Goofball, Gen Z, slacker assassins Chisato (Akari Takashi) and Mahiro (Saori Izawa) are back in workhorse director Yugo Sakamoto’s third(!) Baby Assassins feature in four(!) years. Nice Days sees the duo take on their dangerous foe yet: freako assassin Fuyumura (Shoplifters’ Sosuke Ikematsu). Fuyumura’s arguably too dangerous for our Baby Assassins, and so they’ll need to engage in a full team for the first time to take him down.

Nice Days sees arguably the biggest budget yet for Sakamoto, who is somehow only twenty-eight and is somehow on his ninth(!) feature? The man is a marvel. The bigger budget comes with some narrative concessions. Nice Days plays far more straightforwardly than the previous two Baby Assassins films did. Gone are the days of horrifying maid restaurants and street chess games; instead, the film moves between actions set-pieces, something that was previously relegated to openings and closing. The secret MVP of Nice Days is stunt choreographer Kenosuke Sonomura, who creates a logic and fluidity to the film’s action: a rarity in mainstream North American cinema of a similar ilk. Otherwise, it’s possible that this would get stale.

Meanwhile, the external MVP remains the buddy comedy stylings of Takashi and Izawa, that are at their most wholesome here. Izawa’s physicality delightfully embodies the modern skate slacker, while Takashi’s bug-eyed manicness humoursly provides a bellyaching juxtaposition. Together, the two expertly demonstrate the sensation of being someone’s person. At its core, Nice Days accurately grasps the sensation of having finally found one’s people in a sea of normality you don’t fit into. I felt very, very human throughout watching this, which is not a normal sensation for most action films. What this suggests to me is a universality Sakamoto touches upon: a hallmark of any truly great film.