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chibivesicle · 4 years

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Golden Kamuy chapters 220 & 221 - I am the bear.

I finally have a bit of a break from work and have some time off to catch up on stuff. As I had hypothesized in 219, I was pretty damn sure that Heita was the bear, the wen kamuy. Chapter 220 starts off with Asirpa trying to find the bear bum that Shiraishi and Sugimoto had seen. Sugimoto thinks that because they royally screwed up they are being punished by the white bear.

Asirpa meanwhile is just looking at him sternly while he sweats a little with stress lines under his eyes.

The next page is great as Asirpa calls Sugimoto out on his lazy cultural appropriation. She flat out tells him that using the “excuse” of a kamuy instead of taking the time to think is inappropriate. I love the framing of this shot, she looks in control, like a leader, yet not a harsh leader.

She follows up the idea of not thinking with the observation that there is no bear as there are no bear tracks.

Sugimoto then orders Shiraishi to find Vasily, though in English Vasily is referred to as “hood guy” implying that Sugimoto is too good to bother to learn his actual name. Vasily is helping them and yes, he is the enemy of my enemy (Ogata) is my friend sort of situation, but Sugimoto is supposed to be “friendly”. Not friendly enough to learn the name of a Russian soldier though. I sense this will come back to cause problems in the future. Sugimoto is clearly doing is best to other and dehumanize Vasily since if he knew his name then he’d have to more actively face his PTSD etc. I digress.

The action then returns to Heita finding his Dad and younger brother in a bear snow mound dead. He hears his brother chanting the Pure Land Buddhist chant, in hopes for salvation upon death into the after life. There are a serious of several graphic panels of the bear killing Taka as his head gets smashed by the bear paw. He finds the sexy woman of the group, Noriko and in the stress of watching her boyfriend, die, Heita tries to make out with her as she stops him right as the bear claws her face.

He manages to escape and runs into Sugimoto and Asirpa. I really love the detail between what Asirpa and Sugimoto observe and “Heitavision”. When he runs into Sugimoto, you can see that his face is clean, while the very next panel has smeared blood on Heita’s face as he tells them to run. Sugimoto with out missing a beat tells him, that we will protect you as he asks where the bear is.

Heita replies that it is not possible as the next page reveals him looking super creepy. The bear is going to eat him. It will happen. He also add is that you [Sugimoto & Asirpa] need to get far away fro him. Asirpa calmly asks him for clarification. As Heita names the people killed, Shiraishi has reached Vasily.

Shiraishi also calls him “hood guy” (hoodie-chan in Japanese, par for the course with his habit of calling everyone name-chan, save for Sugimoto). I can understand Shiraishi othering him since he did shoot him in the leg. Vasily is furiously sketching! Look at those eyes!

To build up the suspense, the action returns to Asirpa and Sugimoto with Heita as he explains everyone was eaten and Sugimoto finally realizes that something is off and he asks Heita who these people are that he’d been talking about as Heita looks like he’s in a daze.

Shiraishi is ignored by Vasily as he looks over his shoulder and has a look of panic on his face as he sees his sketch. It is a great page turn reveal as it is like BAM! Guess what, Heita was a convict from Abashiri with a tattoo, striking a sexy pose.

What is even better, is that when it shows the flashback (indicated by the black background) all of the faces have his eyes and eyebrows. This is the visual confirmation that all of these people were/are a part of Heita and his mind has killed them. It them makes his weird licky/making out face as he watched Taka and Noriko make more sense - he was making out with himself in the air.

Asirpa then in a very matter of fact fashion points out that the item that Heita is carrying in his cloth is a brow bear pelt. Even though Asirpa is clearly much shorter than Heita, the framing and angle of this shot makes her look like the wisest and most mature of the three of them. I get a feeling of not quite judgement from her, more like the clarity of a third party observer who has to clearly state the facts. Her pointing with her index finger adds weight to her observation.

Heita then is complete shot as he feels as though he is being haunted by it, despite disposing of it many times over. Sugimoto begins to look concerned as he sweats as he points out that Heita was carrying it like it as a precious item, not something he’d want to dispose of. Asirpa puts all of the pieces together, the bear bum that Sugimoto and Shiraishi saw was Heita wearing the pelt. I have to admit that I love how the pelt expands and rips the cloth as it unfurls in front of Heita as he sees it grow into the wen kamuy with his eyes before him. Asirpa concludes that this wen kamuy is in Heita’s mind only and it isn’t actually a real wen kamuy.

The wen kamuy stands before Heita on the ripped cloth at its feet. This is a great panel, I’m not keen on this story arc, but this 100% gets the point across so damn well. The next few pages are a mix of “Heitavision” and what Sugimoto and Asirpa see as the bear ‘kills’ him and he crawls under the pelt before he stands becoming the wen kamuy.

He then attacks Sugimoto with his front paw and as Sugimoto goes to block he breaks his left wrist! The chapter ends with Heita frothing at the mouth as he goes “bwooooooooh!” which is the sound effect for bears in GK.

Sugimoto has clearly been caught off guard! He needs to stop being so relaxed around former convicts, now he’s gonna have to get a cast and rest his left wrist so that it can heal, but first he’s gonna have to survive Heita.

Chapter 221 is the “bear man” and we get Heita’s backstory from Kadokura! Where have you been awkward old man? Whatever, I’m just glad to see that Kadokura and Kirawus are back in the mix.

