Golden Kamuy – 49 (S4 Fin) – Two Sides of the Coin

Spring has sprung in Hokkaido, and Asirpa as always proves a valuable font of Ainu knowledge when it comes to the usefulness of the various woods in the forest. Back in Sapporo, Usami is still hard at work on a different kind of wood, continuing to jack it as he rants about Ogata having killed his own brother for his father’s love.

When he didn’t get it, he killed his father so he’d get Tsurumi’s love. Usami, being both infatuated with and extremely possessive of the lieutenant, got into it with Ogata while he was still in the hospital, but Ogata got the final word: hitting Usami in the face with his bedpan and calling him “the cheapest” of Tsurumi’s pawns.

Ogata’s practice shooting lefty is paying off; he’s able to kill fowl for Hijikata’s crew. But he won’t call himself a sniper until he’s shot a human. We don’t get any Sapporo standoff this week, but you can bet Ogata and Usami will be facing off for all the marbles at some point, and Usami better bring more than cum to a gunfight!

Already pre-convinced that Sugimoto will leave her if they find the gold, and wondering if they should really find it at all or simply remain together forever, she finally tries to ask him directly, only for him to be distracted by strange marks on the trees. When one is felled, others fall like dominoes around them, trapping them under branches.

Back in town, Tsukishima and Koito catch a glimpse of Sofia, someone they identify only as someone to look out for. Indeed, Sofia is looking for revenge against Koito, but is biding her time until Asirpa is found.

Under the fallen tree, both Sugimoto and Asirpa are wounded but otherwise fine (Asirpa probably has a concussion). She asks him again what he’ll do with the gold, and he tells her about Umeko, to whom he was betrothed but couldn’t marry when his family died of TB. Ume-chan married their mutual childhood friend Toraji instead, but Toraji died in battle.

Sugimoto tells Asirpa he promised Toraji he’d return home to give Umeko the money. Asirpa is relieved his reason is “the Sugimoto she knows”. He also says he’ll remain her partner until she’s “satisfied with how things have turned out”. She notes it’s not the reply she wanted, but that means it’s ultimately her choice when, or even if he leaves.

Shiraishi manages to find them just as they’re in agreement he should know that Asirpa knows how to crack the code; his staying with her at Karafuto while Sugimoto was gone proves he’s trustworthy enough. We know Shiraishi is a convicted criminal and a greedy motherfucker, but I like to think his time with Asirpa and Sugimoto has at convinced him that betraying them is not in his best interest.

Now free of the fallen trees, Asirpa and Sugimoto survey the deforested field, and Asirpa says the Ainu chop trees and kill animals too, because they need to, but they take care not to take too much, and to leave a little behind. Sugimoto hopes that future generations will remember the kamuy who protect the Ainu.

Finding the gold is sure to determine the odds of that happening, and once Botaro is welcomed into the fold, he provides the vital next piece of the puzzle: a coin with an Ainu symbol of unity he found at the bottom of a lake. This coin convinces Asirpa that her father wasn’t responsible for killing the Ainu, but as he told Sofia, he wanted to unite all of the oppressed ethnic minorities far east Asia.

Asirpa is now certain what she has to do for the Ainu. She doesn’t share that with us, but with the post-credits announcement that the fifth and final season of Golden Kamuy is greenlit, we will find out for sure in due time. The bombshells left to be dropped and battles left to be fought are sure to be mixed with more Ainu lore, gross-out comedy, and, of course, generously marbled beefcake.

Golden Kamuy – 48 – Jacking the Ripper

Not five minutes pass after forging an alliance, Botaro the Pirate happens upon Sugimoto’s backpack and the evidence they’ve been looking for him. He distracts Sugimoto on the deck so his partner can pull a gun on him from behind, but Asirpa jams the revolver with a perfectly shot arrow. When the ship captain steers into some branches, Sugimoto and Botaro are tossed overboard.

Botaro is a high endurance diver who is as at home underwater as Michael Phelps, while Sugimoto…is not, so I knew this was going to be a tough fight. Hilariously, Shiraishi dives under to be an oxygen-giving guardian angel, only to be scorned by Sugimoto when he’s a little overzealous about giving mouth-to-mouth. Sugimoto is bailed out by a school of sturgeons, of all things, and when Botaro’s long hair is caught in the paddle wheel, Sugimoto saves him, and the truce continues.

Since the ship can’t dock due to wheel damage, the group takes a smaller boat, and on the way Asirpa not only sharpens a spear but kills herself a giant sturgeon. Thus we get the first “Hinna, hinna” culinary scene in a good long while, with Botaro the new variable in the equation. Every time he inquires as to the precise relationship of Sugimoto and Asirpa, they are both evasive, and Asirpa’s ears turn red. Meanwhile, we see Sofia is in Otaru. What could she be planning?

We then dash over to Sapporo, where Usami and Kikuta are investigating the serial killings. Usami does so with his rather unique special power: he’s a sperm detective, fapping in order to get into the killer’s state of mind.

His dick turns out to be correct that the killer will return that very night, and he and the killer end up in a fapping duel, Matrixing away from one anothers’ loads while Kikuta, the audience surrogate, continually asks what the hell is going on.

Kikuta manages to hop on the killer’s getaway horse and puts his pistol to his head, but the killer once again fires away, and a disgusted Kikuta is thrown from the horse…but not before getting a good look at his face.

