#I’ve been interested in Ainu culture for a long while now and it’s so cool to see here

[queen-vv]

Geeeeeeez, Golden Kamuy is brutal

[goldenkamuyhunting]

Ramblings and crazy theory time about GK chap 268 “A single poison arrow”

So we finally shed some light on what happened during the Nopperabou incident and on Tsurumi’s involvement in the whole thing and how...

...how suspicion can lead everything downhill.

Well, actually the meme opening this chapter is based on the aria, “La calunnia è un venticello” (“Calumny is a little breeze”) from the Opera Buffa “Il Barbiere di Siviglia” (“The Barber of Seville”) by Gioacchino Rossini... but I’ve to say calumny and suspect work in very similar way so the whole thing felt fitting.

Before we start this chapter I feel I’ve to place a warning here.

In this part of the story GK talks of how Ainu were feelings in regard to Japanese and in regard to each others. I’m not even going to try to dig into if this respected things in real life or not, I’ll just discuss it as it’s presented in the story because it’s of the story I’m discussing.

That’s not because real life historical discussions are uninteresting, they’re probably way more interesting and relevant to present life than my little ramblings on a manga chapter here.

However, real life discussions on how real life Ainu historically were and which kind of relationship they had among them or with the Wajin back then, should take place in a more appropriate place, that’s not my ramblings for a manga chapter, and be done by people who have a way more accurate knowledge of this part of history than I can ever hope to reach.

Said so I invite everyone to make them in a more fitting place, a place in which what’s discussed isn’t a FICTIONAL STORY who might or might not respect reality, but real HISTORY and real people, who deserve respect and didn’t exist purely for our intellectual entertainment.

Let’s not confuse Noda’s tale with an historical book or my ramblings as something more than comments on a fictional story. It would show a lack of respect to all of the above.

And now, lets start.

We resume with a continuation of Kiro’s letter.

Kiro wrote to Sofia Wilk’s last words to him where that Wilk was praying for Asirpa’s happiness, that, instead than having her be someone who has others fight for her and live in a safe place without feeling any responsibility, he wanted her to become someone who chooses the difficult path of her own will and tries to grasp her own happiness by herself like Sofia.

So, although he probably never fell in love with Sofia, she did an impression on him as well.

Something else that’s noteworthy is that Wilk’s thoughts resemble both Koito Heiji’s, who, aware his son would one day become a commander, wanted him to become a man capable to face hardship on his own and that he had no right to shield his son when he himself lead other men to war (chap 139)

and Boutarou’s, when he told Shiraishi happiness doesn’t fall from heaven but one has to grasp it (chap 258).

At the same time they contrast with Hanazawa’s ideas, as he turned his son into a flagbearer, someone who yes, lead men to war but doesn’t fight himself (although he undoubtedly risks his life even more than them) and not even think for himself (as Yuusaku explained he was doing what he was doing merely because his father told him so),

...and Sugimoto’s, as he believes he should be the one fighting for the people he cares for and they should just sit back and let themselves be protected.

I hope you’ll forgive me if I’ll focus a bit on Wilk’s and Sugimoto’s mindsettings in this regard as I know there’s a great divide in the fandom about who’s right... and the key point is probably that both are right and wrong at the same time.

Let’s start with Wilk.

His intentions toward Asirpa are good on the outward.

He wants her to be happy and her to be in charge of her destiny, responsible and aware of her condition.

This should be every father’s wish for his own children.

But, at the same time Wilk fails her in the sense he projects his own thoughts and ambitions on her, thinking she would automatically embrace them once he were to prepare her to do it. Like he had done with Kiro, telling him his own idea was the best plan and not bothering to discuss things with anyone else, he just expects Asirpa to see the Ainu question the same way as he does, became a partisan and fight a guerrilla warfare against the Japanese as the leader of the Ainu.

Asirpa at the time was a child around 6/7, she might have been wiser than her age, more mature, but still a child who hadn’t a fully formed personality, ideals and wishes for her future.

And Wilk, sure his own ideas are the best, projects them on her, thinking she too will choose them and will pursue them in the exact same way he would.

Giving Asirpa the instruments to be able to pursue them should she decide to do so is a great thing, assuming she would SURELY decide to do so and would do so in the manner Wilk would pursue them, is a completely different matter, unfair to her as she doesn’t exist as an extension of Wilk and might have completely different wishes, ideas or ways to fulfil them... and this is twice as wrong as she pushes that burden on her when she’s still way too young to decide and risks ending up being manipulated or worse by men who’re way older than her and much more expert at this game.

Long story short, Wilk talks of Asirpa choosing... but he actually forces Asirpa into the situation and, while she could have still turned it down, well, this wasn’t really an option Wilk expected her to take as he believed Asirpa’s happiness would only come by fighting for the Ainu independence as a guerrilla as he and Sofia did.

Sure, part of the problem is that Wilk is the sort of person who, yes is highly intelligent but this gave him the belief he knows better than everyone else, so of course his choice to fight as a guerrilla is the best choice and the only one who can lead to happiness, but we also have to consider how, assuming a son was merely an extension of yourself, meant to carry on your job, ideals, wills and so on was a deeply rooted belief at the time, as well as the idea children were nothing else but ‘short adults’.

This means even if Wilk hadn’t been so overconfident in his own ideas and beliefs he would have still assumed Asirpa would have chosen his path merely because she’s his daughter, so part of Wilk’s mistakes are undoubtedly due to him living in a time period in which people believed in a completely wrong sets of ideas so yes, for him is difficult to realize he’s actually wronging Asirpa, but we, as readers, should know better.

Giving Asirpa the instrument to pursue whatever choice she were to make is cool, pushing her in a situation to force her taking a certain choice assuming she wants to take it when she’s in a age in which she’s not ready for such things, is not right.

On the other side there’s Sugimoto, a generation younger than Wilk’s, who just wants to protect her (and also Umeko and all the people he happens to love). This seems so very nice and it’s fitting for the modern way in which we expect one should deal with children, protecting them, sheltering them and creating a better world for them, not just passing on them all the responsibility, but the key point here is that, at the same time, same as Wilk, Sugimoto believes to know better than the ones he protects, when the story proves over and over than he doesn’t. This lead Sugimoto, same as Wilk, to push over and over his decisions on the people he wants to protect... so ironically, although on the surface he seems to be doing the opposite as Wilk, he’s actually doing the same, deciding a course for the people he loves instead of letting them choose for themselves, the real difference is that the course he decides is opposite to the one Wilk decided for Asirpa.

Sugimoto wants Asirpa to live someplace safe without a care in the world as others fight for her.

The mistakes here are:

- Ainu’s lifestyle is at risk and he doesn’t know nearly the next thing to Ainu situation to be able to decide for Asirpa’s well being, nor is he willing to fight for the Ainu’s sake in her place... and he clearly doesn’t wish a fight between Ainu and Wajin because the latter wouldn’t be beneficial for him either. Long story short he’s deciding things from a very uninformed point... a point that’s also very biased as he’s a Wajin who don’t really see much value in Ainu culture and didn’t know or experienced many of their hardship.

- he wish to take decisions for Asirpa without even considering Asirpa’s will. While Wilk automatically assumed Asirpa’s happiness would be to turn into a partisan and fight for her culture because this was what it was for him, Sugimoto assumes Asirpa’s happiness can’t be fighting for her own people because he loathed it. Asirpa is no more an extension of Sugimoto than she is of her father. She’s her own being, deciding if she wants to spend her life fighting for her people or not is up to her. Sure, she’s undoubtedly too young to do it NOW so Sugimoto, as her friend, should do his best to help her to realize she shouldn’t make this choice now, that she’s not ready for it, not that ‘this choice is not to be performed’ (yeah, the resemblance with a quote from “The Betrothed” by Alessandro Manzoni is deliberate).

So this leaves Asirpa with two figures who think they know best and try to push her in opposite directions... without realizing they’re basically imposing on her their views. I’m curious to see where this will lead Asirpa.

The story depicts both Wilk and Sugimoto as opposite in this and too extreme in their opposition (either lead the Ainu in battle or sit there and do nothing pretending nothing is going on), so I wonder if the idea Noda is trying to pass is that Asirpa will chose something that’s in the middle. We’ll see.

Back to the story another important bit in all this is that Kiro said  those were the last words Wilk told him. This tells us Kiro didn’t get the chance to confront with Wilk again, which seems to imply he either wasn’t involved at all in the Ainu massacre or didn’t manage to talk with Wilk during it.

We move to Asirpa who seems a bit saddened...

...but then proceed to defend her father’s mindsetting, saying this was the sort of person he was, that if he was making others fight he would feel the need to put his daughter at the forefront of the battle.

Asirpa might not realize it, but she’s basically saying she too was a pawn in her father’s game. In her words Wilk was making everyone fight, and he placed her in a certain position in order to make her too fight like the others.

It would be different if she had said Wilk knew her and knew she would want to fight so he shared his dream with her... it would imply not manipulation but regard for her own wishes... but put in the way she put it, it’s still Wilk deciding for her.

I’m not sure she realizes or, if she were to realize, she would care.

The idea children are an extension of parents works both ways, with children BELIEVING they had to fulfill their parents expectations so, for her, it might be natural to expect she had to obey to her father’s will.

Tsurumi, who’s another father, agrees that if Wilk has simply wanted to protect his family, he could have simply had them live quietly, hidden away somewhere far from battle...

...which in a way is what he tried to do with Fina and Olga and that spectacularly backfired when Fina decided she had a mind of her own and came back despite Tsurumi telling her not to.

