The idea of a legendary killer attempting to go clean, failing and then killing a bunch of bad guys is an incredibly fun cinematic premise that possibly goes back to the 1950s. Yet in the last few years, the genre has been completely dominated and defined by the John Wick franchise.
With a spin-off slated for release later this year and two other movies in development, it seems that we’ll be associating the interrupted retirements of professional assassins with Keanu Reeves’ character for the foreseeable future… Or maybe not.
Recently, a new addition to the genre has entered the scene and garnered a lot of attention. It’s called Sakamoto Days, a Netflix anime that shares many similarities with the world of John Wick but does a few key things differently.
Courtesy of Netflix
A Seemingly Familiar Premise
Taro Sakamoto was once the greatest assassin in the world until he fell in love with a convenience store worker, left the life of a professional killer, got married, had a child and opened his own store where he now spends his uneventful Sakamoto days. Then, suddenly, the Sakamoto days get very eventful when assassins start targeting the legendary hitman, forcing him out of retirement in order to protect his peaceful family life.
Despite surface similarities, this is a fundamentally different premise to John Wick. We first meet Wick after he lost his wife and then see him lose his beloved car and dog. This forces him back into the assassin’s life as a man with nothing else left to lose.
Sakamoto, on the other hand, has everything to lose. While Wick acts out of anger, Sakamoto essentially acts out of fear to protect what he has, so while both he and Wick take on bad guys in crazy, inventive ways, they are doing it for completely different reasons and that affects how we view their actions.
It’s not to say that one approach is better than the other, but using spousal and parental love instead of grief as fuel for the hero may appeal more to one of the genre’s main demographics: dads.
Courtesy of Netflix
The Ultimate Dad Anime
We’re living in the Golden Age of “Dad Media,” broadly defined as movies, shows and games with easy-to-follow stories that tend to lean towards the action genre, starring slightly older (but not too old) main characters.
Hijack, Equalizer, Reacher and even John Wick, to a degree, aren’t exclusively targeted at dads, but dads sure love them. And they really love imagining themselves as the hero.
That fantasy is often shattered by the heroes of Dad Media being marble-chiseled gods with abs you could shred cheese on. Sakamoto Days offers an enticing alternative. Ever since retiring from assassinations, Sakamoto has let himself go, grown a hilarious dad mustache and got really fat.
It makes it incredibly easy for dad bod audience members to associate with the character, resulting in increased immersion and enjoyment. And the best part is that while some people may make fun of Sakamoto’s size, his weight is never a source of shame.
Sakamoto Days actually contains a lot of examples of positive masculinity due to the overweight main character deriving his sense of self not from his murder proficiency or killer physique (which he can temporarily revert to in order to “power up”) but from just being a good person.
He’s a doting father to his daughter Hana, a loving husband to his wife Aoi, and a helping hand to anyone in need. John Wick is manly because he once killed a guy with a pencil. Taro Sakamoto is manly because he helps his kid eat their vegetables or prunes his neighbor’s tree.
Courtesy of Netflix
Embracing the Madness
Aoi knows all about his past and makes it clear that if he ever kills again, she’ll divorce him. This forces the world’s greatest killer to adopt non-lethal techniques, like using chopsticks to catch bullets in midair, wearing bulletproof glasses and cutting guns in half with a knife. It’s exactly as goofy as it sounds, but because the anime leans into that vibe from the get-go, it works really well.
Also, let us not forget that the world of John Wick is at times hard to take seriously, with a bunch of different secret societies controlling the world around us and “consecrated” hotels where assassins aren’t allowed to kill. The worldbuilding in John Wick is what allowed the franchise to do new things with each movie, but it is undeniably very silly.
Sakamoto Days matches those levels of silliness and makes them work in its own way by not taking itself too seriously. This is made apparent the second a mind-reading assassin shows up and is confirmed beyond all reasonable doubt when Sakamoto is attacked by a pizza-themed assassin armed with pizza cutters.
Benefitting From Some Friendly Competition
A great thing about Sakamoto Days is that, despite it being undeniably a wacky comedy, it never skimps on the action. If anything, because Sakamoto Days is an anime series and knows how to utilize the medium to its full effect, the action often surpasses many John Wick scenes in intensity and scale.
Sakamoto Days should be celebrated not because it’s better than John Wick or anything as needlessly divisive as that, but because it offers a specific demographic — you know who you are — something new that was clearly made with a lot of love for the genre. And more choice has never been a bad thing.
