Golden Kamuy: The Live Action Movie
Mar. 23rd, 2025 11:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meteordustIt was a manga, then an anime, and now a live action movie! (Well, made in 2024, and now on Netflix.)
Live action adaptations can be a mixed bag. This one totally nails it. Filmed on location in Hokkaido, with gorgeous snowy landscapes and sweeping mountain vistas. Beautiful cinematography, great pacing, dramatic action, and even the bits of humour. (Still violent and gory, but more sporadic than in the manga.)
The casting totally worked for me. I loved that every time a character was introduced, we got a dramatic pause, and a title card with their name and role. It felt like if you were in the theatre and you got to applaud their entrance.
(It was mildly amusing every time someone called Asirpa "the Ainu child", because her actress fully looks like she's 20. But I was happy to suspend my disbelief.)
Two scenes that particularly struck me:
* The bear! Well, one of them, in particular. (They were all CGI.) When Sugimoto is carrying the body of the dead prospector through the woods, he suddenly sees a bear cub off to his left. I'm thinking, "Uh-oh." Then the camera shows the dark entrance to a cave on his right, and the alarm bells really go off. Sugimoto isn't looking that way. He's in sharp focus in the foreground, so the bear is just a blurry shape in soft focus as it emerges, like something out of a horror movie. Beautifully done.
* Yohei Nikaido's death and aftermath. One of the creepiest scenes in a manga full of creepy scenes. The twins have been interrogating and torturing Sugimoto, one of them comes back by himself to continue, and Sugimoto takes him down but is mortally wounded. Or so it appears. Tsurumi noticing how strange Nikaido's body looks, and then realising that his uniform is on wrong! And realising that Sugimoto had not actually been stabbed in the stomach, but had cleverly faked it to get taken to the hospital. A shocking and memorable moment.
Other observations:
* I had forgotten that even though he's the leader of the 7th Division, Lieutenant Tsurumi is just a lieutenant because there was actually a captain! Who of course got offed when he objected to Tsurumi's plans.
* I had also forgotten that Asirpa made Sugimoto promise not to kill anyone, as a condition for her providing him with help. Because I'm pretty sure he racked up a high body count during the story! Though maybe self-defence doesn't count?
The movie covers just the first part of the story, but it ends in a reasonably satisfying place. The story continues in a live action TV series, also now on Netflix.
Live action adaptations can be a mixed bag. This one totally nails it. Filmed on location in Hokkaido, with gorgeous snowy landscapes and sweeping mountain vistas. Beautiful cinematography, great pacing, dramatic action, and even the bits of humour. (Still violent and gory, but more sporadic than in the manga.)
The casting totally worked for me. I loved that every time a character was introduced, we got a dramatic pause, and a title card with their name and role. It felt like if you were in the theatre and you got to applaud their entrance.
(It was mildly amusing every time someone called Asirpa "the Ainu child", because her actress fully looks like she's 20. But I was happy to suspend my disbelief.)
Two scenes that particularly struck me:
* The bear! Well, one of them, in particular. (They were all CGI.) When Sugimoto is carrying the body of the dead prospector through the woods, he suddenly sees a bear cub off to his left. I'm thinking, "Uh-oh." Then the camera shows the dark entrance to a cave on his right, and the alarm bells really go off. Sugimoto isn't looking that way. He's in sharp focus in the foreground, so the bear is just a blurry shape in soft focus as it emerges, like something out of a horror movie. Beautifully done.
* Yohei Nikaido's death and aftermath. One of the creepiest scenes in a manga full of creepy scenes. The twins have been interrogating and torturing Sugimoto, one of them comes back by himself to continue, and Sugimoto takes him down but is mortally wounded. Or so it appears. Tsurumi noticing how strange Nikaido's body looks, and then realising that his uniform is on wrong! And realising that Sugimoto had not actually been stabbed in the stomach, but had cleverly faked it to get taken to the hospital. A shocking and memorable moment.
Other observations:
* I had forgotten that even though he's the leader of the 7th Division, Lieutenant Tsurumi is just a lieutenant because there was actually a captain! Who of course got offed when he objected to Tsurumi's plans.
* I had also forgotten that Asirpa made Sugimoto promise not to kill anyone, as a condition for her providing him with help. Because I'm pretty sure he racked up a high body count during the story! Though maybe self-defence doesn't count?
The movie covers just the first part of the story, but it ends in a reasonably satisfying place. The story continues in a live action TV series, also now on Netflix.
