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 – 39 – Echos in the Sulfur

Privates Usami and Nikaido are washing their privates with the healing waters of the famed Noboribetsu hot springs when Warrant Officer Kikuta and Private Ariko ask them if they have heard any rumors of a strange man walking around in the nearby mountains wearing geta and wearing “strange patterns”. The other privates, still two of Tsurumi’s men, claim ignorance, as does their masseur.

But the masseur, Toni, turns out to be the soldiers’ next tattooed target. He and his blind companions head out in the night, but due to the moonlight and snow it’s not pitch dark, and Kikuta uses a purported pirate’s trick of wearing an eyepatch all day so one of your eyes is adjusted to the dark. The sound of geta turns out to be Toni’s mouth clicking, using echo location to see.

Kikuta, Ariko, Usami and Nikaido join forces and are led into a cave, where they give away their position to their target whenever they tread upon the rare ice stalagmites found there. Kikuta eventually just lights a torch so he can get a clearer shot, hitting Toni in the shoulder.

He leaves the remainder of the hunt to Ariko, who is not only Ainu but a member of a famous group of Ainu who braved the most inhospitable conditions imaginable to bring back the bodies of soldiers who lost their lives in a mountaineering mission gone horribly wrong.

Knowing Toni will be listening to every sound he makes, Ariko, who also knows these mountains like the back of his hand, leads his prey into a spot where his rifle shots cause an avalanche that buries him. “I lose,” a bitter Toni says before he meets his demise.

Four days pass and Ariko fails to return to Noboribetsu, so Kikuta heads out in search of him, and finds him staying in an Ainu village, having removed and dried Toni’s tattooed skin. It will make a fine gift for the two to find themselves back in Lt. Tsurumi’s good graces.

And while their little adventure is fun enough and features plenty of clever tactics, I must admit I still missed Sugimoto, Asirpa, Shiraishi & Co., whom we only get to see at the very end, with an apparently drunk Sugimoto and Shiraishi being gross after eating Granny’s spit-infused rice dumplings. Asirpa doesn’t even say anything! Hopefully we get more time with the main crew soon.

Golden Kamuy – 38 – Blades and Buttcracks

As one would expect, being poisoned and buried alive is no biggie for Ushiyama, tank-made-flesh that he is. Fortune smiles upon our young ice skater Chiyotarou, who is tied to a felled tree by his tormentors, when Ushiyama frees him (by the most extra method) in exchange for peaches. That said, Ushiyama is still drugged and can only manage brief utterances, leading Chiyotarou to think the hulk’s name is “Pussy.”

When Detective Kadokura receives a ransom letter from Sekiya, he and Kirawus head to the frozen lake for a parlay. At that same lake, Chiyotarou introduces “Pussy” to ice skating (using gerori, or geta skates), but the bullies return and toss a moss ball at Ushiyama. In his drugged state he lashes out violently, sending the three bad lads packing, but Chiyotarou is mortified: he only wanted Pussy to be a visual and psychological threat. The kid has a gentle heart, and doesn’t want anyone actually hurt.

Taking responsibility for unleashing this Frankenstein’s monster on the world by feeding him peaches, Chiyotarou arranges for Pussy to leap right into one of the holes in the lake formed by hot springs. Around the same time, Kadokura meets with the ever-cautious and well-prepared Sekiya, who makes him strip, and soon deduces that the detective is hiding an Ainu blade between his clinched ass cheeks.

Sekiya flees, but it was always Kadokura’s plan to make the deal go bad so he would, enabling a well-hidden Kirawus to then tail Kadokura back to where Hijikata is buried. And he would have, too, were it not for Ushiyama suddenly coming to his senses and emerging from the ice.

Kadokura discovers Sekiya’s hideout anyway (a silkworm factory) thanks to the cocoon that falls from Ushiyama’s jacket. There, Sekiya presents the former warden with yet another one of his trials designed to reveal whether someone is on the right path. He has Kadokura pick among a circle of cocoons and take whatever is inside, and he promises to do the same to the cocoon opposite that one.

This gives them a 50-50 chance of taking the deadly poison, but Kadokura knows that with his ruinous bad luck he’s sure to pick the poison. Indeed he does, but before it kicks in, Sekiya tells him the story of how his young daughter was suddenly struck by lightning and killed, leading him on a lifelong exploration of fate and faith. Kadokura starts to show signs he took the poison, so Sekiya holds up his end of the bargain and digs up Hijikata.

