Tarou Sakamoto was a legendary assassin with unmatched prowess. However, five years ago, Tarou Sakamoto disappeared from the criminal underworld.
It turns out that he decided to retire after he fell in love and got married. Now with a wife and young daughter, Sakamoto put on a little weight, works with his wife at a convenience store, and has given up killing under their family rule—absolutely no killing.
However, his peaceful life is threatened when Sakamoto’s old partner, Shin Asakura, comes after him. While he is able to peacefully work things out with Shin, the large bounty that was placed on Sakamoto’s head means that Shin won’t be the only one coming to upend Sakamoto’s peaceful life.
Shounen action comedies about badasses being soft for their families, so hot right now. If you are looking for more anime recommendations like Sakamoto Days, head on down below.
Anime Like Sakamoto Days
For Fans of Assassins/Spies/Ect Living Family Lives

Spy X Family
There is no order too big for master spy Twilight.
He uses his numerous skills as a spy to keep the peace between his country and aggressive neighbors, but his recent mission demands he investigate a reclusive politician that only attends school events for his child.
Dictating that he must now have a child and wife of his own to pull off the mission, Twilight manages to recruit a small orphan girl and an office lady to play the roles.
However, what he doesn’t know is that his new daughter is an esper capable of reading minds and his new wife is actually an assassin using him as a cover to maintain a guise of normalcy.
Similarities Between Sakamoto Days and Spy X Family
- A top notch spy/assassin is living a completely normal life for reasons
- Their deadly skills are used for everything from serious action to silly comedy
- Happy family/found family life juxtaposed with serious action
- Distinctly shounen-style storytelling with high energy in every aspect
Differences Between Sakamoto Days and Spy X Family
- Spy X Family is about a spy building a fake family for his mission where his child is secretly a mind reader and his wife is secretly a still-active assassin.
- Spy X Family skews the ratio more towards a family life/school life focus whereas Sakamoto Days skews things towards more frequent action.

Mission – Yozakura Family
After his family died in a car crash when he was young, Taiyo Asano became increasingly socially inept. Now in high school, the only person he is able to really connect with is his childhood friend, Mutsumi Yozakura. However, one day he discovers that Mutsumi is actually the future head of a family of the world’s strongest spies, despite having no special spy abilities herself.
With her eldest brother ultra-protective of his little sister ever since she got injured as a child, he has marked Taiyo for execution. The only way to survive his lethal spy skills is for Mutsumi to marry Taiyo, thus making him part of the family.
While Taiyo resists at first, he eventually agrees to marry Mutsumi as well as to train to become a world-class spy himself to ensure her protection.
Similarities Between Sakamoto Days and Mission Yozakura Family
- Spies/assassins living with their family
- Shounen style storytelling with both ample comedy and action
- There is never a day when someone isn’t being attacked
- Slowly unfolding intrigue plots that build up to the big fights
- Wide variety of different combat powers that only lightly border on the sci-fi/superhuman and isn’t just full-on magic, but also become progressively more detached from reality as both series go on.
Differences Between Sakamoto Days and Mission Yozakura Family
- Yozakura Family follows a normal teen that marries into a spy/assassin family, so no one is retired like in Sakamoto Days.

Buddy Daddies
Kazuki and Rei are roommates that also work as professional mercenaries while they each flee from their grim memories through the dangerous work.
However, while carrying out an assassination on Christmas Eve, their paths cross with four-year-old Miri who traveled to Tokyo by herself, told by her mother who abandoned her to go find her father. Unfortunately for everyone involved, her father was their mark whom they successfully took out.
Now saddled with a small child, this pair of grown men struggle to adjust to being new parents while also balancing it with their dangerous job.
Similarities Between Sakamoto Days and Buddy Daddies
- Criminal badasses are turned into fumbling, doting fathers by small children
- Protecting their little family from their criminal life/past is the plot
- Cute family moments interspersed with darker action plots and intrigue
Differences Between Sakamoto Days and Buddy Daddies
- Buddy Daddies, while it has comedy, is often more focused on drama surrounding the main cast. As such, it sometimes takes itself more seriously than Sakamoto Days.
- Buddy Daddies and its combat is fully grounded in reality. Just guns and normal human abilities here.
- While both series have “found family” elements, Buddy Daddies lacks any “biological family” element as no one in that family is actually related.

The Yakuza’s Guide to Babysitting
Tooru Kirishima is known as the Demon of the Sakuragi crime family due to his overly violent tendencies. Because of his skill and loyalty, he has been selected by the boss of the family for an important job – the job of babysitting the boss’ daughter.
Similarities Between Sakamoto Days and The Yakuza’s Guide to Babysitting
- Small children in a family with criminals ties
- Protecting that small child and shielding them from the violent life of their parent and/or caretaker is the goal.
- Cute family life juxtaposed with brutal action
Differences Between Sakamoto Days and The Yakuza’s Guide to Babysitting
- The Yakuza’s Guide to Babysitting follows a yakuza lackey taking care of the boss’s daughter in an active yakuza family. No retired people here.
- The Yakuza’s Guide to Babysitting is often far darker with its stories, more cute than comedy, and has a decent dose of drama surrounding the situation of the daughter.
- The Yakuza’s Guide to Babysitting is firmly grounded in reality with its combat.

You are Ms. Servant
From a young age, Yuki was told that her only worth was as a killer. She was trained as an assassin who became renowned for her ruthlessness, efficiency, and always following orders.
However, after leaving that all behind, she arrives at the home of Hitoyoshi Yokoya, a teen boy who lives alone, and asks to be employed as his maid.
Similarities Between Sakamoto Days and You are Ms. Servant
- An assassin has retired, and they are now working in a profession that seems silly compared to their skills.
- Happy family life is rehabilitative
- People from the assassin’s past come after the assassin as they try to live normally
Differences Between Sakamoto Days and You are Ms. Servant
- You are Ms. Servant features a female assassin who starts working as a maid because she has no other marketable skills.
- You are Ms. Servant is very much a romance series between her and the teen boy she is working for.
- You are Ms. Servant is often darker, bloodier, and more dramatic, though it still always makes time for cute slice of life moments too.