The next day we see that Hijikata’s group is spread throughout the public areas of Sapporo disguised as merchants and beggars. Among them is Private Ariko, with whom Kikuta has a chat about allegiances. Ariko laments that neither Tsurumi nor Nagakura trust him, which I guess makes him an unfit double agent.

The newspaper publisher Ishikawa determines from the occupation of the victims and the timing of the murders that the killer is a Jack the Ripper wannabe, or possible fanboy. Jack is only credited with five murders before disappearing and the final murder came 40 days after the previous one.

Of course, this Jack copycat isn’t the only thing they have to contend with: there’s also Ueji Keiji, the creepy guy with the face tattoos capturing children. Sugimoto, Asirpa, and Shiraishi are arriving at Sapporo when it is quite the happening tinderbox. I’m sure we’ll be in for some serious (or possibly hilariously gross) fireworks in the season 4 finale.

Golden Kamuy – 47 – Pirate King of the South Pacific

Tsurumi’s scouts have arrived in Sapporo, assuming Hijikata is also there to look into the news of the red-light district serial killer. Asirpa, Sugimoto, Shiraishi and Vasily are searching towns for a tattooed peddler, Sugimoto and Shiraishi in particular get maybe a little overzealous in their desire to get every peddler they encounter to strip naked.

Shiraishi channels his inner Pennywise to get a tip from one of Golden Kamuy’s trademark useful kids and they track a tattooed peddler down, but the tattoos are on his face, not his body, and he manages to give them the slip on a coal trolley. Asirpa thinks she heard him say they’ll never find the gold, so he may not have been a dead end.

The quartet then boards a paddle steamship, the faster and easier way to get to their next destination of Ebetsu with the melted snow turning the roads to mud. Their ship is then attacked by Pirate, the prettiest Abashiri prisoner, who demonstrates his superhuman swimming ability in singlehandedly boarding the ship and pointing a gun (which he makes sure to dry out) at the Captain.

Asirpa is in the cabin while Sugimoto and Shiraishi are topwise, making Sugimoto nervous. However, once Pirate recognizes his old bud Shiraishi, he’s friendly towards him. When another steamship packed with soldiers passes, the pirates try to make it look like everything’s fine, but a grizzled, armed postman in the cabin with Asirpa has other ideas.

He wants to be a hero, so he starts shooting his post office-issued pistol at the pirates. It looks at first like he scores a headshot, but it’s actually Vasily with his rifle from one of the dinghies being towed behind the ship. When Pirate loses three of his “citizens”, he counters by throwing the anchor of the ship into the cabin.

Sugimoto takes exception to Pirate being so reckless with Asirpa down there, so the two get into a little scuffle, each of them proving their mettle to one another. Asirpa ends up saving herself by luring the postman out onto the deck with the promise of more ammo, then kicking him overboard.

With the chaos agent removed from the equation, Pirate re-engages Shiraishi and Sugimoto as chums and potential partners, suggesting they work together to find the gold. He intends to start his own island country with his share. Then he asks Sugimoto about his family, and learns he lost them all to Tuberculosis.

Sugimoto thinks back to that dark time in his life when he was utterly useless to stop the death of his father, the last member of his family left besides him. The last thing his father tells him is to get away and make a life for himself. Not to build and rule his own country, mind you: just a life.

Golden Kamuy – 45 – Love and Pieces

Tanigaki is ready to walk away from the entire gold-hunting affair when Tsurumi informs him that Inkarmat has been moved to another location. Tanigaki takes this for the threat it is, but Tsurumi goes on: Inkarmat is currently pregnant with Tanigaki’s child.

Tsurumi will let her go if Tanigaki delivers Asirpa to him. Unaware that one of their most dangerous rivals now has one of their most reliable allies wrapped around his finger, Asirpa, Sugimoto, and Shiraishi inspect Heita’s tattooed skin and resolve to continue the search for the gold.

By studying the gold dust Heita collected on his travels, Shiraishi reveals another Abashiri prisoner: a skilled diver and murderer named Botaro the Pirate, whom Heita had dive to the bottom of Lake Shikotsu to recover a cargo of gold Nopperabo was transporting.

Meanwhile, we check in with Hijitaka’s crew as Ogata reunites with them and reports that a woman named Sofia Goldenhand will be coming for Asirpa, and that Asirpa knows how to decipher the code for the skins. There’s also a tattooed prisoner with a mustache going around murdering prostitutes in Sapporo.

Famous author Ishikawa Takuboku reports to Nagakura on the activities of this prisoner, whom Hijikata notes is being way to flamboyant in his crimes, and thus will attract the attention of the “ruffians” of the 7th Division. Tsurumi sends Kikuta and Usami to Sapporo to deal with the prisoner.

Kukuta and Usami don’t like each other, and that’s when the episode turns back the clock to when Tsurumi was a guest instructor at his master’s dojo and Usami was just an impressionable young lad. Like many young lads who’d go on to serve him, Usami fell for Tsurumi’s good looks and charms hard and early.

Tsurumi basically groomed Usami into a lethal weapon, while Usami’s friend Tomoharu failed to win a single sparring match against him. On the day they both graduate from the dojo, Tomoharu begs Usami to spar with him one more time. Since the master closed the dojo, Tsurumi has them spar outside.

