The Story
Golden Kamuy, an otherwise gracefully told and delivered work, continues to be overlooked and short-changed this season most commonly for production reasons in the community. It’s a shame because the product has been pretty effective outside of that context.
I saw the memes with the CG bear though and it looked really jarring
Granted, it is pretty jarring, but it’s literally only for a handful of scenes. Please don’t let what amounts to less than a couple of minutes of screen time ruin one of Spring’s better executed narratives.
Sure, but the rest of the production doesn’t look all that great either
Golden Kamuy admittedly isn’t the most glamorous work in a visual sense, but it’s not like its production is a nightmare. Kamuy is more than functional.
Hmmmm, I don’t know. I’m already watching a decent bit this season. Is Golden Kamuy really worth the pickup? What does it actually do well?
Golden Kamuy has natural storytelling with a knack for on-screen character chemistry. It commands its pace well and finds ways to garner viewer interest subtlety rather than overreaching for cliffhangers and hooks. There’s a good sense for dramatic build and release here, and the series boasts an underrated amount of comedic snap for its genre space. Its expressional work is sharp and the series on a whole is backed by a great pedigree of well regarded source material.
The Bottom Line
Golden Kamuy is a good prospect to add to your watch list despite the popular takes on its use of CG. Give it a chance if you can as it’s certainly been an enjoyable ride.
“QUOTE OF THE WEEK”
– A real headline. Sounds about right.
SEASONAL PRATTLE
Find what you’re looking for fast
Megalo Box
Steins;Gate 0
Mahou Shoujo Site
Golden Kamuy
Wotaku ni Koi wa Muzukashii
Hinamatsuri
Comic Girls
Fate/stay night Movie: Heaven’s Feel – I. Presage Flower
Megalo Box (6)
We’re still receiving more doses of Megalo Box’s emotional formula, continuing with our easily digestible Nanbu / Aragaki narrative thread that ultimately spills over into touching post fight moments. However, the intensity and adrenaline during the fights that we once had in this work’s early material is still unfortunately missing, even among Joe’s comeback this week. It would be really nice if we could perhaps match close-knit character episodes like this with the in-ring thrill and dramatic sell this series dished out just about a month ago. Here’s to hoping that happens moving forward.
Megalo Box is a Love Letter to Anime’s Past
Steins;Gate 0 (5)
Our recent Steins;Gate 0 doesn’t exactly have the sharpness of voice to make its scenes compelling or the visual polish to completely drill the level of anxiety it’s attempting to convey like previous weeks. Be that as it may, it’s still a reasonable episode with a fine finish. I’m not expecting every episode of this work to nail its beats from top to bottom, but if it can hit home when it counts like it did here, then I’ll be pretty satisfied.
Worthwhile Prattle:
‘Amadeus’ Versus Real-Life A.I.
Mahou Shoujo Site (6)
A fair number of the scenes here were undercut by the sheer amount of overextending to come off as “dark,” and unfortunately that established tone makes any of the lighter beats centered around friendship or that are generally Nijimi oriented land that much more jarringly. Shoujo Site may never overcome this tonal problem, and given that we’re halfway through it, the series might just be better off going in all the way with what they’re fundamentally geared towards.
Golden Kamuy (5)
I know I’ve touched upon Kamuy’s comedic sensibilities before and even rolled out a reasonable amount of praise towards that department, but this episode really makes me feel that I genuinely haven’t given it justice. Simply put, in an episode that offered a solid cap to our previous predicaments, Geno Studio’s palette of comedic beats actually showed volume and took some spotlight. We’re not just operating with the usual blend of Aspira expressional work to drive the comedy home, but little well timed bits like Retar eyeing the horse meat or Shiraishi sliding in through the bars. All of these pieces hold their weight to make this viewing experience that much more enjoyable.
Worthwhile Prattle:
Wotaku ni Koi wa Muzukashii (5)
Riding on sturdy storytelling fundamentals can still reliably pilot your twenty minutes of content into satisfying places, even if that content is relatively linear. This week didn’t have the well timed emotional pulls and releases as our previous one to keep the audience as engaged, but the entry we got was quite respectable nonetheless. Wotakoi still has decent comedic snap to bring to the table. The layer Hirotaka’s brother added acted as a nice launching pad for some solid moments and our casts’ palpable chemistry picks up any narrative lulls where lesser romcom works would have sunk. Very happy to have this apart of the season.
Worthwhile Prattle:
Hinamatsuri (6)
Hinamatsuri is still leaning on much of its core strengths to wonderful results – good gag scheduling, a favorable mix of charming and character texturing beats and a sturdy floor of writing to support it all. At this point I’m not expecting Hinamatsuri to be truly better than the material that we’ve been receiving, but that’s perfectly fine, it’s still an exceptional work this season in the current condition that it’s in.
Worthwhile Prattle:
Hinamatsuri is (not) what it sets out to be
Comic Girls (6)
A distinct sense of emotional place can be tough to create and even tougher to make universal – so seeing our latest Comic Girls bring enough aptitude in its writing to sell its spookier scenes was genuinely pleasing. A lot of this series’ base material tends to fall around the genre standard, but sound sequencing with plenty of directional wrinkles and smooth layouts keep its scenario from feeling so linear. Good job Nexus.
