Sugimoto's Group | The Abashiri Convicts (Hijikata's Group) | The Hokkaido 7th Division | The Ainu | Barato's Mob | Others
open/close all folders
General
The indigenous people of Japan, living prominently in an area that ranges from Hokkaido to Sakhalin. They are an ancestral (preceding the Japanese themselves) hunter-gatherer culture that practices animism, but the Japanese government openly discriminates against them and is gradually phasing out their culture and identity, as well as ruining their islands with the industrial exploitation of their resources. In response to the discrimination against their people, seven Ainu chiefs gathered gold to finance a revolt, until a man called Noppera-Bou (No-face) killed them all and both the gold and the revolt were lost. Despite this violent episode and the oppression they face, the Ainu are generally gentle, pacifist people.
- Carry a Big Stick: A large stick called sutu is used to punish crimes ranging from thievery to murders. It's absolutely not to be used lightly.
- Fingore: Sakhalin Ainu punish thieves by chopping off one of their fingertips for each offense and if the offense is grave enough, the entire finger is cut off.
- Foreign Queasine: Raw brains are a delicacy for them. And so are boiled animal heads, beaks, feet, etc.
- Green Aesop: Be respectful of nature, and be thankful of the gifts it provides you. Nature is not forgiving with those who take it lightly.
- Guardian Entity: Ainu believe that a spirit called turenpe, located in the back of their necks, protects them and for this, they thank them with offerings, usually food.
- Noble Savage: They live off of nature and know to respect it. In spite of the discrimination they face, most of them feel no ill will towards the Japanese, and will be friendly towards them unless they aren't given the same courtesy.
- Only One Name: Per tradition, Ainu have no surnames, unlike the Japanese.
- Oral Tradition: Ainu don't have a writing system and pass their history, myths and culture orally.
- Our Gods Are Different: Almost everything has a kamuy, and they gifted the Ainu what they have. The kamuy range from benevolent to downright evil, and can take away the gifts they bestowed just as easily as they granted them.
- Poison Is Evil: Averted, Ainu traditionally use poisoned arrows to kill their prey rapidly. Each clan has its own secret concoction, which makes antidotes hard to acquire.
- Prophecies Are Always Right: The more traditional Ainu take divination very seriously and believe dreams are messages from the ''kamuy'' of things to come. Younger Ainu like Asirpa do not share this belief for the most part.
- Thou Shalt Not Kill: Killing another person is taboo, believed to condemn someone to hell, and a man-killing animal is considered to be a 'wenkamuy'', and anything that could gained from them is deemed unfit for use.
- Trap Master: As part of their hunting skills, they traditionally trap animals.
- Tribal Facepaint: Ainu women traditionally tattoo their mouths, cheeks and arms to signify that they are of marriageable age. The larger the tattoo, the more important in their society the woman is considered to be. The younger generation of Ainu women take a dim view of tattooing, and many of them refuse to partake in it.
- Unfortunate Name: Invoked: to ward off evil spirits, infants will have disgusting-sounding names until they are six years old. After that age, the child is given a named inspired on what they've done in their lives, or their personalities.
- Worthless Yellow Rocks: The Ainu hoarded gold for generations without actually having any use for it. In fact, it's less than worthless to them, since gold panning pollutes rivers, which is a traditional food source.
Wilk
Voiced by: Hiroki Tochi (Japanese), Barry Yandell (English)
- Abusive Parents: Zigzagged. While Wilk is shown to have been a loving father to his daughter, his methods for raising her into the huntress she became were extremely harsh for her young age, making her hunt bears on her own when she was no older than 7. While Asirpa succeeded, he put her under extreme danger and stress without properly informing her of it. His true goal by doing this and all the hunting and survivalism knowledge he imparted into her, was to raise Asirpa to be the leader of the Ainu revolt against the Japanese government. He was otherwise supportive of her, and genuinely trusting of daughter's skill and talent as a hunter.
- Badass Native: Asirpa describes him as one of the bravest bear hunters of their people, with Wilk crawling into a bear den alone to kill it armed with only a single poisoned arrow, and succeeding in the hunt with a method that would be tantamount to suicide for any other hunter.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: He is described and remembered by Asirpa as a loving, supportive father, a skilled hunter, and also extremely well versed in the ways and traditional myths of their people, teaching her all the traditional knowledge she knows and is fond of introducing others to. He was also a ruthless terrorist in Russia, responsible for the death of the Czar, and his past scenes shows him effortlessly commiting mass murder without any shred of remorse. After Asirpa was born, Wilk secretly raised her as a freedom fighter who'd wage war against the Japanese government for Ainu independence, using hunting and survival training as a pretext to drill the necessary skills into her.