Usami beats Tomoharu once more, then stomps on his throat, crushing his windpipe. Usami always hated Tomoharu for being the son of a well-to-do soldier who was always stealing away precious time with Tsurumi.

While Tsurumi never explicitly told Usami to kill Tomoharu, the end result is that his murder cherry was popped, and they became bound by their story that Tomoharu was killed when Tsurumi’s horse kicked him. Usami is deeply moved that Tsurumi covered for him even though it meant drawing the ire of his superiors.

The tale of how Usami became one of Tsurumi’s chosen ones is framed by a chat between Usami and his sensei about what he learned in the war in China: that it isn’t hatred of the enemy or fear of death or even differences in politics or ideology that draws out a soldier’s drive to kill. It’s love.

He has carefully nurtured and inspired “interesting” characters like Usami not just to follow his orders because he’s their superior officer, but because they love him. Usami’s jealousy drove him to kill and unlocked the killer Tsurumi would need for his plans. Now he’s poised to use Tanigaki’s love for Inkarmat and her unborn child to drive him to betray Asirpa and Sugimoto. He really is quite the sonofabitch!

Golden Kamuy – 44 – Red, White, and Brown

Back in Hokkaido, Asirpa, Sugimoto, Shiraishi, and the foreigner they call “Mister Hood” soon come upon a kotan, where they come up with a broad-strokes plan to bring Hijikata and Tsurumi together and snatch their map skins while they fight each other.

Speaking of gold, the Ainu here tell them that a man panning for gold in the Uryu river has been getting rich, but there’s also talk of a vicious wenkamuy loose in that same area.

When the trio investigate, they save the life of a weird little man named Heita, who along with his father, brother, and brother’s beautiful wife, have been in this area for a while now. As thanks for saving him, Heita shows Sugimoto and Shiraishi how to hunt for gold in the river.

Furthermore, he tells them that the real riches of the river lie not in the “red” gold, but in the “white”: platinum, a mineral that classically has been a nuisance but now something for which modern folk are paying a premium.

But as Sugimoto and Shiraishi pan for gold and platinum, something is definitely off about Heita and his people. His brother’s wife invites Mister Hood, an adept artist, to draw her nude.

When his husband interrupts, she explains she wanted a drawing to remind her that she was beautiful. When she and her husband make out, Heita is in a tree, watching intently and wagging his tongue.

Later, Mister Hood almost steps into an amappo, or poison arrow tripwire trap. Heita keeps spotting the brown bear wenkamuy in the woods, but no one else can spot it. It then kills both his brother and his wife, whom Heita tries to kiss and grope before her face is ripped off.

Eventually, reality returns to normal and we learn that Heita is all alone in this forest. None of other people we’ve seen exist, except in his head. This is confirmed when we see Mister Hood’s drawing, which is of Heita himself posing seductively.

Warden Kadokura regales Kirawus with the story of one Matsuda Heita, an Abashiri prisoner who believed he had multiple people “inside” him, and was also convinced a bear wenkamuy was outside the prison, trying to break him out.

Clearly a sufferer of multiple personality disorder, but also having absorbed an incomplete telling of the wenkamuy legend, Heita would don a bear pelt and embody the wenkamuy, feeding on his human victims. That’s the Heita that attacks Sugimoto with unreal strength, until Sugimoto stabs him several times in the side.

Seemingly glad Sugimoto weakened the beast within him, Heita then trips another amappo and gets a poison arrow to the neck. All this time, he’s been trying to get rid of the wenkamuy who kept coming back ever since he lured a bear to his family’s home to kill them, to punish them for becoming so greedy over gold.

When he dies, the wenkamuy dies with him. Asirpa points out the importance of passing on the truth properly, as Heita had the wrong idea about wenkamuy all along: they don’t kill people to punish them, but because they were favored by the gods. In any case, having encountered another weird prisoner, they’ve obtained another piece of the map.

I liked how off-kilter this episode felt throughout, and how reality bent to the point we were essentially watching things unfold from Heita’s skewed perspective, until a switch flipped. It’s good old-fashioned Golden Kamuy weirdness, and I’m glad it’s back.

Golden Kamuy – 43 – A Far More Difficult Path

Over six months after it was postponed due to the passing of a key staff member, Golden Kamuy marks its stirring return with the long-awaited meeting between Asirpa and Lt. Tsurumi in Karafuto. While he’s cordial with Asirpa, his insistence that he fights for a happier world for all—including the Ainu—doesn’t convince Asirpa.

Before they meet, Tsurumi says under his breath that he’ll keep her detained indefinitely in a dark, filthy cell furnished with a bucket and a stool until they find the gold. At the sight of Asirpa’s dazzling blue eyes, so much like Wilk’s, he can’t stop leaking…er…fluid from the brain. So Asirpa makes a break for it, with Sugimoto right beside her.

Tsurumi’s men fan out and search the town, with Usami finding them first and Tsukishima training his rifle at them. When Sugimoto keeps running, he shoots him, but that only unlocks Immortal Sugimoto, who goes to absolute town on Koito and another 7th soldier.

Asirpa holds Sugimoto tight throughout his rampage, and while he was shot a few times, he assures her he’s not hurt bad enough for “his soul to escape his body”. Tsurumi shoots a disapproving look at Tsukishima for letting Asirpa get away, while she and Sugimoto encounter the hooded Russian sniper, who takes them away on a horse.

