Golden Kamuy (ゴールデンカムイ)

KANTO ORWA YAKU SAK NO

ARANKEP SINEP KA ISAM

"NOTHING COMES FROM HEAVEN WITHOUT PURPOSE"

1904, MEIJI 37

During the Russo-Japanese War,

the battle at 203 Meter Hill became the bloodiest battlefield of them all.

A total of 130,000 Japanese soldiers were deployed to the frontline

with the purpose of capturing the Russian naval base, Port Arthur.

Of the wounded or dead, 60,000 were Japanese,

and 46,000 were Russian.

Hardly anyone left this hellish battleground alive.

Sour.

I'm starving.

I'll eat a dead Russian if I have to, but I'm not dying here.

Right, Toraji?

Right.

Fire!

Fire!

Fire!

Fire!

Fire!

Charge!

Advance!

It's open!

No!

Saichi!

I'm...

Immortal Sugimoto!

TWO YEARS LATER, HOKKAIDO

How's it going?

Nothing.

I came all the way out here to Hokkaido

in the middle of nowhere to make a quick fortune.

But there ain't a speck of gold here.

Heard from the guys who came home.

They call you "Immortal Sugimoto," don't they?

Even with a mortal wound, you're up and running the next day.

You can't be killed by a bayonet thrust or a machine gun round.

Is the legend true?

Yeah, I can't seem to die.

Where's your medal, then?

If I hadn't nearly killed an officer that was pissing me off,

I'd have been awarded the Order of the Golden Kite

and be enjoying a cushy retirement by now.

Oh, yeah?

Anyway, who cares.

Say, do you want to hear an interesting story?

It involves gold.

Gold?

Back in the day in Hokkaido,

you could find a ton of bean-sized gold pieces all over in the rivers.

You know, a real "gold rush."

To stand up to the Japanese persecution and the stealing of their land,

a group of Ainu were secretly gathering funds to build an army.

Gold full to the gunwales.

Then one guy stole it all

by murdering every single Ainu.

The stolen gold came out to 200 Kan.

That's 800,000 yen worth of gold.

After hiding the gold somewhere in Hokkaido, the guy got arrested

and thrown into prison.

To hell at the ends of the earth, Abashiri Prison.

Give it up!

Where'd you hide it?

No matter what they did to him, he never let slip about the gold.

In the end,

they cut a tendon in one of his legs to prevent him from ever escaping.

The guy had friends outside, but he never wrote any letters

because the guards would steal them.

He couldn't secretly pass on a note to someone about to be freed either.

The guards would check even their asses.

Hey, what would you do in that situation?

How would you communicate the location of the treasure to someone on the outside?

Cut to the chase. How'd he do it?

With tattoos.

He got some charcoal during penal labor, mixed it with saliva,

and used a hidden needle to inject it bit by bit,

tattooing a code of the buried treasure's location

onto his fellow convicts' bodies.

Apparently, the tattoos of all the convicts together made one code.

Then he told the convicts,

"Break out of here."

"I'll give half the gold to the one who succeeds."

Ex-legionary misfits heard rumors about the tattoos,

so they forced the convicts out of prison, saying that they had to transfer them.

The army was after the gold too.

But this was the moment the convicts were waiting for.

They killed every last soldier...

and disappeared into the woods.

So what happened to the escaped convicts and the gold?

No one knows.

Another tall tale, then.

It's freezing.

Toraji!

I said too much.

You wanna see... if I'm really immortal?

I guess that wasn't just crazy talk, after all.

Hey.

A brown bear?

So you're one of the convicts in the story.

ABASHIRI PRISON ESCAPEE TAKECHIYO GOTO

Ainu...

Move away.

A brown bear can still take ten strides even with strong poison.

Is it dead?

Her fur isn't bristled anymore. She's dead.

What are you doing?

I'm removing the meat around the poisoned arrow.

Otherwise, the meat and fur will go bad.

Is that man dead?

Yeah.

I found him buried with his guts all eaten.

Must have been that bear.

It came from that hole.

That's odd.

A bear out of hibernation can't eat right away as its stomach is shrunk.

Here, look.

Her stomach is empty.

So,

another bear... ate this guy?

Only matakarip eat meat this time of year.

Matakarip?

"Those that move in winter," in Ainu.

Bears that miss hibernation. They're aggressive and dangerous.

If their prey is taken away, they won't give up on getting it back.

Leave him behind.

Can't do that.

I can't leave this body behind.

Is he family? A friend?

No... not exactly.

Then... you'll have to kill the matakarip.

If you're not ready for that, then let him go.

The weak get eaten.

Truth is...

There's an interesting story.

If it's true, I'm not gonna let some brown bear eat him.

You're used to hunting brown bears. Help me out.

But... I guess the story is hard to believe.

I believe it.

My aca was one of the Ainus killed there.

"Aca"?

It means "father."

Hurry, gather firewood.

We'll use the bonfire light to shoot the brown bear.

We'll use the corpse as bait and set up an ambush.

Wait a minute.

What is it?

His tattoo is sectioned off at the median lines of his body.

That's exactly how we mark bears and deer before we skin them.

What's the reason for that?

The body was intended to be skinned.

He never planned to split the gold.

Wait. If we skin him before the bear gets here...

There's no time.

Gather firewood. Get some sitat too.

Get what now?

Sitat. Birch bark.

It's rich in oil and burns long. Works well as a torch.

Don't shoot!

Hey, don't shoot! You'll hit me!

I'm Immortal Sugimoto!

Are you alive?

I survived again.

My aca also pierced through

the heart of a brown bear that landed on him.

It's a risky tactic among Ainu hunters which risks life and limb.

I'm surprised you knew it.

I didn't. It was pure instinct.

Not bad for a Japanese.

I'm Saichi Sugimoto.

I'm Asirpa.

Five years ago now.

When my father and the other Ainu men were found,

their bodies had been hacked to bits and scattered.

I didn't know the man who killed my father was in Abashiri Prison.

Here, this is yours, Sugimoto.

Put it in your mess kit.

What is this?

The brown bear's gallbladder.

Once it's dried, it will sell for a lot as medicine.

No part of a bear goes to waste.

Its meat can be eaten, and the fur can be sold.

You brought it down. It's your right to claim.

Asirpa, it's your right too.

I'm fine with that one.

Ainus don't eat the meat of a bear that has killed a human.

A bear that did something bad becomes an evil spirit, a wen kamuy,

and is sent to a hell called teine pokna mosir.

I don't want to kill people either.

So you go to hell when you kill people?

I guess I'll have the best seat in the house.

The culprit is still alive in prison.

He won't have been executed yet.

But once that gold is found, his life is over.

Finding the gold means getting revenge for your father.

Aca...

I'll do all the dirty work.

All you need to do is share your knowledge.

Work with me to find the gold.

If we work together,