Only to his surprise, Hijikata is fully conscious once he digs him up. Using his own pharmaceutical knowledge, he made sure to take enough of one poison to counteract the effects of the other. This, incidentally, is what Kadokura does, trying to take more poison to speed his death but ending up taking the precise dose needed to neutralize both poisons in his system.

Even with Sekiya’s life in his hands, Hijitaka has no time to talk about God or faith, as he’s singularly focused on the world of men and what men can do. He considers fate not to be something endowed from a higher power, but something to be taken with one’s own hand, through experience and guts. You can’t exactly argue with his results so far, as he’s had more lives than a cat and is now in possession of more map tattoos.

As for young Chiyotarou, he flashes a dirty look at his bullies who then cower, but he’s unaware that “Pussy” is alive and well, lucis, and walking right behind him. Hopefully he’ll notice him so he won’t have to bear the burden of thinking he took a life in order to prevent a monster from taking far more of them. While I missed Asirpa and Sugimoto this week, this was still a meaty, fun, and at times quite hilarious Edo-period hard-boiled detective case.

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 – 25 (S3 E01) – Russian Beef Bonanza

Golden Kamuy picks right up where it left off, with a healed Sujimoto sailing north to Sakhalin, accompanied by Lt. Koito, Sgt. Tsukishima, Private Tanigaki, and Cikapasi (who stowed away). In the Japanese town of Otomari (now Korsakov), Koito samples the hurep, a local lingonberry wine, and they learn that a little Ainu girl was there before them.

From there the team heads north into the forest where the girl headed, but the Ainu girl they meet is not Asirpa, but a similarly capable-beyond-her-years Enonoka, who fell of her grandfather’s dogsled. Its here where the soldiers have their first brush with a wolverine, an animal even more feared than bears, and which indeed is in the process of attacking a bear when it turns on them.

After wounding Koito, the others shoot at the nimble wolverine but hit nothing but air. Thankfully, Enonoka’s gramps Henke returns and gets them all out of there on his dogsled. The snow that arrives a month earlier, combined with beasts more dangerous than bears, indicates that Sakhalin is going to be even less hospitable than Hokkaido.

After a quick check-in on HIjitaka’s crew, who are headed to Kushiro on a new lead on the gold, Sugimoto & Co. arrive in Enonoka’s village, and we learn how Sakhalin Ainu have adapted to the harsher conditions by having separate summer and winter domiciles. Koito’s wound is treated with bear fat, and Enonoka tells Sugimoto that Asirpa visited them earlier (her “Hinna!” reaction to the salted hurep being a dead giveaway).

After hiring Henke’s dogs, the group sleds to a Russian town to the north, hoping Asirpa and Kiroranke’s trail heats up. But upon entering a tavern they only encounter unhelpful and lippy drunks. Sugimoto has no patience for this, and slugs the biggest, toughest mofo in the bar, while asking Tsukishima (the only one of them who speaks Russian) to translate the elaborate way he’s going to fuck them all up if he doesnt get his way.

When a distraught Enonoka reports that their lead sled dog (who is like family to her) has been kidnapped, Sugimoto & Co. learn that the tavern owner had money on the guy Sugimoto slugged in the next stenka, and that Sugimoto will have to replace him if he wants the dog back. That night the Japanese boys experience a stenka (Russian for “wall”) for the first time, and it’s a veritable testosterone factory—which is right up their alley!

Eager to teach the towering Russian fighters that they’re no slouches, all four soldiers enter the match and defeat their opponents convincingly (even Kaito is jacked as shit). This has the intended consequence of attracting the interest of another tattooed ex-prisoner, who only fights in matches he deems worthy of his skills.

Desperate to reunite with Asirpa, Sugimoto has been wrangled into a wonderfully over-the-top Russian beef-mashin’ factory. It would seem they’ll get the lead sled dog back with this first victory, but he’ll probably have to entertain the tattooed guy even more before he gives him any information.

In any case, Golden Kamuy returns in fine form, delivering its wonderfully unique blend of treasure-hunting, frontier survivalism, cultural education, supercharged masculinity, and slapstick comedy.

Golden Kamuy – 24 (Fin) – Skin in the Game

As Hijikata defeats Inudou by playing dirty (tossing the blood from his arm he let Inudou cut to blind him), and Tsurumi mows down the inmates with a Maxim gun (channeling Tony Montana), A heavily-wounded Sugimoto happens to cross paths with the very person everyone’s been looking for since before episode One: Nopperabo (AKA Wilk). There’s no mistaking those eyes, but it’s confirmed when he recognizes the makiri he made for his daughter.