I wonder if the idea is Tsurumi’s mindsetting about handling his family was meant to be similar to Sugimoto, not only he wanted to decide for them because he knew what was best, but wanted to just keep them out of it. It’s noteworthy the thing backfired also because Fina came back for the wrong reason, she assumed the problem were Wilk and Co once she was the wanted posters, she had no idea Tsurumi was a spy targeted by the secret police. It’s possible if she had known the situation she would have made different choices. Tsurumi kept her in the dark and decided for her... she refused to play by his rules but, as she lacked all the information, she took the wrong decision and she and her baby died.

As Tsurumi suggests Wilk would have had the option to let his family live quietly Asirpa counters that in this way they would forget... basically the whole Ainu way, including the language and the Kamuy and this would eventually lead the Ainu to disappear, which not necessarily imply they would die but, as Kiro told her in the past, that their culture would be simply erased and they would be assimilated.

Asirpa clearly doesn’t want this, at this point she clearly wants to stand up for her father’s cause, for the Ainu cause.

And it’s at this point Tsurumi attacks.

Gone is the conciliating man mourning for his wife and child as with an open mouthed grin which well show his teeth he yells he’ll tell them about the miserable end that awaited Wilk and the other Ainu who were fighting so bravely to protect the Kamuy, scaring Asirpa and Sofia both.

Tsurumi says after Wilk split with Kiroranke he and the others went to search for the gold. At the same time they tracked down the source of the information about the old Ainu man, Kimuspu, the guy who survived smallpox and was among the others who tried to buy weapons from the Russians.

And guess who was the one who had the bright idea to inform everyone and their moms of Kimuspu being alive and kicking?

Yeah, Siromakur, Ariko’s dad. -_-

I’m start to think he was the personification of the blabbermouth for the Ainu. Is there a reason why he felt the need to tell everyone about Kimuspu being alive? Because really, I don’t think it was a smart choice.

Tsurumi confirms the guy was the one who first spotted Kimuspu and who had originally joined Wilk and the others in their search for the gold.

Tsurumi went to visit him with Usami and Kikuta. The uniform he’s wearing is the one who had during Koito’s kidnapping, but it’s missing its sleeves. I would say this means this meeting is taking place AFTER Koito’s kidnapping and Tsurumi didn’t have the time or the money to replace the uniform (if my memory doesn’t serve me wrong officers were meant to pay for their own equipment).

There’s no sight of Tsukishima or Ogata.

It can be they’re busy with something else, or that Tsurumi doesn’t want to involve the more morally sensible parties in this part of his plan.

Why I call them more ‘morally sensible’?

Because we know Tsurumi felt the need to test and strengthen Tsukishima’s loyalty during the Russo-Japanese war, and because Ogata showed weakness toward Koito, feeding him with Anpan which nearly gave away the fact they weren’t Russian and even patted his back in sympathy. So it’s entirely possible the both of them back then weren’t jaded enough yet to be considered reliable by Tsurumi, should things turn ugly.

Siromakur is carving a knife for his own son. Tsurumi acts appreciative of the carving, with his usual technique of playing polite and respectful to get other people to trust him and talk to him.

Siromakur explains how the knife’s design is passed down in his family and how he’s going to send it to his son in the army so that he doesn’t forget about being an Ainu.

Siromakur will reveal himself as a man who’s balanced between wanting to keep the Ainu alive yet also wanting his people to coexist with the Wajin peacefully. While this is not a bad position per se, I fear his problem is most he’s not really working to find a way for them both to coexist but well, we’ll discuss this more later on.

Anyway Siromakur knows why Tsurumi and co are there, he tells them they’re too late if they planned to go after Kimuspu as Wilk and Co should have found the gold already... since they caught up with Kimuspu OVER A MONTH AGO.

Tsurumi then asks him why he’s not with the other Ainu and Siromakur explains he couldn’t go along with Wilk’s group’s way to do things.

He explains Kimuspu didn’t want to talk about the gold, saying it should remain buried right where it is because it’s cursed...

...which was what Makanakkuru said as well. Coincidence?

Maybe.

Still this causes Asirpa to ponder. I wonder if she remembers his uncle also thinking so. It’s worth to remember Huci said in their village there was a man knowing about the buried gold. Sugimoto and Shiraishi assumed that man was among the ones who died in the Nopperabou incident but this might not be the case.

That is, unless Noda retconned some details.

I mean, previously Makanakkuru talked about ‘their ancestors’ (先祖 ‘Senzo’) collecting the gold but Tsurumi, in chap 266, said the gold was gathered only 50 years ago.

Either someone is lying, or the gold was collected long before, then 50 years ago the Ainu tried to use it again or Noda retconned the story. We’ll see.

Anyway Siromakur goes on saying the more short-tempered men refused to accept this answer and started making threats, promising they would harm the man’s brother (the guy who talked with Boutarou) and the man’s grandson who’s no one else but Cikapasi...

and I’m not surprised. This is the ugly side of many partisans, they fight to protect their people but, if their people don’t cooperate with them, they turn against them as well.

Kiro, who felt bad for harming Inkarmat to the point he didn’t finish off Tanigaki when he came to avenge her, was a pretty uncommon one and the same goes for Siromakur, who claims he just couldn’t forgive that and so he left.

Tsurumi asks him if he heard the gold’s location but Siromakur, without looking at him, denies it, claiming he left before they find out and... I’m a bit impressed by how they let him leave. I wonder which excuse he used or if he was really that important they couldn’t force him to cooperate.

Anyway Tsurumi proceeds to try to paint himself as a friend who believes his words and only means the best for Siromakur.

He praises Siromakur saying he knows him and his son showed utmost dedication in helping Wajin recovering the bodies lost in the Hakkoda mountains and that he’s sure Siromakur is proud of how Ariko joined the 7th division and how Siromakur was wise in leaving whose who plotted to divide Ainu and Wajin.

Tsurumi’s words are clearly nice and amicable but they can be viewed also as a subtle reminder of how Ariko, being in the 7th, is under Tsurumi’s control and how Siromakur could easily be accused to have plotted against the Wajin.

Siromakur still tries to mediate.

He says he understands how whose Ainu feel.

According to him, in his region, Ainu relations with the Wajin were MOSTLY positive (meaning not perfect but good enough they, according to him, don’t have to complain) but in other regions Ainu have a deep hatred on the Wajin.

It’s interesting how he tries to be subtle and do not openly push the blame on the Wajin, not explaining why this deep hatred exist.

Siromakur says he cooperated hoping there was a way to use the gold without spilling blood... but then goes and say those 6 are stubborn and difficult men with a not deep relationship, united only by their shared extreme ideology toward the Japanese.

It’s overall... a pretty negative portrait and I don’t know how faithful that one is as the other 6 have no way to make their voice be heard but, assuming it’s faithful, it remarks the biggest failing of Wilk’s plan (by the way, interesting enough Wilk’s face among them is the only one shaded).

But I’ll discuss it in a while.

Siromakur however says there was one man, among them, who was capable to unite them with an incredible deft touch. He then proceeds to show how the group come to argue over one of the tradition which belonged to the Ainu from the Saru area. The argument is... ugly, because it seems to be chosen to point out how among Ainu from the same area there still were heavy discriminations as the Ainu from Saru are looked down because they eat a particular type of earth. It’s the sort of talk many readers would expect from a Wajin who would look down on Ainu, not from an Ainu to another.

In truth, although in a more peaceful way, Golden Kamuy has already depicted Ainu from various regions of Hokkaido as very different. We readers call them all Ainu and expect they’re all the same and feel the same, but the story actually portrayed them as if each region was its own country, with its own tradition and culture, similar to the other yet not the same.

Those men are now fighting for a common cause... but each of them carries with himself the baggage of their own region, a mix of beliefs and traditions and cultures that differ from the ones of the others, not as drastically as they do with the Wajin, but enough that, among them, they can spot differences that, to them, are jarring.

Anyway, as they start to toss insult and fight against each other, Wilk speaks up, explaining WHY the Ainu from the Saru area eat earth, and why the Ainu from Asahikawa and Nemuro don’t.

The biggest part of the Ainu seems to be impressed by Wilk’s words (except whose who started the argument) and Wilk, face completely shaded to the point it’s just a black spot and only his scar is visible, claims discrimination is born from ignorance (confirming that yes, the argument was spawned by discrimination) and that he thinks Ainu should understand each other and come together as one.

On a sidenote I’m not sure why Wilk’s face here is depicted as completely black, as if he was some sort of scary person. Overall I get the feeling from Siromakur’s words he somehow came to dislike Wilk, as if he were afraid of him.

I mean, Siromakur joined those extremists but he aimed actually at using the gold in a peaceful way that wouldn’t harm the Japanese. Maybe he was counting on them arguing, because, as long as they argue, nothing could be done by them against the Japanese.

“Divide et impera” is always true.

As long as the Ainu are divided, is easy to control them. Wilk instead unites them, which could make possible for them carry on a plan in which they would rebel against the Wajin. So for Siromakur, whose region is in good relation with the Wajin, a war wouldn’t be beneficial in the immediate times, so he fears it, he wants to keep the status quo.

According to him he joined them to do damage control, to stop them to use the gold against the Japanese... and then Wilk spoiled everything by making them more than willing to join forces against them.

Back to Wilk’s word about discrimination and how you should fight it with knowledge, this makes me think is this what Wilk was talking about with Sugimoto when he said in the magazine version that Asirpa has been training him (chap 136)...

‘Sisam yo… Ano ko ni zuibun to shikoma reta yōda na…’

シサㇺよ… あの子に随分と仕込まれたようだな…

“Sisam… it seems as if that girl has been training you, hasn’t she?’

