Sakamoto Days

Episode 21

Even though this season of Sakamoto Days should technically be winding down, it seems like the show still has plenty of gas left in the tank on the action front. While this entire season has been pretty fight-heavy overall, this episode cranks that up to eleven as we watch Shin and the JAA recruits use every trick in their arsenal to fend off Gaku's attempts at gaining some new hires for Slur. That also has the consequence of making this episode nearly devoid of anything that doesn't involve fighting, and while this show's usual production quality would make that a bit of a mixed bag, there's just enough spectacle here to make for a good 20 minutes of shonen fisticuffs.

A lot of the initial fighting here is fairly straightforward as it quickly becomes apparent how much more skilled Gaku is than any of his opponents, but the battle does have a couple of good elements to keep things entertaining. The biggest, and most comedic one, is that while everyone else is fighting in a wide open field, Gaku is controlling Shinaya while standing in the middle of a warehouse, leading to several situations where he either ends up running into walls or starts awkwardly flailing around, which makes for a funny bit of contrast with how flashy a lot of the action on the ground feels. As for the more dramatic parts of this fight, they're largely carried by Shin, who does his best to rally the other exam participants into fighting with him. It was kind of a given we'd see Toramaru jump in after her and Shin “bonded” over their shared Sakamoto fandom last week, but it was especially funny to see Mafuyu try to help out after all the time he's spent complaining about everything, only to get taken out of the fight the moment he tries to be helpful. The battle ultimately comes down to Shin and an assassin named Kaji, who's too shy for his own good, with the bulk of the combat centering around Shin using his clairvoyance to read Kaji's mind while Kaji tries to predict all of Shinaya-Gaku's movements. It's not a particularly complex strategy, but the battle animation and the background music do a good job of helping to compensate for that, with all of it coming together to make for one of this season's better fights.

Cool as Shin's efforts here are, the fight really kicks into high gear when Sakamoto steps in to wrap it up, while tasking Shin with helping everyone else escape. With how much of this fight was focused on Shin wanting to prove he could hold his own without Sakamoto's help, this does feel like it's undercutting his character growth a bit, but any complaints I could have about the writing here were completely eclipsed by how insanely cool the final stretch of this fight was. Watching the battle between Sakamoto and Shinaya-Gaku shift from fighting underwater to an airplane deck was extremely wild (especially when the underwater battle is contrasted with Gaku doing a bunch of awkward swimming motions back at the warehouse), and all of it was layered on top of the most well-animated fight the show has had on offer to date. I've said before that a lot of the appeal of Sakamoto Days comes in seeing the series deliver on the kind of over the top spectacle you could only see in an action blockbuster, and nothing quite screams that like watching Sakamoto launch Shinaya into the air before knocking him out of the sky by smacking him with an airplane tire. It was so much fun to watch that I'm almost kind of concerned that we got something this theatrical in the penultimate episode of the season. It's hard to imagine anything in the finale topping that, but even if it doesn't, I'm at least glad to see the show firing on all cylinders like this. This is a great example of how much fun Sakamoto Days can be when it hits its stride. While a lot of it is riding on sheer spectacle, sometimes that's all any good action blockbuster needs.

Rating:

---

Sakamoto Days is currently streaming on Netflix on Saturdays.