Satoru Noda’s “Golden Kamuy” is turning out to be a fantastic, action-packed manga series worth reading! This issue has quite a bit of violence but if you love action and want to be educated while reading, this is definitely an exciting manga!
© 2014 Satoru Noda. All Rights Reserved.
Click here to purchase this manga on Amazon
MANGA TITLE: Golden Kamuy vol. 5
STORY AND ART BY: Story and Art by Satoru Noda
FIRST PUBLISHED IN JAPAN: SHUEISHA, Inc.
PUBLISHED IN USA BY: VIZ Media, LLC/Shonen Jump Manga
RATED: M for Mature
RELEASE DATE: June 19, 2018
Sugimoto and Asirpa’s hunt for the tattooed treasure map has led them to a fishing village on the coast, where a deranged serial killer lies in wait. Lieutenant Tsurumi and his renegade soldiers are also hot on their trail, and if he catches up to them it’s guaranteed that there will be hell to pay. Toshizo Hijikata also closes in, while an old friend shows up with a secret about Asirpa that no one wants to believe—but it just might take them closer to the gold than ever before!
Sugimoto and Asirpa continue to look for a treasure map in a fishing village but they are unaware that the person along with them is a deadly serial killer.
Meanwhile, Genjiro Tanigaki is healing from his wounds in Asirpa’s village but what happens when two of his own men are hunting him down?
All this and more in volume 5 of Satoru Noda’s award-winning manga series, “Golden Kamuy”!
What is “Golden Kamuy”?
From Satoru Noda comes his award winning manga series “Golden Kamuy”.
Written and art by Satoru Noda, the mangaka also worked with Yu Nakagawa in ensure authenticity of the Ainu language.
The manga series won the 9th Manga Taisho award and with ten volumes currently printed in Japan, the first volume of “Golden Kamuy” will be available in the United States courtesy of Viz Signature on June 2017.
The series revolves around a soldier named Saichi Sugimoto who fought in the Russo-Japanese War in 1904 and survived with savagery and toughness. And because of his braveness, he is known as “Immortal Sugimoto”.
Because his best friend asked him before his death on the battlefield for Sugimoto to take care of his wife and children, Sugimoto hears of a story about hidden Ainu gold (the Ainu are the indigenous people of Japan). One man killed the Ainu hiding the gold and stole around Y80,000 and buried the gold somewhere in Hokkaido.
While the man was caught and thrown into Abashiri prison, he was sentenced to death and the map of where the gold was hidden was tattooed on the backs of 24 prisoners.
This was told to Sugimoto by a drunken man. When Sugimoto finds the man killed by a bear, he notices that he had a tattoo all over his back and that the story must be true.
But when the bear goes for an attack on Sugimoto, he is saved by an Ainu girl named Asirpa, a daughter of one of the Ainu men who was killed by those hunting for Ainu gold.
But as Sugimoto and Asirpa team up to find the gold, many dangerous hunters including the deadly 7th Division of the Imperial Japanese Army led by Lt. Tsurumi.
In the fifth volume of “Golden Kamuy”, Sugimoto and Asirpa befriend a guy in a fishing village as they continue to look for maps, but they are unaware that the man that is with them, is a sadistic serial killer named Kazuo Henmi.
Meanwhile, Tanigaki who has healed from his wounds is surprised when he sees Private Ogata and Nikaido at the same Ainu village where he was staying. But these two are there for one thing, to hunt and kill him.
The writing for the fifth volume continues to captivate me. One for its details of Ainu culture, when it comes to hunting and their perspectives towards animal life and traditions and then you have this storyline of the bonding between Sugimoto and Asirpa, almost like a father and daughter relationship and wanting to see them survive through all this.
But most importantly, it’s great that Satoru Noda is consulting with Yu Nakagawa in regards to Ainu language and culture. For those not familiar with Ainu in Japan, they have a similar unfair treatment in society (as Native Americans in the United States) and prejudice runs rampant in various parts of Japan towards the indigenous Ainu people. So, it takes great care of making sure to capture the culture on the pages of “Golden Kamuy”.
Satoru Noda’s “Golden Kamuy” is turning out to be a fantastic, action-packed manga series worth reading! This issue has quite a bit of violence but if you love action and want to be educated while reading, this is definitely an exciting manga!
Click here to purchase this manga on Amazon