Which however in the volume version was changed into

‘Sisam yo… ano ko ni zuibun to zuibun to kiniira re teru yōda na…’

シサㇺよ… あの子に随分と随分と気に入られてるようだな…

“Sisam… I can tell you care about her...”

So maybe originally Noda wanted Wilk to have Asirpa educate people, Wajin included, so as to overcome discrimination toward the Ainu, but then he just switched to Wilk wanting to unite the Japanese Ainu against the Japanese and the fact a Wajin could care about his daughter impressed him.

We’ll probably never know.

Anyway Siromakur goes on saying each of them ultimately acknowledged and trusted Wilk, as there had never been anyone who could bring together and lead the Ainu from all the different regions... again remarking how strongly divided the Ainu from the various regions were.

So let’s have another break here.

Wilk’s group, the one made by him, Kiro and Sofia, was, on the surface, a close one. They knew each other by years and trusted each other blindly.

We don’t really know about the other partisans, but we saw how Sofia’s men were fiercely loyal to her... and it’s possible the Partisans were the same at least toward Wilk and Kiro who basically spent their youth among them and murdered the emperor for them.

However now Wilk has moved to work with the Hokkaido Ainu.

Among them he’s an illustrious nobody who came from Karafuto, therefore not one of them. He managed to impress them enough to gain their trust but I genuinely doubt it’s a blind one.

As for the Hokkaido Ainu they aren’t really united, actually they are all basically strangers to each other and to him. He has to bridge among those men to create unity among them.

Overcoming discrimination isn’t something that can be done overnight.

Knowledge about the other can help only as long as you’re willing to open up and accept the other as an equal. If you remain trapped in your cocoon of ideas about the other being different because inferior, you won’t progress much even if you study the other.

Wilk’s idea he could easily unite those men, who, despite being against a common treat they loathe, can hardly stand each other and then have them accept also to host on their land minorities from Russia, who would have been likely subjected to even more discrimination, both for being different and for being migrant, was extremely unrealistic.

His idea Asirpa, a young girl in a culture that greatly discriminate women, could do it just because she was partly Hokkaido Ainu and partly Karafuto Ainu, is equally unrealistic.

We saw Ainu villages always ruled by an elder male, I’m not sure Ainu would be willing to take orders by a young girl.

So Wilk’s idea that his charisma or Asirpa’s could just solve everything is tenuous at best and, in fact Tsurumi will immediately shows us how it was easy to crash everything.

In fact we’ll see first how Tsurumi is impressed by the impressive feat this mysterious Ainu accomplished, uniting Ainu of different regions... or better just 6 Ainu from different regions, and asks from where Wilk was but Siromakur claims, against without looking him, he doesn’t know, tossing in the names of Bihoro and Sapporo as possible places from which Wilk could come. He says though he’s an Ainu from Karafuto, called by everyone Wilk and who has blue eyes and a scar on his face.

This produces quite a strong reaction in Tsurumi, his irises whitening, a sign used to point out Usami’s madness and the other characters’ murdering impulses.

Tsurumi, grinning, has realized this Ainu is the one he met in Vladivostok, who has become involved in his life again.

At this point, with eyes completely white, with no sign of pupils or irises as if he were looking not at what is in front of himself but in the far past, he announces Asirpa how ‘he shot a single poison arrow, aimed at Wilk’.

Tsurumi is using figurative speech as he shoot no arrow, he just planted the seed of mistrust and then ‘sat and watched everything as it crumbled down on Wilk’.

Okay, he didn’t sat, but you get the drill.

All Tsurumi had to do before leaving Siromakur is to reveal what Wilk has hidden to his companions, that Wilk was a guerrilla fighting against Russia, searching for funds for the revolutionary activities in Russia... and that’s why he came in Hokkaido in search of the Ainu gold.

Tsurumi asks Siromakur if Wilk came clear with them about this, knowing OF COURSE Wilk didn’t.

Wilk wouldn’t trust the others that much and coming clear would put him in an unfavourable position as gaining the others’ trust would be even more difficult.

However the fact he didn’t come clear becomes even more suspicious. Siromakur at this point doesn’t know anymore which is Wilk’s goal, if to hand the gold to the Russian partisans or to use it for the Hokkaido Ainu and likely fears he and the others had been manipulated by Wilk... and in a way they had. Only now they’re also being manipulated by Tsurumi.

It’s the same trick Tsurumi used with Kiro, telling Inkarmat Kiro was a partisan involved in the Nopperabou incident and let her report that information to the group to create distrust.

In Kiro’s case things worked a little better then they’ll do with Wilk, but that’s because Kiro has many things playing in his favour.

In Wilk’s case...

But let’s go on and see for ourselves.

Tsurumi waited with the others outside Siromakur’s house and, as expected, saw him rush out in panic. Tsurumi is sure Siromakur lied when he told him he didn’t hear the location of the gold and that now he’s headed there, to reveal to the other Ainu Wilk’s identity.

Tsurumi’s plan was to tail him but it’s late and Siromakur is impressive at moving in that area so he easily leaves them behind without even trying to do so.

Tsurumi’s men then hear gunfire...

...and then, at dawn, they find one of the Ainu men at death’s door. He’s Ratci, the Ainu from Asahikawa (or Nemuru but I tend to think he’s the one from Asahikawa) with an Ainu knife deep in belly. This sort of wounds cause a slow, painful dead, which is why he’s about to die but managed to last for so long.

Still the guy, differently from the other, is still whole and alive.

Tsurumi asks him if it was Wilk who killed him but the other claims Wilk didn’t do anything and it was just everyone who started killing each other. The knife in his belly is Siromakur’s by the way, we can recognize it by the design showed in this chapter and in chap 207.

There’s to wonder on those words because it seems pretty weird that the other said ‘Wilk didn’t do anything’. We would expect Wilk to be accused, to try to defend himself and the argument to degenerate, while here it seems as if the other started to try to kill each other for a reason unrelated to him.

To a shocked Asirpa Tsurumi says that those who wanted to defend Wilk and those who didn’t started fighting each other and killed each other.

As said before they were cooperating thanks to their trust in Wilk but that one was extremely frail. Tsurumi brags on how his ‘poison arrow’ caused it to crumble.

Still, in this reconstruction there’s no mention of Wilk’s role, it’s as if he just stood there and watched the other fighting. And then there were those three shoots. Did the Ainu go there with rifles? Did they shoot each other?

Was it as Ratci said or they realized they’ve been tricked by a smarter enemy and, before dying, Ratci spread misinformation so as to trick Tsurumi as well? Hard to say.

Anyway Tsurumi sums up that whoever revealed his identity to Siromakur would come after him following his lead. His plan to lose tracks was smart, impressive and terrible at the same time. Wilk... cut off his own face, put it on someone else’s severed head and faked his own death.

I... don’t want to think to how painful it was to do all that and if a man could really pull it out on his own or would have needed help to do it.

I mean, most of what happened in this chapter fits with my expectations of what happened in the incident.

I assumed one person couldn’t kill 6 Ainu and cause Wilk to escape, so the idea the Ainu killed each other fits with my belief.

I assumed Tsurumi couldn’t have killed them all because it wouldn’t fit his purposes and, in fact, the whole plan escaped from Tsurumi’s control as he only revealed those things to Siromakur in hope he would lead him to the others, not aiming to get the others killed.

Wilk claiming he didn’t kill the Ainu might fit in the sense he didn’t start the killing nor betrayed them. It feels weird he wasn’t involved at all in the fight, but maybe Wilk wasn’t present (if Asirpa’s dream/memory is to be trusted, his father was with her prior to the incident, so it might be he was coming back to Otaru when things took a turn for wrong and he reached the place when the fight had already started) when it started and only come there to see the result so he technically didn’t kill anyone.

It’s possible though he disembowelled them to disguise himself among the corpses.

I mean, one cut head with his face looks odd among many perfectly preserved corpses but if all the corpses are torn apart a cut head feels ‘perfectly normal’.

All the Ainu things presented cuts as per Ainu tradition. Unless someone else got there after the fight, it seems after the fight Wilk had to work a lot to both tear people apart, cut his face away and also mark the Ainu objects before he could leave the place.

This was... well, pretty risky for him as his chasers could be on him sooner than they did.

On a side note, unless Siromakur warned Kiro as well, this might mean Kiro had no idea what happened that way and also came to believe Wilk killed all those Ainu.

Going on with the speculations, Tanigaki wasn’t present but Ogata implied Tanigaki knew all the objects on the crime scene were retrieved by Tsurumi and Asirpa told Sugimoto the incident took place in Tomakomai... but Ariko’s father’s house in Noboribetsu, which is around  50 km from Tomakomai (it can be slightly more or less depending on which way you take) and, according to google, this means a 10 hours walk following the coast line.

I should praise Tsurumi, Kikuta and Usami for managing to do all that in the middle of the night, taking the way that goes through the mountains without even getting lost.

At this point we know Wilk escaped and reached the Shikotsu lake before being captured.

I always wondered if Ogata knew something about all that but, so far, what we had been told doesn’t help us to guess.

He wasn’t with Tsurumi for sure, was he the one who shoot? But if that’s the case why he was around?

The fact Kiro wanted him to kill Wilk dated to that time? Hard to say and it’s entirely possible the shoots were just due to the Ainu shooting each other.

Anyway that’s the end of this chapter.

We’ll see if the next will reveal us more.

[asterinjapan]

Walks through history and caves

Hello again!

Today was a hot and sunny day, so of course I spent most of it inside, haha. That’s not as much of a shame as you might think, because I saw some lovely things and I didn’t melt. That’s always a plus.

