Anime

10 Best Action-Comedy Anime to Watch After Sakamoto Days

If Sakamoto Days scratches your itch for both action-packed fights and hilarious characters, these equally exciting comedies will continue the fun!

Action-comedy Anime like Sakamoto Days

Rising in popularity, Sakamoto Days continues its run with its anticipated 11 episodes to conclude Part 1 in March. With its unique brand of action-packed antics, it can be tough to get out of the slump when a beloved series eventually comes to an end. With so much potential out there in the realm of thrilling showdown-slapstick combos, we wouldn’t blame you if you’re craving more to satiate your sweet tooth for action-comedies. Luckily, we have just the list.

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From martial arts to maids, duels to melees, and witty quips to running jokes, these gagsters and gangsters are sure to to keep you on your toes as they go toe-to-toe. If you’ve been enjoying Sakamoto Days, you’ll love these anime series that don’t hold their punches when busting a gut.

Akiba Maid War

Nagomi Wahira has always admired the maids at the cafes in Akihabara and dreams of joining their ranks. Finally taking the first steps in doing so, she moves there and lands a job as a maid at café Ton Tokoton. It’s a typical first day on the job until she’s tasked with running an errand to a rival maid cafe with her serious thirty-five-year-old coworker, Ranko Mannen. When Nagomi unknowingly delivers a threatening letter declaring war between the rival cafes, all hell breaks loose.

Fighting knife-wielding rabbit maids in an all-out turf war was far from what she expected working at a maid café. Now Nagomi realizes she not only signed up to join the ranks of maids but also the ranks in battle. The combo of action and comedy genres within anime in fact never ceases to subvert expectations. Maids fighting turf wars is probably just as unexpected a plot as an assassin retiring to run a convenience store. Perhaps even more so.

Gintama

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Sunrise

Edo, a city once home to the feudal shogunate of Japan, is now a puppet-government after being invaded by an alien race, the Amanto. With the ban on swords in public, samurai have become a legend of the past. That is, except for one. Gintoki Sakata, brandishing a wooden sword, claims to be a samurai for hire despite the ban. But he isn’t alone; In his endeavor to help others, Gintoki stumbles upon Shinpachi Shimura who becomes his apprentice wanting to learn the way of the samurai and Kagura, an alien girl who assists with her superhuman strength.

The trio take on freelance odd jobs at Yorozuya; emphasis on the capital ‘O’ Odd. From fighting aliens to toilet humor, Gintama is sure to get a giggle. The series centers around a guy dedicated to helping others accompanied by his straight-man protégé and a red-haired, gluttonous girl with powerful strength. You might even say it sounds familiar… If you enjoy Sakamoto Days, you’re sure to love Gintama.

Mob Psycho 100

Studio BONES

What reserved, passive middle schooler Shigeo “Mob” Kageyama lacks in friends due to his distant, inexpressive demeanor he makes up for in pure unadulterated psychic power. Or at least, in theory. Ever since lashing out and accidentally injuring his younger brother, Ritsu, Mob had resolved to keep his emotions, and therefore, psychic abilities, in check. Although, he does occasionally use it to try to impress his crush, Tsubomi Takane. But when she grows bored of Mob’s repetitive tricks, he seeks to better control his power, and so becomes the apprentice of the con artist, Arataka Reigen, who claims to also be psychic. In the business of exorcising evil spirits, Reigen exploits Mob’s supernatural abilities for money. As much as Mob tries to control his power by suppressing his emotions, his untapped potential fights to let his emotions run rampant, driving him towards exploding at 100% power capacity.

With an esper edge, Mob Psycho 100 has both supernatural action and high-spirited humor. Soft-spoken and kind like Sakamoto, this protagonist may seem like a pushover, but epitomizes the phrase “when the going gets tough, the tough get going”.

Dandadan

Dandadan Anime Momo and Okarun
SCIENCE SARU

When Momo Ayase defends her meek classmate, Ken Takakura, from bullies, he mistakes her kindness as wanting to befriend him and an interest in his obsession. Although she also is interested in the supernatural, she explains that she doesn’t believe in aliens like him, but instead believes in ghosts. Initiating a rivalry, they both set out to prove the other wrong, landing them in a series of odd events that not only prove that they were both right, but requiring them to team up against those very supernatural forces they’d bickered about.

Momo and the now dubbed Occult-kun, or Okarun, find that their newfound friendship is based on a much deeper bond with one another than just getting Okarun’s stolen family jewels back. Like Mob Psycho 100, Dandadan is also a supernatural action comedy but with its own twist of paranormal entities. If you enjoy the fights that are just as wittily executed as the back and forth banter in Sakamoto Days, Dandadan is a choice not to pass up, and deservedly won our Anime of the Year award for 2024.

One-Punch Man

Madhouse

Many kids dream of becoming a super hero when they grow up. After training so rigorously for three years straight to the point of losing his hair, Saitama managed to achieve that dream. Now that he’s so strong he can defeat anything with a single punch, challenges have become not so challenging. In fact, they’ve become so easy to conquer, his once beloved hobby has become a source of boredom. When nineteen year old cyborg Genos happens upon such a strong hero, he insists on becoming Saitama’s disciple and encourages him into joining the Hero Association together. With a renewed excitement for battle, Saitama faces new challenges one punch at a time.

