Anime: Golden Kamuy
Studio: Geno Studio
Year: 2018
Length: 24 episodes (12 per season)
What is Golden Kamuy about?
Golden Kamuy takes place in Hokkaido at the start of the 20th century. The story follows ex-soldier Sugimoto who in search of gold in Hokkaido hears about a rumor concerning a huge hidden stash of stolen Ainu gold. He later finds Asirpa, an Ainu girl who saves his life from a bear. She knows of the stolen gold as well and they quickly decide to team up to find it, each wanting it for their own personal reasons. However, they are far from the only ones who are hunting for the gold as a group of escaped convicts and an army division also have their eyes on the riches.
Why should I watch Golden Kamuy?
One of the most striking things about Golden Kamuy is the amount of genres it has. Whilst it would probably be most accurate to call it an adventure anime primarily, it also most certainly is an action, comedy, drama, historical and cooking show as well. Not to mention even genres like mystery, romance and horror do show up. When all that combined sounds like quite a mess with a show only having so few episodes, Golden Kamuy somehow manages to pull it off sublimely, being able to successfully pull off the genre transitions time after time.
There is a lot of action in the show, which can be very tense. Characters are able to get lasting injuries with some even biting the dust. A lot of the characters, including minor characters are quite capable in combat as well, making you never put at ease at what could possibly develop from these encounters. Because characters don't kick the bucket so easily the action becomes quite brutal, where losing some fingers is merely a minor inconvenience. Additionally there is plenty of outsmarting each other, making the action further interesting.
Then you also got the comedy, which is one of the most bizarre style of comedy I've seen. It's not just the jokes themselves that can get completely absurd, but how it can follow any scene as well. Whether it'll be a character almost trying to kill someone else, some historical worldbuilding or after quite a dramatic moment, nowhere is safe from it appearing. And as it happens, it works very well because it's so unexpected. Somehow you're quick to accept this high contrast, even with the show's humour getting crazier and crazier.
It's not often you get a historical show either, especially one based on true events. Whilst the show is taking some liberties with historical facts, the show is very accurate in depicting the time and place of the time period. Especially interesting is to hear all about the Ainu folk, an indigenous group of people who primarily live in Hokkaido. The way you learn about their way of life, their beliefs and mythology do form the heart of the show, which the show also provides plenty of attention to.
Another point that gets a lot of focus is food. Whether it's to show all the intricacies of the hunting style from the Ainu, where each part of the animal gets used as well. It can furthermore be used to showing characters bonding (with some mixture of comedy usually as well) providing a reprieve for all the action. Or it gets used as an introduction to one of the dramatic backstories from the characters where the food in question also played a major role. It's this level of detail that only immerses you more into the world.
The characters are another very strong point of Golden Kamuy. With a large and varied cast, each character even if they'll only appear in a few episodes, stand out very fast with their quirky personalities and have satisfying character arcs as well. They all have their own personal goals to retrieve the stolen gold, and the story stays unpredictable thanks to how some of the characters' allegiances switch during the story. Additionally, watching them all interact never ceases to be interesting with how unique they all are. Coupled all that with two strong leads, who are each going through their moments of strength and weakness and also form a great team thanks to their chemistry.
Music is as well in good hands thanks to the brilliant composer Kenichiro Suehiro, whose most notable soundtracks include Re:Zero and Girls' Last Tour. Golden Kamuy is not on the same level as these, but it does serve its purpose very well. For starters, the music for the journey itself serves its part to get immersed in this great adventure, and was a great way to end the first episode with. The action scenes are either on the tense side like this, sounding like a dance with others and sometimes even just a complete chaos track that absolutely fits how crazy this show can get. More than the action though, it's the build up towards it that tends to be more memorable. Whenever a certain menacing character appears, making the atmosphere feel tense all the way through or a slow and creepy track that gets more intense until the very end. However, it's with the Ainu music Suehiro shines through, whether to present a peaceful town setting, a calm track for the nature, a silly all around music piece or being like a dance altogether. The absolute best though, as with his previous works, are his emotional pieces which couldn't convey the sadness any better. There is just some forlorn sound to it which represents the lost peaceful moments of the past so well, making it hard not to get emotional whilst hearing it, especially with what it gets paired with.
Not only the music is nice, but so are the OPs and EDs. Having veterans like Man With a Mission providing quite the melancholic opening befitting the style of the period and the start of a journey, and Sayuri (with My First Story) providing the OP for the second season, which is a lot more focused in its story and captures all the varying aspects of the show beautifully. For the EDs, the show also utilizes them very well by very often playing them before the credits roll. Both sung by two bands who hadn't made any anime songs before, The Sixth Lie sings the first ED, which did a terrific job making episodes end with a lasting cliffhanger making you want more. For the second ED, eastern youth delivers a powerful song that instead of making you feel hyped for the next one, it makes you feel cathargic after some very strong episodes.
This show certainly isn't without its fair share of criticism though. The most famous one being the bear CGI that feels horribly out of place. Thankfully, the bears only appear for small moments in the show, which makes it tolerable. Another main criticism however isn't that easy to ignore, which you may have already guessed with the animation and art itself being rather lackluster. It's not particularly awful, but it never really gets a chance to shine through and it does hurt at certain action scenes. If it's your first time watching though, the story and innovative action scenes can allow you to not notice it as badly. The second season is also a general improvement in production qualities. Finally, the anime isn't adapting everything, with the first season cutting mostly small things and the second season cutting quite a few little arcs. On the flip side, this does allow the second season to have a clear focus compared to the first season and therefore a very climatic finale that certainly left an impression.
One of the biggest reasons why the anime resonated so much with me was because of the drama. Sugimoto coming back from a war certainly has left mental scars on him, and the question whether he'll ever be able to return to his former self and find happiness remains a big unknown throughout the show. Meanwhile Asirpa has to worry about the future of the Ainu herself, and the mystery of the stolen Ainu gold gets more complex as the show goes on. It's not just the content of the plot, but as well as the absolutely stellar voice acting that accompanies it selling the dramatic moments. The show also knows very well when and when not the music should play during these moments, making it as dramatic as possible. Not knowing how these plotlines will end up and growing very fond of these characters made it such a satisfying watch.
Final thoughts
It's certainly not a show for everyone despite its amounts of genres, but if any of this sounds interesting or exciting to you I wholeheartedly recommend this show. It was a wild ride from start to finish, and it being able to absolutely nail the last episode of the second season made it quite convincingly my favourite anime from 2018.
Submitted September 30, 2019 at 10:40PM by DutchPeasant https://ift.tt/2ndsf3N
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