So I like ninja stories and I like assassin stories. Naturally, I was curious when I see an anime title about the two of them coming together. A Ninja And An Assassin Under One Roof stars Satoko Kusagakure, a ninja who ran away from her village and was rescued from her pursuers by an assassin named Konoha Koga. After finding the two of them have skills the other needs they started living together and that’s how their chaotic life began.

For the most part the story is a slice of life as we see our duo live their day to day lives. What sets this apart is how their normal routine involves Satoko running away from ninjas while Konoha executes them. Satoko needs protection while Konoha needs someone good at cleaning up her home and her crime scenes. I really expected this to be a gag that lasts the entire season and is the core of the story. It is a season long gag but the story is far more than that. These two end up having character development thanks to each other and these episodes are not stand alone. I’ve seen comedic shows where episodes kind of function independently; however, here we have a full sense of continuity. So everything humorous and serious carries over to fully flesh out a story that blends humor and even gets surprisingly dark at times.

The parts meant to be funny worked well. I never laughed hysterically but the humor put a smile on my face several times. The same could be said for the lighthearted moments. The moments meant to be dark also hit rather well. I’ll say that I don’t think any of these were done perfectly but they were all done well enough to be really entertaining. For a show to balance all of this together to seamlessly change its tone and to make a successful story out of it is really impressive.

The characters are surprisingly complex as well. I fully expected one note characters as that’s the first impression they give. However, as the season progressed we get to see more and more to them. Goals, aspirations, fears, and so on. They are not to the realm where I would say they are complex but they are fully fleshed out characters. Again another rarity in shows that tend to be on the humorous side.

So overall there’s nothing that had me absolutely loving this show; however, it’s still really impressive. It balances comedy, character development, dark tones and lighthearted moments together to create something that works really well. I went into this thinking it would take the same path as a lot of comedy leaning shows with a focus on the running gag with little else to support it. However, instead what we got is a fully fleshed out story full of various elements that the running gag brings together. It’s a solid show and worth a watch.