Sakamoto Days (now on Netflix) is the continuing saga of a chubby convenience store owner propped up behind a cash register all day slurping ramen – but he used to be the world’s greatest hitman! Imagine that! Wild! A professional killer-turned-mild-mannered shopkeep! A shopkeep with secrets! The hit manga by Yoto Suzuki is now an anime series, with a new episode rolling out on Netflix every Saturday, with more to come in July 2025. We sat down to spend some quality time with the pilot episode, wondering if it’ll hook us or just give us the same old tired just-when-I-thought-I-was-out-they-pull-me-back-in premise.
Opening Shot: Sakamoto’s feet clomp down a tile hallway.
The Gist: Back in the day – five years ago, we’ll eventually learn – Taro Sakamoto (Tomokazu Sugita) was untouchable. We see him kill the life out of a bunch of guys, deflecting bullets with his staff, dodging swords, zipping around like a wraith, leaving guys hanging from the rafters by their necks, spraying blood all over hell and gone. He was tall and svelte with a ponytail and mirrored glasses and that’s probably why Aoi (Nao Toyama) was attracted to him. This being one of those animes that employs hyperbole like Gru does Minions, Sakamoto’s eyes just about shoot out of his head and rocket themselves to the moon when he first sees Aoi. He gives up The Life, gets married, fathers a daughter named Hana (Hina Kino), sets up a 7-Elevenesque shop and quickly carbs himself into near-obesity. I’d say he seems happy, but he doesn’t say much or tip us off with a facial expression. He’s all glasses and a broomy mustache.
That isn’t to say his murderous skills are kaput. Far from it. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. At this point we meet Shin the Clairvoyant (Nobunaga Shimazaki), a former compadre of Sakamoto’s, and yes, he’s telepathic, which tells us the “realistic” setting here is dotted with fantasy elements. Anyway, Shin’s been looking for Sakamoto, at the behest of his boss, who happens to be Sakamoto’s ex-boss. The boss doesn’t take kindly to dudes who break the code and leave The Life without dying first, so he wants Sakamoto dead and Shin’s the guy to do the job. And as the wise man said, if only ’twere so easy.
Shin quickly learns that Sakamoto, despite his girth, can best him in hand-to-hand. In fact, he thoroughly wallops Shin, who wakes up and winds up at the dinner table with Sakamoto and his family. Aoi is an excellent cook and just the night before Shin was eating packaged junk in his lonely apartment. This life doesn’t seem so bad, I guess? Shin goes back to the boss, who isn’t happy to learn that Sakamoto isn’t a corpse yet, and is about to murder Shin for his failures, when Sakamoto bursts in and does his wily thing. He hasn’t lost it. Not at all. At least not yet, it seems. Not so bad for a sedentary serial ramen-slurper.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The OTT visual style and the retired-hitman-who-still-can-kick-ass premise is like Speed Racer crossed with John Wick.
Our Take: One episode in, Sakamoto Days is undeniably energetic, fast-paced, loony in tone and visually appealing. It’s also insubstantial and disappointingly formulaic, and appears to be setting up a dynamic where Sakamoto and Shin spend their days grinding through Clerksish banalities like selling milk to grumpy commuters, while staving off the encroachments of their past lives. I yawn big and loud with a skinny saliva string stretching between my teeth in the general direction of this tired-ass premise.
The emphasis so far seems to be on action, with a trio of rip-roaring violent instances eating up a goodly chunk of these 25 minutes. That doesn’t leave much room for story to this point, which is fine, there’s 10 more episodes to go after this one, and another batch later, so the opportunity to build out the world is there. But the series struggles to set its hook in the pilot, banking on the mild-mannered mystery-man elements of Sakamoto, which contrast with the rash impulsiveness of Shin. I’m feeling an Odd Couple vibe pockmarked with extreme cartoon violence, which leaves me indifferent. Maybe it deserves another episode or two before we dismiss it, but it feels like only fans of the manga will hang on to compare and contrast this with the source material.
Sex and Skin: None so far.
Parting Shot: Business as usual at the Sakamoto Mart, but Shin is now properly smocked and behind the counter with our title hero.
Sleeper Star: I guess Hana is cute? None of these characters leave much of an impression.
Most Pilot-y Line: Narrator: “All evil men feared him. And all hitmen revered him.”
Our Call: Considering the massive bulk of streaming anime at our fingertips, Sakamoto Days struggles to cut through the chaff. SKIP IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