Shiraishi and Tanigaki catch up to them, but only Shiraishi hops on the horse. Tanigaki has to protect Inkarmat, so he stays behind. They make it onto the ferry back to Hokkaido, but a single 7th soldier follows Sugimoto’s blood trail. Asirpa tells him to shoot the soldier in the leg, but the sniper goes for the headshot, and they’re home free…

That is, until Tsurumi gives chase in his destroyer. The ferry captain, pissed off that a warning shot was fired at a ship full of civilians, agrees to help Sugimoto, even sailing the ferry directly at the ice floes. When Tsurumi’s destroyer opens fire, it blasts away the floes, allowing the ferry to slip past.

When the gap closes and the destroyer attempts to blast its way through, Asirpa, Sugimoto, Shiraishi, and the sniper disembark while wearing white sheets, making them invisible to Tsurumi’s men as they complete their journey on the ice fields.

When they first ran from Tsurumi, thus spoiling any potential deal they might have had with him, Asirpa tells Sugimoto not to tell her not to do things anymore. Instead, he should be thinking of things they can be doing together in the future.

On the boat, Sugimoto tells Shiraishi that he’s heard both him and Asirpa, and has decided to believe in her as she tries to protect the Ainu the best way she knows. He knows that this will be a far more difficult path than simply killing their way to the gold.

Asirpa, meanwhile, withholds the secret of the code to Sugimoto, believing that will keep him with her. Where he was once so obsessed with protecting her that he wanted to keep her out of the search for the gold entirely, now she is determined to be a “powerful shield” for him.

Our pals manage to encounter a group of Ainu on a wooden boat who take them the rest of the way to Hokkaido, but days after they fled Karafuto, Ogata manages to steal the dead soldier’s uniform and gun, along with some salted cod, and tells a sob story about coming home after being wounded in the war that the ferry captain eats right up. Always good to see Ogata lucid and focused.

Golden Kamuy – 42 – Be Like a Boner

The moon over the hot springs is just a tiny sliver, almost new; Warrant Officer Kikuta remembers it being the same moon when he and Private Ariko were lying in the trenches of Mukden. But once the moon is new, Ariko is suddenly bursting out of the side of the inn and landing in the snow covered in bruises, then led through the dark by Toni, who is not dead.

So what gives? Tsurumi knows the skin Ariko brought wasn’t Toni’s and decided to give Ariko the opportunity to steal the other skins for Hijikata Toshizou. Rather than kill Ariko, he reminds him of the difference between how he’d rule Hokkaido and how Toshizou would, appeals to his Ainu heritage, and makes Ariko into a double agent.

He has Usami rough Ariko up, then sends the burly private back into the mountains with Toni to meet with Hijikata and his men, earning their trust by “stealing” Tsurumi’s skins and presenting them to the old samurai. But while the skins are human, Hijikata can tell they’re clever fakes. Even so, Hijikata sees the value of having skins that, while not “full truth”, are still incredibly close half-truths. And so the chess game between the two leaders intensifies.

Sugimoto and Asirpa’s group ends up sledding into Enonoka’s village, where they say their goodbyes to her, Henke, and the ever-trusty Ryu, now a lead dog. Cikapasi shares a tearful farewell with Enonoka, but when he falls off the departing sled, he decides to remain with her after all. He and Tanigaki then share a tearful farewell, with Tanigaki giving Cikapasi his rifle (to be used to hunt only when he grows up) and telling him to stand straight and tall—like the boner that gives him his name.

While it was heartbreaking to say goodbye to Ryu and the kids, I daresay they’ll be far safer in that village than staying with the rest of the group. As much as Sugimoto wants to protect Asirpa, the fact they’re cooperating with Tsurumi and the 7th at all means things are about to get a lot more dangerous and volatile.

Either on the dusk or dawn before Tsurumi arrives to meet with them, Koito has a serious talk with Tsukishima, asking him if Tsurumi had anything to do with the death of Ogata’s father, the only general opposed to the Manchurian annexation hastened by the gaining of the railway in the Russian war.

In so many words, Tsukishima confirms Koito’s suspicions and then some, while also declaring that he never considered his life worth enough to get upset over being used by a man as great as Tsurumi. He wants a front row seat to watch the lieutenant’s big plans unfold.

Koito initially seems overwhelmed by all this truth, but he then revels in just how cool Tsurumi is, even correctly deducing that the good lieutenant staged their meeting and his kidnapping years ago.

The next morning, drunk on booze and the company of a woman, Shiraishi gives Sugimoto a piece of his mind. He doesn’t mince words saying Sugimoto has gone soft in his crusade to protect Asirpa, someone who is neither lover, wife, or daughter. Shiraishi tells him Asirpa changed and grew when she was in Karafuto, and Sugimoto does her a disservice by treating her like a delacate flower to be sheltered from life itself.

As far as Shiraishi is concerned, Asirpa should be allowed and encouraged to lead the Ainu—in battle, if necessary—if that’s what she wants. Sure, Shiraishi undercuts his gravitas by booting into the snow, but they’re words he wouldn’t have said when sober or blue-balled, and they needed to be said.

I hope Sugimoto heard them. Tsurumi and Hijikata may be great men with big plans for Hokkaido, but Asirpa has the potential to be an even greater woman. As her friend, not her savior, Shiraishi won’t let her potential be stifled.

