I haven’t got word on when the 4th season will be released but reaching to 3 seasons at this point already hints how much this show has grown on me. It’s one of the top shows I would recommend watching right now.
Trailer taken from Asia Only! YT Channel
I was introduced to the show by serendipity. I listened to the season two opening sound track by random youtube recommendations and it eventually kept on repeat on my playlist. It’s one of the many anime I got interested in due to the sound track doing the marketing. And I didn’t regret dwelling into the story the music was used for.
It's also part cooking show. They have dedicated some Ainu gourmet trivia on almost all episodes. I'm not even complaining because these segments are well animated and written.
Plot:
Saichi Sugimoto gained fame from his seemingly abundance of luck and sheer determination to survive during the Battle of 203 Hill. A look back on history would reveal how bloody pre WWI was fought in trenches and harsh terrain. The story is set post Russo-Japanese war when Sugimoto started mining for gold to raise support funds for his deceased friend’s wife and kid.
By chance, he came upon a story about how the Ainu had a stack of gold collected from different parts of Japan consolidated. However, the gold was stolen during transport and the murderer captured and sent to prison. The murderer was believed to be one of the Ainu but he managed to hide the gold before being captured. Everyone was interested in treasure hunting and public officials kept the story under silence as these groups were also interested in the gold.
The Ainu that was imprisoned managed to tattoo codes to locate the treasure on fellow prisoners due for transport. It was an attempt to send a message to an outside group to where the location of the gold was.
The Immortal Sugimoto happens to encounter one of the prisoners who told the story as a rumor until there was an attempt made for his life upon knowing the tale. This led to Sugimoto confirming the rumor to be true and goes on a journey to round up the prisoners and decipher the code.
At the start of his journey, he comes to meet Asirpa, an Ainu girl which helped him retrieve the tattooed skin from a deceased prisoner killed by a bear. They made a deal to search the treasure together and thus begin their journey in search for gold.
What I like about this plot is how simple it is to get behind. The situations that propel a character to start their hero’s journey aren’t forced upon on them; rather, Sugimoto takes initiative to start the story with his grounded motivations. He just wanted to fulfill a promise for his dead friend that died during the war. His friend’s wife had an eye problem and living conditions were already harsh especially for a single mother with disability.
Seeing Sugimoto doing the conventional way of mining for gold in the river after a scene where he was fighting made a lot of sense to me anyway. A well-made character has internal motivations that drive their own story and it’s a bonus if these motivations are relatable for the audience. The first few minutes of the show had me analyzing the setting while taking into account historical context. Post war soldiers have difficulty blending into the society that forced them to fight and there were little options for job from the discriminations they receive from civilian life.
The best course is to continue being a soldier which entails always having one foot 6 feet under while in service. But within a few seconds of clip, we see how human Sugimoto’s reaction to the stresses of war and the costs it comes along. An attempt to a peaceful life made sense for me to try his luck at mining gold. The pursuit of gold was his active choice and that makes a whole lot of difference compared to a character where situations were forced upon them like saving the world.
The charm of the show lies closely to how the slice of life and comedy blended so well with violence. It’s one of the shows that have good pacing and storytelling. Anyone can argue that the first 2 seasons was spent setting the rest of the plot with slow paced story telling but it’s this manner of storytelling through animation that builds good foundation to making us care for the characters and knowing them better. While the progress to keep the plot move forward should be there, it helps to have episodes were there is a balance of being a filler, character development, and plot progression.
Some chill moments are found whenever they hunt, cook, and eat. These scenes are the small culminations on how the light moments keep the story being entertaining even progression to serious parts of the plot.
While there are plenty of characters introduced, I find the slow pace and slow backstory building helps us give a damn about the characters being 3 dimensional. Their motivations are relatable while they have a staple character archetype as a back bone.
One thing this show has accomplished is that it made some disliked characters likeable because of how their perspectives affect other character motivations. Each person influences the other and while Sugimoto and Asirpa are the default protagonists, I find other characters deserved their own spotlight even for just one episode of backstory building.
One of the sound tracks I fell in love with taken from Melodic Star YT Channel. It's a collab of My First Story Band and Sayuri
Golden Kamuy is a balanced show leaning on to the good side. I can’t seem to find unbearable negative points about the show worth mentioning. The animation is ok but it’s the songs the show uses that helped this rank better on the charts.
If you made it this far reading, thank you for your time. This is a creative footer by @adamada. A Hobby Illustrator
