I requested a bunch of larger fandoms, but I wanted to put in a good word for my two smaller ones.
Fandom: Golden Kamuy
What is it?: An ongoing manga by Satoru Noda, with two seasons of anime (and a third on the way). Anime News Network encyclopedia links for the manga, and the anime. GoodReads profile on the manga, including a brief preview, here.
Where can you find it?: The manga is published in North America by Viz Media, and has ebook releases. It’s currently up to volume 17; 22 volumes are out in Japan. The anime is available through Crunchyroll, VRV, and Funimation. You can find international distributors on its ANN page or its Wikipedia entry.
What’s it about?: Sugimoto Saichi, veteran of the 1904-05 Russo-Japanese war, desperately needs money to fulfill an important promise and heads to Hokkaido to pan for gold. Instead of money, he finds a strange story about a treasure trove of gold bloodily stolen from a group of indigenous Ainu men. The gold is hidden, and the only map to it is tattooed on the bodies of escaped convicts who were incarcerated alongside the murderer. Sugimoto teams up with Asirpa, a talented hunter and tracker, and the daughter of one of the murdered men, to find the gold and get Asirpa some closure.
Why do I like it?: It’s famously well-researched, and has an extremely unusual setting. (The Ainu appear in a significant capacity in possibly five other works of fiction; this is by far the most in-depth.)
It blends a ton of genres - mainly that of action-adventure period piece and cultural edutainment, but it’s also a Western, a war story (especially of what happens to soldiers after wars), a critique of imperialism, a survival story, and very often a cooking anime, and features lots of comedy (sometimes quite dark, just as often ridiculous, or both), high camp, and horror.
There’s a massive cast of (mostly) entertaining characters, but the beating heart of it all is the relationship between Sugimoto and Asirpa. He’s a sweetheart, and a talented fighter who’s lived through so many things that should have killed him that he’s nicknamed “The Immortal”; she’s a perpetually-hungry orphan who takes neither guff nor human lives. (Taking animal lives, however? Asirpa’s from a hunter-gatherer society; she’ll do it with respect, but she’ll kill any critter that might conceivably be tasty.) They save each other’s lives with regularity, and functionally, each other’s souls. She lets him be somebody besides unkillable “Immortal” Sugimoto, reminding him of the things he left behind when he went to war. He enables her to pursue her investigation of the gold and her father’s death without compromising her morality.
And there’s great funny faces, and a wonderful found family, and shifting alliances, and so many cool animals, and the manga’s very pretty (the anime only rarely rises above workman-like, I’m afraid, but it has a terrific voice cast to make up for it), and female characters treated with respect! In a seinen manga! And just, again, so much interesting stuff about Ainu culture and Hokkaido and the political situation in East Asia in the early 20th century.
Anything you should be leery of?: YES. THERE IS. Gore - humans attacking and killing each other with fists, blades, and guns; animals attacking, killing, and eating humans; humans killing, cooking, and skinning animals. A major plot point revolves around skinning (already dead) humans; a significant arc character produces outlandish products from human skin. Fanservice - always of adults, of both genders, with setting-censored genitalia, and nearly always of characters who are competent and have agency in the narrative, i.e. they are not present in the narrative for mere titillation, which always makes fanservice more bearable to me. There are occasional naked or near-naked tertiary characters - male and female coal miners, female sex workers. Some comic, undetailed nudity of child characters. A running gag involves a male character’s large chest size, another involves an eight-year-old boy admiring the size of an adult woman’s breasts. Repeated queer-coding of antagonists (and protagonists, but less overtly), no unarguably heroic and good LGBT+ characters (well, basically only Asirpa is ever presented as consistently heroic and moral). Bestiality in one arc - decried by all parties but the perpretrator. Sexualized violence by antagonists - never rape, though. One antagonist has manipulated and/or gaslit his allies into being loyal and/or in love with him.
Fandom: Otoyomegatari | A Bride’s Story
What is it?: An ongoing manga by Kaoru Mori. Anime News Network encyclopedia link here. GoodReads profile, including a brief preview, here.
Where can you find it?: The manga is published in North America by Yen Press, and has ebook releases. It’s currently up to volume 11; there are 12 volumes released in Japan so far. You can find international distributors on its ANN page or its Wikipedia entry.
