Sakamoto Days Review

Yuto Suzuki's manga works on one specific joke: a heavy, silent shopkeeper who will not kill anyone disposing of professional assassins with a shopping basket, a mop and a handful of coins, drawn with the clarity of a stunt storyboard. The comedy lives entirely in timing and staging, which is why an adaptation of it was always going to stand or fall on action direction.

TMS Entertainment deliver it flat. The character art is faithful and the voice work is strong, Nobunaga Shimazaki in particular as the telepath Shin, but the fights are cut into short, stiff exchanges with too many held drawings and too much speed line standing in for movement. Sequences that were spatial and legible on the page become hard to follow in motion, and a large part of the audience arrived from the manga and said so.

What survives is the cast. Sakamoto's silence, Shin's mind reading used mostly for gags, Lu Shaotang's impatience and the running absurdity of the family shop all still land, and the second cour finds better rhythm than the first. Twenty two episodes across 2025, with a further season due in January 2027. A studio with more time would make this very good.