The beginning of a new week can only mean one thing: time for new Weekly Shonen Jump! This is where Jacob investigates the latest and greatest in the magazine, telling you what’s worth your time and what’s not. You can find coverage of other series under the tag Jump Time. Here’s Sakamoto Days chapter 25.
Out of the many, many things that make Sakamoto Days so great, chapter 25 sure does capture one of them: fantastic, engaging fights underpinned by easy-to-understand concepts.
The raid on the underground lab is still ongoing, having kicked off at the end of chapter 20 and remained in high gear ever since. Lu is also staging a jailbreak underground, by the way, but the main focus of Sakamoto Days chapter 25 is Sakamoto and Shin’s fight against the ‘boss’ of floor B1, Mad Horiguchi.
Dressed like a typical mad scientist and acting like one too, Mad wields a device on his wrist that allows him to reverse his opponents’ speech as well as invert allies and enemies in their brains. This is in itself linked to the injections that Mad gave Sakamoto and Shin in the last chapter, but the point is that ‘reversal’ and ‘inversion’ are the main themes of Sakamoto Days chapter 25. The results are incredible to behold.
Although the fact that Shin’s speech is backwards provides an interesting bit of visual variety, it ultimately has no effect on the fight itself. So, how does Sakamoto overcome the ‘inversion’ trick in Sakamoto Days chapter 25? Well, at first, he tries hitting his allies on purpose, but then it turns out that Mad can turn the effect on and off at will. This means that Shin receives a couple of right hooks to the chin, but then he realizes that by attacking all targets at the same time, his blows will land even if Mad flips the switch.
Unfortunately, this means that Shin still gets hit multiple times by Sakamoto, but it’s probably worth it if it means defeating Mad. This easy-to-understand action narrative is then paired with a bit of character development as we see a bit of a softer side to the protagonist: he’s so pissed with Mad’s belittling of Shin’s power that he actually speaks for once.
Yuuto Suzuki’s talent in putting together a quality action narrative was already evident at the very beginning, but this has only become more and more obvious as time drags on. Most likely, this is the reason why the collected volumes are selling well, hopefully securing the series’ place in the magazine for years to come.
You can read Sakamoto Days chapter 25 for free via VIZ Media.