Holiday Review: GOLDEN KAMUY

Of course, the real stand-out action manga from this year wasn't any sort of super-hero related thing, but instead a historical piece that's just as much about the anthropological detail as it is about intense survival action.

GOLDEN KAMUY (Goruden Kamui), by Satoru Noda.  First published in 2014 and first published in North America in 2017.

PLOT:

"Immortal" Saichi Sugimoto is a veteran of the Russo-Japanese War who simply wants to make some money to save his former sweetheart from poverty and potential blindness.  He gets his chance when a prospector clues him in on a fortune in gold stolen from the local Ainu people, where the only clues are tattooed on the skin of escaped prisoners.  His search leads him to Asirpa, an Ainu girl with a personal stake in his search and the survival skill he'll need if he is to survive the harsh Hokkaido winter.