Kadokura reveals his full name to be Heita Matsuda and he was a death row prisoner. Kirawus is relaxing in the background as he listens to the story as Kadokura is clearly a bit tipsy, he’s got a bit of a flush going on as he looks a little distant.

Kadokura remembers a lot of details about him, since he was a unique prisoner. He would constantly change the way he talked, using different forms of “I” to indicate how he wanted to present himself, including talking as though he were a sexy woman [Noriko]. This is easier to do in Japanese as depending on the speaker, it would be watashi, boku, ore etc . . . giving more info to a Japanese reader as English lacks an equivalent. The best way to think about this was in the movie “Your Name” when the characters body swap, they have to figure out which form of I to use when speaking about themselves.

Anyways, Kadokura states that Heita once told him that he has a lot of people inside of him and they switch places; this is likely an indication that he’s suffering from multiple personality disorder. I had originally thought these people were his victims, and maybe they were, but since he stated that they are inside of him, I’m more inclined to think that they are all Heita and his victims are not a part of his mental illness. The fact that Noda re-drew them with his eyes and eyebrows makes me think that they are a part of him.

Heita was always terrified, even in prison as he said there was a brown bear always outside of his cell and it was waiting to eat him. Kadokura states that Heita called it a “what-cha-ma-call-it” kamuy, implying he didn’t put a lot of effort into remember exactly what he said. He had to add in the fact that it was an evil got that ate people so Kirawus has some context. Kirawus then corrects Kadokura that it is a wen kamuy. . . his facial expression looks so over Kadokura.

Poor Kirawus, he’s clearly a smart guy stuck with a drunken loser like Kadokura. Though, I really get the feeling that Kadokura is the type of man who plays dumb so he can get further along in life. I think Kirawus just needs to hang out and work with someone a little more exciting and I’m curious if Kirawus has talked to Hijikata a lot or if he has been forced to interact with Kadokura as the go between and he’d prefer to have more access to Hijikata.

I honestly think Hijikata is keeping Kirawus at a distance, he didn’t trust Wilk, he didn’t trust Kiro and I really have a feeling that Kirawus knows a lot more than he’s let on (I wrote a meta about this awhile ago). I think that even though Hijikata says he needs the help of the Ainu for his plan to work (which Tsurumi has pointed out is a ‘flaw’ about his plan) Hijikata has shown absolutely no trust in any of his Ainu partners as Ariko/Ipopote is a literal pawn between him and Tsurumi. Additionally, it shows that HIjikata has been really crap at figuring out how to work with them, he never learned Wilk’s name nor did he learn Kiro’s real name. Hijikata is just going through the motions of the logistics in his quest for the gold.

Kadokura then explains that Heita’s people in his head are slowly killed off by the wen kamuy, he then is killed by it, he becomes it and eventually he kills a person in the real world. Once that happens his body explodes and he returns to normal.

Kirawus explains that the body exploding is based on how some Ainu groups treat wen kamuy. They cut the wen kamuy into small pieces and scatter is about the landscape. While they do this, they also lecture the kamuy about what it has done and that it needs to change its actions.

Unfortunately, when Heita “explodes” he doesn’t get lectured so that is likely why he isn’t able to learn and heal from his mistake of killing people.

It is also indicated that since Heita lacked the bear pelt in jail, he was safe since the wen kamuy couldn’t kill him and he didn’t become it. He also revealed that he ended up with all of these tattoos over his body and he didn’t even know where they came from. I wonder if one of his personalities agreed to being tattooed and was hiding it from the others?

Either way, at some point in time he shared a cell with Wilk. Kadokura ends with the fact that he was arrested over a victim’s body wearing a bear pelt and he had torn apart the body and it is heavily implied he had eaten part of him. It is also clear that he had likely done this before but wasn’t caught.

The action returns to Sugimoto, hitting him with his rifle as Heita tries to bite through his winter coat. The two of them roll off an embankment into a tree as Shiraishi catches up with the picture of Heita in his hand. No Vasily though, I guess he grabbed the sketch and ran?

Sugimoto’s rifle is caught in the tree and he and Heita are grappling on the ground as he only has his right hand to fight back. As the bear, Heita is trying to scratch through Sugimoto’s clothing, likely thinking his has claws. Sugimoto is in shock a the power Heita has and he knows this is going to be a tough fight.

But Sugimoto is able to push him back with his foot and as the bear roars his eyes go white (about to kill) and he pulls out his trusty bayonet and stabs him repeatedly.

As Heita regains control of his self, his hand emerges from the bear and trips an amappo. It looks like it is about to hit Sugimoto and he leans on top of him so that it instead will kill him. Heita by grabbing onto Sugimoto is able to take the hit instead.

Heita is happy and relieved that Sugimoto fought back so well. He lead them to the amappo so that the wen kamuy wouldn’t know that he was tricking it. He goes onto explain that as a child he learned about wen kamuy and the idea of them terrified him. He then became a gold prospector and his family wasted all of the money he earned. Their greed became too much for him and he hoped that their greed would result in some sort of divine punishment.

