Netflix’s Golden Kamuy Live Action Movie Is Mostly Shiny
Netflix this past week released to streaming Golden Kamuy, its latest live-action adaptation of an animated series to go along with One Piece and Avatar: The Last Air Bender. Unlike those two adaptations, which are each a series like their source material, Golden Kamuy is a movie, which covers just the first 4.5 episodes of the anime. Given that the first season is 12 episodes long, that implies that there will be two more movies to cover just the first season of an anime that already has four seasons, with a fifth and final one in the works.
Below is a spoiler-free review of the movie that starts the story of the former soldier known as Immortal Sugimoto and the Ainu girl Asirpa as they hunt for a hidden treasure of Ainu gold and the truth behind how that gold is connected to the murder of Asirpa’s father.
I’m a sucker for historical drama (and in this case a nearly Shakespearean mix of drama and comedy) so when I first discovered the anime Golden Kamuy when it started airing in Spring 2018 I was hooked. Set in 1906, two years after the Russo-Japanese War, it tells the story of former soldier Saichi Sugimoto, who garnered the nickname Immortal Sugimoto because he always recovered from what would seem to be mortal wounds for most people. After being dismissed from the Army he is in Hokkaido panning for gold when he meets a young teen Ainu girl, Asirpa, out hunting. He also stumbles upon a secret about a stash of gold collected and hidden by Ainu, and the group of tattooed prison escapees who hold the secret of the location of the hidden gold. Asirpa’s late father was murdered because of his connection to the gold, and she wants to find the man who did it.
The series and the movie are about the pair’s search for the gold, and their struggles with the many other factions also looking for it. It introduces some of the most interesting and well-written characters in manga and anime, and is set in some of the most amazing locations in Japan (and eventually beyond). The mangaka Satoru Noda heavily researched the time period of early 20th century Japan, and particularly the Ainu history and culture. The animation studio Geno Studio continued that trend, replicating the look of actual historical buildings in the young and still growing cities of Otaru and Sapporo, and the uniforms and firearms of the Japanese military of the period. For its part, the movie hired Ainu culture experts Hiroshi Nakagawa and Debo Akibe (Akibe also appears in the movie as Asirpa’s great uncle) to make sure that the Ainu elements were accurately portrayed.
The best things about the Netflix movie are those things specifically Hokkaido in nature — the snowy settings of dense woodland, open meadows and the snow-filled streets of a city in which most heavy transportation was still handled by sleigh or sledge. Golden Kamuy was filmed mostly on location in Hokkaido during winter. Also tops is the depiction of Ainu culture, and actress Anna Yamada as Asirpa. Yamada is 23 but is petite and convincingly portrays a teenager, although maybe not quite as young as Asirpa is at the beginning of the saga — her age is never spelled out, but it seems she is somewhere between 12-14.
Also well cast is Yûma Yamoto as Escape Artist Shiraishi. He has the comic mannerisms from the manga and anime down well, and even adds some extra flair to the character who exists mainly for comic relief.
Alas, not as good a bit of casting is Kento Yamazaki as Sugimoto. He is 30 but looks like he is barely out of high school. While it logically makes sense that Sugimoto is in his young 20s as a man who served just one tour in the Army, he is portrayed in the manga and anime as looking more mature (although he often acts much less mature). Yamazaki also is part of what seems to be a school of Japanese young actors who believe that acting is all about over-acting with their eyes. To be fair, this might be more about Golden Kamuy being an anime adaptation than Yamazaki’s default acting style. He was also in the series Alice in Borderland as Ryohei Arisu, and while I never finished it, he seemed more natural as an actor in that than in this. Yamazaki isn’t bad, and does on occasion capture Sugimoto well, mostly in his more stoic or pragmatic moments. And he handles the action scenes quite well, but he is missing Sugimoto’s gravitas.
Props to production studio Credeus for using CG to portray wolves and bears — sometimes it works well, but sometimes it just barely misses. In a world where Disney has perfected “live action” animals done with CG, it seems extra obvious when another company misses that level of realism, even if by just a bit.
Overall, Golden Kamuy the movie succeeds most in the action and comedy, and less so in the drama and tension. Still, as a beautiful portrayal of Ainu culture specifically and Hokkaido in 1906 in general, it makes me want to see more movies that continue to tell the story of Immortal Sugimoto, Asirpa, and the wild cast of characters on the hunt for hidden gold. I imagine Anna Yamada would continue to capture Asirpa well, and maybe Kento Yamazaki as Sugimoto will grow on me.
Golden Kamuy (Credeus; TV-MA; 2h 7m) gets a 3.5 out of 5.
