OK, in the first place, I agree – that bear looked ridiculous.
In a season with new cours of Boku no Hero Academia and Hoozuki no Reitetsu on the menu, it would be hard me to say any new series would be my top in terms of anticipation. But Golden Kamuy would be a serious candidate. A historical seinen and one of the most-awarded manga of the modern era, thematically focused on a fascinating and dark subject that modern Japanese are loathe to discuss openly, brought to us by a new studio just coming off a debut success with Kokkoku. All things considered this series would be on any shortlist of potential AotY candidates.
The general rule of thumb with adaptations of source material this good is, just don’t screw it up – which sounds easy but is actually quite difficult, especially when a 12-episode run means you’re either going to have to craft an original ending or stop the story in middle. In director Nanba Hitoshi, Geno have put a man in charge who seems a good fit for that Hippocratic intent – he’s a veteran of long standing, with a resume dominated by meticulous and conscientious stewardship rather than daring vision and creativity. The rest of the staff is likewise solid, including writer Takagi Noboru, but they (especially Takagi-san) are going to have their hands full making this work as a single cour.
I sincerely hope (thus far, a fruitless hope) that what gets discussed about this premiere isn’t mostly the CGI bears. While they were indeed shockingly discordant, the rest of the episode was as rock-solid as its source material and staff – and it looked quite handsome, too. It’s hard to know why a director with Nanba-sensei’s experience would allow such a thing to happen on his watch – he’s spoken of wanting to create a different impression between the animals and humans, and the difficulty of conveying mangaka Noda Satoru’s depiction of the animal fur – but whatever the thinking behind it, this small, relatively insignificant part of the premiere was a disastrous choice.
And it’s a shame that’s all most people are talking about – because this was a really good first episode. Really, Golden Kamuy has an exquisitely great premise – in the first place, the whole matter of the Ainu and their shameful treatment by the Japanese (and no, Americans and Europeans shouldn’t forget that we grew up in glass houses) is a goldmine for historical drama. Then there’s the plot itself – involving a huge treasure of gold stolen from the Ainu by a man now confined in the “prison at the end of the world”, refusing to reveal where he’s hidden the gold despite torture by the guards. The man tattooed his treasure map on the bodies of his fellow prisoners, supposedly – with the promise that if they escaped they’d split the treasure, but with the true intent of killing and skinning them to put the coded map back together.
That’s a great setup for a series, and Golden Kamuy jumps right into introducing us to protagonist “immortal” Sugimoto Saichi (Kobayashi Chikahiro) as he fights like a madman in the Russo-Japanese War. Determined to survive, he cheats (and delivers) death repeatedly, and makes a promise to his childhood friend to help his ailing wife find treatment for her encroaching blindness. That means money, and that sends Sugimoto-san panning for gold in the frozen wilds of Hokkaido, where an old drunk tells him the story of the prisoners and the gold around the fire one night.
The connection between bears and the Ainu people is deep and profound – indeed, the “Kamuy” of the title is the Ainu word for “Gods”, and they believe Gods take the form of animals when they come to the human realm, with the bear at the head of the group. This gets very complicated but that will hopefully be explored in more detail as we proceed – for now, a bear attacks and kills the old drunk and half-buries him in the snow where Sugimoto finds him – and when he discovers the man’s corpse is heavily tattooed, the tall tale begins to seem quite believable. The bear that killed the man is a matakirp – an ornery bear that was unable to hibernate. But it’s a mother bear who attacks Sugimoto first – and he’s saved from her by the arrow of a young Ainu girl named Asirpa (Shiraihi Haruka).
Sugimoto and Asirpa teaming up to take on the Matakirp is great stuff (especially when Sugimoto tries punching it Mongo-style). But it’s really just the next piece in the puzzle of this brilliant premise – this team-up of the Ainu and the Sisam to find the gold stolen from her people, that her father died trying to protect. This is just the beginning of a very big and powerful story, full of adventure and humor and shocking violence and profound social commentary. The only cautionary note, really (apart from the CGI) is just how much of that story we’re going to get to in 12 short episodes. Geno seems to have chosen the right team to transition Golden Kamuy to the screen, but the production committee certainly hasn’t made their job easy with the scheduling…
OP: “Winding Road” by MAN WITH A MISSION
ssva
April 10, 2018 at 6:20 amYes, the CGI was an eyesore but can’t people just…bear with it? As you’ve pointed out everything else was fine – the episode is solid.
Guardian Enzo
April 10, 2018 at 6:28 amHang your head in shame.
elianthos80
April 10, 2018 at 6:55 amThat was beautiful I paw my hommages to you.
sonicsenryaku
April 10, 2018 at 9:23 amYea that cgi monstrosity is a sin this production must bear on its shoulders but i get what effect they were trying to go for. In a lot of ways, they tried to give the bears in the world of golden kamuy the same feel as the handler’s in Kokkoku; ethereal entities not of this world which makes sense considering that is how the Ainu see them as. Unfortunately, using the same rendering technique did translate properly here; it’s just bad; the cgi wolf was bad; the realistic fire digitally composited (almost as if it was green screened in) into these beautifully drawn landscapes/backgrounds was bad. From a production standpoint, geno studio has not impressed me, but there are still quite a few things to like here aesthetically about Kamuy. Again, the art direction is competent (I believe it’s hand drawn background; certainly looks like it) and character designs are on point (Looking at you Asirpa; this is the kind of shit people jump at the chance to cosplay as).
Guardian Enzo
April 10, 2018 at 4:08 pmYes, I like the designs and I’m pretty sure the backgrounds (which are lovely) are hand-drawn (as is most of the animation). I don’t think this was so much a matter of budget with the CGI as poor decision-making.