He states that the wen kamuy killed his family. I am still unsure if his family are represented by the personalities or he was just using those people in his head as the stand in for them. The wen kamuy then ate him and then he became a wen kamuy. The framing of the next shot is interesting. Asirpa stands over his head almost deadpan. Shiraishi is very upset as you can tell he’s trying to hold back his tears. Sugimoto is sitting down cross legged cradling his broken wrist, his eyes obscured.

Sugimoto looks very emotional as he gazes down over his body. This is a soft Sugimoto, we can see the light and sparkle in his eyes as he looks quite sad and distraught. I wonder if Sugimoto is thinking of himself when he fights? Keep in mind that he’s referred to as being a demon and not human when he fights. Tsurumi was able to recognize him as a result of his demonic fighting style.

Heita thanks him for allowing him to die. And he then dies as he lays on the snow before them. This then becomes an educational warning moment for Asirpa to Sugimoto. She explains that when a wen kamuy kills someone, they rationalize it by the kamuy liking that person and taking them away with them. However, the wen kamuy is not out to punish people, and Heita did not understand the story, instead he adapted it to his Japanese mindset. Therefore, he produced an incorrect wen kamuy in himself, creating a flawed monster.

She has such a look of wisdom as she concludes that it is important that information is passed down with accuracy, if it becomes corrupted, bad things will happen. This is a strong warning to Sugimoto to not cherry pick Ainu beliefs and customs and to place them in his own Japanese cultural context. He too thought that the wen kamuy of Heita is karmic payback for what they did to the white bear.

I find it curious that Sugimoto instead ignores her statement and instead wonders if he became the wen kamuy in the process of looking for gold? This then leads to the dramatic final panel of the major parties in the quest for the gold and the idea that it is driving everyone to madness.

The game is afoot. Each group is around Hokkaido.

Ogata is leaving Nagakura’s relative’s house where Hijikata was working out of for some time as shown in chapter 20. I’m going to guess no one was at Nagakura’s place as Ogata seems to be leaving it rather pleased. He’s got his happy cat face on. Seeing that Hijikata robbed the bank and had weapons stored there, Ogata grabbed some cash and clips for the type 30/38 he has.

The major question is if anyone was around - Kadokura is with Kirawus somewhere, likely near Kirawus’ kotan, Hijikata was near Noboribetsu with Kantarou and Nagakura.

Hijikata is currently shown on a street in Otaru, matching this one from chapter 98. Not sure why he’s in Otaru, likely waiting for Asirpa to head back home since her grandma and her home kotan are close by.

Lastly, Tsurumi appears to be in Barato, by looking at the mountain ridge line with houses in the foreground from chapter 59 most clearly.

Why Tsurumi is in Barato is interesting - I wonder if he’s looking for witnesses from the shoot out and for information about the skin that Hijikata got from Ogata?

It looks like the factions are closing in on Asirpa’s kotan and the area where the gold is supposed to be. Recall that Wilk was caught when his canoe capsized on Lake Shikotsu, and it is a rumor that he had some gold with him to make it sound more reasonable.

But there is the oral story that Huci explains about why there is so much gold in the first place. The collection of gold, polluted the rivers and the salmon were not doing their runs. As the salmon were essential to survival the Ainu leaders had to decide what to do.

All of the gold was put in one place and hidden so that people wouldn’t fight over it and it was also agreed to stop collecting it for the salmon. There was a moratorium on speaking about the gold and eventually each village had only a single elder who knew of the gold. The overall concept was that the gold should eventually become forgetten.

This was how they figured out the amount of gold is much more than what Wilk told the tattooed prisoners. With everyone back in the area of Otaru it is clear that the parties are starting to look for intel toward the gold.

Lastly, this shows that there are 4 factions; 1). Asirpa and Sugimoto, 2.) Tsurumi, 3.) Hijikata and 4.) Ogata.

I think this fits in with the chapter 201 title page and Ogata will act as his own faction. I’m curious to see if he continues to be a solo wildcat or if he will emerge to lead others?

Is Tanigaki going to team up with Koito and Tsukishima? Will these guys end up working under Ogata? Sugimoto and Tsurumi are rivals. Asirpa and Sofia are likely to become allies. Hijikata had Shiraishi working with him before, will he be forced to work for him again? I really wonder if Ogata will take advantage of commanding Koito and Tsukishima as Koito is now in doubt of Tsurumi and Tanigaki refused to follow Kikuta’s orders. Will another rebel group form in the 27th?

Whatever happens - Ogata’s emergence as a leader will continue to make things interesting. There is too much evidence now that he’s playing his own long game. Whatever it is.

#golden kamuy #golden kamuy meta #sugimoto saichi #asirpa #shiraishi yoshitake #kadokura #kirawus #tsurumi tokushirou #hijikata toshizo #nagakura shinpachi #ogata hyakunosuke #vasily #wen kamuy

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goldenkamuyhunting · 2 years

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Replies to assorted asks regarding if the ending is rushed and how this impacted on the ending Ogata got

This is really a bad working time so yes, I’m still behind in answering to all the ask. This group of asks is tied to the pacing of the manga and to how it might have impacted with Ogata. Asks that regards different things will be in different posts.

Again, as they’re many, I also transcribed them in case the image won’t load.

Sorry again for my lateness in replying to everyone.

Anonymous said:

Greetings. I know this is a strange question, but seeing the way the last arc of this manga has developed.... Do you think the author is speeding up the ending to move on to something else? Or does he don't want the manga to end as an infinite series and is putting his foot on the accelerator, even if it means sacrificing the quality of the writing? It's not a justification, but it's something that started to haunt me after Ogata blew his head off in such a dramatic way.