- Broken Pedestal: Asirpa is distraught to learn that he really has been the infamous Noppera-Bou all along and cries out of dissapointment.
- But Not Too Foreign: He's a Russian born Sakhalin Ainu-Polish man. The fanbook reveals neither him nor Kiroranke were raised or ever felt Ainu, they just chose to live amongst them once they got to Hokkaido.
- Chick Magnet: According to Asirpa, Wilk was popular with women because of his excellent craftsmanship; a man's craftsmanship traditionally showed Ainu women how good of a provider that man could be to her. Unknown to her, Wilk was far more popular with women than she ever knew, with a young Inkarmat having developed feelings for him during their time travelling Hokkaido together, Sofia, a Russian noblewoman, falling in love with him as well during their youth as revolutionaries and Riratte, Asirpa's mother, being just as quickly smitten with him in spite of knowing nothing about his past.
- Deceased Parents Are the Best: Asirpa has nothing but fond memories of her late father and praise for his ability as a hunter. Subverted, as it's revealed during the Abashiri arc that he's been alive all along at the prison under the identity of the infamous Noppera-Bou. When questioned by Sugimoto, Wilk calmly admits that he had been raising Asirpa as a revolutionary in order for her to be the leader and eventual martyr of the Ainu rebellion he had almost been in the past.
- The Faceless: Although he's spoken of a lot, the manga doesn't initially show his face, as only glimpses of it are shown from time to time. His face is eventually revealed in Chapter 137, and fully shown for the rest of the manga.
- Family Eye Resemblance: Asirpa gets her blue eyes from him. Their eyes are particularly relevant to the story as they prove that he is indeed Noppera-Bou.
- Follow in My Footsteps: Wilk, a legendary hunter amongst the Ainu, always made sure to take his daughter alongside him in his hunts, teaching her all he knew, even though Ainu women typically stayed at their village doing traditionally feminine tasks such as broidering. His insistence in developing Asirpa's hunting skills were aimed towards eventually turing her into a revolutionary waging war against the Japanese government for Ainu independence.
- Going Native: Inkarmat reveals that Wilk was a Christian due to his Polish heritage, but that he eventually embraced Ainu beliefs and customs wholeheartedly.
- Good Eyes, Evil Eyes: He had round, dark blue eyes, and was described and remembered by Asirpa as a loving father. At the same time, Wilk was also a terrorist, a mass murderer several times over, and raised his only daughter to be a revolutionary martyr.
- Good Scars, Evil Scars: Wilk had a pretty large scar in his face, earned during his killing of the Czar.
- I Have Many Names: His birth name is unknown, but he's most commonly referred in the story as Wilk. His father started calling him Wilk, Polish for wolf, after seeing his son running around wearing a wolf's pelt on his back, having become fascinated by them in his childhood. When Wilk visited Kouichi Hasegawa in Russia, wishing to learn Japanese, he claimed his name was Grigori, in order to hide his identity as the Czar's murderer. When he told his wife the story behind his Polish name, Riratte bestowed upon him an Ainu name, Horkew Oskoni, meaning "to catch up to the wolves", which he relied to Asirpa as the key to solve the gold code. When he booked himself into Abashiri Prison, having skinned off his face in order to once again obscure his identity, he was given the nickname Noppera-Bou, which is the name of a traditional faceless Yōkai.
- Intergenerational Friendship: Had one with a young Inkarmat, when they travelled Hokkaido together. She's the true source of his almost encyclopedic knowledge of the Ainu language, their traditions and mythology, which Wilk told Asirpa he had gained from Riratte. Their sudden parting, motivated by Inkarmat finding out that Wilk, whom she had feelings for, had no romantic interest in her, and lso had a wife and eventually would have a child, haunted her for years to come.
- Laser-Guided Karma: His change of heart regarding the revolution and his subsquent fight and fallout with Kiroranke ends up costing him his life, as Kiroranke ends up plotting and assisting his murder with Ogata in retaliation.
- Led by the Outsider: The seven Ainu in Hokkaido who gathered the gold to revolt against the Japanese government were led by Wilk, a Polish-Karafuto Ainu fugitive. They had a deadly falling out when Tsurumi exposed Wilk's past as a revolutionary in Russia.
- Manly Men Can Hunt: Wilk was an excellent hunter, and one of the few people to have hunted bears on his own without a gun. It earned him the admiration of his daughter and his village.
- Meaningful Name: His Polish father named him Wilk after the Polish word for "wolf", because as a child, Wilk carried around a pelt of a dead wolf wishing become like the animals he considered pragmatic, logical and beautiful in all their mercilessness.
