Demon City’s ending was all about Sakata getting his revenge on the Kimen-gumi for killing his wife, Aoi, and supposedly murdering his daughter, Ryo. Back in the day, Sakata used to work as a hitman for Fujita. As his last assignment before seeking retirement and living the rest of his days as a family man, he killed off the last Yakuza group in the provincial city of Shinjo. When he went back home with the intention of starting a new chapter of his life, he found his wife and daughter being held hostage by a group of masked men. The Kimen-gumi were apparently cleaning up the city, and they saw Sakata as a “demon” who could ruin it all for them. So, they needed to finish him and his family off to avoid this hypothetical outcome. For some reason, on that fateful night, only Sakata’s wife died. Ryo survived because the bullet from the Kimen-gumi boss Ryu Sunohara’s gun hit her doll instead of her. Sakata didn’t die, even though he was shot in the head, maybe because Jin Sunohara was using a small caliber bullet. Anyway, Ryu allowed both of them to live instead of sealing their fate. Sakata remained in a vegetative state for 12 years while Ryo grew up thinking one of the members of the Kimen-gumi, Kanta Fase, was her father. But as soon as Sakata regained consciousness, he went on a murderous rampage to end the Kimen-gumi and free Ryo. Did he succeed, or did he die trying? Let’s find out.
Spoiler Alert
Sakata’s first kill after his resurrection in Demon City was Kotaro Shinuzuka, who was Chief of Police and secretly a member of the Kimen-gumi. After that, he gunned down Fujita because he was the one who gave Sakata’s address to the Kimen-gumi, which led to the events of that fateful night. Soon after that, another member of the Kimen-gumi, Homare Takemoto, bit the dust as he refused to give information on his boss to Sakata. After learning that Ryo was alive, Sakata got in touch with Officer Yoshifumi Takigawa and confronted Kanta Fase. Since Ryo thought Sakata was an intruder, she shot him with an arrow while Fase threw him out of the window. Takigawa rescued Sakata, but before he could tend to his wounds, Sunohara called Sakata to his passion project, the Mahoroba, which was a giant building smack in the middle of Shinjo City. Sunohara was holding Ryo hostage there, and if he wanted to reunite with his daughter, he would have to fight his way through waves of armed guards, as well as Kanta Fase, Jin Sunohara, and Ryu Sunohara.
After killing off almost every henchman in the Mahoroba and incapacitating Kanta Fase by stabbing him in the eye, Sakata got to Ryo. Unfortunately but expectedly, Ryo didn’t recognize Sakata. Jin used that opportunity to knock out Sakata and took him to Ryu’s den, who was gearing up to enjoy killing Sakata and Ryo all over again. But, much like every final boss in an action movie, instead of straight-up putting Sakata and Ryo in their respective graves, Ryu began monologuing. He was under the impression that even though Sakata had butchered half of the Kimen-gumi and the armed guards in the Mahoroba, the former hitman was holding back. Ryu wanted Sakata to unleash the “demon” inside him, and he threatened to slice Ryo’s head off if Sakata didn’t do his bidding. Ryu’s yapping gave Officer Takigawa the chance to burst into the room with a Tommy gun and create a ruckus. As Ryo fled the scene with Takigawa, Sakata took on the remainder of the guards and seemingly finished off Jin Sunohara. Then he fought Ryu. Sakata lost his arm while Ryu lost his head. Ryo returned to the battlefield to put an end to Kanta Fase (who made a last-minute re-entry) and bid goodbye to her father, who used his dying breath to apologize to his daughter for failing to protect Aoi and to express his happiness about how much Ryo had grown.
During Demon City’s ending, while the police and medics were taking care of the dead and the wounded, a team of firefighters whisked away Jin’s body, because he was the only member of the Kimen-gumi who was alive. He posed as Ryu and won the election for the post of the mayor of Shinjo. It was evident that Sakata’s rampage had benefited Sunohara greatly. He was able to use that attack, as well as the scar on his face, which he had had ever since he was a child, to sway the voters over to his side. Well, the election was a sham anyway, because Sunohara had been accused of abducting and killing his political rivals. But the thing about megalomaniacs is that, even if they have a sure-shot win, they’ll still be insecure, and they’ll always take things too far. It just boosts their arrogance to the next level. However, arrogance always comes with a blind spot, and since Jin didn’t check his corners as he was too busy celebrating his victory, he failed to see Ryo coming for him. Yes, Ryo had fled the crime scene after Sakata’s death and, by the looks of it, she’d started brewing her plan to kill Jin and perfected her archery method so that when the time came, she wouldn’t miss. Since characters in the film have a habit of coming back from the dead, when Ryo caught Jin off-guard, she put three arrows into him and waited until he was surely gone. In doing so, Ryo completed Sakata’s revenge saga, which in a way was her revenge saga as well, because Ryo was as much of a victim of the Kimen-gumi’s villainous actions as Sakata was.
Although there’s no official confirmation of a sequel, Demon City’s ending has left the door open for one, as we see Ryo taking up the mantle of the Demon of Shinjo after Sakata’s departure. It’s unclear if she’ll be the hitman that Sakata was, but she’ll surely be the vigilante and savior that Shinjo needs after the end of Ryu’s reign. Even though the Kimen-gumi claimed that they wanted to cleanse the city, it was obvious that they wanted to siphon the resources that were meant for the weakest sections of the society and make the rich even richer. I mean, the biggest indicator of the fact that Ryu or the Kimen-gumi didn’t actually care about development was Kanta Fase’s business of human trafficking. They used the money they made off of that and put it into PR management to boost Ryu’s image, thereby making people believe that Ryu believed in the betterment of the city and nothing else for 12 very long years. So, it’ll take a lot of time and effort to put things right. Villains like Ryu will look to use the power vacuum to plunge Shinjo into another dark phase. And given how the chief of police was in the Kimen-gumi, we can’t exactly trust the authorities and law enforcement to keep the evil at bay. Ryo is a safer bet because she has the brains and the brawn to take care of anyone who wants to take advantage of this volatile situation. Maybe she’ll get some help from Officer Takigawa, or maybe she’ll come across other vigilantes like herself who are looking to fight for Shinjo’s bright future. Is that something you want to see explored in a potential sequel to Demon City? Let me know in the comments section below.