I’ll start not with my opinion but with some official info.

Q1: Do you already know how you’re going to end the story?

Noda: I know how I want to end it, and there’s not that much left. I want the landing to be akin to one of a gymnastics gold medalist, but I refuse to rush through things and make it ugly just to reach the conclusion, out of both pride as a professional mangaka and responsibility towards my readers. [Q&A corner from the DVD bundle of the 15th volume of Golden Kamuy translation courtesy of @piduai]

Of course since this is an old interview (Vol 15 came out on September 19, 2018) things might have changed so it’s not really fair to use it as proof that now that almost 4 years are gone he doesn’t want to rush things, however when he released the fanbook (November 19, 2020) he was still caring about the characters having endings that he hoped it would be satisfying for everyone.

Q: Please leave a message for the readers. Or maybe some advice for the troubled youth. Noda: I want people to say that everyone in Golden Kamuy had a satisfying ending, and I want that for everyone involved more than anything. As for advice for the troubled youth, there’s none. Life is survival of the fittest. The weak ones get eaten. [Interview with Noda Satoru from the Golden Kamuy fanbook translation courtesy of @piduai]

Even in the recently released message about the end of the manga Noda confirmed he would add changes to the volume version and implied that he was working so that everyone would like it.

Maybe I’m wrong but I don’t get the vibe of a person who’s tired and want to rush into a conclusion because he has something else to do, but of a person who’s working hard for his work to be well received.

I might not like the past chapters but I’ve always admired Noda as a mangaka for how hard he works on his manga and I think he’s trying to work hard on it still. The result might not be of my liking but this doesn’t mean it’s because he stopped caring for this manga.

Sure, maybe I’m wrong and naïve but that’s overall how I feel.

I’ll add KamuyCentral’s observation that 314, the number of the final chapter, in Japanese might also be read as ‘Saichi’s death’ (though there’s also a more optimistic option suggested by a Japanese fan).

So what all this mean?

That Noda likely made for “Golden Kamuy” a draft, a script, a plan, something and that his plan was to follow it. This plan might have extended to picking up the final number of chapters beforehand.

So he’s not running?

It really depends on many factors.

Did he really set the story to end at 314?

Let’s assume he did.

So why people get a feeling he’s rushing?

I mean who feels the story is running can point out at the following things:

1) The convicts moved from 24 to 23, although it turned out Kadokura had a tattoo for a total of 24 tattooed beings. It’s possible this was planned beforehand for surprise value but it generates some plot holes in the early premise regarding the convicts (not that Noda cared much about that part as he mostly asked us to suspend our disbelief about it). Regardless, some perceived it as a shortening.

2) Three convicts were introduced one after the other and dealt with at a fast pace when, previously, the story would introduce one convict, deal with him, and move to the next. Again, it could have been done on purpose for a greater showdown in Sapporo (I remember that in robot series they liked to have the robot face 3 enemies at once either around the finale or in some important episode so the 3 convicts being tossed all together might be merely a Japanese trope, nothing more) but it might also have been done to shorten up things.

3) By the way, Jack the Ripper was a historical figure but the way he’s handled is a mess compared to how the manga handled historical figures.

4) Relevant retcon in the volumes clearly hinted to changes of plans in regard to the characters’ characterizations, which made people doubt if the characters’ arc were established before or if they were created as the story went.

5) The way the story was told changed. Before we had many groups which act independently, their actions crossing over and all relevant for the plot. However, although the cast was still divided in many small group, the story slowly started to prefer focusing on 2 groups overall becoming more streamlined and simple to follow, placing into the sidelines the other groups by giving them actions of little to no real relevance to the plot, until everyone converged in one group or the other. Again it can be a choice, but it’s a choice that who preferred the previous structure might not enjoy causing them to think groups are deliberately being neglected.

6) Vasily. While other characters might get neglected, Vasily doesn’t get developed at all to the point some wondered if Noda forgot to draw him here and there, he, basically, has 0 relevant impact on the plot and seems to be there to just get killed. For a mangaka who’s usually awesome at creating and developing characters this feels strange and, if it was a conscious choice, a peculiar one that a good part of the fandom doesn’t particularly appreciate.

7) Ogata. He moves from a character who actively influence the plot to one who’s just in the sideline, his motive felt unsatisfying to a good part of the fandom, a part of his actions feel all of sudden dumb, there’s plenty of things about him that remain unexplained and he took himself out of the plot while the main characters watched, again with basically little to 0 relevant impact to the plot. I’ll go back to him later so for now I’ll stop at this.

8) People had grievances for Vasily, Tanigaki, Sofia, Ushiyama and Hijikata’s deaths for different reasons, not so much because they died but how they died. Vasily died almost offscreen. Tanigaki dies in a blink (if he’s really dead). Sofia’s death was felt by many as unemotional, the reason why she hesitated and was killed by Tsurumi poorly constructed. Ushiyama died by a stroke of bad luck (if the grenade hadn’t, by accident, fallen near Asirpa he wouldn’t have sacrificed himself) and not by Tsukishima’s efforts. Hijikata’s battle is unclear but, again, his death seems to be another case of bad luck with his extremely cool getting up timed in a too convenient manner so that he wouldn’t hurt Koito. This can fall a bit in the ‘in the volume version all those scenes will be expanded but in a chapter of 18 pages it wasn’t possible to do so’ part, and a bit in the conscious effort to keep Koito and Tsukishima safe. Some still wonders if the characters with unclear deaths are actually alive and the unclear death was meant to hide it for surprise value.

