MANGA REVIEW | "Sakamoto Days" - Volume Fourteen
Looking back as Taro Sakamoto’s past has been the interesting ride. Although we’ve known him to be the top-tier assassin since Sakamoto Days began, seeing what made him into the person that he is now has been a hell of a page tuner. On top of that, the origins of Slur/X/Kei Uzuki have added more flames into the fire of passion and hate that Taro have kept surprisingly hidden for sometime. But as we see in its fourteenth volume, the time for those fires to spread has arrived.
The first half of Volume Fourteen continues onward with the flashback. Kei is in the midst of backstabbing his JAA colleagues, whilst Taro, Rion, and Nagumo deal with a plethora of baddies attempting to kill Kindaka & his family. Taro’s fight with a man with a plethora of good karma has a good mixture of humor and action, with the deadly philosopher attempting to use all his good person points to take out the top-tier assassin. The problem is, Taro’s got so much good karma in him that no person — even someone wracking up millions of hours of good deeds just so they can commit one bad one — can stop them.
It’s the finishing blow where we not only see how badass Taro is, but also how ridiculously funny this series can be. A crumbling bridge, a speeding car, and a fishing pole are all what’s needed to make what looks like something out of a Jason Statham movie. Even funnier is how the drivers of the car register their wild rescue, with their happy-go-luck faces showing that they’re the kind of folks who constantly live for the joyful moments. But Taro’s not the only one delivering wild attacks.
Rion, Nagumo, and Kei are all dealing with a master poison user, and it’s not the guy from Marriage Toxin (thankfully). Instead, it’s a man who claims his victims will succumb to his toxic traits between 1-10 minutes, and it takes our assassins a moment to figure how just how his powers work. Once they realize what they can and can’t do to fight back, they come up with an outside-the-box way to take out the enemy. All they need is a car door and a chair…and maybe one massively charged grenade.
But then, it’s betrayal time. All the things that have led to Taro Sakamoto’s present day fall into place. The defining act, the death of a friend, and even one more battle set the stage for everything that Taro deals with in the here & now. And the sad part: it’s not the final nail in the coffin Taro hoped it would be.
Yes, we wouldn’t have Sakamoto Days if Kei bit the dust right then and there. So for that to finally happen, Taro, Shin, Nagumo, and Heisuke head to Thailand to take down X. But some new enemies arrive to make the task just a tad more harder, including a woman who has powers that even takes Kashima by surprise. For all those pieces to come together, a good ole chase sequence needs to be initiated.
Heisuke serves as the perfect character to be the one to trigger these effects. Although he’s one hell of a sniper, he’s a magnet to all things clumsy. With Hyo by his side, the chase for an important suitcase results in a bountiful of chaos in the streets of Bangkok. It showcases the kind of person Heisuke is to a T, from his comedic slip-ups involving all sorts of animals to the moment he can pull the trigger in a badass way. And just when you think there’s a moment of calmness for him and Hyo, a new challenger approaches.
Sakamoto Days often throws one dangerous scenario after another at its heroes. With every new villain that arrives, the danger meter ticks up just the right amount. Volume Fourteen does a wonderful job demonstrating these dangers with the most wanton violence a Shonen Jump series can legally abide by, with maybe some splattering exceptions to emphasize the carnage. Will Taro and the gang get out of this unscathed? Probably not, but it’ll be fun to watch once the mayhem shifts into high octane mode!
FINAL GRADE:
Promotional consideration provided by Chantelle Sturt of VIZ Media.
