Sakamoto Days

Episode 18

We've got another post-credits Heisuke sketch this week, and once again, it's mostly focused on how broke he is. This time, we see how he can't even afford a bowl of cheap ramen, and the only thing keeping him from starving is his pet bird, which helps him pawn off pretty rocks it finds. Instead of getting an actual meal, Heisuke gets some buns to split with the others, and while it's cute, it mainly just left me wondering how the poor guy has survived up to now.

I was at least a lot happier with the actual episode, which mostly improved upon my complaints about this arc needing a shake-up. The beginning of it is still a bit slow as it follows up on Shin and Sakamoto's previous battles, but they do at least provide some fun interactions. Once Shin defeats the edgelord kid he's fighting, he decides to spare him, which makes just enough of a good impression on him to start following around. Unfortunately for Shin, this kid quickly proves to be pretty annoying as he constantly whines about how much things never go his way, and while that does feel pretty accurate to dealing with the average 14-year old, it still doesn't make it any harder not to feel for Shin here for putting up with it, and makes their scenes together all the funnier. Meanwhile, we see Sakamoto continuing to help out the blue-haired girl from last week, who finally reveals her name to be Akira. She still feels very out of place in this show, but it is at least fun to see Sakamoto bring out his inner dad to help her figure out how to fend for herself in this den of killers.

The real main appeal of this episode is in the new character it introduces. I said last time that I didn't feel like the show was doing enough here to lean into some of the tricks that make exam arcs in other shonen series so effective, and an often understated one of those is having a wild card who's mostly just around to cause problems. For the Hunter Exam in Hunter X Hunter, we got Hisoka to fill that role, and here we get it in the form of Kanaguri: an exam proctor whose day job is working as a famous film director and producer. However, as you might have come to expect from this show, he's no ordinary auteur, as the films he specializes in making are assassin flicks. While he's a pretty skilled killer himself, the only thing he's here for is material that he can use for his latest work of art.

Needless to say, he's a real delight, and he pretty much steals the show. Part of that is the episode's willingness to lean into how much of a film buff he is, and seeing him go from enthusiastic to hostile the second the edgelord kid talks about preferring VTubers and reading internet summaries to actually watching movies (an exchange that feels so real it almost me wonder if Yūto Suzuki had this kind of experience talking to a teenager at some point) makes him as hilarious as he is fun to root for. It makes Kanaguri hard to hate, even when he's doing things like blowing up a plane with laser beam cameras so he can get a thrilling scene out of it. The other contributing factor here is having him played in the dub by Crispin Freeman, who is a delight in basically any role he's in. This is no exception, as he's clearly having the time of his life hamming it up with this guy as he monologues about his art.

His presence also provides much-needed changes to the show's current proceedings, as the aforementioned plane explosion switches the stakes from fighting to seeing how they can all avoid falling to their deaths. Although we don't see a ton of ingenuity from the characters here, it's still entertaining to see Sakamoto try to go for the most obvious solution of using his work apron like a parachute, only for it to somehow result in him falling even faster. We also see Akira get to be helpful here as she manages to use her skills at sewing to help quickly put together a better parachute, and while it does feel like its playing into gender stereotypes a bit to have that be the one thing she's good at, it does at least provide an interesting solution to this whole dilemma. It also sets up a bit of mystery surrounding her as Sakamoto notices that her sewing skills here were perhaps a little too fast and that there might be more going on with her than it would seem at first glance. That should hopefully provide a little something extra to explore as the show gets deeper into this stretch of the story, but even if that doesn't go much of anywhere, we at least have more Kanaguri to look forward to. If the rest of this arc can fully capitalize on these two characters, it could make for one of the show's best yet.

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Sakamoto Days is currently streaming on Netflix on Saturdays.