9) Asirpa’s black eyes get solved easily and equally easily the characters seem to accept they’ll have to give up on the gold because Asirpa has said so. Sure, it might be this will be developed better later but… sure it’s easy.

10) As the cars are disconnected and only 3 chapters are missing people feel there will be no time to answer all the questions they had and Tsukishima and Koito’s arc will be cut abruptly… which we can’t tell yet for sure but sure the fear is around the net.

11) The story progressing in an overall ‘easy mode’ that uses luck/bad luck and deus ex machina to solve problems quickly instead than having the characters tackle and solve them.

12) Other reasons I completely forgot and for this I apologize to the people who shared them with me.

Sure is… quite a lot and I understand everyone’s concern.

Part of all this might be due to choices, choices which might not have been as appreciated by everyone as Noda hoped or by the page constraints of the magazine and will be fixed in the volumes.

Part of this can be due to miscalculating how many chapters he would need to finish it.

I mean, if you tie yourself to a certain number of chapters, you must plan them in an EXTREMELY CAREFUL manner because you might end up expanding too much a part (maybe to explain better something) and so, to remain in the scheduled number, you might be forced to cut something which Noda maybe thinks to add again in the volume version.

It’s hard to say.

Still this has going on by too long to assume something had abruptly ended and Noda decided to cut the manga short. We might say the Sapporo arc began with chap 224… which was released on December 19 2019. If we go back further to post Karafuto escape… well, we can genuinely say, for something ‘rushed’ Noda still spent years on “Golden Kamuy” instead than have Asirpa being forced to tell the code to Tsurumi in Karafuto and then escaping and meeting up with Hijikata with them realizing how to spot the fake one as well that they’ve enough skins to figure out the place is Goryokaku even if they don’t get Heita, Boutarou and Ostrog’s skins… or just claim Hijikata found and killed them off screen so as to get their skins too into the mix.

So… I don’t know.

Maybe Noda deliberately offered us a ‘summary’ version in the magazine so as to persuade us to buy the more detailed volume version. Maybe he believed a faster pace and a change in storytelling would be more liked. Maybe additions to the story forced him to also do some cuts. It’s really hard to tell.

An endgame is difficult, maybe the most difficult part of the story because readers will demand it to fulfill all the expectations the story has built in them, the longer and more complex the story the more the expectations.

It can be even Noda is aware of this and is using the magazine as a ‘test trial’. We’ll be able to fully judge his story only after the last volume release in July 19, 2022.

For now we can only postpone our judgment to that date.

@howtodestroyacharacter said:

Golden Kamuy will end with chapter 314. Could my doubt that some artistic choices were due to a hasty closure of the series be sadly true? It is possible that for such an editorial choice a story was sacrificed that was so beautiful by "killing" and eliminating some characters in a hasty way and taking them out of their character. I think I have only the fanfictions of good writers left to hope for a more "realistic" ending than what Noda is presenting to us.

Anonymous said:

Well, i actually liked those last chapters, but now with the news that we'll have only 3 chapters until the end i can oficially say that most of the questions that i still have about some characters will not be answered lol. I hope that Noda made at least 1 of those chapters a litte bit bigger than the others so it can fit more resolution for the end, but i really doubt that it will happen so... Anyway, damn, i'm really going to miss Golden Kamuy :(

Well, all that Noda has to ABSOLUTELY include is:

- how the story will deal with Tsurumi

- how the locomotive will be stopped

- what we can call a final chapter, which might tie up some loose ends by telling us which will be the fate of the surviving characters or share additional info and points to ponder or… leave the ending open because this too is a possibility.

Noda is not Toriyama or Arakawa, so the fight between Tsurumi and Sugimoto (and possibly Asirpa) is likely not going to take a lot of chapters even if Tsurumi is the final boss.

To give you a better idea, Kiroranke was killed in 2 chapters and a half, after all, Nikaidou in 1, Sofia… in few panels.

I dare to hope that the story won’t handle Tsurumi’s fate in ‘easy mode’ but that whatever fate will befall to the characters will be the result of their actions, not of good/bad luck (that is unless Kadokura shows up, as Kadokura ultimate weapon is his amazing good luck and we all know about it so, if he were to show up, is reasonable to assume Tsurumi would slip under a banana peel, fall off the train and against a pole on which he would stab himself and die while Kadokura laments his ‘misfortune’ that stopped him from taking part to the battle).

Still, it can be Noda will need only 1 more chapter to deal with Tsurumi… or that he’ll make the fight longer enough we’ll get some of it in each chapter (alongside with Asirpa’s attempts to stop the train).

Therefore yeah, for what Noda really need to do, 3 chapters are enough.

For closing up each loose thread… no, 3 chapters aren’t enough but, at this point, I don’t think he means to do so. He has told the story he wanted to say for all the rest he probably feels ‘But that is another story, to be told another time.’ (quote from “The Neverending story” which deliberately left subplots hanging very often to drive home the point that it is, as the title says, a ‘Neverending Story’).

