Spoiling without warning.

« We'll roam the lands and find the ~~One Piece~~ treasure of the Ainu! » — Equipped with a basic plot looking like a replica of 『One Piece』, 『Golden Kamuy』 brings us back to the beginning of the 20th century while Japan was becoming an imperialist nation. That's in this historical setting that the Japanese soldier Sugimoto would meet the Ainu Asirpa and that they would together search out the biggest amount of gold you could imagine, embarking on an adventure through the Northern lands of Hokkaido!!

To begin this review, I'd like to talk a little bit about the way Japan handles its history. Historically, Japan has not made a lot of anime on its history (what a wordplay), especially on its history from the end of the sakoku to the end of World War 2—that is, on its imperialist and colonialist era. As much as it is somewhat understandable (for it is not an era to be particularly proud of), it creates a strange "hole" in art, and by extension in minds—as much minds of their own people, as minds of strangers who look at Japan (which is convenient for it 🥸).

I guess that's because of that hole that 『Golden Kamuy』 looks first and foremost like a documentary, telling a piece of Japanese history that's VERY rarely mentioned. That being said, while it contains a handful of references to Japanese history, 『Golden Kamuy』 is not so much a piece of work on that aspect that it is one on the Ainus, with a lot of scenes dedicated to explaining their traditions and the like, even showing some Ainu language (a truly nice presence). As much as Japanese manga shows a teacher role commonly, it has a peculiar ethnic vibe here; and as much as it is interesting, it is somehow too blatant, especially in the way it is conveyed to the screen: calm explanations, focus of the camera on the element that is being explained, … which gets the viewer out of the anime.

Now about the anime in itself—that is, its animation: it is not great at all, very modest, kinda mediocre. I'm not watching so many animes these days, but still: 『Golden Kamuy』's animation got me surprised as to how second-rate it was. Let's not misunderstand ourselves: it's not SO bad that it is horrible to watch. It's just that you'll witness a lot of flaws here and there; not so much for the frames, rather consiering the handling of the drawings, that are in themselves often… weirdly handled. What I found the most poorly handled was how the anime tried to translate the comical expressions of the manga: a few times a success, a lot others a failure, as it is too smoothly pictured to convey the ridiculousness of them, lacking real consideration (for instance by adding shadows idk).

Considering the comical layer of the anime more precisely, it is not so great either. It's like, the anime tries to be funny, but it is kind of clumsy at it, so that it makes you smile and then you'd headpat it for having tried. In the same vein, I've found it quite clumsy to put so many comical facial expressions on Asirpa and not so much on the other characters, which would have probably distributed the comical effects more evenly and thus more neatly.

And this is the perfect transition for talking about the characters: you could say, the facial expressions work better with Asirpa because she's a child while Sugimoto has been a soldier, seen war and is more serious blahblah… However, these characteristics don't add up with what the anime shows. While being a child, Asirpa is already able to survive alone in the woods, kill animals, rip them to pieces with very little consideration; while Sugimoto is as much serious as he makes jokes very often and is very open to a lot of things, all the while he mentioned being traumatized by the war but it's shown like, not even 3 times? To be honest, all of this looks pretty unnatural, like the author wouldn't know what personality assign to his characters who end up being pawns for telling the "documentastory" more than true characters.

Now, in the end, I've appreciated 『Golden Kamuy』. I REALLY love the idea of Japanese anime speaking about its imperialist era or about its other ethnicities than the Japanese one. But that is looking at the anime through a documentary-lens, what it does itself; whereas looking at it through a pure anime-lens, piece of art-lens, 『Golden Kamuy』 is bothering, as it doesn't succeed much at it. I'll still watch the second season though 👀