The Devil is a Part-Timer
Right on the verge of taking over the world, evil Demon Lord Satan was foiled by the hero Emilia and was forced to retreat through a dimensional portal.
He ends up in our modern world where he is without powers and without money. In order to pay his way, he gets a part-timer job slinging fast food.
Similarities Between Sakamoto Days and The Devil is a Part Timer
- A badass is no longer being a badass, and is now working a comical minimum wage job
- Cute slice of life and comedy is often the plot, but also features occasional action as people threatening their life turn up.
Differences Between Sakamoto Days and The Devil is a Part Timer
- The Devil is a Part-Timer features a demon lord from another world living in our world without access to much of his power and having to work at legally-not-McDonalds. So a bit more supernatural/fantasy than Sakamoto Days.
- While both Sakamoto Days and The Devil is a Part-Timer share a “family life” element, that element doesn’t show up in The Devil is a Part-Timer until much later in the series as he gains a child.
- The Devil is a Part-Timer likes to bait multiple romance options for the main character, and keep you guessing as to who is the main one.
For Fans of Badasses in Retirement

The Fable
An assassin simply known as Fable has earned a legendary reputation in the underworld for ruthlessly, efficiently, and successfully carrying out hits for organized crime. However, after six years of efficient murder, his boss fears too much heat from authorities and tells Fable to take a year off.
Forced to move to Osaka and live like a normal citizen for a year with his handler staying with him under the guise of being his sister, Fable decides to try his best to follow these new orders.
However, the Osaka mafia is not happy to learn that the legendary Fable has come to stay in their territory. Between threats and plots going on in town, Fable still tries his best to be a perfectly normal person.
Similarities Between Sakamoto Days and The Fable
- Both series follow the daily lives of men that were master assassins and occasionally use those skills and try to be non-lethal with them.
- Master assassins are a bit quirky
- A solid balance of silly comedy moments, action, and moments of genuine emotion
Differences Between Sakamoto Days and The Fable
- The main character in The Fable is being forced to take a year-long break. He intends to go back to his work after that.
- Sakamoto Days is lighter and more energetic not unlike a shounen action anime whereas The Fable is darker and more grounded in reality more akin to a seinen action anime.

The Way of the House Husband
The Immortal Tatsu is an legendary yakuza name, but after taking down a rival gang single-handedly, he disappears.
Now, he has reappeared as an apron-wearing, laundry-doing, bento-lunch-making househusband for his office-working wife.
Similarities Between Sakamoto Days and The Way of The House Husband
- Both series follow the daily lives of master killers who are now happily married and in retirement.
- The retired killers are a little quirky, but well loved by the neighborhood and their various friends
- The killers love their wives, but surprisingly the wives are a minimal focus in both series with the main character spending far more onscreen time with their friends.
- Slice of life shenanigans that always go awry, often comically
Differences Between Sakamoto Days and The Way of The House Husband
- The main character in Way of the House Husband may have been a badass yakuza in the past, but he doesn’t use any of those skills like Sakamoto has to.
- Way of the House Husband is a pure slice of life comedy. No action or any sort of plot unfolding.

Gintama
After aliens invade Japan, they put a prohibition on swords. However, Gintoki Sakata still possesses the heart of a samurai.
Taking on odd jobs alongside of his friends, Gintama follows Gintoki during his chaotic life as an errand boy.
Similarities Between Sakamoto Days and Gintama
- A once-badass is now living in retirement working a minimum wage job
- Quirky badass is surrounded by other quirky friends at his job
- High energy comedy, fast-paced action, and random adventures transforming into actual plot
- Shounen action-style storytelling, but far more often just a comedy
Differences Between Sakamoto Days and Gintama
- Gintama is set in a sci-fi alternate Edo era Japan where aliens invaded.
- Gintama is by far and wide the more random comedy and often enjoys parodying other works
- It takes a lot longer to discover that the main character of Gintama is a badass and not just a comical idiot.

Assassination Classroom
After the moon is mysteriously turned into a permanent crescent by an unknown calamity, the students of class 3-E at Kunogigaoka Middle School are presented with a daunting task – Assassinate the creature that blew up half the moon before the year’s end or die when the world is destroyed.
The creature in question, dubbed Koro-sensei by his class, is super fast, super strong, and by all respects, indestructible. However, while the students try and learn how to destroy him, they also learn that he is the best teacher that they have ever had.
Similarities Between Sakamoto Days and Assassination Classroom
- An assassin has retired, and put their life of murder behind them—mostly
- The assassin has a normal person job that they do comically
- The assassin mentors a bunch of troubled younger people, helping them with their problems and to find fulfillment.
- Often a comedy, but not without a good bit of shounen-style action and a dash of more serious drama.
Differences Between Sakamoto Days and Assassination Classroom
- The assassin in Assassination Classroom is a non-human being for various spoiler reasons.
- The assassin in Assassination Classroom has decided to become a teacher and tasks his students with training to be killers and killing him in one year, so it sounds a bit less wholesome than Sakamoto Days, but actually ends up exactly as wholesome in many ways.
- Assassination Classroom juggles a much larger cast—a whole classroom—of characters with stories to explore. This is unlike Sakamoto Days that only has a large cast in that it has a lot of cycling antagonists.
Do you have more anime recommendations like Sakamoto Days? Let fans know in the comments section below.