Anonymous said:

I agree that Ogata should have died in Vol 19 instead of what happened to him in the end. But I had a thought hit me, that it's possible that Ogata was kept alive for so long not only for plot reasons but also because he's a popular character. Perhaps because he was so popular that Noda decided to wait to kill him off later (unfortunately in the most contrived way). What do you think?

Again, I don’t really know if Ogata was really meant to die in Vol 19 and was kept alive till now merely due to popular demand or if the plan was ALWAYS what we saw, that he has to commit suicide in Vol 31.

While satisfy his readership is an author’s duty, it is generally not a good idea to do so blindly, keeping alive a character because readers said so without any plans for him.

Of course if the editor gets involved into said matter and impose the author certain things, the author can either comply or drop the series but… honestly, keeping Ogata alive at the time in which the chapters that will go in Vol 19 were released wasn’t such a huge deal that I think an editor would impose Noda to do so.

“Golden Kamuy” was going strong at the time, sure, part of the readership might have gotten disappointed and this might have seen a decrease in the selling… but it wouldn’t have been probably something so dramatic it would have caused the manga to be forced to end prematurely and, since they would have 12 volumes to recover, it might have even be a better way to deal with the problem (a manga that ends in a dissatisfying manner ends up not being recommended which causes sales to drop permanently as no new chapters will be released that can help readers to change their mind).

So I don’t think Noda went to his editor and said ‘hey, I think to kill Ogata in the next chapter’ and the guy answered him ‘NO WAY! DIDN’T YOU SEE HOW READERS LOVE HIM? HE’S TOO POPULAR! YOU MUST KEEP HIM ALIVE AT LEAST UNTIL THE LAST VOLUME OR ELSE!’

If Ogata was meant to be killed in Vol 19 and then he wasn’t, I want to think it’s because Noda had decided to do something different with him… and then his plan got aborted somehow and he went back on the original track.

We had seen with too many volume releases that differ from the manga version that Noda changes his plans, often for the better, so this might have been just this.

Again I might be wrong. I’m not Noda I’m not really with him as he takes his decisions.

Anyway the reason why I think it would have been better to kill Ogata in Vol 19 is the same due to which I think it would have been better not to have Vasily return. They’re kept in the story for basically doing nothing but going back to Vol 17 (Vasily) & Vol 19 (Ogata).

Vasily is shoot in Vol 17, doesn’t die, comes back in Vol 21 but none of his following actions impact the plot in a way that required Vasily to be there or we would have a drastically different story because some fundamental plot point couldn’t be reached without him.

I mean, if you remove Boutarou the gold coin can’t be recovered but if you remove Vasily you can just tweak a little with the story and it goes on the same way.

Ogata is almost the same. He only makes a really relevant contribution, which is to trigger Koito’s distrust of Tsurumi so that Koito and Tsukishima don’t follow Tsurumi and will probably survive to the train ride of hell (unless their wounds were so severe they’ll die off screen or Nagakura won’t kill them off).

Replacing him in that scene would have been a bit tricky because things in Koito’s kidnapping should have gone differently so that it would have been Tsukishima who would have to inadvertently tip him… or Usami (whom we have discovered likes to run his mouth and reveal things that aren’t probably meant to be revealed) would end up saying something to him out of his jealousy, same as he had done with Ogata.

So yeah, I guess Noda could have put Usami in the kidnapping trio instead than Ogata and Usami might have ended up telling him something… but, well with Ogata the scene worked better.

Then what of Ogata? He recover his sniping ability so he can kill Vasily off and then kills himself.

Sure, okay, he killed Usami but there was no specific need to kill Usami in such way in that precise moment. Usami’s role wasn’t that big that, if he had lived until the Goryokaku siege episode and it was Ushiyama that snapped his neck off the story would have taken a totally different course.

Ogata could just have had his epiphany and die in Vol 19 and we wouldn’t have noticed any big difference. Chap 311 showed Asirpa overcoming what had happened just fine. Actually if Ogata had died in Vol 19 his death would have served the plot better.

In chap 206 Sugimoto, in an attempt from dissuading Asirpa from killing, points out that the Ainu belief that people who kill end up in hell might refer to how the intense guilt stop them from returning to their old self. Although Asirpa knows Sugimoto has been changed from his experiences, she doesn’t know the previous Sugimoto and Sugimoto is still an overall sociable and happy guy for most of the time so Sugimoto’s words might not feel that terrible to her. If however she had seen a man kill himself in front of her out of it she would have had a better idea of what ‘who kills end in (psychological) hell’ means.

Asirpa is a bit of a peculiar character in “Golden Kamuy” as her arc is not plot driven but character driven (her arc is basically a ‘coming of age’ arc with her moving from her innocent self to someone aware of her people’s problem and willing to kill to protect what she loves) so this would have worked well.

But that’s just me. I’m not Noda, I don’t have access to his draft, I can’t see what it said and how many changes it suffered. It can even be that, although he was meant to kill him in Vol 19, Noda too loved Ogata and wanted to keep him until the end.

Not everyone is Conan Doyle and want to toss his characters off a cliff, after all.

And the fact I don’t like how Noda handled it, doesn’t mean everyone feels the same and Noda wrote that ending for him with ill intentions toward him.

