The official website for the Golden Kamuy anime series has revealed the addition of two new characters for the fourth season, which restarted its broadcast on April 3, 2023 after a lengthy production delay.
The additional voice cast members include Akira Ishida as Heita Matsuda (pictured left) — a mysterious gold panner — and Nobuyuki Hiyama as Keiji Ueji (pictured right) — a dangerous candy vendor who craves despair.
The two characters appeared in the seventh episode of the fourth season, which is the 43rd episode overall in the series. Season four first premiered on October 3, 2023, with the first six episodes airing before the broadcast was stopped. The first and second seasons of Golden Kamuy premiered in 2018, while the third season premiered in 2020. Crunchyroll is streaming all the previous seasons.
The fourth season’s production staff includes Shizutaka Sugahara (Grimms Notes: The Animation, Rin-ne, and D-Frag! director) as chief director and Takumi Yamakawa (To Your Eternity, In/Spectre, and Grimms Notes: The Animation animation director) as character designer. Brain’s Base takes over as the new animation production company from Genos Studio.
Other new staff members for the fourth season include Tooru Koga (Shinkansen Henkei Robo Shinkalion Z) as art director, Yuuko Fukuda (To Your Eternity) as color designer, and Yorinobu Oda (To Your Eternity) as photography director. Returning from previous seasons are Noboru Takagi as series screenwriter and scriptwriter and Kenichirou Suehiro as music composer.
Meanwhile, the main voice cast duo includes Chikahiro Kobayashi as Saichi Sugimoto and Haruka Shiraishi as Asirpa. Masaaki Mizunaka and Tomokazu Seki joined the season four cast as Ariko and Boutarou the Pirate, respectively.
The anime is based on the historical adventure manga by Satoru Noda, which ran in Shueisha’s Weekly Young Jump from August 21, 2014 to April 28, 2022, concluding with a total of 31 tankoubon volumes. The manga was published under the Young Jump Comics label.
Viz releases the Golden Kamuy manga in English and describes the synopsis as:
In the early twentieth century, Russo-Japanese War veteran Saichi “Immortal” Sugimoto scratches out a meager existence during the postwar gold rush in the wilderness of Hokkaido. When he stumbles across a map to a fortune in hidden Ainu gold, he sets off on a treacherous quest to find it. But Sugimoto is not the only interested party, and everyone who knows about the gold will kill to possess it! Faced with the harsh conditions of the northern wilderness, ruthless criminals and rogue Japanese soldiers, Sugimoto will need all his skills and luck — and the help of an Ainu girl named Asirpa — to survive.
Source: Golden Kamuy Official Japanese Website, Golden Kamuy Official Anime Twitter
