Sakamoto Days Season 1

Assassination comedy Sakamoto Days has seen some moderate popularity since it started airing on Netflix, and my initial impressions of the show were largely positive - the idea of a world class killer retiring for love and putting on a Dad-bod has plenty of legs, especially when his old life intrudes and drags him back into the world he left behind. 

As the show progressed, more oddballs arrived at the store following psychic assassin Shin - the show takes on an "assassin of the week" format with new challengers with their own skills and motivations arriving to claim the reward on Taro Sakamoto's head. In this it works well enough, thankfully layering in a background plot of a sinister group working in the shadows to their own ends, but while each episodes was entertaining enough, it never quite felt that it had quite enough meat on the bone (ironic considering the lead) to really make it essential viewing.

There's a lot of love for Sakamoto himself, his ability to use his excess calories in battle (which returns him to his thinner state) has seen a lot of people have their cake and eat it - the hefty cuddle-bear and Shonen heart-throb in one package. Being a man of few words also helps retain an element of cool, so generally I enjoyed seeing how he would next use an everyday object to cause mayhem on the battlefield. It's this inventiveness that makes the show worth watching, though it's nothing Trigun wasn't doing years ago as Vash similarly hid his true talents from his enemies.

All that said, it's a typical Shonen that does enough to please the target audience without ever standing out as something special. For a show about assassination there's very little actual death, and while that is a plot point on the part of Sakamoto, I was rarely worried about his safety given his superior skillset. More upsetting was that none of his challengers ever seemed like much of a threat either. Sure, they all talk a big game, but almost all of them are defeated and sent packing in a single episode. It's that missing element of danger that makes the whole experience a bit hollow. Generally speaking, shows like Spy X Family, which also play on spying and assassination themes complicated by family, had enough going on for all the characters to add drama to the humorous setup. Anya has her educational mission while Loid and Yor develop their relationship without realising the true nature of the other. Sakamato on the other hand just has people after him.

I do like Sakamoto's family, his daughter Hana is delightful and his wife Aoi is forceful in her own way, so their dynamic is fun to watch. But so far they're just an Achilles heel to dance around and provide some comedy. Shin and Lu have their own backstories but feel resolved within these 11 episodes.

Shin (right) and Lu (left) add a youthful energy to the show, but their arcs feel complete in 11 episodes

I know from research that things will get more sinister as time goes by, but I have to judge the show so far on its own merits. To this end it's a breezy shonen with inventive battles and powers that feel like a take-away - fun but forgettable. The animation by TMS is fine but not special, with everything sharp but unremarkable. Hell, I had to rewatch the last 10 minutes of the final episode to remind myself how it ended (with a new bunch of death row killers conscripted for their specific set of skills ready for season 2)  even though I watched it four days ago. So for me at least, I'll probably have to watch a recap before we visit the Sakamoto store again.

As it stands, it's a fun way to pass the time on streaming, but I'll probably skip the home release.

Sakamoto Days is streaming on Netflix.