Every war needs an origin point, and for Sakamoto Days, that point has a name: Rion Akao. She has been dead for years before the story even begins, yet her death is the single event tying Sakamoto, Nagumo, Uzuki, and Akira together in the fight now consuming the manga’s Final Battle.
If you have only watched the anime, you have seen her in flashes. A blue-haired legend from Sakamoto’s JCC days, gone before Slur ever became a problem. But as the Final Battle arc digs into Kei Uzuki’s fractured psyche and Nagumo’s obsession with uncovering the truth, Rion has stopped being a footnote. She is the wound the entire story keeps pressing on.
Who Was Rion Akao Before She Died?
Rion trained at the JCC alongside Taro Sakamoto and Yoichi Nagumo, and the three of them were inseparable. They were also, by every account, a nightmare for their instructors.
Rion, Sakamoto, and Nagumo were considered excellent students and troublemakers, especially by Etsuko Satoda, and their antics eventually got them expelled together. Rion matched both of her friends in raw skill, and she carried a distinct edge: a rare technique for reading the paths that lead to a person’s death, a gift she later passed down to her niece, Akira Akao.
She was also the emotional center of the group in a way Sakamoto and Nagumo were not. When Kei Uzuki joined their unit as the final member for a mission against the Steel Dragon, Rion was the only one among her friends who tried to make friends with and talk or interact with Uzuki. That kindness would end up costing her everything.
After leaving the JCC, Rion did not settle down. She ran off with Uzuki, taking on illegal assassination jobs alone so he would not have to carry that weight himself, and the two of them even talked about living a normal life beyond the world of killers. It is one of the few glimpses Sakamoto Days gives us of Rion wanting something softer than the life she was raised for.
The Betrayal That Set Everything in Motion
Rion Akao died seven years before the series begins, and the person who killed her was Kei Uzuki, the same man she had tried to shield from the Order.
Her death was not a fair fight or a mission gone wrong. It was engineered. Rion was manipulated by Kei Uzuki’s brother Masaki, and ultimately murdered by Kei, whom she had come to care for and even aided in escaping from the Order. Masaki orchestrated the entire betrayal, turning Uzuki against the one person who had refused to give up on him.
The aftermath fractured everyone connected to her. Nagumo, in particular, could not let it go. He kept digging for the truth about Rion’s death, a search that eventually got him expelled from the Order after he was shaken during a confrontation tied to her memory.
Sakamoto walked away from the assassin world entirely and built a quiet life with his family, but the past never stayed buried. And Uzuki, the man who pulled the trigger, has never fully recovered. Even in death, Rion’s spirit persists as an alternate personality within Kei Uzuki, continuing to influence key events from beyond.
Why Rion Still Matters in the Final Battle
Sakamoto Days officially entered its Final Battle arc with chapter 224, and Rion’s fingerprints are all over it. Her niece Akira is now fighting through the JCC using the same path-reading technique Rion taught her. Nagumo is still chasing answers about what really happened seven years ago. And Uzuki’s identity crisis, the war between who he was raised to be and the version of himself shaped by killing Rion, has become one of the emotional cores of the entire back half of the story.
Sakamoto recognized it instantly. When he watched Akira fight during the JCC entrance exam, he saw Rion’s technique and immediately asked if she knew her. That single moment reframes the current arc: this is not just Sakamoto versus Slur anymore. It is a reckoning between everyone Rion left behind.
The manga has not slowed down since entering its Final Battle, and every thread connects back to her. Sakamoto Days chapter 224 kicked off the arc on August 4, and new chapters continue dropping weekly in Weekly Shonen Jump, with chapter 269 now scheduled for July 26.
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