is a 2024 Japanese movie directed by Shigeaki Kubo, based on the

manga are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long history in earlier Japanese art. The term is used in Japan to refer to both comics ...

series of

same name ''Same Name'' is an American reality television series in which an average person swaps lives with a celebrity of the same first and last name. It premiered on July 24, 2011 on CBS. The series received low ratings, and CBS pulled it after four-ep ...

written and illustrated by Satoru Noda. The movie stars

Kento Yamazaki is a Japanese actor and model. He is best known for starring in manga adaptations, including the films '' L DK'' (2014), '' Orange'' (2015), ''Your Lie in April'' (2016), '' JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond Is Unbreakable Chapter I'' (2017), ...

Anna Yamada is a Japanese actress represented by Amuse. Career In 2011 Yamada won the Grand Prix at Ciao Girl 2011 Audition, and joined the talent agency Amuse Inc. She attended the audition because she wanted the Nintendo 3DS, which was the prize of th ...

, Yûma Yamoto and

Gordon Maeda is a Japanese actor. He is the son of actor and martial artist Sonny Chiba. Maeda is best known for portraying Takashi Mitsuya in live action movie adaptation of ''Tokyo Revengers'' and Hyakunosuke Ogata in ''Golden Kamuy'' series. Early life ...

, and it tells the story of Saichi Sugimoto, a veteran of the early twentieth-century

Russo-Japanese War The Russo-Japanese War (8 February 1904 – 5 September 1905) was fought between the Russian Empire and the Empire of Japan over rival imperial ambitions in Manchuria and the Korean Empire. The major land battles of the war were fought on the ...

, and his quest to find a huge fortune of gold of the

Ainu people The Ainu are an Indigenous peoples, indigenous ethnic group who reside in northern Japan and southeastern Russia, including Hokkaido and the Tōhoku region of Honshu, as well as the land surrounding the Sea of Okhotsk, such as Sakhalin, the Ku ...

, helped by a young Ainu girl named Asirpa. The movie received a sequel series titled '' Golden Kamuy: The Hunt of Prisoners in Hokkaido''.

Plot

In the late

Meiji period The was an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868, to July 30, 1912. The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonizatio ...

Hokkaido is the list of islands of Japan by area, second-largest island of Japan and comprises the largest and northernmost prefectures of Japan, prefecture, making up its own list of regions of Japan, region. The Tsugaru Strait separates Hokkaidō fr ...

, Japan, Saichi Sugimoto, a war hero known as Immortal Sugimoto from the Russo-Japanese War, embarks on a new life in Hokkaido. He learns about stolen gold once belonging to the Ainu people, taken by a man named Noppera-bo who massacred everyone so he could get all the gold to himself. Noppera-bo was then caught and thrown into Abashiri prison, but had already hidden the gold in a secure location in Hokkaido. He tattooed the location of the hidden gold on 24 different prisoners, each prisoner held a part of the map, necessary to uncover the treasure. After sometime, Noppera-bo staged a jail break and asked those he tattooed to find the gold in return of getting half of it. Upon verifying that the information is true, Saichi Sugimoto sets out to gather the whole piece together so he could use money from the gold to restore Umeko's eye sight, whose husband Toraji died in the Russo-Japanese War. During a bear attack, Sugimoto is rescued by Asirpa, an Ainu girl seeking vengeance for her father's murder by Noppera-bo. Bound by different goals but a shared quest for justice, Sugimoto and Asirpa unite forces. As their journey unfolds, more individuals including soldiers from the Seventh Division, Hijikata and others join the pursuit of the elusive gold. The movie ends with Hijikata revealing that the worth of the gold is not 200 kan, but 20,000 kan which is enough to build a new nation, adding that Hokkaido will become a battle field for all those in search of the gold.

Cast

as Saichi Sugimoto *

as Asirpa *

as Hyakunosuke Ogata *Yūma Yamoto as Yoshitake Shiraishi * Asuka Kudo as Hajime Tsukishima *Shuntarō Yanagi as Kōhei Nikaidō / Yōhei Nikaidō *Yūki Izumisawa as Toraji *

Mitsuki Takahata is a Japanese actor and singer who is represented by the talent agency Horipro. She attended Hosei University as an undergraduate student. Her song "Hitomi Hiraite" is the Japanese theme song for Meet the Robinsons. Personal life On November ...

as Umeko *

Ryohei Otani is a Japanese actor and model. He began his modeling career in Japan, then entered Korean entertainment by being featured in a commercial for Dunkin' Donuts in 2003, followed by Hyundai Motors, Olympus and SK Telecom. His popularity helped him ...

as Genjirō Tanigaki *Makita Sports as Takechiyo Gotō *Yuno Nagao as Osoma *Debo Akibe as Asirpa's great uncle *Hisako Ōkata as Huci *

Katsuya is both a masculine Japanese given name and a Japanese surname. Written forms *克也, "achieve, to be" *克弥, "achieve, extensive, complete" *勝也, "win, to be" *勝矢, "win, arrow" *勝哉, "win, how" *勝夜, "win, night" *活耶, "acti ...

as Tatsuuma Ushiyama *Katsumi Kiba as Shinpachi Nagakura *

Arata Iura , previously known as Arata, is a Japanese actor, model, and fashion designer. He is the Director of fashion brand Elnest Creative Activity. He holds the position of Director at the Artisan Culture Organisation Institute. Biography Iura co-sta ...

as Aca *

Hiroshi Tamaki is a Japanese actor and singer from Nagoya, Japan. When he was still in high school, he was discovered by a talent agent while out shopping with friends. He made his debut in the drama ''Am I Weird?'' (私ってへん？ ''Watashitte Hen?'') in ...

as Tokushirō Tsurumi *

Hiroshi Tachi is a Japanese actor and singer. His ancestors were samurai of the Owari Domain and the family of the former samurai. He graduated from Chiba Institute of Technology. He was a leader of a rock 'n' roll group ''Cools'' but he left the group so ...

as Toshizō Hijikata

Production

Production began in early 2021 after WOWOW and CREDEUS acquired the film rights, and the production lasted for three years. The idea of the movie was to respect the manga series and maintain the same story line, thus Shigeaki Kubo who is a fan of the original series was appointed to be the director. Satoru Noda, the author of the original series supervised the scripting process, so that it will not deviate from the original story.

Release

The poster and trailer for the movie was released in October 2023, while the movie was released in Japanese theaters on 19 January 2024, and began streaming on

Netflix Netflix is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service. The service primarily distributes original and acquired films and television shows from various genres, and it is available internationally in multiple lang ...

on 19 May 2024, four months after its initial Japanese release.

Reception

Box office

The film grossed over ¥500 million and attracted over 350,000 viewers in the first three days of its release, ranking number 1, and it attracted 1.75 million viewers and grossed ¥2.58 billion as of February 29.

Critical reception

James Hadfield of

The Japan Times ''The Japan Times'' is Japan's largest and oldest English-language daily newspaper. It is published by , a subsidiary of News2u Holdings, Inc. It is headquartered in the in Kioicho, Chiyoda, Tokyo. History ''The Japan Times'' was launched by ...

rated the movie 3 out of 5 stars, saying that “For all its extravagance, Golden Kamuy only leaves you half full.” Panos Kotzathanasis of Asian Movie Pulse noted in his review that Golden Kamuy is a film worth watching, but the flashbacks were not placed in ideal moments and the dramatic parts could have been handled in better fashion.

References

External links

* {{Golden Kamuy 2024 films 2024 drama films Japanese drama films 2020s Japanese-language films 2020s Japanese films