What’s it about?: In 19th Century Central Asia, 20-year-old Amir Halgal and 12-year-old Karluk Eihon enter into an arranged marriage. The story is usually a slice-of-life romance, alternately following Amir and Karluk’s families and friends and their guest, British researcher Henry Smith as he enters new places and meets new people. Please don’t run away from the age-gap romance at the heart of the series - it’s treated really respectfully and wholesomely, and with a strong sense of time and place. Amir, at 20, is considered late to marry; Karluk, at 12, a little young. An ongoing thread with them is Karluk’s efforts to grow up and be ‘manly’ enough for his adult bride, even though, as a married man, he’s accepted as an adult by everyone around him already. Amir has to adapt from her previous nomadic lifestyle to the settled routines of town, and choose between the warmth of her new husband’s family versus going back to her controlling birth family.
Why do I like it?: Again, an unusual setting, with loads of research done for it - there’s not a lot of English-translated media set amidst the daily life of Silk Road societies. Locations visited include: Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Karakalpakstan, Tajikistan, and Persia/modern Iran. There’s a deep sense of cultural exploration, featuring nomadic herding families, agricultural town dwellers, fisher folk around the Aral Sea, Persian aristocracy.
This is a series that really values ‘women’s work’ - entire chapters revolve around textile work, child care, cooking, animal husbandry. Despite the patriarchal societies they live in, the female characters have power in their own lives, in their families, and in their communities. And despite the series being, ostensibly, a romance (or several romances), familial and platonic relationships form a major part of the narrative.
Most of the characters in A Bride’s Story are good-hearted, trying their best to live alongside each other in an increasingly turbulent time. This means most chapters are slower-paced slice of life, sinking into the details of the setting. Occasionally, though, Mori chooses to flex her writing chops, and these high-drama moments are as exciting and heart-pounding as the rest of the series is delightful and relaxing. (Mostly relaxing - the historical encroachment of Russia is a source of continual background tension.)
The art! For my money, one of the three most gorgeous manga being published. Mori is incredible - she draws people, props, animals, and landscapes with lush and beautiful realism. No cheap shortcuts, either - one glance at a panel draped with hand-drawn embroidery is enough to show that off.
Anything you should be leery of?: Well, the central age-gap romance. Again, I think it’s handled well, and there is no creepy sexualization or fetishization going on. A small amount of nudity with characters bathing or sleeping naked (in a yurt, or while suffering a fever.) Teenagers getting married or betrothed to other teens. One warfare sequence with visible blood. References to spousal abuse - offscreen, and decried. Two instances of patriarchs enforcing their will over women in their charge - neither successful in the long term.
no subject
Fandom: Golden Kamuy
What is it?: An ongoing manga by Satoru Noda, with two seasons of anime (and a third on the way). Anime News Network encyclopedia links for the manga, and the anime. GoodReads profile on the manga, including a brief preview, here.
Where can you find it?: The manga is published in North America by Viz Media, and has ebook releases. It’s currently up to volume 17; 22 volumes are out in Japan. The anime is available through Crunchyroll, VRV, and Funimation. You can find international distributors on its ANN page or its Wikipedia entry.
What’s it about?: Sugimoto Saichi, veteran of the 1904-05 Russo-Japanese war, desperately needs money to fulfill an important promise and heads to Hokkaido to pan for gold. Instead of money, he finds a strange story about a treasure trove of gold bloodily stolen from a group of indigenous Ainu men. The gold is hidden, and the only map to it is tattooed on the bodies of escaped convicts who were incarcerated alongside the murderer. Sugimoto teams up with Asirpa, a talented hunter and tracker, and the daughter of one of the murdered men, to find the gold and get Asirpa some closure.
Why do I like it?: It’s famously well-researched, and has an extremely unusual setting. (The Ainu appear in a significant capacity in possibly five other works of fiction; this is by far the most in-depth.)
It blends a ton of genres - mainly that of action-adventure period piece and cultural edutainment, but it’s also a Western, a war story (especially of what happens to soldiers after wars), a critique of imperialism, a survival story, and very often a cooking anime, and features lots of comedy (sometimes quite dark, just as often ridiculous, or both), high camp, and horror.
There’s a massive cast of (mostly) entertaining characters, but the beating heart of it all is the relationship between Sugimoto and Asirpa. He’s a sweetheart, and a talented fighter who’s lived through so many things that should have killed him that he’s nicknamed “The Immortal”; she’s a perpetually-hungry orphan who takes neither guff nor human lives. (Taking animal lives, however? Asirpa’s from a hunter-gatherer society; she’ll do it with respect, but she’ll kill any critter that might conceivably be tasty.) They save each other’s lives with regularity, and functionally, each other’s souls. She lets him be somebody besides unkillable “Immortal” Sugimoto, reminding him of the things he left behind when he went to war. He enables her to pursue her investigation of the gold and her father’s death without compromising her morality.