Golden Kamuy – 41 – Ainupocalypse Now

We’re back with the main gang in the present day, and with time to kill before Tsurumi meets up with them, Sugimoto and Asirpa hang out in the woods while she performs Ainu rituals and hopes a wolverine will come her way so she can taste its brains. They then encounter something completely new: a two-man film crew with a cinematograph.

When a wolverine pounces on the back of one of the men, Sugimoto and Asirpa spring into action with bow and rifle, and the cameraman captures it all. Asirpa gets to taste her wolvy brains (and watch Sugimoto taste them too), but they probably didn’t think much of the little wooden box with the crank until its owner takes it back into town.

There, he explains it’s a relatively new French invention to which he owns the Japanese rights. He then proceeds to play some of the footage of Aniu he’s taken, and everyone is unexpectedly amazed by the dancing pictures. Asirpa, who is of late extremely preoccupied with preserving her culture, decides to don a director’s cap, and Sugimoto reminds the filmmakers that she saved their asses.

Everyone chips in on the ensuing production, which starts with simple folk stories involving dicks and dick copycats (the copycat always dies in the end like the moron he is; Asirpa’s casting of Shiraishi as said moron is an inspired choice).

When she’s not satisfied with how the production is going she shifts from comedy to drama and a story of three brothers, one of whom turns into a bird kamuy. The seriousness is somewhat undone by a nearly-naked Tanigaki bursting out of the bird suit, but Asirpa is happy with the shoot.

Koito arranges for them to screen Asirpa’s masterpiece in a theater, and seeing themselves in the moving pictures is surely an invigorating experience. Then the filmmakers decide to surprise Asirpa with some footage they took ten years ago. In it, she gets to see her father Wilk before his face was lost, and also gets to see her mother for the very first time.

While I laughed during the goofy dick-filled filmmaking scenes earlier, I teared up when I saw Asirpa’s family, and especially her desperately beautiful and powerful mom, from whom she inherited so much without ever knowing her. Kiroranke also makes an appearance in the footage, but it’s her mom who seems to cast a spell on her and everyone in the theater.

But then, as was a not-so-uncommon occurrence in the early days of cinema, the projector light set the film on fire and burned it, not only destroying the all the footage Asirpa & Co. took that day, but also the only images of her mother to ever exist. The first time she saw her was also the last. Utterly dejected, Asirpa walks out into the cold night alone.

Sugimoto follows her to ensure she’s alright, but she’s not. Film, she says, is a wonderful invention, but it’s not nearly enough to keep her people’s culture alive. And she’s right. Literally seeing it through a lens is totally different from learning and living it from other Ainu. The footage was enlightening, but also cold, especially relative to her warm memories of her father telling her stories.

Asirpa is definitely putting far too much of a burden on her slender shoulders to save the Ainu from certain cultural oblivion, and yet she can’t stop. Sugimoto calls it a “curse”, for while much of it is her own will, she can’t deny that will was shaped in her formative years by the likes of Wilk and Kiroranke, who all but forced her to carry on their legacies.

Whatever she has to do to achieve her goals, Asirpa knows it will require gold, and lots of it. But Sugimoto knows that with gold comes blood. He admits to her that part of him wants to preserve the innocence he lost by protecting her, but he also knows that he already inhabits a kind of hell of his own making; a hell he assures Asirpa she won’t like. Nothing will change her more from what she should be than killing.

Leave it to Golden Kamuy to gradually build up our Sugisirpa withdrawl for three straight weeks and then pounce on our back like a wolverine with a gem of an episode that’s both bawdy and fun, and part heartbreaking and redemptive.

Golden Kamuy – 37 (S4 01) – Born Under a Bad Sign

After taking Fall 2021 off, Golden Kamuy is back with its quirky blend of history, culture, gore, fellowship and gross-out comedy. Sugimoto and Asirpa travel with Tsukishima, Tanigaki and Koito across the border and back into Japan, and they soon arrive at the border village of Shisuka.

Sugimoto splits off from the others to stock up on the miso Asirpa likes so much, but while he’s gone, a sniper shoots Shiraishi in the leg. The soldiers know not to run out to him, lest they get shot too. Tsukishima assumes Ogata is the one shooting at them. Shiraishi tries to attract crows to cover his escape, but only cute sparrows come.

Sugimoto, who sneaks up on the sniper from behind and takes him down, soon learns it isn’t Ogata, but a Russian soldier from a previous encounter who is still hunting Ogata. After communicating with drawings Sugimoto confides in the Russian that he wishes to preserve Asirpa’s innocence in the midst of all this bloodshed.

Asirpa actually overhears this, but Tsukishima, Tanigaki and Koito enter first, and Tsukishima uses his proficiency in Russian to properly get their point across. Sugimoto, Asirpa, Shiraishi (who is apparently fine from his gunshot wound), the kids, and the soliders hop back into their sleds and move on, but the Russian follows them from a distance, no doubt hoping they’ll lead him to his quarry.

The remainder of the episode takes place in a town by Lake Akan, south of Abashiri involves a buddy cop scenario, with former jailor Kadokura and his Ainu comrade Kirawus head out to search for Hijikata and Ushiyama, who have been missing for two days and are starting to worry Nagakura.

The next inmate being hunted is Sekiya Waichirou, who specializes in naturally-sourced yet lethal poisons. Apparently to kill time, he’d lace only one out of three bowls with poison and ask a fellow inmate to choose one. He makes a similar proposition to Hijikata after having already successfully poisoned and buried Ushiyama alive, only with silkworm cocoons.