Follow me behind the link for today’s report on Okinawa World and the Okinawa prefectural museum!

 So, yeah, two things today again. I have a bunch of things I want to do or visit, but not all of them can be combined due to bus lines being very inconvenient. In general they’re pretty great, but sometimes two things are like 5 kilometers apart and yet the fastest way by bus is going to the other side of the island first… So I stayed up late last night and scrambled up my list to see what came up. As it turns out, the Prefectural museum is on the other side than anything else I’d like to visit, and would thus always require a trip back to Naha. That would be the plan for the afternoon then!

In the morning, I went to Okinawa World. It’s a theme park of sorts about, well, Okinawa, and frankly the majority of it is… well. I mostly came here for the cave, which we will get to later, because upon entering, I learnt that there would be a performance in ten minutes, so I went there first. It turned out to be a traditional Eisa-style drum and dance performance and boy, did that group pack a punch! Near the end they rolled in an absolutely massive drum as well, those were some intense vibrations, haha. Despite the heat (it was open-air, although underneath a tent cover), time flew and I had a good time during the performance. I however can’t say it’s music I’d very quickly buy a CD of, because I feel this is something you have to experience.

After that, I made my way to the limestone cave, Gyokusendo, the second biggest in Japan. It was formed over the past 300,000 years and measures 15 kilometers in length, although only a little less than 1 kilometer is accessible to the public. And accessible it is: there’s a metal walkway with guardrails and at the end there’s an escalator, so you don’t have to climb stairs all the way up again.

The most impressive part is right at the beginning: once you descend the first flight of stairs, you face an absolutely massive room full of stalactites and stalagmites. It’s pretty dark in here, but there are enough lights to find your way and take pictures without needing excessive flash. And although mankind has carved itself a path through the cave, it’s definitely still a natural beauty. The cave narrows the further you get, and at one point they’ve had to carve a pathway through the stalactites since they had gotten too dense. The big dangers here are tripping as the ceiling drips incessantly, and hitting your head against a stalactite, haha.

Here and there, special places were marked and occasionally got special lights, like a blue pool of water and a waterfall.

Overall, I really enjoyed this walk, especially since it was only 21 C down here, haha. That was quite the clash once I got back outside, with 30 C and sun. The cave exit leads you into the Kingdom Village, which is full of work shops that all require additional fees, and a bunch of souvenir shops. Uh, yeah, it’s a bit overly commercial here, haha, but I was prepared for that and thus didn’t really mind. Outside the cave they were selling commemorative pictures which they had taken before entering the actual cave, so I uh, caved and got that one. I should be able to download it tomorrow too, so that’s nice! I still look very jetlagged on that picture, but hey, not a lot of full-body shots of me here otherwise, haha. It’s all selfies or nothing.

 I walked through Kingdom Village fairly quickly, although it looked very nice. Scents of all kinds of food were mingling, and that didn’t exactly do wonders to my stomach along with the heat. I most definitely skipped out on the snake show (thankfully you can opt out of paying for that in the first place) and looked up my bus times. Still plenty of time left, and thus I crossed the street to find a café.

Not just any café, however – the Cave Café! Across the street lies the Gangala valley. You can only take a tour if you make reservations, and I’d juuuust come out of a cave, but you can still take a seat and have a drink at the café. Which was really cool, because it is indeed inside a cave, with stalactites dripping above you. They served soft drinks with flavored ice blocks, so I asked for the most popular combination (lemon and – something) and took a seat.

 After soaking in the cool air and the pretty views for a while, I went out to find the bus stop. The bus took me back to my starting point, about 9 minutes away from my hotel, but I wasn’t done yet for today! No, I boarded the next bus which brought me to the Okinawa Prefectural Museum. Although I must confess I rushed into the nearest shopping center first to find a bathroom and a water tap, haha.

After that, I walked to the museum and got myself a ticket for the general exhibition in the historic museum, skipping out of the art museum and special exhibitions as it was already close to 4 PM. I didn’t have to rush, though, since the museum is open until 8 PM on Fridays and Saturdays.

And I’m happy I didn’t have to rush, because whoa, this museum is packed! I got a free audio guide, which came with 50 (!) audio spots, and consisted of a map with a digital pen. You set the pen to your preferred language and then tapped the audio spot on the map. To be fair, if you listen to all audio clips, it takes much longer to make your way through, haha, but it definitely added to the experience.

The museum has a very impressive opening with a glass floor looking down into the coral life that surrounds the islands of Okinawa prefecture. Right in the first hall, there’s a relief map on the floor of the islands, and with light projections, they show how the islands were formed over the ages. The history museum really lived up to its name and covered the entire history of the Ryukyu islands right from the earliest human being discovered there, to the kings and culture, until the eventual 17th century invasion by Satsuma (currently Kagoshima in the south of Japan) and eventually annexed by Japan in 1879 as the Okinawa prefecture, only to be briefly under USA command following the horrific and devastating Battle of Okinawa in 1945. Okinawa was returned to Japan in the 70s, but the relationship remains difficult as many Ryukyuans feel independent of Japan. Sure enough, Ryukyu culture is a mix of Japanese, Chinese and other influences and yet has its own character, and even managed to remain a kingdom under Satsuma and Japan, be it with adjustments to become a vassal state. Current concerns are the loss of Ryukyu identity due to mixing with Japan and Japanese attempts to push their language and culture onto Okinawa.

So yeah, pretty difficult topics presented in a mostly neutral manner, but there was still more to discover. The natural history part went into length about the unique eco systems of Okinawa’s different islands, with very specific species of insects, birds and so on that got cut off from the rest of the world early on and now only exist here. They went the extra mile and replicated the environments here, trees and all, with animals hiding in between the trees for you to find (not live ones, of course).

Other parts of the museum discussed all aspects of life, including funerals, and this is where I truly learnt why the urns at the Tamaudun Mausoleum were surprisingly big. They do not contain ashes, since cremation wasn’t par of the course back then. Instead, once the body had decomposed, there was a bone washing ceremony and then the bones were deposited into the urn, their actual final resting place. Apparently the urns are now sought after because they’re pretty and there have already been instances or grave robbing… Geesh.

Aside from that slightly disturbing note, there were more folklore exhibits, such as the dressing up as the gods, which was on tv the other day and confused me completely, haha. The person dressed up as god, Miruku, supposedly comes from across the sea (which is something akin to heaven for people living on an island) and brings good fortune. Other gods must be appeased as they might bring bad omens. And unlike mainland Japan, it’s the women here who are spiritually superior and communicate with the deities as priestesses. I think I could have watched an entire museum on that topic alone, haha, but they did a good job covering the basics here considering how broad their scope is.

There are also a couple of traditional buildings outside, but I didn’t stay there for long since well, I just visited the Nakamura house already, haha. And I was getting really, really tired – although I had a great time at the museum, I was secretly kind of glad to be through. It made for an interesting contrast with Okinawa world, although I can’t say the latter felt super ingenuine or something. Just – commercially inclined. But I’m not sure in how far Okinawan/Ryukyu culture is actually oppressed and in how far it is akin to what I’ve heard the Ainu people on Hokkaido say: that they feel they had to put on a costume to even show their culture at all.  I don’t think that’s the case here, but I’m way too uninformed still to say something sensible about that on Okinawa, so I’ll leave that to your discretion. Maybe I’m just spouting sleep-deprived nonsense here, who knows, haha.

 After that contemplation, I had a (slightly too big, but still) delicious dinner in the mall, which hosts several traditionally Japanese food stands, and then walked to the bus stop on the other side of the road. Technically the wait for the bus meant that I could just walk back to my hotel and arrive there at the same time, but it had been a long day and it was past 7 PM, which means it’s dark here, so uh, the bus it is, haha.

 And now I’m back in my hotel! Longest day so far, so I don’t know what I’m up to for tomorrow. I have enough to choose from, that’s for sure! Photos will be up soon, and thank you for reading all of that. See you tomorrow!

[cheswirls]

tether notes 3/3

attached links

reference maps

pt 4 drawings

pkmn team graphics for 5 char

big bang art one / two

timeline

[this is very loose and only goes chronologically, so some points may happen years apart from each other]

caesar, under the family, begins research on creating an artificial arceus

the river from law’s village becomes polluted, and lami gets sick

everyone in law’s village dies. he travels to alola

corazon, the ula’ula kahuna, gets wind of caesar’s experiments

law joins the family in alola

law meets corazon, and shortly after embarks on an island challenge

after getting a special material on poni island, law meets with corazon, who tells him he was planning to turn the family over to the international police

corazon dies, and law escapes the family with one type:null

law ends up in the kalos region

luffy meets shanks, and learns about aura

luffy leaves for the sinnoh region to train with shanks for the first time

ace and sabo set off on a journey through the kanto region

luffy is given his second pokemon, a buizel, by shanks, to help cope with the loss of his brothers

sabo and ace return to travel kanto once more

sabo’s accident occurs; he’s hospitalized, but convinces ace to continue traveling

ace dies in an accident; sabo takes striker, his charizard, and leaves the sevii islands

luffy starts his journey looking for sabo

a band of pokemon poachers begins to grow more prominent in sinnoh; it’s led by caesar, who escaped capture at alola all those years ago

dragon’s group arrives in the sinnoh region

marguerite, a close confident with the sinnoh champion, goes missing

shanks sends luffy a letter; law boards a boat for sinnoh from kalos

the sinnoh champion, boa hancock, contacts shanks about marguerite

dragon arrives at snowpoint and meets with kokoro

aisa goes missing

tama goes missing and, catching word of this, shanks heads to tsuru from his meeting point with luffy

anana goes missing

luffy arrives in the sinnoh region

chimney goes missing, and shanks sets off to go look for all the missing girls

luffy migrates to jubilife, thinking it was veilstone; law arrives in the sinnoh region

shanks is captured and loses contact with boa hancock

dragon separates from his group, going off on his own

law and luffy meet in jubilife

-

the battle zone’s real-life location is a formerly-japanese-but-now-russian island called sakhalin. the lower half, specifically. the other island on the map where the pokemon league sits is based off a chain of japanese-owned islands that i can’t remember the name of and am too busy to look up right now. sakhalin is pretty barren, pretty remote, and pretty unpopulated. it’s also colder than hokkaido, being further north, but bc the pokemon-equivalent has an active volcano, the climate balances out.

i spent more time researching sakhalin on google earth than i did actually writing the entire travel part of part 4. like, an absurd amount of time. more than i needed to. but the result is a good portrayal, and an accurate, effortless one. here’s some geography stuff.