- Posthumous Character: He's long deceased by the time Sugimoto and Asirpa meet. Zig-zagged. Wilk and Noppera-Bou were the same person all along, and he had been alive but imprisoned in Abashiri for at least 6 years. In that same arc, Ogata shoots him dead shortly after Sugimoto finally meets him, and then he turns truly posthumous.
- Pure Is Not Good: When Asirpa asks Sofia what Wilk was like, Sofia answers that he was pure and beautiful. Wilk considered wolves the most pure and beautiful creatures in existence, since they were ruthless, logical and efficient, an ethos he passed on to Sofia. She alluded to his purity and beauty as Wilk assasinated the Czar with no hesitation for the revolutionary cause.
- Significant Wardrobe Shift: As a child, he wore a tetarape, a type of Ainu clothing made by the Sakhalin Ainu using urtica thunbergiana. As an adult, he used to wear a white shirt and a black jacket before replacing them with a customary Hokkaido Ainu clothing. As Noppera-Bou, he wears a standard prison uniform.
- Spell My Name With An S: His name sometimes has incorrectly been spelled as "Uiluk", the phonetic pronounciation of Wilk in Japanese.
- Used to Be a Sweet Kid: As a child, he was an innocent and impressionable boy. As an adult, Wilk was a ruthless, brutal revolutionary and terrorist who killed the ruling Czar, and killed countless people more in cold blood without a shred of remorse in Russia. After arriving to Japan, he had no qualms about abandoning his revolutionary ideas, leaving his past with Kiroranke and Sofia behind him, destroying their lifelong friendship and would dedicate his remaining years to both raising Asirpa into revolutionary martyrdom, and once imprisioned, to tatooting the convicts, fully knowing he'd be sending them to their deaths.
- Two Aliases, One Character: He and Noppera-Bou are the same person.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: As a partisan in Russia, Wilk fought the Czardom, seeking to abolish the ruling oppressive serfdom system through violent revolution. Once in Hokkaido, he decided to fight for the Ainu, gathering enough gold to finance a revolt against the Japanese government, and to raise his daughter as the ideal leader for the violent struggle. In his only meeting with Sugimoto, the war veteran expresses his appalment at Wilk's methods, especially his plans for Asirpa even if his goals are sympatethic. Wilk finds Sugimoto's concern about Asirpa hilarious, and then bursts out with this gem.Sugimoto: Do you want her to be a killer like us?! Your cause is righteous...and maybe someone has to fight for it! But it doesn't have to be her! I want Asirpa to hunt deer and eat brains...and make citatap...and say Hinna, Hinna!!Wilk: (laughing) Sisam, you've been groomed very well by that kid...
- "X" Marks the Hero: He had a cross-shaped scar across his forehead and down his left eye to the cheek. Subverted, as he was far from a hero, being a mass murderer, terrorist, and the one who would kickstart the deadly gold hunt.
Asirpa's Grandmother "Huci"
Voiced by: Miyuki Ichijou (Japanese), Jessica Cavanagh (English)
- Amazingly Embarrassing Parent: Within minutes of meeting Sugimoto for the first time, she quickly informs him that her granddaughter has never had any friends, is terrible at any Ainu traditional female occupations, and thus asks him to take Asirpa as his wife so that she doesn't have to worry about her future any longer. Asirpa, evidently embarrassed, refuses to translate her grandmother's request and instead tells Sugimoto that Huci said that people shouldn't eat poop.
- Dreaming of Things to Come: Influenced by Inkarmat, Huci has a dream which predicts that she would never see Asirpa again, causing her great anguish, to the point that she starts preparing her funeral clothing in secret, losing her will to live. Asirpa reveals that Huci had dreamt of her daughter's imminent death, which did happen, justifying her reaction. This prompts Tanigaki to go find Asirpa to make sure she's safe, and ease Huci's fears.
- Facial Markings: She bears the biggest tattoo around her lips because her late husband was the most important man in her village.
- Language Barrier: Everything Huci says is entirely in Ainu, and she doesn't speak nor understand any Japanese, meaning all non Ainu characters simply cannot understand what she says. Sugimoto, in spite of not knowing any Ainu, once managed to guess what she meant about how important Asirpa was to her and the village.Huci: (in Ainu) Sugimoto-nispa. Asirpa means more to me than anything in the world. Please always be there for her.Sugimoto: (in Japanese) ...I understand, grandma. I know you love Asirpa very much. You and everyone in this village.
- Miniature Senior Citizen: Even shorter than Asirpa.