And there’s great funny faces, and a wonderful found family, and shifting alliances, and so many cool animals, and the manga’s very pretty (the anime only rarely rises above workman-like, I’m afraid, but it has a terrific voice cast to make up for it), and female characters treated with respect! In a seinen manga! And just, again, so much interesting stuff about Ainu culture and Hokkaido and the political situation in East Asia in the early 20th century.
Anything you should be leery of?: YES. THERE IS. Gore - humans attacking and killing each other with fists, blades, and guns; animals attacking, killing, and eating humans; humans killing, cooking, and skinning animals. A major plot point revolves around skinning (already dead) humans; a significant arc character produces outlandish products from human skin. Fanservice - always of adults, of both genders, with setting-censored genitalia, and nearly always of characters who are competent and have agency in the narrative, i.e. they are not present in the narrative for mere titillation, which always makes fanservice more bearable to me. There are occasional naked or near-naked tertiary characters - male and female coal miners, female sex workers. Some comic, undetailed nudity of child characters. A running gag involves a male character’s large chest size, another involves an eight-year-old boy admiring the size of an adult woman’s breasts. Repeated queer-coding of antagonists (and protagonists, but less overtly), no unarguably heroic and good LGBT+ characters (well, basically only Asirpa is ever presented as consistently heroic and moral). Bestiality in one arc - decried by all parties but the perpretrator. Sexualized violence by antagonists - never rape, though. One antagonist has manipulated and/or gaslit his allies into being loyal and/or in love with him.
Fandom: Otoyomegatari | A Bride’s Story
What is it?: An ongoing manga by Kaoru Mori. Anime News Network encyclopedia link here. GoodReads profile, including a brief preview, here.
Where can you find it?: The manga is published in North America by Yen Press, and has ebook releases. It’s currently up to volume 11; there are 12 volumes released in Japan so far. You can find international distributors on its ANN page or its Wikipedia entry.
What’s it about?: In 19th Century Central Asia, 20-year-old Amir Halgal and 12-year-old Karluk Eihon enter into an arranged marriage. The story is usually a slice-of-life romance, alternately following Amir and Karluk’s families and friends and their guest, British researcher Henry Smith as he enters new places and meets new people. Please don’t run away from the age-gap romance at the heart of the series - it’s treated really respectfully and wholesomely, and with a strong sense of time and place. Amir, at 20, is considered late to marry; Karluk, at 12, a little young. An ongoing thread with them is Karluk’s efforts to grow up and be ‘manly’ enough for his adult bride, even though, as a married man, he’s accepted as an adult by everyone around him already. Amir has to adapt from her previous nomadic lifestyle to the settled routines of town, and choose between the warmth of her new husband’s family versus going back to her controlling birth family.
Why do I like it?: Again, an unusual setting, with loads of research done for it - there’s not a lot of English-translated media set amidst the daily life of Silk Road societies. Locations visited include: Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Karakalpakstan, Tajikistan, and Persia/modern Iran. There’s a deep sense of cultural exploration, featuring nomadic herding families, agricultural town dwellers, fisher folk around the Aral Sea, Persian aristocracy.
This is a series that really values ‘women’s work’ - entire chapters revolve around textile work, child care, cooking, animal husbandry. Despite the patriarchal societies they live in, the female characters have power in their own lives, in their families, and in their communities. And despite the series being, ostensibly, a romance (or several romances), familial and platonic relationships form a major part of the narrative.
Most of the characters in A Bride’s Story are good-hearted, trying their best to live alongside each other in an increasingly turbulent time. This means most chapters are slower-paced slice of life, sinking into the details of the setting. Occasionally, though, Mori chooses to flex her writing chops, and these high-drama moments are as exciting and heart-pounding as the rest of the series is delightful and relaxing. (Mostly relaxing - the historical encroachment of Russia is a source of continual background tension.)
The art! For my money, one of the three most gorgeous manga being published. Mori is incredible - she draws people, props, animals, and landscapes with lush and beautiful realism. No cheap shortcuts, either - one glance at a panel draped with hand-drawn embroidery is enough to show that off.
Anything you should be leery of?: Well, the central age-gap romance. Again, I think it’s handled well, and there is no creepy sexualization or fetishization going on. A small amount of nudity with characters bathing or sleeping naked (in a yurt, or while suffering a fever.) Teenagers getting married or betrothed to other teens. One warfare sequence with visible blood. References to spousal abuse - offscreen, and decried. Two instances of patriarchs enforcing their will over women in their charge - neither successful in the long term.