REVIEW: ‘Sakamoto Days’ Episode 6 — “Heisuke Mashimo”

Sakamoto Days Episode 6 introduces another peculiar yet endearing character. The episode does a great job of highlighting this character, but not much else is worth noting, as many of the engaging aspects of the anime are lacking in this episode.

Sakamoto Days Episode 6 introduces Heisuke Mashimo, a struggling hitman who is poor and lives in a tent. However, he’s not alone, as his loyal bird, Piisuke, keeps him company. Despite being poor, it’s clear Heisuke has a big heart and cares greatly for his bird. He uses most of his money on Piisuke’s bird feed, sacrificing funds for his own food. To resolve his money problems, he decides to join the bounty hunt for Sakamoto’s (Tomokazu Sugita/Matthew Mercer) head for the billion yen reward.

Heisuke goes to Sakamoto’s store and meets the group. Despite being in the presence of Sakamoto and his store, named after him, Heisuke is convinced Sakamoto isn’t his target because he’s put on a few pounds and looks quite different from his bounty image. Noticing that he isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, the group manages to convince him he is in the wrong place and Sakamoto isn’t the target, but not before taking pity on him and giving him some food before he leaves.

This scene shows that Heisuke is unfortunately not very bright, which is likely part of why his circumstances are so bad. However, it also proves Sakamoto’s group is still the good guys, as they have no qualms about giving a starving man some food despite him being a dangerous hitman out for Sakamoto’s head.

Most of Sakamoto Days Episode 6 is about Heisuke.

Of course, this isn’t the last they see of Heisuke, as the entire episode is basically all about him. Sakamoto and Shin (Nobunaga Shimazaki/Dallas Liu) decide to enter a local paintball competition to earn some money to fix up the damages to the store after several hitman fights. Being the broke hitman he is, Heisuke joins the competition and ends up being in a team with Shin and Sakamoto. Lu (Ayane Sakura/Rosalie Chiang), however, does not join and instead gets drunk and wears a cheerleader outfit to cheer them on. While Sakamoto and Shin clearly take the competition seriously, Lu decides to get drunk for no reason.

Lu has noticeably been reduced to a comic relief character for the past three episodes. Since her initial introduction, she has showcased little to no depth or intelligent thoughts or opinions. Whenever she does sound eloquent or even competent, she’s usually drunk, which makes it hard to take her seriously as a character. This is a shame as she was introduced as a smart, strong-willed character, but she’s yet to have many good moments since.

Shin, Heisuke, and Sakamoto showcase their hitman skills and make short work of their competitors in the paintball competition. Heisuke especially steals the show with his excellent marksmanship. Unfortunately, while things are going well as the three work together, Lu ruins that by exposing Sakamoto’s lie to Heisuke in her drunken stupor, which quickly makes him hostile toward them. This proves again that while Lu’s foolishness is used as a narrative tool to drive the episode’s story forward, she so far only serves as a goofy comic relief character even in serious situations, which is frustrating to watch.

The rest of the episode boils down to Shin and Sakamoto trying to avoid Heisuke’s bullets and outsmart his near-perfect marksmanship. Compared to fight scenes in previous episodes, the gunfight isn’t all that impressive as it only shows the two avoiding ricocheting bullets and doesn’t last long enough to leave an impact on viewers. Sakamoto and Shin work together to disarm Heisuke. Shin screams into the microphone of the headset the three use to communicate.

Heisuke and Sakamoto are in perfect sync in Sakamoto Days Episode 6.

This shock lets him read Heisuke’s mind and find his location. Sakamoto uses his superhuman strength to destroy Heisuke’s gun by throwing a pebble at it. The only impressive part of the fight was how Shin and Sakamoto flawlessly worked together without prior planning. This scene perfectly displays how in sync they are during combat and Sakamoto’s absurd, almost cartoonish strength.

After defeating Heisuke, Sakamoto praises him for his excellent marksmanship, which leads Heisuke to break down in tears. No one has ever been kind to him, especially in his line of work as a hitman, leading him to have low self-confidence. As such, it’s unsurprising that this one compliment from Sakamoto touches his heart. The episode does a great job of making viewers sympathize with Heisuke through his flashback scenes. It also proves that despite it all, Sakamoto Days has endearing, well-developed characters, even if they don’t seem like it sometimes due to the anime’s goofy nature.

The episode ends with the group leaving Heisuke with a measly 50 yen coin after having to pay for damages he made to the town. A post-credit scene also shows how Aoi and Sakamoto first met. This scene, while cute, felt a bit out of place as it didn’t relate to anything in the episode and did not provide more context to Sakamoto and his wife’s meeting, which was previously established in the Netflix series.

Overall, Sakamoto Days Episode 6 excellently introduces another endearing character but leaves much to be desired with its fight scene and portrayal of one of the anime’s main characters. The animation from TMS Entertainment also didn’t have a chance to shine this time save for the short moment showing Sakamoto’s physical prowess.

Sakamoto Days Episode 6 is streaming now on Netflix, with new episodes every Saturday in January and February.

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