- Outliving One's Offspring: She lost her daughter Riratte to disease, while her granddaughter Asirpa was still an infant. Her fears that Asirpa will perish in the gold hunt anguish her terribly, but ultimately, Asirpa returns safely to her.
- Shipper on Deck: For Sugimoto and Asirpa. As hunting is an exclusively male task in Ainu society, and Asirpa is both lacking in skill and utterly uninterested in traditionally feminine tasks, she's virtually unmarriagable to any Ainu man. Huci's solution to this is for Sugimoto to marry Asirpa. Asirpa and Sugimoto's cohabitation in the epilogue might have proven her right.
Riratte
Huci's late daughter, Wilk's late wife and Asirpa's late mother. What is known about her is that she was a cheerful and caring woman who greatly influenced her husband's worldview, being the one who taught him all he knew about Ainu culture and mythology, being the one that gave him the Ainu name Horkew Oskoni, the key to solving the gold code, all which was passed to their daughter, Asirpa. This is a half truth, since while Riratte did give Wilk his Ainu name, he learnt everything else from Inkarmat.
- The Chief's Daughter: She was the daughter of the most important man in her village.
- Missing Mom: Riratte died of illness when Asirpa was an infant, leaving her daughter with almost no memories of her.
- Satellite Character: She was Huci's daughter, Wilk's wife, Asirpa's mother, and the woman Wilk chose over Sofia and Inkarmat, that died of illness during Asirpa's infancy. Riratte was described and remembered by her husband as a pirka menoko (beautiful woman) who was well versed in Ainu culture and mythology, just like her daughter.
- Strong Family Resemblance: Barring her eyes, which she gets from her father, Asirpa gets most of her facial features from Riratte. Volume additions show that she was prone to making the exact same goofy faces as her daughter, and fiddled with Wilk's bow as it were an instrument as a joke, proving that Asirpa's lighthearted parts of her personality also come from her.
- Unknown Character: Since Asirpa has virtually no memories of her, Huci doesn't mention her beyond her traumatic premonitory dream about her passing, Wilk spends most of the time imprisoned and only mentions her in Asirpa's flashbacks, and Inkarmat doesn't like to remember her at all, Riratte is virtually unknown throughout the story.
Osoma
Voiced by: Ayaka Asai (Japanese), Apphia Yu (English)
- Cheerful Child: The only mood we see Osoma in is playfulness.
- Precocious Crush: Implied. She offers Tanigaki a tepunke, a hand cover that women personally make and offer to the men they like.
- Unfortunate Name: Her name means "poop".
Maka-Nakkuru
Voiced by: Atsushi Ono (Japanese), Jim Johnson (English)
Asirpa's maternal uncle.- Stab the Scorpion: He is introduced shouting at Sugimoto to stay still in an isolated place, only to tell him that there's a deadly trap where he is.
Inkarmat
Voiced by: Mamiko Noto (Japanese), Felecia Angelle (English)
- Ambiguously Evil: Inkarmat's agenda is mysterious for the majority of the story, but she doesn't come across as well-intentioned due to how creepy she is. It turns out she's working with Tsurumi as a spy, but she claims she was merely using Tsurumi for information on Kiroranke. She also claims that Kiroranke will betray Asirpa and that she's following her to protect her.
- After the Abashiri Prison Arc it's more or less cleared up that her concerns about Kiroranke were well founded and her claims about wanting to protect Asirpa are true.
- Animal Motif: The fox. She resembles her fox pelt scarf and Asirpa calls her cironnup (fox).
- Babies Ever After: She ends up having fifteen sons together with Tanigaki in the final chapter.
- Bound and Gagged: Aohara tells his men to tie her arms up after his men find out that she has pretended to be Chizuko Mifune. As soon as Tanigaki and Cikapasi appear, they remove the bonds.
- Cheshire Cat Grin: Inkarmat has a constant knowing grin on her face.
- Consulting Mister Puppet: Her main method of divination is to toss a siratki kamuy, the lower jaw from a white fox's skull, on the ground and look at it to predict the future somehow.
- Eyes Always Shut: To compliment her Cheshire Cat Grin, Inkarmat's eyes are almost always closed.
- Foil: Actually serves as one to Asirpa. Both of them are Ainu women who don't adhere to the traditional roles of women in their society with Asirpa's hunting and Inkarmat's travelling as a fortune teller. As a child both of them befriended an older scar-faced foreigner and educated them in the ways of Ainu culture, both of them holding deep-seated fears that their older partner would eventually leave them behind. Both of them also had close relationships with Wilk, Asirpa being his daughter and Inkarmat being one of his first friends among the Ainu people who taught him much about the way of life he would come to adopt.
