Baby Assassins: Nice Days
Written originally on March 20th, 2025.
Baby Assassins: Nice Days is the third film in Yugo Sakamoto’s trilogy that follows teenage assassins, Chisato and Mahiro. They are played incredibly by Akari Takaishi and Saori Izawa. These films are almost like their own genre. The typical structure is pretty plotless, revolving around Chisato and Mahiro snacking and laying around while they try to avoid their responsibilities which include being hitman and finding part time work. Chisato is the more charismatic of the duo, almost becoming manic at some points. Mahiro is more masculine presenting and a tad lazier. The films always culminate in a videogame style boss fight for Mahiro against a much larger male villain. There is this lackadaisical energy to the characters that just rubs off on you. Anytime they get called into work, it feels almost frustrating because you are so steeped in their perspective, even though you know there is some great fight choreography coming up next.
In a post John Wick world, the progression and structure of those sequels that follow the original Chad Stahelski film seem to be as if not more influential than the original. Each gets substantially bigger with additional characters and a longer runtime. The action set pieces involve progressively complex and showy choreography. With the Wick franchise, that progression generally works because Stahelski creates pure spectacle, especially in the Buster Keaton adjacent fourth entry when he is basically working with a blockbuster budget. The simplified lesson of escalating action unfortunately does not equal an escalation in drama.
Baby Assassins: Nice Days is a substantial dropoff from the previous two entries in no small part to the obvious increase in scale. That sounds like a good thing because who wouldn’t want bigger action setpieces? However, the action is choppy and segmented in an effort to clear space for higher production action sequences. This priority leads to gorey shootouts feeling absolutely weightless. Through over five hours of these films, you cannot point out a more lifeless scene than Fuyumura, played by Sosuke Ikematsu, returning to the Farmers only to slaughter all of them. It is a perspective change to relay an event that barely matters to the story. Sure it opens him up to becoming the leader of the remaining freelancers, but there are zero stakes at play. You never feel a sense of danger.
The blocking feels self obsessed and only interested in creating the coolest shot possible. You intrinsically cannot create action that feels slick and muscular when that is such a defined intention. Even if you tried to isolate the action from the rest of a film, you cannot because it is so plot intensive that Chisato and Mahiro should be having a stroke the second they have to go to a third location. It does not feel in service of storytelling or formal exploration, but rather spinning the wheels on a franchise for the sake of it.
Narratively and emotionally, this covers essentially the same ground as Baby Assassins: 2 Babies, especially by the time we get to the third act. Chisato gets knocked out of the boss fight, and Mahiro must finish the film with a brawl to the death against Fuyumura, a rival assassin that the babies have been commissioned to terminate, which is… the exact same thing that happened in the last film. With a franchise, obviously some ground will be worn to the dirt, but that does not require one to be so lazy and obtuse about it.
Fuyumura’s most interesting trait is that he likes journaling. Perhaps he is a tad neurodivergent or just incredibly organized, but regardless it is not a piece of characterization that is particularly interesting, especially when compared to the twin team of assassins from 2 Babies that are seeking to take Chisato and Mahiro’s spot in their organization. There are immediate stakes to the idea of being replaced in a capitalist state and visualising that with duplicates. Nice Days tries to replicate that idea but with the gig economy, attaching the title of freelancer to Fuyumura. It comes across as nothing more than a name tag that does not differentiate him in any meaningful way.
The most dramatic moments of Nice Days lie in the quiet conversations between Chisato and Mahiro revolving around Mahiro’s birthday and their dinner plans. After spending so much time with these characters and seeing their friendship slowly morph into something tinged with romanticism, their chemistry engulfs the frame and makes everything else feel like noise. As screen partners they are incredibly dynamic and playful, and they manage to make the overtly silly material feel important. The pace of film slows down significantly, more akin to the hangout vibe of the previous entries.
One could make the point that Chisato and Mahiro getting caught up in the hustle and bustle of work as they grow older is in the text of the film, but it plays out in the most boisterous and plotty way possible so that there is barely any time to breath, let alone consider the thematic implications. Baby Assassins: Nice Days is so clunky and obsessed with its own mythologizing in the action movie landscape that it forgets why these films work so well.