1. the squatty plants on sinnoh’s route 225 are probably stone pines. i say probably, bc i still came away unsure, but this was my best conclusion. i cross-referenced sakhalin flora with what i was seeing on google earth, paired with what was most common since these trees are everywhere in the battle zone. specifically they’re japanese stone pines, so more of a squatty bush than an actual tree. (also called dwarf siberian pines, or the genus name of the dwarf version, pinus pumila) in pokemon verse, i chose aguav berries as the pine’s fruit since the seeds grow in pink bundles, like an aguav plant in-game. also, an unripe pinecone is greet, so there’s that too. 

2. southern sakhalin, that i can remember, doesn’t actually have black-sand beaches. there’s one in platinum off the base of stark mountain, but since that’s aniva bay area of sakhalin, it doesn’t match up great. the only thing similar is in northeastern sakhalin, off the sea of okhotsk, where dark mud will collect on the coast and turn the beach dark. i wrote it off as a game mechanic, saying ‘it’s from the ash from the volcano’, or something like that, and then referenced beaches in iceland that are actual black-sand beaches and really pretty. 

3. aniva bay is southern sakhalin, essentially. it’s a fork, and in the middle is where the black sand beach is in platinum. in actuality, aniva bay is not that big. there’s a lighthouse off one fork, not tall or anything impressive, but it’s there. at one point i wanted law and luffy to sail in (i saw sail, i mean like surf on a pokemon okay) past the lighthouse, and go through the bay, and stop on the black sand beach. this was before i knew most anything about part four, though, and soon the idea was scrapped as i deviated towards the cargo ship taking them to fight area. also, aniva bay isn’t deep enough for whales to flop around in, and i realize since i called it a bay in tether that that should also hold true, but i did say it was a wailmer so let’s jus forget that inaccuracy and say its okay bc the whale is tiny.

4. stark mountain was a challenge i spent. so long. so so long. trying to find the  mountain range it was based off of. pokemon wikipedia was no help, bc sakhalin is huge. if i was gonna do anything for the pokemon community, i’d wanna go and edit articles to include real-life landmarks that in-game ones were based on. i think the closest thing i found to a once-volcano was more into the northern half of sakhalin, so after spending too much time looking into it, i jus wrote based on screenshots of stark mountain, and on my own intuition. also, yea, i used video game logic the closer they got to the volcano. please don’t depict characters holding cloth over their mouths to protect from sulfur ash if youre going for accuracy, bc thats not going to help. 

5. the survival area and the ainu village. i wrote a little about the ainu in part one, while exploring law’s village. my main amount of research went into the ainu’s of sakhalin, though. it’s all sorta the same culture, since they all got kicked out migrated to hokkaido anyway, but there are a few differences. the sheer rock cliff is part of a sakhalin photoset i referenced, so it does exist, somewhere. yes, there are bears in sakhalin, perhaps even more than hokkaido, since it’s less-human-populated. but, again, also colder. i realize survival area is a settlement in platinum, but also.. its really small? and kinda nothing, tbh. so i transformed it into an ainu village, since it’s so outta the way of the other two areas down on each fork of the bay, and it’s closer to the volcano, where the fire goddess resides.

the ainu are the indigenous population of japan. i mentioned before, if you’ve read fma or one of arakawa’s spreads, you’ve probably heard of them. in fma, they’re the race that the ishvalans are based off of. nowadays, they reside in hokkaido, and a while ago they used to reside in lower sakhalin. i couldn’t figure up a creative name for tether for them and i was in so much of a time crunch that in the end i didnt bother, sue me. researching the ainu was most definitely one of the more time-consuming tasks. i spent a long time reading. i watched, after a good recommendation, all two seasons of golden kamuy (an excellent portrayal of hokkaido!ainu, btw, jus not exactly what i was going for) and all one season of sirius the jaegar, where i got the most help from. marking maps and writing the outline (and making myself remember why i dont ever outline. ever.) were definitely time-consuming, but ainu research was by far the most hours i spent on a task for tether (besides like, writing it.) 

i still don’t feel like i did enough research, so the cultural things i did include i tried to keep vague to keep from portraying wrong. the bear ceremonies, the signs of summer through salmon (finneon) hunting and huki harvesting, the bear cub raising, the ripping of clothing in a funeral procession, and the kamuy (ainu gods) are all real things and part of ainu culture. woman tattoo their lips, yes. the patterns of the clothing are distinctive (also warm, bc they’ve always been This Far North, and tether!law is a bastardization of forgotten ainu culture pls dont look at his sleeveless top next to his wooden earrings i beg you) there are lots of things i could go into, but im jus gonna leave it vague again and say if you’re super interested, go find an article or watch golden kamuy. 

there wasn’t a lot of pokemon depicted in the wilds of the battle zone, and for reason. at this point i really wanted to keep true to sakhalin, so i stuck with the fauna native there, and the pokemon native to sinnoh, and if i didn’t include any pokemon that actually appear in the battle zone in platinum? oops. my house my rules. anyway so horses, dogs, wolves, bears. rapidash, eevee, luxray line, ursaring line.. that covers it, right? oh, and fearow. okay, so i did include one pokemon from platinum’s battle zone. also wailmer, there was a wailmer. 

why did you include baroque works into dragon’s group?

so. i wrote tether while the vivre cards were coming out. specifically, right before i was supposed to have started writing part 4, the alabasta pack came out, and i was so taken with goldenweek’s real name that i re-read little garden and stuck her into the story. bentham was.. k, no lie, in my mind he’s like a pseudo-rev member? i jus associate hm so heavily with ivankov, and i read a fic once where he was iva’s student and since then i’ve jus always had to include him in rev stuff so that’s why he’s here. plus i love him. good enough, right? and those two are the only ones, so it’s not entirely baroque works. i don’t rly consider bentham bw anymore, like i said, he’s kinda a pseudo-rev. and i jus rly liked marianne’s name. also her, now. tether!marianne is cool. 85% of the story’s sass.

april 9th is both caesar and marguerite’s birthday. i think in the beginning i was searching for characters that share birthdays for a plot point, and when i settled on caesar i settled on marguerite eventually for this reason just so i could make the whole ‘it’s not his bday its mine!!’ joke. and then i formed the whole story on it being late march-early april and based the weather off that.

law’s sixth pokemon. see, i told you revealing it was strategic! you all were expecting null, right? and then out pops silvally. well, it’s been so many years, so it’s natural they would’ve figured out love and trust and such and breaking the mask and evolving. still! aaaa, that felt so good to write. 

there’s more of a metaphor with silvally, even more with umbreon, that i was going for. something along the lines of a captured being being granted escape, bonding with someone, coming back to get due vengeance with the old captor, showing how much more they had become. with umbreon, it was more thing-i-protected-grew-into-something-that-now-protects-me aka her helping law through his nightmares, being a generally supportive and kind pokemon like someone law knew wink wink. also literally protect, with the whole casear thing.

okay mind control time. i reread pt 4 real quick before writing the notes, and im still not completely satisfied with how shanks broke free. i tried to hard to research good mind control depictions but i was more interested in figuring out how the mind control ended rather than the state of being, and there weren’t many promising results other than the victim dying, which wasn’t helpful. i knew i didn’t want it to be the whole i-love-you-so-snap-out-of-it thing, thats so cheesy and kinda ridiculous tbh. i think luffy confronting shanks’ inner self directly and convincing him to step out is nice, but if you pay attention closer to the scenes and how they match up, you might notice something that aids this.

so, it wasn’t just luffy. i know a lot goes on in latter half of pt 4, and all the scenes are disjointed. law and umbreon and silvally defeat gengar before shanks awakes properly. it was luffy, yes, that convinced him everything was going to be okay, and to not falter. but since gengar was knocked unconscious, the control over shanks was already waning to begin with. it was more like, he was already fine, and out of the cycle, but the trauma kept him from realizing it until luffy came. does that help? so basically, it wasn’t luffy talking alone, it was defeating gengar, like luffy had thought of previously. and then it was helping shanks thorugh it, because you don’t just bounce back from that. thats why i wrote shanks Like That in the remaining scenes.

while not in the best conditions as lab 3, labs 1 and 2 were fully-operational and secure facilities, so if you were questioning why sabo and law (mortally injured, mind you -two stab wounds, ow) would just leave the people and pokemon next to a burning lab, it’s because it was secure and the fire contained. the base was inside a volcano, guys, there’s no way the rooms werent airtight to prevent an accident. imagine being That Guy that fucked something up and led to the active volcano erupting. of course they took precautions. also, sabo had been working in the base for a bit, so if he thought the people were gonna catch fire, he wouldn’t have left them.

koala having aromatisse was purely for plot purposes, for it’s hidden ability. i needed a psychic type, and if i haven’t mentioned, dragon’s group are based in kalos, so it had to be from there. it fits though, maybe, right? anywa, yea, that’s why sabo has a delphox and salamence after he fucks off for two years, because he was in kalos. (this is what i’m referring to, if you haven’t clicked on any of those links.)