I don’t really know, maybe we’ll never know why Noda chose such ending and if Ogata was meant to die in Vol 19 or not. Maybe it’ll be revealed in a Q&A or in an interview. Maybe it’ll remain a secret forever. We’ll see.

@xyamaneko said:

What do you think about the page where huci is singing the lullaby and the part with:

“I’m sure the gods are watching you so that you’ll grow up to be a fine man.”

Is shown while Ogata is sleeping? I mean it clearly meant something and I always thought this was to show that he would have some sort of redemption but in my opinion it was never shown?? Now he is dead while everybody hated him.

Any opinions on that?

The reason why Ogata is a controversial character is because his arc has conflicting points.

Some readers watch his arc, see points that are typical of the redemption arc and think ‘it has to be a redemption arc’.

Some readers watch his arc, see points that are typical of the story of the minor bad guy that get killed by the hero for his crimes and think ‘it has to be a justice arc’.

It’s not that one side is making up things, Ogata’s arc is rich of conflicting elements so that both sides, when deciding to write meta about their views, often have to work a lot to give a sense to all they see without slipping in the easy ‘let’s dismiss what doesn’t fit with my theory’.

Ultimately, what we got was neither the ‘redemption arc’ nor the ‘justice arc’ but just a ‘self destruct arc’ that, according to many, didn’t really answer fully to all the things observed about him.

The split in the fandom, with people still trying to fit this arc in their previous views, and the countless takes that are being created by fans as we speak to explain why we got to a ‘self destruction arc’ despite people thinking we would either get a redemption or a justice arc, can be a hint that something didn’t work the way it should have because the ‘solution’ we had to the mystery that Ogata was didn’t cause the fandom to come to an agreement but only split it further.

Maybe Noda originally was uncertain between the ‘redemption arc’ and the ‘justice arc’, hence elements of both were included in the story, then decided a ‘self destruct arc’ was a ‘fair’ compromise between the two sides.

Maybe things will be better cleared up in the volume version.

Or maybe we’re missing elements because we don’t belong to his target audience.

I don’t know.

The elements and tropes we, as readers, are bound to pick up are tied to our culture and our experiences. We aren’t his target audience therefore our readings can be as different as WE are different.

Surely, ultimately, the words “I’m sure the gods are watching you so that you’ll grow up to be a fine man” ended up not being foreshadowing, quite the opposite.

It can be that Noda wanted to create a conflict, to show that, differently from Sakamoto’s son, Ogata, who was a child who wasn’t born by parents who loved each other, wasn’t ‘watched by the gods and so he didn’t have the chance to grow up as a fine man’. After all the previous bit talked about how the kid’s parents were working hard to fed him, so more than a song about gods watching over you, is a song about your parents caring about you, which is something Ogata didn’t have. Ops, no, wait, chap 310 said maybe they did love each other for a short time… not that Ogata could benefit of it. But I’m digressing.

There’s probably some cultural aspect in that blessed thing and gods watching, but I’m not that knowledgeable of Japanese customs at the moment.

I could spend hours watching that double spread as it’s one of my favorite and make a deeper analysis of it but I get that’s not what you’re really asking.

I don’t really know what to say on that regard.

Although a part of the fandom loves the chapter in which Ogata dies, the other is disappointed, to put it mildly, each person for their own reasons. If it can be of some comfort, you’re not alone in being disappointed in how Ogata’s arc ended.

Sorry I can’t really help any more than this.

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goldenkamuyhunting · 3 years

Photo

It’s October 17!

Happy Birthday Master Matsuda Heita!

We’ve no idea when you had birth but you surely look well for your age!

Thank you for having been with us from 24/October/2019!

#Golden Kamuy #Matsuda Heita #Golden Kamuy Birthday

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goldenkamuyhunting · 3 years

Note

It is nothing important, but i finished yesterday cap 211 and with the Tsurumi and Koito's dad nude a few chapters before i thint that se finally Saw every male nude in the manga lol (except for Kirawus Maybe?). Is there any Man with no nudes on this manga? (No complains here by the way, i was waiting for a tsurumi nude pops up Someday and now i think that my life IS complete)

Well, let's see...

To be honest...

...someone is still missing in the Hijikata group... never mentioning early on Noda went through a shy period in which undressed characters weren't openly shown as now... but well... I'll say we've seen most of the cast in their adamic state.

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goldenkamuyhunting · 3 years

Note

I forgot henmi existed until I saw your birthday post.... crazy ass bitch I kinda miss him he was so funny...

LOL,

so long ago Henmi was our crazest convict!

You just couln't forget him!

Nowadays though, after animal lover Anehata, Bear Man Heita, semen detective Usami, poorly done Ostrog and total monster Ueji, Henmi is just a slightly weird guy with a crush on Sugi...

Ah, our standards has changed so much...

#Henmi Kazuo #Anehata Shiton #Matsuda Heita #Usami Tokishige #Michael Ostrog #Ueji Keiji #Ask

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goldenkamuyhunting · 3 years

Text

Ramblings and crazy theory time about GK chap 261 “Fire brigade”

New chapter, which likely marks the start of the new volume, vol 27...

...which really remarks how Sugimoto should learn to figure out what his allies really think and keep it into consideration. But whatever, let’s dig into the chapter.

We start with a cover that superimpose on the burning brewery an image of the cast. What’s noteworthy is that there are arrows starting from cast members and pointing to who they want to get.

