JAA Jail Arc

This is the ninth story arc of the Sakamoto Days series, spanning chapters 169 through 207 across volumes 19 to 23. In the fallout of the exhibition attack, the newly rebuilt Order marks Sakamoto, Nagumo, and Uzuki as grave threats. As Uzuki moves to dismantle the rest of the association, Sakamoto's group trains hard and breaks into the JAA's own prison hunting for a fortune teller to gain an edge.

In the wake of the museum bloodbath, the freshly reorganized Order flags Sakamoto, Nagumo, and Uzuki as grave dangers, while Uzuki channels his new Takamura persona toward tearing down what remains of the Japanese Association of Assassins. Bracing for the coming storm, Sakamoto hardens himself against the Order operative Torres, and Shin and Heisuke drill under the revived Kindaka.

Judging that ordinary practice will not be enough, Shin and Heisuke breach the heavily guarded JAA Jail in pursuit of a fortune teller, a gambit that pulls them through a gauntlet of the prison's inmates. Their infiltration surfaces old ghosts, among them the imprisoned Boiled and the enigmatic Tenkyu, whose full form is finally seen.

The arc digs deep into the cast's origins. The Al-Kamar Orphanage massacre is depicted at last, along with its aim of manufacturing emotionless killers, a program that failed with Uzuki, Kumanomi, Gaku, Gozu, and Haruma but succeeded with Tenkyu. Tasuku Ando is introduced as a former association researcher who once ran the orphanage and let Shin escape at the cost of his own freedom, before dying alongside Ikari in a ship explosion. Kindaka wakes from a decade-long coma and throws his support behind Sakamoto, who also decides to grow his store into a national chain.

Shin learns that his thought-overwriting works only once on another person yet endlessly on himself, and he chooses to leave the store behind. The Order descends on the prison to seize Atari and halt the escape of Boiled, Sakamoto, Shin, Heisuke, and Hoshi. Meanwhile Uzuki, having kidnapped Asaki, murders him and proclaims the birth of a reborn association, prompting the Order to throw in with him as he reveals his true goal, and leaving Sakamoto shattered by the belief that Lu and Aoi have died, a thread that carries into the New JAA Arc.