I am burned out after writing all three episode reviews in one day. So, you’ll have to do without a polite or interesting introduction paragrah this time, lol.
Article Contents:
Episode 2: Vs. Son Hee and Bacho
Episode Rating: 7/10
This episode mainly served as a secondary introduction installment. A new main character – Lu Shaotang – was introduced. She has a cute and cool design that includes a long, red braid and an awesome pink-and-white jacket. Lu Shaotang showed some impressive martial arts skills, but her talent and strength seem to be lower than Shin. I feel a bit disappointed that she isn’t as OP as the two men. Maybe I’ll assume it’s because she’s so young rather than the more unpleasant assumption of sexism.
We also learned about the Sakamoto family rule in this installment. Years ago, when Sakamoto was dating Aoi, she found out he was a hitman and convinced him to quit. Aoi was a strange girl who decided to endanger her own life to prove a point. She jumped off a high overlook and was saved by a cushion of snow and Sakamoto’s protection as he jumped after her and caught her in the air.
When the snow settled, Aoi said that everyone has someone who loves them and wants to save them – including the people Sakamoto killed. Nobody wants to lose their loved ones. Thanks to this lesson, Sakamoto took Aoi’s point seriously and changed his ways. It’s now the rule that nobody in the family can kill anyone for any reason. Shin also adopts this rule by the end of the episode.
Sakamoto and Shin decided to help Lu Shaotang with her trouble. She was being hunted by two assassins: freaky twin brothers named Son Hee and Bacho. They were fairly humorous and cool in design. They were also a bit harder to defeat than previous thugs, but still easy enough for Sakamoto, who beat them senseless with iron cooking pans. Once they were defeated, Lu Shaotang thrashed the person who sent them – a cowardly little man who was also responsible for killing her parents.
In the end, Lu Shaotang decided to quit the mafia and started working at the Sakamoto’s convenience store. Little does Sakamoto know that a huge bounty has now been placed on his head. The reward for killing him is 1 billion yen (or 6.6 million USD). This bounty was decided by the JAA – Japanese Assassination Association – a fictional underground organization full of the country’s best killers. To be continued.
Episode 3: Welcome to Sugar Park
Episode Rating: 9/10
This episode had outstanding action scenes. TMS Entertainment – the studio for Sakamoto Days – is really outdoing itself. The music was also terrific. The composer is Yuuki Hayashi, who famously wrote the soundtracks for Haikyuu and My Hero Academia. He also did the music for Kiznaiver and Death Parade, shows that I enjoy more than the mainstream entries. Anyway, it definitely seemed like Shin was the main character of this episode since he got all the cool action sequences.
At the start of the episode, we met Yoichi Nagumo, a young man from the group that put a bounty on Sakamoto’s head. Though cheerful, Nagumo is a strange and scary assassin with the ability to look like other people. It isn’t clear if he’s friend or foe to Sakamoto, but either way, he did inform Sakamoto about the 1 billion yen bounty. A pizza-themed assassin tried to attack during this scene, but Nagumo quickly defeated him.
(Side Note: Nagumo’s VA, Natsuki Hanae, is forever stuck in my mind as the voice of Kaneki from Tokyo Ghoul, despite his more famous role of Tanjiro in Demon Slayer.)
Now let’s get on to the main part of this episode. It’s Sakamoto’s day off, so the family planned a trip to an amusement park called Sugar Park. The place also has a cringe mascot of a pink bunny with blue hair named Sugar Rabbit. It’s currently what little Hana is obsessed with. Shin and Shaotang accompany the family, trying to protect Sakamoto from assassination attempts on his rare day off.
Tatsu, an assassin with silver hair and awesome punk style, was planning to kill Sakamoto that day. He was a skilled killer who used poison knives, small guns, and CQC. By essentially turning off his thoughts, he avoided being detected by Shin’s mind-reading until they were all on the rollercoaster. Then Shin realized what was happening and leaped into action. He fought an amazingly cool anime battle on the rollercoaster track, duking it out with Tatsu. However, the enemy managed to scratch Shin with a poisoned knife, and he was losing the fight.
