Sakamoto Days 2025 Tv Series Review Trailer Poster

Even for viewers who are familiar with the world of anime, it remains surprising how the genre can bring something new years after its creation. Recently, DanDaDan became a surprising hit not only for its approach of mixing supernatural and extraterrestrial stories, but also for its unique animation style. In a similar path, the new Netflix series Sakamoto Days, based on the manga series created by Yuto Suzuki, quickly establishes its own identity, and could be one of the best shows of the year, depending on how it is handled in the coming weeks.

Since Netflix releases episodes on a weekly basis, as has become common for both anime and K-dramas on the platform, this review covers only the first two episodes of Sakamoto Days. Despite not revealing much about where the story is headed, these episodes provide a pretty clear picture of what we can expect in terms of the tone of the series while also presenting a threat that will likely unfold in the coming weeks.

Creator: Yuto Suzuki
Stars: Tomokazu Sugita, Nobunaga Shimazaki, Nao Tôyama

Sakamoto Days follows the main character, Taro Sakamoto (voiced by Tomokazu Sugita in the original subtitled series and Matthew Mercer in the English dub), a ruthless, professional assassin who is feared by criminals and admired by his peers. His life changes drastically when he meets a woman at a convenience store and decides to retire from the world of assassins to settle down and start a small business. Five years later, Sakamoto has gained a lot of weight and started a family, but enemies from his past begin to resurface, threatening his new quiet life.

It can sometimes be difficult to find the balance between extreme violence and comedy without undermining either. More often than not, stories that try to walk that particular tightrope tend to make their violence so excessive that it's hard to take them seriously. Let's not kid ourselves, in Sakamoto Days the violence is over the top, but it follows the same line as franchises like John Wick, which exaggerate their most brutal scenes without sacrificing the potential for audience interest.

From the start, Sakamoto Days understands that it needs to establish its protagonist as a dangerous figure. Thus, we have a sequence in Episode 1 ("The Legendary Hitman") that makes it clear why Sakamoto became a legend in the world of assassins, while also proving that the anime takes its action sequences very seriously. Despite being over the top, the violence can be quite gruesome at times, and in addition to working in the context of the series, it also makes the action scenes quite distinct from the comedic ones.

However, the show's humor works quite well as well. The only drawback is that some of its comedic themes have become outdated through a contemporary lens. More than once, Sakamoto Days plays up how fat Sakamoto is to elicit laughs, with parts of his body bobbing up and down so you never forget how big he's gotten in his retirement years. The nice thing is that the show doesn't dwell on those jokes too much, and, at least for the first two episodes, doesn't suggest that Sakamoto's figure has affected his lethal abilities at all. This is a nice counterpoint to the fatphobic jokes: Sakamoto's enemies underestimate him because of his weight, and it's always a lot of fun to see them learn their lesson the hard way.

Of course, two episodes isn't much for a definitive assessment of a full season. But, from its initial premise, it seems like Sakamoto Days has enough promise to deliver a batch of highly entertaining episodes. By the end of Episode 2 ("Vs Son Hee And Bancho"), you get a pretty clear view of what the show's structure will be like, as well as the villains who will be set in motion to take down Sakamoto. Whether the series continues to repeat its enemy-of-the-week format or evolves into something more, it'll be a win-win for viewers either way.

In that sense, it's also impressive how Sakamoto Days is able to join said wave of shounen stories while still doing its own thing. And it's great that the show seems primed to have a lot to offer over the next nine episodes: we've barely seen the Sakamoto family together, there's certainly a lot of the protagonist's murderous past left to reveal, and as the title sequence has already revealed, more characters are set to join the main cast. A strong start to the year in anime, indeed.

Netflix releases new episodes of Sakamoto Days on Saturdays.

Watch Sakamoto Days 2025 Tv Series Trailer