Fate/stay night Movie: Heaven’s Feel – I. Presage Flower
There really isn’t a need to be inventive when the vast majority of your boards have enough complexity and depth to carry a project outright. Heaven’s Feel is the perfect example of what great positioning and sound directorial fundamentals can provide as oppose to novelty, and Ufotable’s efforts here are still plenty applaudable even upon a second watch seven months later. There’s a lot of works that use space well, delivering a keen sense of intensity and scale for a handful of cuts – but few can drive those results for larger lengths with fluency like this one .
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7 thoughts on “Golden Kamuy Is Good With Strong Storytelling Fundamentals, Yet There You Are Still Overlooking It Because Of The Bear”
I like golden kamuy well enough; I think more often than not, it’s the source material that’s doing all the heavy lifting for this anime adaptation rather than any substantial input from the creative staff on deck. I said it before and ill say it again; while I’m not one to dismiss a series just because it doesn’t have flashy visuals (I mean Serial experiments Lain and Digimon Tamers are two of my favorite anime of all time and their visuals aren’t exactly what i’d call amazing or great as a whole), your visuals are a part of your storytelling. People talk about how writing is important and believe me, I hold that aspect to a insanely high degree; but guess what (and this seems to be an idea that some people tend to miss) your visuals are an aspect of writing. A good amount of the time, visual artist tend to make written outlines or notes as to how they wish to stage a visual scene so that it can all come together in way that expresses the intent and emotion they want it to. Lain and Digimon tamers not examples of generally strong animation, but they lack in animation prowess, they make up for by having consistent coherence in their visuals while taking advantage of their other strengths to propel their narratives in auspiciously enthralling ways. In Lain’s case, it aligned its amazing use of sound and art direction successfully with narrative to tell a compelling tale. There was a cogent visual structure the series had even if it’s animation was never top tier, and that visual mastery was always on display to continuously evoke the attention of its audience.
Digimon tamers achieves a similar visual-narrative interplay even if its animation fidelity mostly stayed unimpressive. In regards to kmauy, not only does it have underwhelming animation, but it also lacks genuinely effective storyboarding or consistently good cinematography (“consistent” is the operative word; there are MOMENTS of good scene composition). Aside from the background art and some of the character designs, Golden Kamuy doesn’t really excel anywhere from a technical standpoint and that’s were the issue lies when considering the integrity of its production. I can point to many shots or scene layouts that just come off very lackluster, impeding the visual fidelity a series like this should have. Why is a story that is meant to be a pulse pounding, rip-roaring, swashbuckling action adventure thriller lacking the visual splendor needed to sell a series like this? That’s like making an action film that boasts sick fight choreography obfuscated by terribly executed shaky cam.
Then there’s the writing, that while good, has some pointed blemishes.The writing does a commendable job delivering snappy humor in conjunction with its more thrilling scenes (even though one can argue that there are a few moments these comedic scenes are timed awkwardly with the rest of what’s going on). The screenplay also excels at crafting endearing, personable chemistry between the cast members, particularly that of the leads, and doesn’t miss a beat at conveying the scope of the plot at large. All the players in the narrative feel like they have a stake in the plot, and because each of these players are portrayed as being skilled and efficient, we as the audience are conditioned to expect exciting outcomes whenever these characters converge upon one another; it’s really good stuff. There are times however, when the exposition becomes a bit clunky and i can feel the pace stall because this person’s particular background is being explained or that particular detail is being explained (I’m excluding the Ainu trivia by the way; that stuff is fine). I gave ep 1 a break for taking a good chunk of its runtime to explain the hidden cache of gold and it’s inexorable tie-in to the prisoners in a fairly rote fashion, but future eps have continued to demonstrate that this kind of laborious exposition won’t stop any time soon. It’s not so egregious but when it does show up, it does break the pace of story a just a bit. Overall, I like golden Kamuy; it’s good. I wouldn’t stop watching it just because of some damn CGI bear (i think they tried to give the bears the unnatural, otherworldly, and discordant aesthetic the handlers from Kokkoku had due to the Ainu’s spiritual outlook on bears) on the merits of its strong source material, but I feel like I should like this series a bit more than i do.This series could have been more. It’s a 6.5 for me, meaning it scores just above the average in terms of its overall quality.
While I agree that Kamuy doesn’t accel in any technical sense beyond what you already outlined, I don’t believe it’s inept enough in that department where it actively undermines the product to a poor degree (outside of the more blatant CG moments of course).
As stated in the blog, I believe it’s a step above functional (although that’s not saying much) for the vast majority of the time where it concerns production related elements – bringing enough competency each week to get by and reasonably sell the intentions and tonal goals of its scenes. To each their own of course, you already know I respect your opinion on seasonal Sonic, and to be perfectly honest, this is just me splitting hairs. I’m not seriously trying to contend a difference like this when we’re both still in the same ballpark.
On a side note: To anyone else who might have quickly scrolled down through these comments or skimmed them, Sonic’s third comment (the one that I’m directly replying to) is actually a pretty level headed take on GK’s writing, and I recommend giving it a read if you’re still on the fence with picking up this title / curious about what it could possibly offer you.
“To each their own of course, you already know I respect your opinion on seasonal Sonic, and to be perfectly honest, this is just me splitting hairs. I’m not seriously trying to contend a difference like this when we’re both still in the same ballpark.”
Of course and I absolutely always respect your opinion too; What can I say; i like discussion things with you
Wow….Golden Kamuy ep 6 is easily the best looking one of the entire series. Everything from the art direction (which has always been good) to the character designs to the shot compositions have never been stronger. If each episode looks this good from here on out, we’re looking at much more visually cohesive final 6 episodes.
Agreed. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Geno Studio can keep the effort up.
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