Shin and Tatsu crashed down into a stage where the park was putting on a show for the children. It was the kind of show where the mascot, Sugar Rabbit, would win a staged fight with a sentai-esque villain. Shin put on the Sugar Rabbit outfit and started fighting Tatsu in front of the crowd. Sakamoto was also in the audience section. The poison clouded Shin’s eyes, making him temporarily blind. But he won the fight by reading Sakamoto’s mind to know what fighting moves to use. What a fun episode!
Episode 4: Hard-Boiled
Episode Rating: 7/10
The Sugar Park arc continued as Sakamoto and Lu Shaotang gave the poison antidote to Shin. They released Tatsu after confiscating his poisonous knives. As the Sakamoto family kept having fun, Shin and Lu Shaotang tried to prevent Aoi and Hana from noticing what was happening. After lunch and more rides, the group entered a haunted house. Shaotang was afraid of the creepy costumes and jump-scares, so she drank “medicine for her nerves.” More on that later.
The two main enemies in this episode were a woman named Obiguro and her male partner, Boiled. I love Obiguro’s character design and sense of style. She and Boiled have a weird character dynamic that I’m not sure if I like. Obiguro was secretly crushing on Boiled, but she was also constantly being startled and alarmed by his loud outbursts. Boiled was a very sweet, sincere person when he wasn’t literally killing someone. Most of what he said to Obiguro was cute and harmless.
Notice how I used the word “most” in the previous sentence. There was one thing that annoyed me slightly, however, since it’s a prime example of casual misogyny. When Obiguro asked for some kind of input from her partner, Boiled said she shouldn’t sit with her legs apart because she was a fine young lady. Yikes. Instead of being put off by the creepy comment, Obiguro acted happy and flattered to be called a young lady. Somebody should tell these (undoubtedly male) writers that most women don’t react kindly to men invoking purity culture.
Getting back to the story, there was a special reason why Boiled took this job. He had a romantic attachment to Sakamoto when they were both delinquents in highschool. Boiled was under the impression that he and Sakamoto were “two of a kind” and completely inseparable. However, Sakamoto wasn’t attached at all. He claimed to not even know who Boiled was at one point. Because of that stupid highschool drama, Boiled now hates Sakamoto and wants to kill him. Talk about psychotic.
Sakamoto had no trouble defeating the amateur assassins in the haunted house, but they were just a distraction from the greater danger coming soon. Boiled isolated Sakamoto from his family and beat him nearly to a pulp. Meanwhile, Aoi and Hana were rendered unconscious and captured by Obiguro. She also captured Shin and tied him down. If Lu Shaotang can’t defeat Obiguro, then she and Shin are both toast.
Unfortunately, even if Lu Shaotang had been capable normally, she was now thoroughly drunk. The “medicine” was straight alcohol. Drunk Shaotang was adorable, but she’s also literally eighteen, and yet clearly used to carrying around flasks of “medicine for nerves.” Alcohol addiction in early adulthood is a slightly dark joke, but fairly normal for an action-comedy like Sakamoto Days. It’s not really problematic at this point.
Going back to Sakamoto, he finally remembered Boiled from highschool. Rising from the dust of his defeat, Sakamoto challenged Boiled with new vigor. He was ready to go all-out to protect his family. To make it dramatic and heroic, the animators made Sakamoto look much different than usual – the most noticeable difference being that he is no longer overweight and has a defined jawline.
I know this isn’t supposed to be taken literally. He didn’t just drop those pounds right then. It was a symbolic way to say that Sakamoto was serious. But that’s pretty lame, since it implies that overweight people are funny and not serious by default. This episode left me with a bit of a sour taste, but not enough to make me give up the show. I have the time right now, and I still enjoy several aspects of the anime. Anyway, that’s all for today.
~Thanks for reading~
Written by 7Mononoke at Anime Rants
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