Marvel certainly isn’t averse to some cross-franchise cooperation when it comes to promoting their superhero movies in Japan, but that doesn’t mean you can just lump any anime series out there together with the latest movie in the MCU – as the latest Golden Kamuy and Spider-Man collaboration proves.
The Golden Kamuy and Spider-Man collaboration went live over the weekend, with the intention of promoting both Golden Kamuy’s Bluray releases and the latest Spider-Man: Far From Home movie, which is set to release in Japan on June 28.
This collaboration consists, in the main, of two core things. Firstly, we have some illustrations that see the main duo of Golden Kamuy trying to recreate three Spider-Man: Far From Home posters. They’re pretty funny, I’ll give them that.
But even if these Golden Kamuy and Spider-Man collaboration illustrations might elicit a little chuckle, that still doesn’t mean that I’m entirely convinced of the reasoning behind lumping two such series together. After all, one is about treasure hunting on the Japanese frontier, and the other one is about a young boy from New York with the abilities of a spider.
A special video from the collaboration, however, does try to spell out some reasoning behind combining Golden Kamuy and Spider-Man. It features the voices of protagonist Sugimoto Saichi, his Ainu sidekick Asirpa, as well as main antagonist Tokushirou Tsurumi and Ogata Hyakunosuke (voiced by the lovely Kenjiro Tsuda, I may add).
While the video is mainly just the characters of Golden Kamuy explaining the basic premise of Spider-Man: Far From Home, Tokushirou does at least try to draw a comparison between himself and Nick Fury in saying that they both ‘put together teams.’
This certainly isn’t false, but Nick Fury and Takushirou Tsurumi are still quite different characters in their respective stories; Nick Fury’s team fights for good, while Tsurumi’s fights for evil, to name but one major difference.
That being said, it’s quite clear that this Golden Kamuy and Spider-Man collaboration is just a way for Marvel to promote their upcoming film in Japan by way of piggybacking off of another, domestic series’ success.
But at least the previous collaborations, such as between My Hero Academia: The Two Heroes and Avengers: Infinity War, made at least a little sense. At least find a currently airing series to buddy up with next time, Marvel!