Friday Road Show (Nippon TV, Friday 9pm) on February 27th will feature a special edition of "Golden Kamuy: The Battle for the Hokkaido Tattooed Prisoners" (2024), the drama version of the popular comic series which has sold over 30 million copies in total.
Set in Hokkaido at the end of the Meiji era, former soldier Sugimoto Saichi (Yamazaki Kento), who survived the Russo-Japanese War and was nicknamed "Invincible Sugimoto," is searching for 24 "tattooed prisoners" whose tattoos have been engraved with codes indicating the location of a gold nugget, along with an Ainu girl named Asirpa (Yamada Anna) and an escaped prisoner from Abashiri Prison, Shiraishi Yoshitake (Yamoto Yuma).
However, Lieutenant Tsurumi Tokushiro (Tamaki Hiroshi), commander of the Imperial Japanese Army's 7th Division, and Ogata Hyakunosuke (Maeda Go Ayano), and Shinsengumi's "Demon Vice-Commander," Hijikata Toshizo (Tachi Hiroshi), are also targeting the prisoners. On their journey, Sugimoto and his friends encounter a host of unreadable characters, including Asirpa's father's friend Kiroranke (Ikeuchi Hiroyuki), an Ainu woman named Inkarmat (Takahashi Maryjun), and the proprietress of the Sapporo World Hotel, Ienaga Kano (Sakurai Yuki).
The battle for the prisoners' tattooed skins, which bear codes revealing the location of the buried treasure, intensifies. A diverse cast of characters sometimes work together and sometimes betray each other in the pursuit of the treasure.
Next week on Friday Roadshow on March 6th, a 60-minute extended version of "Wicked" (2024, USA), which won the Academy Award for Best Costume Design and Best Art Direction at the 97th Academy Awards (2025) and grossed $756 million worldwide, will be broadcast on terrestrial television for the first time.
