Okay, I had a look at this one because it's getting to the end of the season and it's more or less my last chance to finish a few things off before I get swarmed by a whole new set.
Good lord am I glad I had a nosy at it. This is secretly really good.
It's shortly after the Russo-Japanese War, and Sugimoto, one of our deuteragonists, finds himself out of the army, panning for gold. He has to fulfil a promise made to a dying comrade, to look after his widow, by providing the money to get her eye surgery and save her from blindness. Which is a handy motive to let him get up to some horrible things.
See, some time ago, during the backstory, a rather unpleasant chap stole a lot of gold from the Ainu people, and hid it somewhere. Finding himself caught and imprisoned, he decided to tattoo the location of the gold in code on the bodies of 24 of his fellow prisoners.
This makes them a very exciting resource for chaps in the military, who organise a mass break-out, which almost immediately goes wrong. Now there are 24 prisoners wandering about in the depths of winter, covered in a treasure map to a king's ransom. Sugimoto would quite like to get hold of it, which means hunting down and capturing all of the prisoners.
He's assisted in this quest by Asirpa, who has her own reasons for wanting to hunt down the prisoners, namely that her Ainu father was murdered in the same backstory. Asirpa is an entertaining mix of small child encountering the world for the first time (slightly obsessed with poop, as well as poison arrows) and effective hunter with a very no-nonsense approach to getting food in the wild.
The comedy between Asirpa and Sugimoto is impressive, with quite a lot of fish out of water on both sides, and a significant lightness found in the brutality of surviving a harsh winter in an unforgiving environment. What's also impressive is just how much I'm learning about what animals I can eat, and which bits of them are the tastiest. Thankfully it manages to just avoid the food porn problem of so many other shows.
There's a lot of good elements here, and they all work together to generate a gripping story. The range of prisoners allows a fun with different types of evil, including malevolent hunters, mankillers and just general nasties, though interestingly, a lot of them turn out to be rational enough to give up when they're obviously beaten, mostly hoping to survive. Hell, even the primary antagonist proves to have a decent reason for what he's doing.
Nature is cruel as well, though in a more uncaring way. Hypothermia, bears and wolves are all possible sources of death, and the tension is racked up every time a pair of eyes glints out from beyond the trees.
The camaraderie of the central pair is enjoyable, and there's not one of the various minor characters that I dislike. Ainu's village is especially fun, as they take great delight in screwing with the foreigner who doesn't know their ways, particularly when he brings them a baby bear to raise. Trust me, it's cute. Cute animals also feature heavily in the form of Ainu's wolf Retar, which has that trick of suddenly pretending to be a dog and demanding belly rubs that absolutely no wolf has ever done.
It's both adorable and exciting, with great splashes of humour, especially every time Asirpa demands they kill another animal for food, which all adds up to a surprisingly good series. The only downside is I suspect I'm missing a lot of historical references. Still, hasn't affected my enjoyment.
Tagged: Anime Drama War story Fighting Antagonism Crunchyroll Subbed