Law takes Luffy’s hand and leads them backwards, until they’re out of sight again

and, finally, my favorite moment of tether, when lawlu graduates from arms to wrists to finally holding hands. /cries so proud

k but what’s with that ending?

fun fact time i always knew how i wanted to end tether. from the moment of its conception, even before i finished writing part 1 (before i started, really, back when i was gathering material) i knew it ended with dragon in front of the statue of giratina. insert obligatory sequel joke here marianne mentions, before the trio ventures into the base, that her group’s leader wouldn’t appreciate having to halt his own agenda to help them with taking out the hunters. giratina was this agenda. 

originally, before i started on pt 2, i thought abt law/lu taking a different route. i wanted them to go north, up through eterna forest and to eterna city, and examine the statue of dialga. then go east from there, still taking them through coronet, but then through celestic town and seeing the cave painting of the lake guardians. i also really wanted them to go to lake valor, since it was the only lake they could conceivably go to on their way to veilstone. i thought about switching pastoria for snowpoint and encountering sabo at lake acuity. none of this worked out, but it was all supposed to reference back into dragon and giratina and sinnoh lore. instead i turned it fully into a travel fic and then a rescue op, at the end. it’s still interesting to think how the story could’ve changed, had they gone up to eterna before crossing through coronet. 

in all honesty i wanted to end the story on a surprise note. almost like a goosebumps ending, where everything is resolved and then at the very end there’s a quick scene that leaves you grasping for more, leaves you questioning. (also like certain op chapters leaving you with zero answers and more questions than you started with, fuck you, oda) it wasn’t until i was almost done with part 4 that i started to kinda miss tether, even tho i wasnt done yet but my outline had been done for a bit so i kinda was? and then i remembered back in november when i created concepts for ace and sabo before i even wrote that one scene in mt coronet, and i remembered thinking so much about their story, and their travels, and sabo’s accident. and then, not long after i finished with part 4, i had a startling idea, and i had a first line of a maybe sequel, and i started to put a little more thought into it.

if you’re looking for confirmation, this isn’t it. this is saying i have an idea i’d like to explore. maybe. tether took a lot of work, and a lot of time. it definitely doesn’t have as much feedback as i would like it to, for me to invest in a full-fledged sequel. if i start this, if i ever do, it’ll definitely be more lax, and a chapter-by-chapter sort of thing. i guess it just comes down to how many people are actually interested in it.

[yunhokick]

[GOLDEN KAMUY] Interview with Noda Satoru, January 2016

Corrections and suggestions are welcome! Translations were originally posted on my Twitter account and privatter.

Original interview

Q: All the characters that you draw are distinctive. How do you design these characters? A: I make even the brutal convicts have some aspects that cannot be hated… for instance, some might be playful, some might have a noble side to them; I try to make characters with such multifaceted personality. Q: And what makes you do so? A: I think the quality of a work has slid down if “bad characters” stay bad characters until the end, if it portrays characters with labels stamped on them. I feel like “Change!” “Please make the characters undergo more complicated change!”

Q: I think that it’s easy to understand movements in your drawing. When drawing, what important points do you keep in mind? A: Using less strokes, but so that the drawing won’t become too simple, I show three-dimensionality with things like clothing wrinkles and such. Also, I draw the rough sketches carefully. I know my drawing style is not very modern but… who cares. I think a man is only cool if he’s got strong male hormones like a gorilla. Like a man with chest hair and beard so thick that they’re connected. Q: Do people often tell you that “the characters (in Golden Kamuy) are changing”? Is there any of the characters that develops beyond your own expectation? A: Shiraishi. Shiraishi is like Katsuo in “Sazae-san”. I think many stories in “Sazae-san” develop thanks to Katsuo’s desires and wit. I’ve been recording “Sazae-san” since about 2006.

Q: Is there any character that you have a special emotional attachment with? A: Nihei Tetsuzou. I was actually thinking of making him the main character. Boner. Q: But in the end, it’s decided that the protagonists are a duo of an ex-soldier and an Ainu girl.. A: If that dirty old hunter was the main character, Golden Kamuy would immediately be cancelled (laughs). Q: Which scene do you like the most? A: I think the scene when serial killer Henmi and Sugimoto tried to kill each other (in volume 5) was romantic. I think I had a boner when I was drawing it. Q: What is the most enjoyable thing for you to draw? A: Gag scenes. I re-draw Asirpa’s funny faces over and over again until I myself burst into laughter while drawing. Q: Re-drawing… Sounds hard. By the way, are your manuscripts made by analog means? Do you draw the layout and patterns using pen, then finish them digitally? A: My work is 100% digitally made.

Q: Lately manga about cooking are pretty popular, aren’t they. A: I wasn’t interested in cooking manga. I don’t read them willingly. Q: Really? A: But because I thought cooking was an indispensable thing for the story in Golden Kamuy, I draw it seriously. Because if I keep avoiding the thing I’m bad at, I wouldn’t be able to make a good work. Q: You’re not good at it? I’m surprised… A: For instance, it’s a kind of negligence if I draw strange-looking firearms because I am not interested in them. When I’m drawing, I’m drawing seriously as best as I can. Q: However, this work shows a great diversity of elements, such as the Ainu culture, the Meiji military, and hunting. To carefully draw all of those one by one, don’t you have to amass a great collection of reference? A: Even now as the serialization is ongoing, I keep buying more reference materials. I drew Sugimoto’s military hat in volume 1 without reference, so if I look at it now, it looks bad. Q: I noticed that there’s a long list of reference materials at the end of Golden Kamuy books. A: I only put the reference materials that are related to the Ainu in the appendix. The number of the other materials is too enormous to be listed there. Q: Despite all your attention to details, what points are particularly hard to draw? A: It’s hard to portray life at that time. For instance, is my drawing consistent with how it was like? How far had gas lighting spread in the cities? Wasn’t oil lamp supposed to be the common illumination at that time?

Q: Seems to me you’re trying to pursue reality. A: But if I faithfully stick to the details too much, it will restrict the development of the story. For instance, during that period, ski had not spread to Japan, but it had existed in Russia, so I said to myself “Since Otaru had already had prosperous trade, it shouldn’t be strange if ski had already been introduced there”, and I drew it in the manga. However, if the skiboard bears a brand such as ‘Rossignol’, now that wouldn’t be right.

Q: So reality is adjusted. A: Even Nakadai Tatsuya’s scarf and pistol were impossibilities in the time setting of Kurosawa Akira’s Yojimbo, but it was said they’re included for the sake of characterization. I think the stance of “if it’s interesting it’s OK” is important in making entertainment.

Q: What was the first manga that you bought? A: Kinnikuman. Q: There are a lot of Jump mangaka who love Kinnikuman. A: When I was a child I also loved Hana no Keiji. When Keiji was going to shoot his piss towards people, for some reason he always scrubbed his dick. I tried to imitate it but something else came out instead. Q: I see, something else came out instead. Since when did you want to be a mangaka? A: I was told that right after I was born, I pointed at a manga book. Q: Which work that greatly influenced you to become a mangaka? A: Chidaruma Kenpou/Onorera ni sugu (a work by Hirota Hiroshi – ty.) I read it and turned my anger into motivation.

Q: Did you go to Tokyo from your hometown in Hokkaido to become a mangaka? A: I got the chance to go to Tokyo because I was called up to be Kubo Mitsuro’s assistant. There I helped her for two years. My only memory regarding Kubo-sensei was of her telling me “Eyeglasses are absolutely necessary when eating.” Q: What did you learn from her? A: People have sometimes told me that my style is similar to her, but I thought our styles are different. It’s because I have spent more time as the assistant to Kunitomo Yasuyuki-sensei than to Kubo-sensei. Style is an author’s own. It can’t be passed on from a teacher. Q: I see, that explanation is very easy to understand. By the way, would you tell us what work you are currently following? A: Nothing. All authors are enemies. Q: How bold! As for the development of Golden Kamuy after this, apart from the ‘romantic’ killing that you mentioned earlier as an important point of attention, what other point do you want readers to pay attention to? A: Shiraishi will brace the front cover. Q: Lately, please give a message to the readers. A: Dungeon Meshi is unforgivable. Q: (laughs) Thank you so much!

[rieshon]

Spring 2018 Preview

I can’t believe a new season starts in a week already... heres the shows.

1. Comic Girls: KIRARA ANIME BOIS. Do I even need to say more than that? The girls look absolutely adorable, the animation looks on point, and although the director is a debutante he's being backed up by an impressive quartet of writers including Takahashi Natsuko, Yokote Michiko, Hanada Jukki and Machida Touko. Oh yeah, it's also got a bunch of hot channees in addition to the cute schoolgirls. You can't go wrong with this one.

2. Amanchu! ~Advance~: Satojun is back at it again with the silly hiragana subtitles for sequels. The masters of healing are back again for a sequel to what was one of my favorite shows of 2016. More Teko, more of that sexy Itou Shizuka-voiced teacher, and more relaxing feels. This is exactly what we need to fill the Yurucamp-shaped holes in our hearts.

3. Alice or Alice: There are a lot of things that make me excited about this show. Obviously the cast is one: Ayaneru plays the main character, and we got Natsunee and Oonishi in there too. The director is Kobayashi Kousuke, an alumnus of the Pretty Rhythm series who was very heavily involved in Pripara, which you may know is the best anime ever made. And then there's the aesthetic: everything from the character designs to the title logo make this look and feel like a harem anime from 15 or so years ago, which is absolutely my jam. Pretty hyped for this one.