Nopperabo won’t say anything about the gold until Asirpa is brought to him, but Sugimoto has a non-gold-related question first: Why? Why involve his innocent daughter in what he knew would be a horrible blood-drenched mess that would stretch beyond his life and possibly hers? Sugimoto could sense the fear and apprehension she felt about the possibility Nopperabo turned out to be her father. Why put her through this?

The answer doesn’t quell Sugimoto’s pain, and perhaps that’s because he has no children of his own. Nopperabo was entrusting Asirpa with the future, believing she’d become the leader of the Ainu in that future. All of the time he had with her, he spent teaching her the ways of the Ainu, how to take care of herself, and how to defeat overwhelming foes. Before she turned ten, Asirpa was able to kill a giant red bear all by herself.

When Inkarmat hands the binoculars for Asirpa and she lay eyes on her father for the first time in a long time, she weeps, and perhaps not because she doesn’t understand her aca’s motivations. After all, she knows she’s an Ainu Woman of The Future. Perhaps she’s weeping more for the simpler life she knows her father wanted for her, but could not afford to provide; weeping for the time she and their aca were apart.

Then, to everyone’s utter shock, Nopperabo and Sugimoto are both shot through the head and fall, both shots carrying the very familiar sound of Ogata’s rifle. Tanigaki later rushes in and saves them from further shots (getting shot in the wrist himself) then finds Inkarmat lying in her own blood, a silver dagger in her belly. She tells Tanigaki that Kuroranke was giving someone a signal once the shots were fired.

Shiraishi manages to get Asirpa safely away, but Tanigaki and the wounded Inkarmat are captured by Tsurumi and his men. After all that planning and getting so tantalizingly close to the answer to the location of the Ainu gold, everything seems to have unraveled, and the lives of key players are either gone or in hanging from threads.

Ogata and Kiroranke meet up with Shiraishi and Asirpa, and Ogata confirms that Sugimoto and Nopperabo are dead, sending Asirpa into a frenzy of grief. However, less than a minute later we see Sugimoto, heavily bandaged and resting in bed, scarfing down onigiri. Both his life and Inkarmat’s were saved by the expert ministrations of Ienaga (who may have removed and eaten some of Sugimoto’s brains – channeling Hannibal Lector).

Now “brain damage pals,” Sugimoto is back in Tsurumi’s custody, along with Tanigaki. Inkarmat tells them that Kiroranke and Ogata’s likely next destination is Karafuto, which is where they turn out to be. The two are also well aware that Sugimoto may yet still be alive (he is Immortal Sugimoto after all) and that he’ll surely want to kill them both the moment he sees them again.

As for why Kiroranke stabbed Inkarmat, it wasn’t what I initially thought. Turns out, it was an accident. Kiroranke was merely threatening her with a knife, but in the ensuing struggle he fell and stabbed her. Kiroranke’s intent was to share the location of the gold with his former guerrilla comrades in the far east. And with Nopperabo dead, Asirpa is a vital key in discovering that location.

That’s not to say she’s the only key, however. Before leaving Abashiri, Tanigaki manages to find a consolation prize inadvertently left to him by Inudou: information relating to the tattoos no one else has. With none of the interested parties having the complete puzzle, there will surely have to be more confrontations alliances, and/or betrayals for any one of the parties to find the gold (if it even still exists).

Tsurumi sends Sugimoto to Karafuto to find Asirpa. He’s accompanied by Tsukishima, Koito, and his transport provided by Vice Admiral Koito, the lieutenant’s father. The Admiral had seemed to be only a means to an end up to this point, but he shares insights crucial to Sugimoto’s understanding of why Nopperabo did what he did.

Being a father himself, Koito knew that he could not ask the fathers of those beneath him to sacrifice their sons, nor ask those sons themselves to die, if he did not have skin in the game. Whether he liked it or not, the success of the battles being fought required that he put aside a life of safety and comfort he wanted for his son to legitimize the sacrifices of other sons.

He believes it was the same for Nopperabo. He didn’t simply cynically using her to help craft his ideal of the future for the Ainu. He simply could not ask the Ainu to pay for it with only their blood. Honor, obligation, justice, and an eye toward the future: these are the things parents in positions like Nopperabo and Koito must consider when raising their children.

Still, Sugimoto also happens to love Asirpa, and as long as he’s alive, he will see to it she doesn’t become a murderer like him and his ilk. Indeed, the kamuy may well be helping Sugimoto stay alive in order to serve as her guardian, and a check to the designs of both her father and the unceasing tides of history.