The gross joke of the week goes to Kadokura, who says he knows Sekiya by the wrinkles of his asshole, having had to check there for contraband on the regular. Kirawus mocks him, saying anything Sekiya stuck up there would have killed him, so he spent all that time looking at his ass for nothing!

Sekiya is still on the same frozen lakebed when Kadokura and Kirawus are investigating. He offers Kirawus some extra smelts he caught, with one of the several no doubt laced with poison, a test of these folks’ luck. Turns out Kadokura has the absolute worst luck, such that he slips head-over-heels and spills the smelt, which slide right back through nearby holes in the ice.

To Kadokura it’s just another instance of the fortune he’s been cursed with since being born “under a bad star”, but at least in this case, that bad luck is a boon. A sore back beats being dead, after all. This first episode back brought us up to speed with where most of the major players are and introduce us to a few colorful new characters; mostly quiet but functional. Also? The new OP and ED slap, hard.

Golden Kamuy – 36 (Fin) – Not For Nothing

We were left hanging with the vicious knife fight between Kiroranke and Lt. Koito. Both use their arm or hand to block a knife from digging too deep into their vitals, but Koito gets a much-needed assist from Tanigaki and Tsukishima. Kiroranke, as dangerous as any wounded animal, produces one more bomb, but Koito is able to slice it away so it doesn’t blow everyone up.

They’re about to finish Kiroranke when Asirpa arrives in time to stop them; she wants to hear him explain why he shot her Aca. She doesn’t get an answer before he draws his last breath, but he dies happily, knowing Asirpa did indeed figure out the code, and their journey north wasn’t for naught. It’s also implied by Sofia’s reaction (prior to rejoining her fellow inmates) that she Kiroranke and Wilk formed a love triangle. Kiroranke’s body is buried in ice that will melt into the Azur river and flow back to his homeland.

Kiroranke and Asirpa try to go after Sofia, but find everyone’s favorite Stenka shoujo, Gansoku Maiharu. Kiroranke is the only one who ends up dying on the ice floes; Ogata remains alive and Tsukishima’s neck wound isn’t life-threatening. As Sugimoto returns Asirpa’s ceremonial knife to her, Sofia returns Kiroranke’s to him, confirming there was something going on between them.

Back at the Nivkh village in Ako, Tsukishima gets Svetlana to agree to write a letter to her parents which he’ll deliver as proof she’s alive, so that they can escape the black pit of uncertainty and know for sure their girl is okay. She heads to Russia with Gansoku, and the narrator indicates they’ll have a number of exciting adventures in the future.

This final Kamuy of the season wouldn’t be complete without another Ainu food session, so Asirpa explains mosu, a lucious-sounding treat made with fish skin, berries and seal fat. She describes the Nivkh, like the other tribes in Karafuto, as “a little bit different and a little bit the same”, and takes comfort in that.

Ogata is beyond Nivkh medicine, so everyone dresses up like Nivkh and reach out to the Russian doctor in Ako. He quickly recognizes Sugimoto’s Japanese, but still agrees to operate on Ogata. Unfortunately, no one thought to tie Ogata to the bed.

The moment he comes through post-op, he gets up, holds the nurse hostage, knocks Koito down, and escapes on a horse in nothing but his gown. Asirpa and Sugimoto are too late to catch him and the latter’s shots miss his horse, but Sugimoto is fine with that. He urges Ogata to get better so he can kill him fair and square later.

That need to do any and all dirty work, including killing, for Asirpa’s sake so she doesn’t have to bloody her own hands, defines Sugimoto. He withholds Wilk’s desire for Asirpa to be a guerilla fighter in the war between the Ainu and the Imperial enemies of Japan and Russia—but Sugimoto wants better than that for her. Maybe, with the gold, she can lead the Ainu into peace, not another horrible war that will claim her soul.

Sugimoto’s had his fill of war, but he’ll still fight all the battles needed to protect Asirpa. And as both of them are still in need of money to achieve their goals, Sugimoto renews their contract as partners, and Asirpa concurs. They remain on the same road together, with Sugimoto continuing to work with Tsurumi’s men per their agreement, and Asirpa hoping to learn who killed the Ainu and what ultimately became of her Aca.

So ends a another incredibly strong season of Golden Kamuy, a wonderful melange of a show that combines stylish, inventive, often brutal combat, enriching cultural and historical education, some of the best comedy of the season (with a prodigious side of beefcake), and many of the better characters and relationships. None were more compelling than Asirpa and Sugimoto, and now that they’ve finally reunited I look forward to a fourth season of their adventures together.

Golden Kamuy – 35 – Finding Warmth in the Shattered Ice

The reunion of old buddies Shiraishi and Sugimoto is appropriately gross, as the former’s nose snot ends up in Sugimoto’s eye. This is actually foreshadowing for another key reunion, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

These two men are still separated from Asirpa, just as Asirpa finds herself alone with Ogata—the only person who knows Asirpa has remembered the secret to Wilk’s code. Both groups have shattered on the ice floes, as Tsukishima finds Svetlana in the cold while Tanigaki and Koito are ambushed by escaped prisoners.

While Sugimoto uses his coat as a sail to steer their ice floe where they want (yet another lifesaving lesson Asirpa taught him), Tsukishima urges Svetlana to return home, only for her to tell him she willingly went with whoever would take her—anything to get away from the boredom of life in that lighthouse.

