2020s Sensibilities with Early 2000s Aesthetics: ‘Sakamoto Days’ Pilot Review

Let’s start off with a tangentially related fact: Netflix has managed to cultivate an aggressively comprehensive anime library over the last few units of time. As far as Winter 2024 anime, they gave us the simuldubs of Dandandan, and Ranma ½, as well as one of the most thrilling historical fiction animes I’ve seen in a minute, Orb: On the Movement of the Earth. Over the last year, I watched Hajime No Ippo: The Fighting and Captain Tsubasa, to say nothing of how they started 2024 with Dungeon Meshi (which you may know as Delicious in Dungeon). It’s impressive that I watch more of anime on Netflix than on Crunchyroll, Hulu, and HiDive (that said, Crunchyroll is where I still get my One Piece fix as well as Solo Leveling and things like, and I’m not quite as familiar with HiDive’s library like my friend Carrie, and Hulu’s Medalist is making a really strong play but that’s a different article). Based on the pilot, Sakamoto Days is going to continue that trend because it is so much fun and is going to be a perfect weekend watch harkening back to good old Saturday morning cartoons in the best way possible.

The basic premise of Sakamoto Days is that a legendary hitman, Taro Sakamoto, fell in love and gave up being a hitman to be a convenience shop owner and loving husband. However, when you’re that good, you’re not exactly able to leave, so Sakamoto still occasionally has to deal with hitmen. For example, Shin, a hitman with inexp…