Welcome back to Anime Rants. Sakamoto Days finished airing a couple weeks ago now, but I’m behind since I was taking turns each week between this anime and Blue Exorcist. Sorry for the delay, but here are some brief thoughts on the last three episodes of the short but fun Netflix anime, Sakamoto Days.
I will eventually write a review for this anime, but it could be a while from now. My preliminary rating for the series is 7/10, which is pretty decent. Now let’s run through what happened in these episodes.
- Episode 9: All Aboard
- Episode 10: Bathhouse Roughhouse
- Episode 11: Casino Battle
Episode 9: All Aboard
Episode Rating: 7/10
Shin defeated Seba with the help of Heisuke. It was an intense battle, and Heisuke was seriously wounded, but the heroes still won. Elsewhere, Sakamoto continued his intense battle with Kashima. It seemed like the man was immortal, not to mention full of secret weapons. The fight continued in a subway train area. Everything about this scene was entertaining. Finally, Sakamoto defeated Kashima and threw him in a dump truck.
The danger wasn’t over yet. The lab was set to self-destruct in only a few minutes. Shin hurried to reunite with Lu and tell her of the danger. He arrived just in time to save her from some falling rubble. At that point, Lu and Shin both apologized to each other for their earlier fight. Shin also reunited with his surrogate father after many years. There were some sweet moments.
Shin and the others split up to help the rest of the people in the lab evacuate in the last few minutes. They succeeded and everyone who worked in the lab was happy to see Shin again. That’s the end of the lab arc, but there’s one thing I haven’t mentioned. This episode introduced us to Slur, the mastermind antagonist in the series. Shin ran into him briefly and was overpowered by his threatening aura. Also, Kashima was deeply inspired by Slur, after the villain justified his life of killing.
I like the design for Slur, as he reminds me of a combination of Shougo Makishima and Johan Liebert. The resemblance is probably only physical, however. I’m not expecting a show like Sakamoto Days to write a profound villain on the level of anime masterpieces, haha. Slur seems like a fairly intriguing character, but since there are only two episodes left, will we even see any more of him?
Episode 10: Bathhouse Roughhouse
Episode Rating: 6/10
Apparently, Sakamoto Days will continue in July 2025. These 11 episodes were only the first half. I was right that we won’t see much of Slur in the last two episodes of the season. That’s a letdown because I was excited for something new and different in this series. I’m getting tired of the same old character gags and goofy humor. It’s not that Sakamoto Days isn’t usually entertaining, but there’s not much unique or of substance to it. The best elements are probably the music and voice-acting.
As for this episode, it actually wasn’t very entertaining. I may be losing interest in this anime, but I wanted to finish it, so I powered through. The first half of episode 10 was about Sakamoto and Shin going to a public bathhouse. It’s Shin first time ever going to such a place. Unfortunately for him, it wasn’t a relaxing time. An employee who wanted the bounty on Sakamoto set up multiple death traps in the bathhouse. Sakamoto was fine through the hellish trials of fire and ice, but Shin was half-dead by the end.
The employee was a middle-aged fellow who failed as a hitman. Killing Sakamoto would be his last chance to make it big, he thought. But he failed to even upset Sakamoto’s day. In the end, Sakamoto even did a big favor for the bathhouse employee. He was getting bullied and beaten up by people who used to know him as a hitman and knew he was a failure. Sakamoto made the thugs stop and rescued the employee, thanking him for his “innovative” baths. After that, the employee turned over a new leaf.
The second half of the episode was about Lu Wutang, a member of the mafia family that was once run by Shaotang’s father. Wutang was an extremely creepy dude who idolized, crushed on, and stalked Lu Shaotang from a young age. She had literally hoped he was dead, and understandably so. Yet here he was, begging for her to return to the mafia and lead the clan. I don’t think I have to explain that this character type isn’t funny.
At first, Lu was adamant that she wanted nothing to do with the mafia anymore. But when she heard that Wutang would give her a clue about to who put the bounty on Sakamoto, she agreed to a challenge. They would have a contest, of sorts, to see who would return home with Lu Shaotang. The contest Wutang had in mind wasn’t a fight, but rather, a money-making battle at an underground casino. Sakamoto, Shin, and Lu needed to make more money than Wutang in order to win. Let the games begin!
Episode 11: Casino Battle
Episode Rating: 8/10
This episode was an improvement over the last one. The music was great, the action scenes were better than last time, and Wutang became somewhat sympathetic. I felt bad watching him get bullied and beaten as a young boy. He’s still creepy, but there’s hope that he will back off and respect Lu’s autonomy as he gains emotional maturity. It makes sense that he’s brooding and mentally messed up when he’s been put down by others all his life. Probably never had any good role models.
Anyway, the casino battles were fairly entertaining. Sakamoto’s team cheated a lot, haha. My favorite part was when they played Old Maid after they tied on all the classic casino games. Shin tried to read Wutang’s mind to tell which card was the joker, but he could apparently only read verbal processing. So, by reciting a ton of mental math and complicated equations verbally in his head, Wutang overwhelmed Shin. He got mentally overloaded by the math and passed out. Real.
Sakamoto won Old Maid, but did so with tricks and cheating. Before Wutang could object, the surrounding mafia men lost patience. They didn’t like working under Wutang, viewing him as a nerd with no real strength. Wutang almost gave up, but Sakamoto encouraged him to “impress his crush,” so he came up with a plan to distract the mafia men and prevent them from shooting. In that moment of distraction, Sakamoto, Shin, and Lu attacked. They took out all the mafia men quickly.
The casino battle thus ended and Wutang started working for the Sakamoto’s convenience store. (Even though he was more tolerable in this episode, I’m still not excited about him being a regular character.) He told Sakamoto that the one who put a bounty on his head was a criminal named Slur. Sakamoto already knew that Slur was a known killer of hitmen, but he didn’t know how to locate or identify the mysterious man.
That’s when Wutang offered some new information. Four mass murderers faked their deaths in a prison in South Africa and escaped. Rumor had it that Slur set them free and let them join his group. The four psychopaths were now on the loose in Japan. We met them briefly, but they all seem one-dimensional and not particularly interesting to me. I don’t even care enough right now to review their names and character designs. They will probably be the first enemies to face in the second season.
Once again, my preliminary rating for Sakamoto Days is 7/10 overall, with a weak story concept (5/10), a decent visual score (7/10), and amazing audio components (8/10). I’ll probably write a review at some point, but I might wait until the second season is finished. That’s all for today.
~Thanks for reading~
Written by 7Mononoke at Anime Rants
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