Live certainly isn’t boring for anyone on these ice floes, as Tanigaki and Koito successfully repel the bandits. However, an unlikely reunion occurs when Kiroranke emerges from behind an ice boulder. Tanigaki, who seeks revenge for the death of Inkarmat, gives Kiroranke his bone-handled knife back—by stabbing him with it.

As the skies seem to darken and the snow and wind intensify, so too does the tension between Ogata and Asirpa. He knows she’s figured it out, and asks her while they’re alone if she’ll tell him. He only wants a little gold; to have all of it would mean getting tangled up in war with all the parties who want it. He also believes she wishes to return home to her kotan and spend her days hunting in the woods.

When his methods of persuasion don’t work, he reveals that Sugimoto wasn’t quite dead when he saw him, and tells her his last words about giving some gold to his friend’s widow Tome for her eye surgery. Then Asirpa catches Ogata in a lie when she asks him if Sugimoto said anything about food, and Ogata says he wanted monkfish stew. Asirpa knows Sugimoto’s true final wish would be for dried persimmons.

She breaks Ogata’s grip and knocks her bow, but Ogata reminds her of when she stopped Sugimoto from killing him, and when she vowed never to kill for the gold or anything else. Ogata actually takes sick pride in trying to goad Asirpa into murdering him, since to him that would mean they were alike in their “impurity”. Sugimoto manages to arrive in time to shout out, but Asirpa is startled and looses the arrow straight into Ogata’s eye.

Sugimoto quickly administers first aid, purging the poisoned from the wound and bandaging it to slow the bleeding. He won’t let Ogata die. because he won’t let him make Asirpa a killer. When the ice floes split again, threatening to separate Asirpa and Sugimoto, he reaches his hand out, she leaps to grab it, and they successfully embrace. After an entire season of them apart, finally they’re together again, and it feels so good to see it!

Of course, this is Golden Kamuy, a show never afraid to follow up a tearful, touchingly cathartic reunion with some absurdly gross comedy. Asirpa says she “can’t let go”, but we soon learn she literally can’t, because her damn eyelid is stuck on Sugi’s frozen coat button! Shiraishi, who is holding Ryuu back from interrupting the lovebirds’ reunion, is quickly summoned for assistance.

As we learned, the best way to separate skin from cold metal is piss, and if there’s anything Shiraishi is always full of, it’s piss. This leads to perhaps the most hilariously fucked-up line in the entire Golden Kamuy series: “Piss on her face!” The snow lets up, the sky brightens, and the sun starts to peak through the clouds as Shiraishi, Sugimoto, and Asirpa revel in rainbow-making golden showers. It is utterly glorious.

The episode then jumps back a few minutes and returns to the darkness of the storm, as Tsukishima, Koito, and Svetlana find an injured Tanigaki, who tells them Kiroranke is wounded and on the run. While in pursuit, the two soldiers make the mistake of picking up Tanigaki’s rifle, which was rigged with a bomb by Kiroranke. Tsukishima’s neck is gashed in the blast, but Koito is relatively okay, and continues the chase.

He and Kiroranke eventually become locked in a bitter grappling match; Koito with his saber and Kiroranke with his rifle. Kiroranke has escaped worse scrapes in his long bloody history, but with Asirpa learning the truth about his treachery at Abashiri Prison and Sugimoto already knowing he’s bad news, whatever becomes of him, he can no longer hide his true colors.

As of this tremendous episode’s ending, Ogata, Tanigaki, Tsukishima, and Kiroranke are all seriously wounded, while Koito may be about to be. Sugimoto, Asirpa, and Shiraishi are all fine. Sofia strangely plays no role in this episode, but I wonder where her loyalties will lie (I suspect with herself) while Svetlana just wants to go to St. Petersburg. Most importantly, Sugimoto and Asirpa are together again. That one fact makes my whole month.

Golden Kamuy – 34 – Hesitation is Starvation

The big day arrives, and while not everything goes according to plan—not all of the explosives planted in the prison walls detonate, and oh yeah, a frikkin’ Siberian Tiger complicates matters a bit—but Sofia is freed from Ako Prison. It’s a day she’s clearly been relishing, judging from the amount of fun she’s having. She even briefly rides the tiger!

Sugimoto’s team can see the explosion from where they are on the outskirts of Ako, meaning they’re catching up just as Asirpa’s team is heading out of the town across the ice floes. So tantalizingly close, and yet so far…

As Sofia trudges through the floes with Asirpa’s team, she seems glad to see the daughter of Wilk, whom she loved so much, and the bottomless pools of those deep blue eyes. With Kiroranke translating (remember, Sofia never bothered to learn Japanese), she tells Asirpa what a “pure and beautiful” man Wilk was, and how he taught a rich city girl about the minority ethnic groups and their plight in the rapidly modernizing world.

There’s no more impactful symbol of Wilk’s ethos and the natural order from which that world is retreating than a goddamn tiger, who also greets Sugimoto’s team when they arrive at Ako prison. When they fire shots to scare it off (killing it is bad luck), the unique report of Tanigaki’s old rifle catch’s Ogata’s ear all the way out on the ice floes. The dude really knows his guns, but he can’t quite believe that it means Tanigaki is following them.

