Vague Visages’ Baby Assassins: Nice Days review contains minor spoilers. Yugo Sakamoto’s 2024 movie features Akari Takaishi as Chisato Sugimoto, Saori Izawa as Mahiro Fukagawa and Sôsuke Ikematsu as Kaede Fuyumura. Check out the VV home page for more film criticism, movie reviews and film essays.

Yugo Sakamoto’s “Baby Assassins” series — which stars a pair of roommates/contract killers named Mahiro (Saori Izawa) and Chisato (Akari Takaishi) — has become a staple of the Glasgow Film Festival, with the inclusion of Baby Assassins: Nice Days (2024) making it three for three. And, as with the previous franchise movies, the filmmaker’s latest makes for one of the most gleefully entertaining viewing experiences the festival has to offer, combining gentle hangout humor and brutal fight scenes in a way that’s highly unusual and deeply charming. 

The plot of Baby Assassins: 2 Babies (2023) focuses on Chisato and Mahiro’s unpaid gym fees, and Baby Assassins: Nice Days sees them taking on an even more important mission — going on a vacation to Miyazaki, where they can celebrate Mahiro’s birthday with some seaside fun and a slap-up meal. Sadly, work once again gets in the way of the antiheroes’ plans, as they are ordered to take down a freelance assassin named Kaede (Sôsuke Ikematsu), who loves killing people, in contrast to the title characters’ fun and bubbly approach. He tracks each of his kills in a journal and obsessively scrutinizes his own performance on each job, exhibiting an intense perfectionism that makes him the perfect foil for Chisato and Mahiro, whose approach is decidedly more lackadaisical.

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At one point, when the focal assassins’ employers instruct them to trade out their casual clothing for something more formal, they instead dress up as pop stars, complete with face glitter, striking blue contact lenses and alternative names (Ruby and Sapphire) — all of which they dispense with a few minutes later when Mahiro gets bored. 

But, like its antiheroes, Baby Assassins: Nice Days knows how to get serious. The moment the guns come out, the film morphs from a breezy comedy into a hard-as-nails action movie with extensive fight scenes that are blisteringly visceral and inexhaustibly creative. There’s an elasticity to the reality of the “Baby Assassins” movies, a fungibility to its tone that’s reminiscent of its fellow gun-fu master, John Wick (2014). Both films have a way of turning the violence into sport, allowing viewers to enjoy the adrenaline-pumping action without having to reckon seriously with silly jokes and the fact that the title character(s) just murdered 50 people.

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It helps that the two stars of Baby Assassins: Nice Days are excellent on-screen fighters with distinctive styles. Chisato is like a mad-eyed ballet dancer, cutting down her enemies in lethal strokes, while the baggy-clothed Mahiro is both a boxer and breakdancer, moving in on her enemies with shoulders hunched and fists raised before hitting the ground for a series of twisting, sliding grapples. The latter character even has her own patented finishing move, in which she launches herself into a flying head-butt like a torpedo, topped with a blonde bowl cut.

Baby Assassins: Nice Days introduces a few other combatants to mix things up, like Riku (Mondo Otani) — a hulking, sweet-natured bodybuilder who stars in one brilliantly conceived fight scene by taking down three opponents at once while wielding them as weapons against each other. And Sakamoto remains an elite action director — the camera is almost always in motion, bristling with kinetic energy as it sways and slides along with the fighters, and yet it never allows the audience to lose track of a scene’s geography, nor does it lessen the impact of the blows.

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But the secret weapon of Baby Assassins: Nice Days, as with the other franchise films, is Mahiro and Chisato’s chemistry. They’re kind of an odd-couple, with the latter character’s hyperactive cheer playing off the former’s sleepy introversion. Their idle conversations about haircuts and barbeque preferences are unfailingly funny, and the odd sincere moments between them remain oddly affecting and tender.

There’s no better way to see what makes a movie tick than by taking a look at what happens when it goes missing. The 2025 Glasgow Film Festival also included an action comedy written by Sakamoto, starring Takaishi and directed by franchise fight choreographer Kensuke Sonomura. Ghost Killer (2024) is essentially a spiritual spin-off from the “Baby Assassins” series where Takaisha’s character is paired with the ghost of a deadly assassin rather than her usual BFF. This leads to some fun body-swapping antics as her regular college student turns into a master martial artist whenever said ghost possesses her, and it puts Takaishi’s capricious comedy skills to good use. But, without that warm-hearted friendship at the heart of it, Ghost Killer never quite comes to life in the way that Baby Assassins: Nice Days does.

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On the other hand, this year’s one-two punch of Baby Assassins: Nice Days and Ghost Killer makes it clear that Sakamoto and Sonomura could keep turning out enjoyable martial arts comedies for years to come, either as straight-up sequels or genre riffs. So, with a little luck, the Glasgow Film Festival shouldn’t find itself wanting for easy laughs and hard-knuckled action any time soon.

Ross McIndoe (@OneBigWiggle) is a freelance writer based in Glasgow. Other bylines include The Skinny, Film School Rejects and Bright Wall/Dark Room.