This seems like a Tokyo Ghoul situation. The source material is clearly very well written, but the anime is kind of average.
The animation is kind of stiff and art sort of average, same goes for the direction. But it's also not horrible. I like Tokyo Ghoul's anime because I think it has good writing and some inspired decisions behind it. I'd agree it's worse than the manga, but I still like it.
I get the same feeling out of Golden Kamuy. Cause the writing is really confident and really gives you the impression the writer has everything planned out. Again, I love the contrast between Sugimoto's war background and Asripa's connection to nature and how similar and how different they are. Such a good time period chosen for this type of story, too.
A lot of effort and thought clearly went into researching this and then putting it together into the story. I want to see the endpoint just because of the confidence these first two episodes give off in terms of storytelling.