Sakamoto Days

Episode 19

Kanaguri's introduction last week did a good job of injecting some extra tension into this arc, and this episode mostly manages to follow up on that. While the man himself is absent this week, the show manages to compensate by giving us another new character to help spice up the action, and diving a little deeper into all the mysteries surrounding Akira. The answers to those mysteries aren't all that surprising, but there is enough going on with them to give this arc a little more momentum.

Having narrowly survived the plane crash, Sakamoto and Shin prepare for the third stage of the JCC exam. This one involves dividing into teams in order to steal colored sashes from each other, and it's pretty funny when Shin discovers that this activity is about as childish as it seems and the proctors are just improvising after how many participants have already kicked the bucket. While the competition seems fairly straightforward, it doesn't take long for the two of them to start running into problems, the first being that they've been placed on separate teams, with Shin insisting they avoid helping each other out (something that hurts Sakamoto's feelings a bit, and is kinda sweet knowing he likes having Shin look up to him even if he'll never admit it), while the other comes in the form of three new exam participants. Although we don't get to learn much about two of them, we learn plenty about the third one, Toramaru, as she turns out to be a giant Sakamoto fangirl with her own keychain plushie of him. As hilarious as that sounds on paper, it seems as though she hasn't quite pieced together that the big guy is her idol, but that lost comedic potential is more than made up for by getting a demonstration of how dangerous she is. Watching her carve guys in two with her giant axe is a pretty fun time, and her spree of violence ends up leading her to Shin rather than Sakamoto, who now has to figure out how to deal with her. It does feel like a bit of a waste to have her fighting with Shin rather than Sakamoto, but considering Shin is basically a Sakamoto fanboy himself we should still get some funny interactions out of that, and I'm excited to see how the rest of their encounter goes.

Sakamoto himself ends up in a team with Akari and a guy called Kill Baby (who, as his name suggests, is mostly just here for comedic relief) and seeing more of Akira's unusual movements just makes him more suspicious of her. Those suspicions get put to the test when the three of them fall into a trap from one of the other teams, and Akira is the one who has to bail them out. When she gets anxious about watching these two die in front of her, her instincts kick in and we see her pierce through a guy's jugular with just her fingers before Sakamoto intervenes. It's pretty shocking, though some of the impact is lessened by some of the animation shortcuts surrounding the action in this scene. While it doesn't look too terrible, it's just distracting enough to be noticeable, and it's a bit of a letdown compared to some of the other action sequences we've gotten in the past couple of episodes. Even beyond the shortcomings with the animation, though, the scene is also made a little awkward by how inconsistent some of the morality here feels. It's understandable that Sakamoto would try to stop Akira from killing since he's promised not to let anyone die on his watch, and Akira is clearly too kindhearted for the assassin life, but it is a little strange seeing both Kill Baby and their attackers having hangups about murder when they're all fighting to become pro killers. It's not enough to take away from the fun of the proceedings, but it's strange enough that it does make me wish that the show had a bit more to say regarding Sakamoto's (semi) pacifism versus all the killers he faces.

We do at least get to learn a bit more about Akira from all this, and seeing her skills up close causes Sakamoto to realize she's related to an old classmate of his named Akao. That name has come up before, but there hasn't been any details on what her relationship with Sakamoto was like, so this connection could provide a much needed opportunity to explore a bit more of his past. It'll also be interesting to see how Akira's display here could affect the rest of this arc, considering that Slur is still looking to add some younger assassins to his roster, and she could be just who he's looking for. We'll have to see how well the show manages to deliver on all these looming threads, but there's at least enough here to work with to help this season go out with a bang

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