Written by the mangaka known as “ONE”, the same creator of Mob Psycho 100, One Punch Man packs a punch for both action sequences and hilarious exploits. Sakamoto may have been stressed with just keeping his wife happy, but Saitama wasn’t losing his hair over even the most imposing villains. Well, at least metaphorically.

Assassination Classroom

Assassination Classroom official anime key visual
Lerche

Unlike their peers at the elite Kunugigaoka Junior High School, Class 3-E, a class of delinquents and dropouts, is banished to attend classes in a derelict building away from the main campus. With little hope for a bright future, an unexpected turn of events opens the door of opportunity when a new teacher arrives. But the new teacher doesn’t just want to give them lessons in arithmetic, he wants to teach the class how to kill. Namely him. Dubbed Koro-sensei, the new teacher is actually a super fast, super resilient octopus-like creature thought to be an alien who, after destroying the moon, threatens to destroy the earth by the end of the school year. That is, if no one destroys him first.

Tasked by the government itself to eliminate the strange professor, the students must find Koro-sensei’s weakness before its too late. Besides having trouble with even coming close to wounding him, the students face another obstacle: letting go of the only teacher who truly believed in them. Sakamoto is an ex-assassin and Koro-sensei teaches assassins. At the end of the day, they are both lovable, eccentric beings of mass destruction.

Spy x Family

WIT Studio/CloverWorks

As the neighboring countries Ostania and Westalis quietly plot against each other, spy Twilight takes on the alias of psychiatrist Loid Forger in the Ostanian city of Berlint to conduct intel. His target: the politician Donovan Desmond. The problem is Donovan only rarely appears at his son’s school, Eden Academy. In order to get closer to his target, Loid enlists Yor Briar, an unmarried city hall clerk, and Anya, his newly adopted daughter who he enrolls at Eden Academy, to act as a normal happy family.

Unbeknownst to the spy, Loid’s new family hides their own secrets — Yor is actually an assassin known as “Thorn Princess” and Anya is a telepath secretly able to read others’ minds. Even though the family starts out as a façade, their love for each other grows to be true. As a cute triad family with an assassin parent, Spy x Family gives Sakamoto Days some competition. Nonetheless, both families cherish their forged relationships

Dragon Ball

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Toei Animation

This series, for the few who haven’t heard, follows the adventures of Son Goku, an alien of the Saiyan race. He travels the world in search of both new friends to make and new enemies to defeat, sometimes the latter becoming the former. Though Goku faces escalating threats and increasingly powerful foes, he also has no shortage of good times to be had in doing so. No matter the situation, Goku, with his strong sense of justice, protects the world from those with malicious intent who search for the Dragon Balls, seven magical orbs that grant a wish when collected.

With super strength and silly quirks, both Goku and Sakamoto know the struggle of balancing a background of bulking and keeping the wife happy. But even in the case of Goku’s earlier days as a simple, ultra-strong bachelor, his adventures are similarly larger-than-life as an action-comedy classic. You can of course follow Goku’s journeys from the 1984 original through Dragon Ball Z, Super, GT, and Daima predominantly on Crunchyroll.

Ranma 1/2

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MAPPA / Shogakukan

After Ranma and his father Genma Saotome return from a martial arts training expedition in China, they’re each cursed to transform when in contact with cold water; Ranma into a girl and his father into a panda. Though it can be lifted with hot water, the curse continually causes a stream of issues for them. When Ranma is engaged to Akane Tendou, the youngest daughter of his father’s closest friend, Soun Tendou, the two aren’t exactly enthralled with the prospect.

Forced to live under one roof, the betrothed constantly butt heads with Ranma’s curse only worsening the situation and giving way to silly situations and misunderstandings. When trouble comes knocking on their doorstep, both Ranma and Sakamoto know how to step up. The silly antics only increase with another part-time red-haired martial artist.

Soul Eater

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Studio Bones

At the Death Weapon Meister Academy led by the Shinigami Lord Death himself, students pair up into weapon meister and demon weapon duos in order to one day complete their objectives into becoming the rank of Death Scythes. But in order to achieve this feat, the pairs must collect ninety-nine evil souls and one witch’s soul and have the demon weapon partner consume them.

Soul Eater follows three teams of weapon-meister partners: Soul Eater Evans the Demon Scythe and his partner meister Maka Albarn, the ever confident Black Star and his weapon Tsubaki, and the headmaster’s obsessive-compulsive son Death the Kid and his pistol weapons Patty and Liz. The teams work to collect their objective number of souls and protect Death City. These kids don’t just know how to fight, but each definitely has their quirk, making quite the ruckus with both evil spirits and each other. But having a team of misfits band together to fight threats and grow through their mutual eccentricities is something endearing in both Soul Eater and Sakamoto Days.


What action flick has you not just glued to the screen but rolling with laughter? Let us know in the comments!