“Nothing comes from heaven without purpose.”

Within the Japanese film-industry, it has become a common affair to bring popular manga to life on the silver screen. This risk-averse tactic does not only seek to leverage the popularity of the manga – an audience is already established, but also try to stimulate consumption by reaching now audiences. One of the latest manga to find its way on the silver screen is Satoru Noda’s Golden Kamuy which was serialized in Weekly Young Jump from August 2014 to April 2022.

The narrative commences in 1914, during the bloodiest battle of the first Russo-Japanese war: the battle of 203 Meter Hill. In the heat of the battle – bullets penetrating bodies, grenades and cannon fire blowing bodies apart, ‘Immortal’ Sugimoto (Kento Yamazaki) turns the tide by preforming a truly heroic act in the enemy’s trenches after being mortally shot.

Two years later, ‘immortal’ Sugimoto wanders around Hokkaido in search for gold. Contrary to his belief of being able to quickly amass a small fortune, he struggles to find even a speck of gold in Hokkaido’s rivers. However, one day, an old man tells him about a hidden Ainu treasure and the convicted thief’s crafty choice to tattoo the treasure map, in fragments, on the bodies of his fellow Abashiri convicts. While Sugimoto, at first, dismisses the story as mere fantasy, the discovery of the old man’s mangled tattooed body confirms its veracity.

Shigeaki Kubo’s Golden Kamuy has a straightforward narrative structure. The narrative has a simple backbone – i.e. the hunt for the tattooed skins that will form a map that will lead to the coveted treasure of gold, and the rhythmically intertwined threads – the thread of action (e.g. face-offs, chases, shoot-outs) and of narrative revelations – provide ample flesh on the bone. Moments of action flow into fleeting moments of narrative exposition, plot twists, and character development which set the stage for further action to burst forth. What makes the rhythmic alternation of action and narrative development so effective is not simply that the latter slowly raises the narrative stakes – introducing the narrative’s main adversary and emphasizing the unseen threat that will eventually seek them out, but that the exposition of the stakes makes the action-sequences gradually more suspenseful for the spectator.

The same duality marks the finale of Golden Kamuy. Kubo delivers an impressive action-sequence while also introducing the spectator to the moral opposition between the unselfish desire that drives the hero and the lust for power that marks the villain. However, Kubo finishes this duality off by finishing his narrative with a series of appetizing images – of characters yet unseen and mysteries yet unsolved – that arouses a thirst for more.

Like most live-action adaptations, Golden Kamuy is sprinkled with moments of light-heartedness. While some of these comical turns successfully offer the spectator a light-hearted intermezzo – a pleasant pause before the tension rises and the action burst forth again, others do not land well. In our view, the sole moments of comical repose that work well are those that leverage the cultural differences between Sugimoto and Asirpa (Anna Yamada), the Otherness they embody for the other.

What makes Golden Kamuy more interesting than other similar action-narratives is the inclusion of a cultural Otherness that is, more often than not, ignored within discussions of Japanese homogeneity. Via Asirpa, the Ainu girl that teams up with Sugimoto, the spectator is introduced to specific Ainu signifiers (e.g.  Aca (father), Huci, Matakarip (those [animals] that move in the winter, Wen Kamuy (evil spirit), Horkuy Kamuy, Teine Pokna mosir (a version of hell), Hinna, sisam … etc.) and different cultural practices (e.g. the way animistic religion organizes the subject’s approach to animals, hunting techniques, the Kuca (the hunter’s hut), the kotan, …), traditional cuisine (e.g. citatap, Ohaw) and tools (e.g. Menokomakiri, Sutu, …).

By introducing this kind of Otherness within the narrative, Shigeaki Kubo also equates the spectator’s position with Sugimoto’s and generates a fictitious feeling of sameness – ego and alter-ego both ignorant of Ainu culture – that pulls the spectator into the narrative and keeps him engaged throughout. This dynamic, by strengthening the spectator’s investment in Sugimoto’s position, does not merely offer the spectator a revealing glance into an Otherness that lingers within the so-called ‘homogenous’ Japanese field, but also facilitates the spectator’s ability to sit back, relax, and let the dramatic flow of the narrative take him along.             

Golden Kamuy also offers the spectator a revealing glance at pre-war Hokkaido and the effects of the Meiji westernisation on its city-scapes, inaugurating contradictory spaces where traditional and modernity continually clash (e.g. at the level of clothing, architecture, … etc). Golden Kamuy, however, also introduces the spectator to a contrast between two different kinds of traditionality – the Japanese tradition being reshuffled by the rise of western modernity and the Ainu traditionality yet untouched by Japanese imperialism.   

Kubo brings the narrative of Golden Kamuy alive with a highly effective stylistic eclecticism. While such compositional soup – variable pace of cutting, all kinds of dynamism (i.e. fluid, shaky, tracking, spatial), static moments, stylistic decorations (e.g. slow-motion, …) – could easily have led to a visual cacophony, Kubo never loses his focus, making compositional choices that serve the ‘dramatic’ unfolding of the narrative as well as the staging of action sequences. The opening sequence, which serves to introduce the spectator to Sugimoto, strikes in this respect a perfect balance between sketching out the horror of war and staging the heroism of individual in the face of death.

Kubo, however, did not merely craft a visual fabric that supports the many moments of visual and narrative drama, but also seeks to satisfy spectator’s scopic search for pleasure. He does not only craft many beautiful shot-compositions – of Hokkaido’s natural beauty – but also delivers some visually exciting moments of extreme yet cleaned-up violence.  

The dynamism of the visual fabric of Golden Kamuy is further smoothened by the musical accompaniment. However, music is not only utilized to support the visual flow of the narrative. Dramatic musical pieces, for instance, also heighten the dramatic impact of certain action-moments or allow a sensible quantum of tension to seep into the film’s atmosphere. In other cases, music is utilized to elevate the stylistic elegance of certain shot-compositions and the beauty of the images of nature or the support the impact of certain revelations – e.g. the prisoner telling Sugimoto about the buried treasure of gold, and certain emotional twists. 

Kento Yamazaki gives a decent performance, one that works. While the fact that he is instantly recognizable is, in all probability, the main reason why he was chosen as the lead – being recognizable helps one’s marketability, the unignorable echo of his other performances within his version of Sugimoto underlines reaffirms that his acting-range is very limited.

One cannot deny that Yamazaki’s performance pales in comparison with the one by Anna Yamada. Yamada brings enough nuance into her portrayal of Asirpa to make the more emotional moments of the narrative effective. Unlike Yamazaki, Anna Yamada can convey the emotions of her character in a sensible way, even without musical support.

With Golden Kamuy, Shigeaki Kubo reaffirms that he has the skill and talent to bring action-driven narratives to life in a satisfactorily way. His adaptation will not only satisfy fans of the manga, but also newcomers to the story of Sugimoto and Asirpa, inviting them to delve into the manga, the anime, or into the series that continues the story where the film has left the spectator hanging.