The wild guesser
April 10, 2018 at 7:33 amFirst kingdom and now this, is there some sort of CGI quota for historical anime?
Anyways, while the CGI was distracting, it didn’t take me out of the episode that much. I really like the fact that anime related to the Russo-Japanese war actually exist. Nothing against the Tokugawa Shogunate or the Sengoku period, but they seem to be FLOODED with anime and manga related to that time.
justfun
April 10, 2018 at 7:45 amIt was an OK episode, but after the high expectations everyone had I thought it would have been better. I found direction and storytelling a bit dull because everything was too rushed. Instead of giving us that much exposition and backstory so early, characters could have been introduced more slowly and the two mains could have gotten more time to “sniff” at each other. For a ruthless soldier that kills even his superiors I found the main character also too casual and too talkative.
sonicsenryaku
April 10, 2018 at 8:59 amHe didn’t kill his superior officer; he almost beat him half to death; regardless, i don’t see how that trait has anything to do with how casual or talkative a person can be. The correlation between those factors isn’t as direct as you’re making it out to be. I get your complaint about the exposition though as my sentiments pretty much match yours, at least initially. I get that perhaps a more meticulously-paced drip of that kind of information would have been more suited to building suspense and intrigue about the mysteries of the gold cache and the atrocities that befell the Ainu; however, this is the kind of story that is trying to hit the gas pedal on the main conceit of its premise: the adventures of our two mains surviving against nature and hunting for the gold. Being that the aim a straight-forward but carefully crafted action series with social commentary and cultural world building, I can see why wanting to stage the premise of show immediately was the approach the narrative took. Get the exposition about the gold hunt out of the way immediately (which still delivers the information at a moderate enough speed that you can grasp the importance of it) and then you can focus on delivering the main goal of the story right away. As a writer, you have to make decisions on what narrative details are worth stretching out throughout the story. Perhaps the thought was that trying intersperse that information gradually throughout the first few parts of the narrative would have took away from building up the other elements necessary to maintain the pace and intensity this story thrives off of, which kind of makes sense to me. Could they have made a more meditated approach to the exposition work for this kind of story?….eh probably, but it’s a clunky stumble I’m ok with if it means that they can deliver on the parts that make this story as gripping as it supposedly is.
Guardian Enzo
April 10, 2018 at 4:09 pmPlus, they only have 12 episodes, far from enough to adapt the manga that already exists. I think there are going to be storytelling decisions made directly as a result of that, and the exposition here may be an example.
GC
April 16, 2018 at 8:20 pmUnless they plan on going for a 2nd season?
Simone
April 10, 2018 at 11:12 amIMHO the problem with this episode was that the awful CGI might have distracted everyone, but there was nothing else *specific to the anime* that drew attention. The execution was… okay. Nothing too inventive, nothing too excellent, nothing too gripping, just what looks like a run of the mill workmanship adaptation.
And that’s the thing, lots of people have read the manga, and most who haven’t are aware of its existence, and we also know this show’s going to be 12 episodes so it’s going to end midway through anyway, which leads to the natural assumption… why should I watch it instead of reading the manga? Because yeah, the story looks really interesting, but we already know that’s not something the anime authors came up with. Right now, I will keep watching, but I really feel like I might just drop it in favour of reading, and would lose next to nothing.
Guardian Enzo
April 10, 2018 at 4:12 pmFor me at least, anime can deliver a richness and vibrancy of experience that manga cannot. Both mediums have their advantages and disadvantages – I don’t feel the impulse to skip one for the other because the experience is different, as long as the adaptation being delivered is competent.
Simone
April 12, 2018 at 8:16 amI mean, yeah, a good anime delivers a wildly different experience, I agree with you on that. I just didn’t have the feeling *this one* did. That was exactly my point, it looks like the sort of run-of-the-mill adaptation where most of what’s good comes from the source material being good. It doesn’t feel like the anime team really added anything, if you know what I mean. Stuff like Made in Abyss, Land of the Lustrous, David Pro’s Jojo, Hunter X Hunter… these all took the manga and gave it a lot more than was already there in terms of aesthetics, animation, colour, music, direction. This show doesn’t feel like that.
Guardian Enzo
April 12, 2018 at 2:31 pmDidn’t seem that way to me, but one episode is too soon foe either of us to judge, I think.
Yann
April 21, 2018 at 7:12 pmFelt exactly the same… I haven’t read the manga so I can only judge from the fugly bears and the pace which made me feel like I was listening to a podcast at 1.75x … I’ll keep watching because the premise is interesting, but it’s actually my least favorite series so far this season :’(
The Anime King
April 10, 2018 at 9:12 pmYou aren’t going to go ahead and try Caligula? I would like to see your first impressions on that. It’s a very interesting first episode to what I hope is possibly one of the best shows this season.
Guardian Enzo
April 10, 2018 at 11:05 pmTime is the issue, and you’re the first person to recommend it to me. But now that you have, I’ll see if I can squeeze it in.
GC
April 16, 2018 at 8:22 pmI was not impressed with the 1st episode of Caligula. Lots and lots of exposition and the series was very confusing. Hopefully it gets better.
Mike
December 6, 2018 at 7:20 amThis was one of my most anticipated shows for the Spring season and now I finally got around to watching it. I love the premise and I’m very interested in the dynamic between Asirpa and Sugimoto. This was a good first episode, but I felt that pacing was bit too fast and I was not a big fan of the CGI.
Guardian Enzo
December 6, 2018 at 12:46 pmWell, I certainly don’t want to spoil anything for you. I’ll only say I hope you don’t let any issues with the CGI ruin your enjoyment of the series, because in the final analysis there really aren’t all that many incidents of it.