight so he can be a patchwork weapon so... um... hooray for randomness?

Osaragi has a cool design but she didn't do much during the season so whatever.

I mentioned it up above but it's just not a very funny anime. I get the sense that it's supposed to be funny but it's not. There's a recurring joke about Sakamoto killing Shin in his mind and Shin reading Sakamoto's mind and going, every single time, "why are you killing me in your mind?" Yup, we got it the first time. Not to mention it just makes Sakamoto look like a psychopath. That's supposed to be your ally/friend, why ARE you killing him in your mind repeatedly?

Even the "intelligent" fight where they aren't actually fighting, it's solved through shitty comedy and how Sakamoto plays the game of old maid is what ultimately brought this show down from a 6 to a 5 because it put a sour taste in my mouth. How the fuck do 2 grown hitmen not know how to play poker anyway?

Speaking of which, I've been pretty negative, why does it have a 5?

I mean, if you can ignore the blatant suspension of disbelief, the fights are okay. I couldn't get into them but I guess I can see why some people would enjoy it. I liked Heisuke. The music was decent, the OP's kind of a bop. It didn't actively disgust or offend me. It's just not a very good anime.

In a world where you can easily pick up and find good battle shonen, I don't really see a reason why you'd pick this one unless you were fiending for new content or trying to impress your dad who's never seen an anime in their life and calls them cartoons.

I gave it a Mixed Feelings because if you don't think too hard about it, you'll probably enjoy it more than I did, but I just cannot take this show seriously (but I also can't find it funny) and it kind of ruined my enjoyment of it.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Mar 24, 2025

eyedek666

Not Recommended

Sakamoto Days is the textbook definition of a just-below-average show. Not offensively bad, but near everything it could be praised for has been done better by other anime and it will be largely forgotten once a few years are behind it. This wouldn't be such a problem if not for the immense online hype surrounding this adaption that convinced me to give it a watch in the first place. I sat down expecting a top-tier action-comedy with amazing fight scenes, which made the mediocre product I received that much more disappointing. Indeed, I kept watching weekly with a gradually diminishing hope that I would eventually ... see what was so great about Sakamoto.

The plot is nothing we haven't seen before: "hardened assassin has to balance their dark past with domestic life and defending their family". Sakamoto Days doesn't do anything particularly interesting with this concept, other than Sakamoto involving two other sidekicks who are aware of his origins and abilities, one of whom can read minds. The episodes are, well, episodic, and most of the smaller story arcs can be arranged in any order without any real consequence. The "serious" episodes feel low stakes and forced, and like they don't have any real consequences that affect the main cast. Anime like Spy x Family and even Way of the Househusband have executed this concept far better (WotH had at least a clear idea of what type of show it was and what it was trying to do).

The animation is probably the biggest letdown here. Nothing stood out to me as bad, and there were some cool moments, but it wasn't anything to write home about either, which is a major issue for a property whose main draw is the fight sequences. Also, the artstyle overall felt a little "off", for a reason I can't put my finger on.

The characters are likable but archetypal and don't have any real depth to them. We don't have any real reason to care about these characters or their motivations until we get a backstory exposition dump shoehorned in. Speaking of motivations, the characters are so nebulously defined that I finished the anime only yesterday and have already forgotten what the key motivation of each character outside of Sakamoto is (protecting his family). Character designs are fine, I like Sakamoto's face and Lu's hair in particular, but they're nothing special. I also should note that I watched it in English, and while the voice acting is good in general, I found Lu's English voice to be somewhat annoying.

In genera, while Sakamoto Days has its moments and isn't totally devoid of good things to talk about, it is ultimately an incredibly mediocre anime and I can't honestly recommend it to a general audience. Your time is probably best spent watching one of the many other action-comedy shows that do their job much better.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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	Poll: Sakamoto Days Episode 11 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 ) IzanaSolos - Mar 15	168 replies	by DripCat »» Yesterday, 7:48 AM
	Poll: Sakamoto Days Episode 1 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ... Last Page ) IzanaSolos - Jan 4	306 replies	by SouthRzVa »» Apr 11, 9:51 PM
	Poll: Sakamoto Days Episode 6 Discussion ( 1 2 3 ) IzanaSolos - Feb 8	108 replies	by ad0rablegoat »» Apr 11, 7:40 PM
	Sakamoto days should be canceled and get a remake. ( 1 2 3 ) izanami204 - Feb 25	130 replies	by MV_Silva »» Apr 10, 8:29 PM
	Poll: Sakamoto Days Episode 10 Discussion ( 1 2 ) IzanaSolos - Mar 8	84 replies	by terebitosan »» Apr 10, 7:46 AM