Meanwhile, Sofia continues to tell Asirpa stories about Wilk, who believed the Native Americans couldn’t defeat the white man because they were at war with each other, necessitating the importance of creating a federation of all ethnic minorities to battle Imperial rule.

Sofia also regales Asirpa with the time they were on the run from the secret police and one of them was seriously wounded, slowing them down. When the police grew nearer, Wilk slit his throat so his moans wouldn’t give them away. He only ever did what was necessary exactly when it was necessary and not a moment later, which is what made him such a good revolutionary.

That ethos had been instilled in Wilk as a young lad, when he would often visit a wolf that had been separated from its pack by illness or “some other defect”. One day he found the lone wolf dead; killed by its own pack which he had called to with his howls. The other wolves in his pack saw his weakness as a threat to all of them, so they did what was necessary to survive. Young Wilk took that wolf’s pelt and wore it, leading his father to name him after the wilk, Polish for “wolf”.

Wilk taught Asirpa this wolfish way of living, which for those who live off the land like the Ainu is even more important: not to show kindness or mercy if it can become weakness. A bear cub too old to raise in the kotan is just as valuable a source of food as its mother. Hesitating to kill it out of pity could spell starvation and death. Beauty is strength, and strength is life.

This talk of Wilk’s name causes Asirpa to remember the night her father told him his Ainu name, Horkew Oskoni, which means “catching up to the wolf.” Asirpa then remembers the symbols on the prisoner tattoos, and seemingly solves the code right there in her head. Ogata seems to notice this.

As for Shiraishi, he became separated from Asirpa and the others when he ran off to take a piss and the floe he was on cracked and drifted away. He must therefore take the long way around to catch up to the others, but one sheet of ice he jumps on suddenly shifts, threatening to dunk him into the deadly frigid ocean.

His wooden dick talisman saves him momentarily only to snap off in the ice, but he’s then saved by the outstretched arm of none other than Sugimoto Saichi. He seems happy to see his old pal. It’s just too bad that old pal got separated from the person he really wants to see…

Golden Kamuy – 33 – A Wolf in Vladivostok

As Kiroranke and Sofia exchange correspondence, smuggled in and out of the prison with a little help from master of disguise Shiraishi, Asirpa, Kiroranke, Shiraishi, and Ogata stay in a village of the Nivkh, Karafuto’s most populous ethnic minority. Kiroranke maintains that Sofia could have crucial information about Wilk and the code for the gold.

Because he claims the gold will benefit all minorities including the Ainu, Asirpa is willing to go along with his plans. We also learn that Sugimoto’s team has reached the reindeer farmers who previously hosted Asirpa’s team. They’re still a ways behind, but Sugimoto is looking forward to reuniting with her at Ako Prison.

That’s pretty much all for present-day events, as Kiroranke spends much of the rest of the episode telling a story about—among other things—how he, Wilk, and Sofia learned Japanese from a man named Hasegawa Kouichi, who ran a photography studio in Vladivostok. Kouichi has a happy life with his wife Fina and infant daughter Olga.

Before the three revolutionaries arrive at his doorstep wanting to learn Japanese, Kouichi spots a lone wolf on the outskirts of town—an ill omen, if you will. Still, Kouichi welcomes the three and they learn quickly, with Wilk learning the quickest while Sofia seems least motivated to learn. Sofia is also immediately smitten with little Olga. Kouichi even likens the three to the Three Great Nobles of the Restoration who successfully modernized Japan.

It isn’t long until Kouichi learns that his three visitors from the far west were responsible for assassinating the emperor. Assuming the Russian secret police will descend upon his studio soon, he tells Fina to take Olga and go far away to await word from him, insisting she not return under any circumstances.

As it turns out, the police aren’t there for the revolutionaries; they’re there for Kouichi, a Japanese spy using the studio as a front. Sofia, Wilk, and Kiroranke break out the guns and do their thing; none of the police can be allowed to escape. Kouichi makes things a little easier in the ensuing siege by revealing he keeps a machine gun hidden amongst his photography equipment.

As the three take out the police, Sofia fires a shot into a tree, and I half-expected it to be that lone wolf Kouichi spotted earlier, which he encountered a second time while Wilk was teaching him about traps. Instead, it’s Fina, who did come back for Kouichi. A bullet hit both her and Olga, killing the child and leaving the mother in bad shape.

Sofia is beside herself with grief and regret, but there’s little time for either; she and her compatriots must flee before attracting more attention. When they reach the seasonal ice floes that allow passage from Russia to Karafuto—the same ones Kiroranke will use in the present to help Sofia & the other inmates reach their allies on the mainland—Sofia declares she won’t be going with Wilk, whom she loves, or Kiroranke, deciding to stay in Russia to stoke the fires of revolution.

We then return to Kouichi holding his dying wife, and the moment he tells her the truth: his real name is Tsurumi Tokushirou. That’s right, that Tsurumi, with the busted skull. It truly is a small world. Now we know the connection between him and the revolutionaries, and it’s another horribly tragic story, this time centered on one of the series’ main players.

Lt. Tsurumi seemed to accept his wife and daughter’s death as an accident, but he’s quite a different man since his head injury. This added history will color all future interactions (if any) between Tsurumi, Kiroranke, and Sofia. Kiroranke also writes to Sofia that Wilk has died, and though the woman has become hard-as-steel in the years since she last saw him, she still can’t help but weep from the news.