Taro Sakamoto (Tomokazu Sugita) was untouchable. We see him kill a group of guys, deflecting bullets with his cane, dodging swords, zigzagging like a ghost, leaving people hanging by their necks from the rafters, splattering blood all over Hell, and disappearing. He was tall and slender, with a ponytail and mirrored glasses, which is probably why Aoi (Nao Toyama) was drawn to him. This being one of those anime that employs hyperbole like Gru with the Minions, Sakamoto's eyes pop out of their sockets and shoot to the moon when he sees Aoi for the first time. He gives up on life, gets married, has a daughter named Hana (Hina Kino), opens a 7-Eleven-style convenience store, and quickly spirals into obesity. I'd say he seems happy, but he doesn't say much or give it away with a facial expression. He's all glasses and a broomstick mustache.
That's not to say his assassination skills are ruined. Far from it. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. At this point, we meet Shin the Clairvoyant (Nobunaga Shimazaki), a former colleague of Sakamoto's, and yes, he's telepathic, which tells us that the "realistic" setting is peppered with fantastical elements. Anyway, Shin has been searching for Sakamoto, at the behest of his boss, who happens to be Sakamoto's former boss. The boss doesn't look kindly on guys who crack the code and leave The Life without dying first, so he wants Sakamoto dead, and Shin is the one to do it. And as the wise man said, if only it were that easy.
Creator: Yuto Suzuki
Stars: Tomokazu Sugita, Nobunaga Shimazaki, Rosie Okumura
Shin quickly learns that Sakamoto, despite his bulk, can beat him in hand-to-hand combat. In fact, he beats Shin so badly that he wakes up and ends up having dinner with Sakamoto and his family. Aoi is an excellent cook, and just the night before, Shin was eating packaged junk food in his lonely apartment. This life doesn't seem so bad, does it? Shin returns to the boss, who isn't happy to learn that Sakamoto isn't a corpse yet, and is about to murder him for his failures, when Sakamoto bursts in and does his thing. He hasn't lost his mind. Not at all. At least not yet, apparently. Not bad for a sedentary, hardened ramen-eater.
After one episode, Sakamoto Days is undeniably energetic, fast-paced, zany in tone, and visually appealing. It's also insubstantial and disappointingly conventional, and seems to be setting up a dynamic in which Sakamoto and Shin spend their days dealing with office banalities like selling milk to grumpy commuters, while fending off intrusions from their past lives. I yawn loudly, a thin thread of saliva stretching between my teeth, in the direction of this tired premise.
So far, the emphasis seems to be on action, with three violent, riotous episodes taking up a good portion of these 25 minutes. That doesn't leave much room for story up to this point, which is fine, since there are 10 more episodes after this one, and another one after that, so the opportunity for world-building is there. But the series struggles to engage in the pilot, banking on Sakamoto's gentle, man-of-mystery elements contrasted with Shin's headlong impulsiveness. I'm getting a bit of an Odd Couple vibe, with a touch of extreme cartoon violence, that leaves me indifferent. Perhaps it deserves a couple more episodes before I write it off, but it seems only manga fans will stick with comparing it to the source material.
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