Shōnen Jump‘s current lineup of manga is in a renaissance of excellent action series such as Kagurabachi, Dandadan, and Chainsaw Man. Despite the competition, Yuto Suzuki’s Sakamoto Days stands out above the rest as a sign of the promising future for the shonen genre. Fans agree, which is why it cracked the top 500 manga on MyAnimeList with over 7 million copies sold.
Sakamoto Days is scheduled to be adapted into an anime on Netflix this January, with a second season in the works. Here are some reasons why the series attracts so many fans.
An Action-Packed Story
Sakamoto Days follows the world’s greatest assassin, Taro Sakamoto, five years after his retirement. In those years, Sakamoto has become a chubby family man running a local mom-and-pop store. Nobody around him knows that Sakamoto had once been the apex of killing, before giving it all up out of love for his family.
However, assassins from his former life begin seeking out the legendary hitman for the equally legendary bounty put on his head. It’s not easy to leave the hitman game. A quietly disgruntled Sakamoto eventually relents and returns to the colorful assassin world to protect his family.
The World of Assassins
Society in Sakamoto Days is chock-full of assassins to a comical degree. Think of heroes in My Hero Academia or ninjas in Naruto, except far more violent. There’s even a publicly accessible university for assassins that comes with mundane perks, despite only 10% of its students graduating alive.
Information on assassins is present in video rental stores, and their exploits are portrayed through cinematic action movies. Scratch-off tickets at street vendors contain cryptic details on the next hit. Some airplanes don’t screen all the firearms and explosives inside of an assassin’s luggage, instead encouraging them to be on board.
Sakamoto Days staunchly follows the “rule of cool:” a scene’s over-the-top entertainment compensates for its frequent skirting around logic and physics. Stopping the Tokyo Tower from falling with a single katana slash is possible!
A Colorful Cast of Killers
Sakamoto, a plump man effortlessly pulling off incredible athletic feats and destroying hardened killers with cough drops, is undeniably fun. However, the series’ equally colorful cast of side characters secures its long-term enjoyability.
The characters are “human,” except the lovable clairvoyant sidekick Shin. Of course, the stronger assassins can have superhuman feats or access futuristic technology, but there is no complex power system for the reader to memorize.
Character introductions only take a page or two to fully form the characters’ relationships, weapons, fighting styles, outfits, and quirks. Nearly every cast member would pass a silhouette test with their varied body types and distinct apparel. Characters are decked out in streetwear drip that will become the staple of future manga while hinting about their personalities.
For example, the supporting antihero Nagumo has at least twenty tattoos based on specific mathematical concepts. Every character design has a similar level of depth to Nagumo that never goes over the top into the impractical outfits seen commonly in anime.
A great example of a seamless introduction is that of the Order, the team of legendary assassins that Sakamoto was formerly a part of. Despite their naturally shadowy, antagonistic position in the story, the members of the Order are surprisingly affable. None are hostile to Sakamoto’s group, or even their assassination targets, nor are they cold-blooded machines.
In fact, most of the Order’s appearances are lighthearted scenes of them hanging out without killing anybody. These scenes incorporate morbidly comedic banter and highlight the members’ eclectic yet relaxed demeanors. Instead of the psychopaths you would expect, the Order just wants a paycheck for a job well done. Yet once their target is spotted, they become the hyper-competent killers one would expect from their status.
Cinematic Fight Scenes
Every assassin in the series functions both comedically and as a serious threat. Fight scenes spawn from the most unlikely environments, while fully taking advantage of that space to create incredible set pieces.
Sakamoto’s combat specialty is using absolutely anything in his vicinity as a weapon. Fitting with his mundane life, Sakamoto’s fighting style uses mundane objects such as pens, bumper stickers, or bubblegum to deadly effect.
Sakamoto isn’t alone in his creative fighting style. Assassins frequently wield a menagerie of odd weapons, such as a clapboard, shotput, hammer, or even a laser-shooting mace. Characters who lack weapons often have strange fighting styles, like flamethrowers, hypnosis, or electromagnetism.
Fights are exciting because they blend all of these factors. The strange set pieces, weapons, and fighting styles are the icing on top of unique scenarios. Vector lines are portrayed through the various body types of the assassins to emphasize the precision and power of each blow. The paneling guides the reader’s eyes to the simple transitions that precede incredible impact panels.
A great example of this formula is in a fight scene in which a random civilian is remotely mind-controlled by an antagonist named Gaku using a virtual reality headset that links the two’s movements. Gaku is merely one of the main antagonist’s henchmen, yet his introduction ups the stakes tenfold.
In an arc focused on amateur assassins taking a deadly entrance exam while engaging in low-stakes fights, Gaku enters the scene swinging. As in, he swings a human being forward as if they were a baseball, a feat of strength that is as comedic as it is mortifying for all the characters to witness.
Stylistically, the fight is shown from a first-person perspective like a video game, because Gaku kills hardened assassins as if they were mobs of common enemies in a virtual reality game. The only thing stopping Gaku’s onslaught of everyone in the vicinity is the comedic moments where Gaku gets carried away with his “game” and punches a wall. Those comedic moments end up becoming the strategy the protagonists require to survive Gaku.
Killing the Competition
If you have enjoyed the adaptations of Dandadan and Chainsaw Man, then the upcoming Sakamoto Days anime should be on your radar by default. Be sure to read it on Manga Plus or Viz!