Asirpa comes to believe this in a dream with Sugimoto, in which he promises he’ll come for her again. The Dream Sugimoto insists it isn’t the kamuy speaking to her through him, but him, Sugimoto himself. He hasn’t joined the ranks of the kamuy yet, and nor has she.

Upon waking, Shiraishi share’s Asirpa’s insistence they haven’t yet seen the last of that big unkillable lug. Sure enough, he’s aboard a ship, with a bearing brimming with purpose and resolve, steaming to their location to reunite with them.

Until Golden Kamuy Season 3.

Golden Kamuy – 23 – Ainu Nothing Like The Real Thing

Turns out Inkarmat was working with Lt. Tsurumi…which is why Tsurumi has arrived with a flotilla of four-stack destroyers. With the prison alarms sounded, she declares Sugimoto and Shiraishi to have failed, and Tsurumi is the only one who can get Asirpa and Nopperabo out now.

When a shocked Tanigaki says that means he’ll get the Ainu gold, she tells him neither she nor he particularly care who gets the gold, further unsettling Tanigaki. The ships open fire, blasting holes in the wall, but also collapsing the entrance to the tunnel where Tanigaki and Inkarmat flee. Tsurumi and his large platoon of around sixty men get into small boats and arrive on the beach, fully armed and ready to rumble.

When Inkarmat is trapped by rubble, Tanigaki forgets who she was working for and bursts every button on his shirt to save the woman he loves. Fortunately for both, Ushiyama arrives to save the both of them, and just when you think it’s goodbye for Ushiyama, he casually tosses away the entire roof of the collapsed structure, then dusts off his jacket.

Tsurumi and his men storm the prison and kill everyone in sight…until he spots Sugimoto with “Nopperabo,” promising to kill him if they don’t lay down their arms. When the fake Nopperabo warns the others of a growing fire in the cell with loud grunts, they mimic the grunts. Like Tanigaki’s buttons, the show effectively tempers all the action and drama with moments of absurd, often pitch black comedy.

Meanwhile (there’s a metric F*CKTON of moving pieces in this episode) Toni Anji promises to take Asirpa to Nopperabo’s true location, but not without meeting up with Tanigaki Genjirou, whom Toni was always loyal to. Sugimoto realizes that Tanigaki wanted him out of the picture lest he cause trouble down the road.

On top of that, Nikaidou disobey’s Tsurumi’s order not to shoot, unknowingly hitting “Nopperabo” in the head, killing him. Shiraishi starts sawing through the floor so they can slide down into the crawlspace below. A wounded Kadokura releases all 700 deadly prisoners, unleashing them on Tsurumi’s outnumbered platoon, and, well, all hell breaks lose.

As soon as Asirpa sees that Warden Inodou is keeping Nopperabo in the chapel, she waits for another volley from the ships to escape from Toni and Hijikata (who applauds how tough the young woman is). But he still has the photos he had taken of himself with Asirpa to show Nopperabo.

It isn’t long before she runs into Kiroranke, and then Shiraishi runs into them, having dislocated his shoulders to exit the prison crawlspace. Kiroranke uses grenades to get Sugimoto out (as he has no clue how to dislocate his shoulders) and Sugimoto tells Kiroranke to meet the others at the front gate, while he takes the dagger Asirpa gave Kiroranke (and which was made by her aca) and heads to the chapel.

He’s stopped by Nikaidou, and the two have a vicious, bloody duel, with Sugimoto taking a blade through his mouth and left cheek and a bullet to the leg from the gun hidden in Nikaidou’s false leg. He manages to wrest that leg away and beat Nikaidou half(?) to death with it. I must say, if he survives this, Nikaidou might deserve the “Immortal” title as well…

In the chapel cellar, Inudou orders the real Nopperabo out of his cell, but Hijikata and Toni are waiting for him upstairs. Toni and Inudou shoot each other, but the latter plays dead so he can shackle Hijikata and lock him into a duel with katanas.

This allows Nopperabo to slip away. Outside the chapel, Sugimoto, crawling on the ground, spots him, and his unmistakable big, blue eyes. If only he could get Nopperabo to the front gate, where Asirpa and the others await.

All this time, mind you, Tsurumi and his men are completely occupied trying to fight off the wave of violent inmates. Like I said, a lot going on. One could even accuse it of being too busy, but I for one loved the sense of building chaos, with every character the show fleshed out playing a role.

It just worked, and was yet another example of the payoff tasting doubly sweet thanks to all the painstaking setting-up. After such a powerhouse penultimate episode, next week’s finale will have some big shoes to fill.