Shiawase Kanako no Koroshiya Seikatsu (2025)

Way too short, but fun!

This series ends up feeling more like an extended comedy sketch than a full drama series, but the acting and action scenes are on point, and, ultimately, the series does have something to say about the empowerment of the main character and her refusal to be defined by "normal" society.

Non plays Nishino Kanako, a recently unemployed office lady, who is offered a job as a hitman and discovers that because of her experience of years of bullying and harassment has acquired the skills to be preternaturally good at the job. The series is happily and ironically cheerful and kawaii as the bullets fly and the blood flows, and Kanako's chibi imaginary animal friends make childish puns as she finds her way in this new world of contract killing and peril.

Every episode features action sequences that are well executed and fun but almost completely bloodless but for occasional splatters and post-combat pools. A polite fiction is maintained throughout that everyone Kanako kills almost certainly deserves it, but the whole thing is so far from any kind of reality that that polite fiction does not really seem to matter much. There are at least a couple of plot points that make no sense at all (wait: didn't she kill that guy?), but the series is so unserious that you probably won't care either since the writer and the director certainly don't.

As I often say in my reviews of comedies: YMMV. But I found the series to be light and funny, and the comedy bits pretty much consistently landed for me. But, at the same time, there is at least one touching moment from Kanako's backstory that was genuinely moving. Non was pretty much born to play this kind of role: a simple and "pure" (?!) person going through a process of discovery to find that she is capable and valuable just as she is. The irony here that her "purity" is the ability to efficiently and relentlessly kill people works for me, at least.

In the end Kanako is offered a choice between the normal life that society says she should want or, instead, continuing to be what she is really good at. And we are left happily cheering her on.

The button at the end of the series says explicitly that there will be a season 2 on Netflix, and one can only hope. But the best information at the time of writing this review is that the button is a joke, and there are no such plans at this time.

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You dont need subs for this drama

Did I watch it without waiting for subs? Yup. But did I still vibe with it, even with my broken Japanese? Hell yes. Kanako’s switch-up was hilarious, and Sakurai’s reaction to her serious mode? Even funnier. They really stacked this show with all the big names for a reason. I can’t imagine anyone else pulling off the serious detective role like Yamazaki Hirona. The way she’s all tsundere about being in love with her coworker? Classic. Then there’s the Kanako’s mom, and her love story wrapped up in just six episodes, wild.

I still need some more time to fully get Hosomi’s character, though. We needed a bit more depth there, I think. But honestly, watching a regular office worker go from zero to assassin? Total blast. All that chaos was pure fun.

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