4. Sword Art Online Alternative Gungale Online: One of the weirder things to happen over the past year-ish is that I've become an unabashed SAO fanboy. The shows are just good, y'all. So you can imagine how I feel about a new show set in the SAO universe written by the author of Kino no Tabi, a show I just put in my top five of the last year, and with characters by Kuroboshi Kouhaku (also of Kino) who is the utmost hotness right now. Hopefully this will be more than enough to tide us over while we wait for SAO3 to arrive.

5. Waka-Okami wa Shougakusei: This looks like a kids anime at first glance, and, well, it is. It's based on a series of popular children's books, but they've really gone all out with the production values based on the PVs (Madhouse producing) and it looks immensely charming. Some of the best anime are childrens' stories, so I'm quietly excited about this one.

6. Hinamatsuri: This is shaping up to be one of the weirder shows of the coming season, and it looks great. From the look of the PVs, feel. are going even more all-out than they usually do with the visuals, and it also looks genuinely funny. Plus it's got a cute loli. Should be good.

7. Ginga Eiyuu Densetsu Die Neue These: It's finally here. Obviously I've heard nothing but good things about the original series, but I'm never going to have the motivation to go back and watch something so old, long and difficult, so hopefully this new anime has got me covered. I'm sure there will be plenty of discourse about it; I just hope it's decent.

8. Tada-kun wa Koi wo Shinai: Somehow, we've still never gotten a sequel to the wonderful Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun, but this show brings together the chief staff of that show for a new romantic comedy anime at Douga Koubou. With that pedigree (they even got the same guy who did the OP song for Nozaki) there's definitely reason to be optimistic about this one. Not to mention it's got cute gaijin girls and an imouto voiced by Inosuke.

9. PERSONA5 the Animation: I think I'm going to give up any ridiculous illusions I have of actually playing the game any time soon and just watch this. It's the only realistic way I'll get to see dat Kawakami-sensei and Takemi-sensei. You know I'm all about the channees right now, and man, does P5 have some good ass channees. The anime is actually being directed by Ishihama Masashi, the man who did Shinsekai Yori and literally hasn't done another TV anime since, so that's pretty exciting. Obviously, a lot Shinsekai Yori's success is because of the material adapted, but if you can make a masterpiece like that you've got to have some kind of talent.

10. Wotaku ni Koi wa Muzukashii: CUTE CHANNEE ALERT WEEWOO WEEWOO WEEWOO. I'm all up ons this. Is there anything better than cute OLs? ...Man, things sure have changed around here. Also, that title is just mean when it's literally an anime about otaku having romances. SOME OF US OUT HERE ARE LONELY

11. Last Period -Owarinaki Rasen no Monogatari-: Has there been a good social game anime yet? I guess Schoolgirl Strikers was alright, in that I actually managed to finish that one, but most of these turn out to be bad. I hope Last Period can be the one to buck the trend and be truly good, because I love the silly light-fantasy tone that it looks like it's going for. Wisemen for best girls. There's tons of cute girls with great designs (the one thing you can always count on social games for) and it'd be a shame for them to go to waste like so many before them.

12. Hisone to Masotan: I got really excited when I saw this because it looked like a cute anime about fighter planes. Instead it looks like it's a cute anime about fighter... dragons. What a ripoff. I wanted the planes. My aviation-nerd pouting aside I'm sure it will still be adorable JSDF propaganda. I just really wanted the planes.

13. Golden Kamuy: It's some kind of weird serendipity that I'm studying the Ainu for school this semester and now we get an anime explicitly about the Ainu. Period anime are pretty cool (the Russo-Japanese War isn't a setting explored in much visual media at all), the premise sounds cool, and I really like the look of the Ainu girl. Plus, how often do we get Ainu culture actually presented in anime? Remains to be seen how well it's done, but it's pretty neat.

14. Uma Musume Pretty Derby: Aw yeah. If only Jug was around to see the horse girls. I have no reason to doubt that this will be great fun, especially since it has the financial backing of Cygames, who have more money than God. Just hopefully we don’t have to see any of the cute girls get put down after breaking a leg.

15. Lostorage conflated WIXOSS: Somehow the WIXOSS anime series is still going. selector is still one of my favorite shows in recent memory, but Lostorage was complete spaghetti compared to it, so there's nowhere to go from here but up, right? This new series promises to bring back the characters from selector, which gives me mixed feelings. I don't want them to just play off nostalgia for the old show, but I'm also kinda excited to see Yuzuki and Tama again. I guess we'll see what happens. Maybe a new director will shake things up for the better.

16. 3D Kanojo Real Girl: Man, who wants a 3D girlfriend? Can your real life girlfriend be considered 3D if you're living in a 2D world? This stuff always leaves me conflicted. I'm down for some Serizawa Yuu-voiced heroine, and the always-capable Akao Deko is writing the screen adaptation, so it might be good.

17. Mahou Shoujo Ore: Oh god. I'm pretty sure I saw clippings from the manga of this a while back. It's a mahou shoujo where the girls transform into buff dudes in magical girl outfits for some reason. It can't be a coincidence that the protagonist is named "Uno" and is voiced by Oohashi Ayaka. If this show is even half as amazing as Fantasista Doll it'll be a great success.

18. A.I.C.O. Incarnation: There are a few Netflix-funded series this season but most of them don't look especially interesting. This one looks alright, but it's using the stupid Netflix bulk release model so I guess I'm waiting until April to start it despite all the episodes being out already. It looks like it could be a cool science fiction show, and I like the Naruko Hanaharu character designs.

19. LOST SONG: So this is that Suzuki Konomi promotional vehicle... From the PV, it doesn't look great, but I am a big fan of Konomin's singing so I guess I'll have to check out at least an episode. I just doubt her ability to act as well as she can sing.

20. Caligula: Strangely, this show does not seem to be about the son of Germanicus and Agrippina the Elder who ruled as Roman emperor from 37 to 41. I actually have no idea what it's about. Something about idols. But some of the character designs look pretty good, especially that blonde channee, so it's a maybe from me.

21. High School DxD HERO: It's baaaack. The show I watched three seasons of for Ayaneru that gave me almost no Ayaneru is back to continue to refuse to give me Ayaneru, probably. But hey, I like channees now anyway, so I may as well keep watching out of tradition if nothing else. I just hope Gaspar is like, actually in it this time...

22. Omae wa Mada Gunma wo Shiranai: This is an anime to promote Gunma... I guess? It definitely doesn't look like your typical local promotion anime... Apparently Gunma is a totalitarian state in this world. The green-haired girl played by Ucchii looks pretty good so I'll check it out.

23. Akkun to Kanojo: SUPER tsundere love comedy? Even regular tsundere is good. Unfortunately it's the dude who is tsundere in this one which isn't the thing I want. But the girls still look pretty cute so I'll definitely be giving it a look.

24. Mahou Shoujo Site: Uh oh, it's dark magical girls. There's nothing wrong with the concept per se but works like this often end up being grimdark for grimdark's sake (see: Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku) so it makes me worried. This one looks like someone tried to mix Madoka and Jigoku Shoujo. It should be good for a laugh if nothing else.

25. Kiratto Puri Chan: Well, here we are. This is what they killed Pripara for. So who did they get to succeed the comedic savant Moriwaki Makoto? Well, it's a guy without a whole lot of directorial experience: Hiroshi Ikehata. What he has directed have been some incredibly charming shows, including the underrated Akiba's Trip anime and Sore ga Seiyuu. The main writing credit goes to Hyoudou Kazuho, who has worked with Hiroshi on all of his directorial projects but doesn't have any especially interesting work to his name. The biggest chance this has to be even marginally worthy as a successor to Pripara is if they continue to draw on the extended family of Pretty series creators, like Pripara did to a large extent. With Moriwaki's steady hand removed, I don't have high hopes, but if they killed Pripara for a show that's not even decent I am going to be upset.

26. Aikatsu Friends!: So Stars is ending and a new generation of Aikatsu is here as well. I can't let this pass unnoticed because Kido-chan is pegged to be one of the new Aikatsu leads and I'm always thirsty for new Kido-chan anime. I didn't really like Stars, so I hope this new one is more on the silly side, like joji anime really should be.

27. Cutie Honey Universe: Rember Cutie Honey? I mean, I don't, but a lot of people do. Apparently it's the 50th anniversary of Nagai Gou's venerable battle girl series, so they're doing a revival of it. I really dig the neo-retro art style going on here, and the cast is absolutely star-studded (our current darling, Kurosawa Tomoyo, is included among the likes of Hanazawa Kana, Tamura Yukari, Horie Yui and Kugimiya Rie) so I just might check it out.

28. Steins;Gate Zero: I really don't know if I want to watch this. Steins;Gate wasn't the worst of the semicolon anime; in fact, the first half of the series was greatly enjoyable, but I don't think I need to retread the infamous "shooting of the moeblob" that led to the godawful second half. It's got Christina, I guess. I just really don't know if I can subject myself to Okabe again.

29. Megalobox: This looks technically amazing, I just don't know if I'm interested in it. Will probably wait to hear other people's opinions before I check it out, if I ever do.

30. Gegege no Kitarou: I don't think I'll actually watch this, but the latest version of the classic children's anime has been getting some attention because the character designs for the female characters are, how you say, Extremely Good. They're definitely good enough that I'm tempted to check it out. Dat Nekomusume...

31. Full Metal Panic! Invisible Victory: It really happened. I'm including this as the highest-profile show I definitely won't be watching. I haven't seen any of the other FMP anime, so it would be stupid to try and jump in here. The subtitle being abbreviated "IV" (for season 4) is very cute though.