- Foreseeing My Death: Inkarmat has foreseen that she would die before seeing Wilk's face again. As she drowns in a lake, she is convinced that her time has come but Tanigaki intervenes to save her.
- Form-Fitting Wardrobe: Inkarmat's heavy clothes still let her curves visible to all.
- Fortune Teller: She works as a seer. The authenticity of her talent at seeing the future which Ainus call Niwok is debatable.
- Hair Color Dissonance: Has magenta highlights in her black hair on the cover of Volume 12 of the manga.
- Has a Type: Inkarmat says in two separate occasions that she fancies men with scars on their faces.
- Hopeless Suitor: Implied to have the case between her and Wilk. She was just a child when she met him, meaning he never looked at her that way, and he eventually got married to another woman.
- Intergenerational Friendship: Inkarmat had one with Wilk, Asirpa's father.
- Meaningful Name: Inkar translates as "to see" while Mat means "woman". Her name is literally "woman who sees", befitting her job as a seer.
- Ms. Fanservice: She has a voluptuous figure, wears a skin-tight dress, and goes through a Bound and Gagged situation. Downplayed as the series features little focus on the Male Gaze.
- Phony Psychic: She is treated that way by the main group save Shiraishi.
- Precocious Crush: Implied. She claims that she likes men with scars on their faces. As a child, she had an Intergenerational Friendship with Wilk, who had a cross-shaped scar on his face.
- Ship Tease: Has several moments with Tanigaki. The two of them have a Relationship Upgrade when they both have sex.
- Wild Card: Why she involves herself with the treasure is uncertain and she claims that she is actually just trying to protect Asirpa to honor the memory of her friend Wilk and expose Kiroranke as a threat. However, due to her trickster nature this explaination is often ignored or not believed. In the end, she doesn't care about the gold and is happy to let everyone slaughter themselves for it if she and Tanigaki can live in peace together.
Cikapasi
Voiced by: Akeno Watanabe (Japanese), Howard Wang (English)
Cikapasi is an Ainu child who lives in the same village as Asirpa. He doesn't play with the other children and is an orphan, but develops a friendship with Tanigaki. When Tanigaki departs to find Sugimoto, Cikapasi tags along.
- Affectionate Nickname: Tanigaki calls him "Bokki" which means "boner" in Japanese.
- Accidental Pervert: He walks into Inkarmat and Tanigaki having sex.
- Dirty Kid: When Inkarmat suggests that she, Tanigaki and Cikapasi pretend to be a family, Cikapasi insists that she plays his older sister from another family who doesn't get angry if he touches her breasts. He spends the rest of his journey being fixated on Inkarmat's body.
- Friendless Background: Cikapasi doesn't make friend with the other children and spends time alone.
- I Choose to Stay: Decides to stay with Enonoka when Sugimoto's group finally part ways with the Sakhalin Ainu when returning to Hokkaido.
- Intergenerational Friendship: With Tanigaki, as both share an interest in hunting, and Tanigaki recognizes himself in Cikapasi.
- Manly Men Can Hunt: He gets his first actual "boner" (his words) not upon first watching Inkarmat having sex, but upon shooting a wolverine straight between the eyes.
- Parental Abandonment: It is mentioned that his parents and his siblings all died in an undisclosed incident.
- Ping Pong Naïveté: Dirty Kid that he is, Cikapasi is traumatized when he peeks at Tanigaki having sex with Inkarmat, and cries.
- The Pig-Pen: Cikapasi is drawn with noticeable dirt covering his face at all time. It may be due to his solitary inclinations that he doesn't bother to wash.
- Tagalong Kid: To Tanigaki and Inkarmat when the three of them go searching for Asirpa.
- Tareme Eyes: He has round eyes.
- Unfortunate Name: Cikapasi means "boner", which reminds Tanigaki of Nihei. Cikapasi personally likes it.
Enonoka
Voiced by: Kana Ichinose (Japanese), Sarah Wiedenheft (English)
A Sakhalin Ainu whom Sugimoto, Tanigaki, Tsukishima, and Koito meet in the forest, thinking she was Asirpa. Fortunately, she has seen Asirpa and gives the group information about her whereabouts.- Tareme Eyes: She has round eyes.
- Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?: Enonoka means lingonberry, and she was named that way because of a time she ate too much of them and barfed. Sugimoto even asks if there weren't any other names her parents could have thought of.
- Wise Beyond Their Years: Downplayed. Although she's a little girl, she's also thorough in taking care of herself and dogs and even secures a good deal with Koito, showing she's also business-savvy.
