4 out of 5

Label: NBCUniversal

Produced by: ?

The historical sweep and treasure hunting intrigue of Golden Kamuy’s opening scene has an intriguing familiarity: there is a certain type of easy-concept, factoid-dribbled fiction with which this aligns, and you can settle in for some bloody action and good drama, and perhaps a fair amount of anime genre tropes, depending on which way the genre-tree bends with the studio or source material. The intrigue, though, is that Golden Kamuy is a little weird with how it wields this familiarity, as it gives us character designs that are striking, and human, but also… somewhat humorous, and a tone that wiggles similarly, indicating that our expectations might be a little off.

They’re not, necessarily – you’ll get your bloody action and good drama fix – but Golden Kamuy is also a unique beast, playing within a familiar sandbox but building some bizarre castles, only to either reshape them back to the familiar, or perhaps kick them over, or perhaps just keep making them more and more bizarre. It’s entrancing. This balance and tone is certainly all in the books, and then it was brought fully to life in the anime, and then also is well-served by Kenichiro Suehiro’s broad but focused and driving (and fun!) score.

The musical theme that summarizes this conjunction of things is thus flexed for its varying appeals: sometimes it’s a kind of generic “important things are happening” strings and drums presentation, sometimes it’s very playful, sometimes the beat kicks in and a more direct melody hits and we’re into the action, and sometimes modern elements of electronics or distortion kick in to offsettle the otherwise contemporary-esque sounds. At a very high level, though, what’s most surprising about all of this is how much Suehiro is able to milk that theme across fifty tracks without really giving us the same exact thing twice. And although it leads us to a kind of unfortunately bland set of climactic tracks, there’s a progression as things go along, “aging” the music up as we get used to the series and characters: the first few tracks kind of touch on the basics of the variety of music, getting bolder and more confident with more layers as the tracks proceed, concluding with some really dense and dramatic work at the end of disc 1. But as we keep going along this axis, the music evolves to a relatively modern sound – i.e. it tends to hit more on that generic vibe. Disc 2 has some interesting stripped down variations – kind of a spin of where we started, where the minimalism is now used to really heighten the theme for different emotions, as opposed to showcasing them – but the middle of that album half is a bit less identifiable as Kamuy-esque. Past this, though, the conclusion is able to apply this maturity of sound to darker, more paced affairs that make for a very rich, rewarding ending.

The soundtrack is, in short, an experience. While not all of that experience is maybe of the same top quality, the overall impression it leaves is substantial, and the impressive range applied to its theme guarantees you’ll be humming and tapping your toes to some tunes you cannot forget.