I don’t know how to rank shorts so heres those:

Tachibanakan To Lie Anguru: It's time for another Yuri Hime anime! All you need to know about how hype I am for this show is the tagline: 'The harem manga protagonist is a girl!?' Tsuda Minami is once again going to have to be hard gay, this time with five different girls apparently. I'm especially looking forward to the Mikakoshi-voiced blonde. Unfortunately, being a Creators in Pack anime, it's a short...

Fumikiri Jikan: This is a five minute anime but I absolutely love the premise: girls wait at a train crossing. That's it. You gotta love manga and anime sometimes.

[goldenkamuyhunting]

Golden Kamuy re-reading: CHAP 3: ‘Trap’

Trasposed in: Episode 2 ‘Nopperabō’

Currently the story is at: Chap 170: ‘The female convict at Akou prison’ (scanlated), Chap 171: ‘The punishment of the Karafuto Ainu’ (raw)

What follows are my ramblings over Golden Kamuy chapter by chapter, comprehensive of summary of the chapter, comparisons with the anime transposition, spoilers, theories, discussions about how a page or a panel was drawn and whatever else caught my attention.

As Golden Kamuy hasn’t ended yet I might miss some details that will be relevant in the future or make a wrong theory (or change my mind in the future on that theory). Consider yourself warned.

Also occasionally you’ll find ramblings for the covers or the extra contained in the volumes.

CHAP 3: ‘Trap’

The cover here shows Asirpa’s equipment and this is possibly even more useful as it introduces us to the Ainu equipment as well as to a bunch of Ainu words.

The story in chap 3 starts with Asirpa fundamentally teaching Sugimoto how to hunt squirrels… and we are introduced immediately to the difference between Sugimoto and Asirpa. Sugimoto is sort of against hunting squirrels because he likes them, as in he finds them cute and wouldn’t want to kill and eat them… like most of us really. Asirpa confirms she likes them as well… but as food.

Asirpa has no empathy for the squirrels, they’re no cute animals for her, just food… while Sugimoto, the guy who could murder people so brutally and skin their corpses is reluctant to harm a squirrel because to him a squirrel is not food, it’s a cute animal.

I love this sort of things that remark their cultural differences but also how things we take for granted are often a matter of culture. Many of us don’t eat squirrels. It gets even harder to think at them as food.

Asirpa plans to catch the squirrels also to pay for travel expenses as they can sell their pelt.

We might think this bit doesn’t mean much but just give us some info about Ainu hunting habits but it’ll turn out later on that learning about these traps had a meaning… which shows Noda’s ability as a storyteller. Everything in Golden Kamuy has a purpose, it isn’t just exposition or harmless chatting.

Back to Sugimoto and Asirpa, Sugimoto thinks that the escape prisoners are still searching for the gold and therefore wouldn’t have escaped to mainland Japan. His assumption is actually off. So far we know 17 escape convicts and very few of them were searching for the gold (some will be roped in the search later but weren’t interested in the beginning), the rest just didn’t care and remained in Hokkaido because that was their home… not mentioning that one of them even left Hokkaido (and we’re still missing the whereabouts of 7 escape convicts).

Asirpa points out Hokkaido is big but Sugimoto claims the convicts can’t really live in the wild so they would go to the biggest Hokkaido towns in order not to stand out. In this too Sugimoto is off as we’ll see that some escape convicts could have easily managed living in the wild (Nihei) or go back to their own small village (Yōichirō the manslayer) or to a minor city Sugimoto didn’t think about (the yakuza boss).

Anyway, long story short, if it had been left up to solely Sugimoto’s plan they would have never managed to get all those skins…

LOL, I love Sugimoto but he’s not exactly great at making plans…

Anyway Sugimoto thinks they can start with the closest big city near to them, Otaru.

Again the anime follows the story more or less faithfully so far but instead than this chapter’s title, it’ll go for chapter 4’s title ‘Nopperabō’. Oh well, since episode 2 covers chap 4 as well it’s not a big deal.

Back to the story Asirpa asks Sugimoto how he thinks they’ll manage to find out people with those tattoos…

…it’ll turn out Sugimoto’s plan is to go ask around if people saw guys with weird tattoos.

Sugimoto starts his search at a men’s bath. While this lead him to nothing there are two good reasons for this. The first is a Watsonian reason, since the men’s baths were baths at which many attended (few had a personal bath at home), it was logical enough that, if one had a weird tattoo, he would be forced to expose it when visiting it.

The second is a Doylist reason.

Noda wanted a good reason to show us how scarred Sugimoto’s body is.

He didn’t want to randomly show it, he wanted a reason that could fit the plot to show it and in this he shows he’s a good storyteller. Anyway, as the man in the bath said, the scarring on Sugimoto’s boy is really impressive enough to make amazing how Sugimoto is still alive.

Back to the story the man in the bath, understanding Sugimoto is a soldier, thanks him for fighting and allowing them to get back southern Karafuto, which ensured financial prosperity in Otaru.

Sugimoto comments the merchants are actually the only ones who got rich…and then thinks he’ll get rich as well, no matter what he’ll have to do. It’s noteworthy how in those first chapters Sugimoto is obsessed with this idea… which he’ll fundamentally drop more and more as the story progress to the point the money is more like an afterthought for him.

The anime cut this little bit about the merchants getting rich and Sugimoto wanting to get rich as well. Well, since the anime planned to be only 12 episodes long I can understand they didn’t want to bother with this part of Sugimoto’s character development as they wouldn’t manage to reach the point where Sugimoto would OBVIOUSLY prioritize Asirpa to the money. It’s still a pity though.

Asirpa goes asking to the women working in the brothels if they saw a customer with a weird tattoo.

In that moment a man who’s probably the owner of some brothel picks her up by the back of her clothes, demanding to know what she’s doing there. He then comments Asirpa should be 12 or 13 since she doesn’t have a tattoo around her mouth yet and then comments since nobody would want a girl with a tattoo around her mouth he should sell her off now.

During this Asirpa remains calm and apparently emotionless but it’s sort of disgusting how that man is handling her, as if she was something he could take possession and own at will (not mentioning the comment about the tattoo is offensive to Ainu culture) but then she catches her chance to hit the man in the eye with the back of her knife so that he’s forced to drop her while the other women cheer for her.

Personally I admire how she remained calm as a man much bigger than her handled her in such way and, at the same time, managed to free herself without stabbing the man with the knife. While remaining careful not to hurt the man too badly, she still managed not to let the man think he could own her.

Asirpa is an AMAZING girl.

Sadly we don’t really get to see more of her putting that guy to his place because Sugimoto joins and beat the guy up, forcing him to tell them if he’d seen people with a weird tattoo. Well, I know I should be glad Sugimoto protected her and that guy could be a hard opponent for Asirpa considering how big she was and how determined not to hurt him too badly she was… but still I would have liked to see her handle him, if possible. But I guess even if she had been able to hold her ground, she probably couldn’t have managed to force him to talk.

In fact the guy has relevant info as he confesses someone else also came asking him if he saw people with weird tattoos. Sugimoto grins as he claims someone had their same idea... knowing this might mean that someone might be an escape convict.

Now…while the anime follows the plot of the manga somehow the whole ‘fighting’ scene came out as less cool… which is bad because in an anime action scenes should come out better than in manga but well, maybe in the dvd version they’ll fix it.

Apparently Sugimoto and Asirpa keeps on asking around but now someone is following them.

Sugimoto and Asirpa know about it. It’s sort of fun though how Sugimoto is the one who asks Asirpa how many are following them and she’s the one to answer it’s just one… but well, I guess that since Sugimoto is a soldier while Asirpa is a hunter it makes more sense she would be capable to figure out how many are following them better than Sugimoto… sort of like Tanigaki, despite the broken leg, is good at keeping his distance from Ogata and Nikaido. Also being so young it’s less suspicious if she turns to check.

The one following them is troubled by how far Sugimoto and Asirpa are walking. He admits he planned to kill them in their sleep, but since they keep on walking he plans to kill them there. As he says so he pulls out a gun, walks after them and… without realizing ends up in a trap that’s a much bigger version of the one Asirpa used for squirrels.

See why we needed to see how squirrels traps worked? Because Sugimoto and Asirpa were going to use them to catch their followers.

As if this wasn’t clever enough the guy’s clothes gets trapped in a bark ‘by coincidence’, ending up on exposing his tattooed skin so as to spare us from further exposition on how Sugimoto and Asirpa will have to check if he’s a tattooed prisoner.

It’s meaningful how, while he’s caught by the trap, we’re shown also a squirrel who was caught by one of Asirpa’s trap, just to refresh our mind on how the trap which had caught this man is the same that had caught the squirrel... only bigger.

Now... compared to all the other prisoners this guy as of now is really solely a plot device that won’t even get a name and will solely be called ‘prisoner number one’. Even Shiraishi, when seeing his skin, will label him as a nobody. I’ve no idea if in the future they’ll reveal something about him that’ll change his status from plot device to something more. For now... he just exists to set into motion some parts of the plot. The chapter ends her. The volume adds a picture of Hokkaido and southern Karafuto, in a quiet hint that’s in those place our story will develop.

In regard to the anime, it changed things a little here, as, instead than having his clothes traped in a back this causing him to expose his skin, it’s prisoner number one who ends up exposing his tattoo with his actions… which doesn’t really make sense. It was okay when he was trying to free himself from the rope that was strangling him but that all of sudden he would pull open his shirt instead than focusing on the rope around his neck… well, that’s weird.