Vasily for example wants to get Ogata. Ogata, Hijikata, Shiraishi and Boutarou want to get Asirpa. Tsurumi has Asirpa already (and so Tsukishima and Koito), so his hand works as if to part her from the rest.

Sugimoto… although Sugimoto clearly wanted to get Asirpa back, he doesn’t have a arrow going to her but one going to Boutarou whom he looks with an expression of fury and that’s likely there to tell us Sugimoto is so focused in his wish to get revenge on Boutarou he’s losing sight of his main goal, get Asirpa back.

But let’s start the chapter.

After three panels showing the firemen trying hard to stop the fire we see Kikuta still wandering in the brewery, searching for Asirpa. Then, as he’s about to turn a corner, someone points a rifle at his head.

It’s not Ogata nor Vasily, but one of the soldiers of the 7th, who immediately apologizes for his action. Kikuta has finally reached them as they’re hiding inside the building, Tsukishima holding Asirpa still while Usami lies on the ground, wrapped in a cloth.

Tsurumi wants to retreat, avoiding confrontation with Hijikata and Sugimoto, prioritizing to escort Asirpa away… or better to kidnap her as she’s tied and gagged. Tsurumi is also warning Kikuta to exercise utmost caution about the sniper that killed Usami. He doesn’t say ‘Ogata’, so maybe Usami hadn’t managed to tell him about him and he’s wondering if it was Vasily who did it.

He should know after all that Vasily was with the Sugimoto group as well as how Ogata’s eye got wounded so it makes sense he thinks the murderer might be Vasily and not Ogata.

Kikuta is surprised Usami was killed, Koito and Tsukishima seems a bit saddnened.

Was the rifle being pointed at Kikuta’s temple foreshadowing something that will happen in the future? No idea.

In the meantime Ogata is worrying about getting Vasily. He think he might take a position upwind of the brewery, where there’s less smoke.

At this point we get one of those rare looks into Vasily’s mind, a thing we’re apparently graced with only when Vasily is out to kill Ogata.

Well, apparently Vasily, who has also learnt Ogata’s name thanks to Sugimoto (but says Ogata’s name all in katakana), has anticipated Ogata’s previsions on his actions and has decided to do the opposite and therefore he’s down the ground where there’s smoke. He thinks Ogata will try to make his way around to outflank the enemy, moving downwind to use the smoke to conceal himself.

So well, apparently this time it’s Vasily who managed to read Ogata’s potential moves and he’s trying to anticipate him after having been utterly defeated twice.

Now… I genuinely don’t expect Vasily to kill Ogata as having Ogata killed by a random sniper we know nothing about because as a character is hugely underdeveloped would be a waste as having him die in the fire or out of heart attack. If Ogata is meant to going down, his death has to count for something. It can be however that Vasily will manage to wound him and Hijikata will retrieve him, allowing Ogata to regroup with Hijikata’s team as Sugimoto has dumped them.

I don’t know, it’s actually possible Ogata has then figured Vasily’s plan… in fact I’ll go forward a bit and comment on how Vasily is expecting Ogata to move but we keep on seeing Ogata holding his position inside the building and checking his surroundings with the binoculars…

...but well, although this episode sets up the confrontation between the two in the end it ends with nothing done on that department... except for Vasily breathing a lot of smoke.

Meanwhile we go back to Sugimoto facing Boutarou, the irises of his eyes completely white which, we know, is not a good sign, demanding to know Asirpa’s whereabouts.

In English the sentence sounds pretty bad as he seems to talk about a package more than a person.

“Where’d you put Asirpa!?”

In Japanese I fear it sounds more or less the same.

‘Asirpa o doko ni yatta!!’

アシㇼパをどこにやった!!

‘Doko’ means “where” and ‘yatta’, although written all in hiragana, is probably meant to actually be 遣った, which means “put”, “move”, “send”, “dispatch”, so yes, it doesn’t feel really nice.

@chibivesicle in a past meta also analyzed how Sugimoto doesn’t choose the best words to refer to Asirpa as a person in the whole kidnapping thing.

Of course we’ve to keep in mind Sugimoto is… well, beyond upset and up till few minutes ago he was suffering of smoke intoxication so he’s not in his best mindset but the fact that he’s not in his best shape also forces him to speak by instinct, revealing his thoughts… which sadly align with the people of his time and culture as Japanese women were seen as possessions that were passed from the authority of their fathers to the one of their husbands to, lastly, the one of their sons.

So while us readers know better, Sugimoto probably is merely acting the way men did in Meiji era… probably even looking more progressive than them as, when he’s in a normal mind setting he tries to speak of Asirpa differently. But whatever, let’s go on.

It turns out Boutarou is really used to use his long hair as weapon as he slaps it straight in Sugimoto’s eyes. Sugimoto still manages to attack with the bayonet he has over his rifle. Boutarou, despite his poor physical conditions manages to grab the rifle and kick Sugimoto, asking him if this can only be settled by the death of one of them.

Sugimoto punches him, retrieves the rifle and uses the butt of it to hit Boutarou’s face, claiming he’s immortal, therefore he’s not the one who will die.

So yes, Sugimoto plans to settle this by killing Boutarou.

We see him pointing his rifle at him but, even though Boutarou says he surrenders this time Sugimoto is determinate to kill him and it’s only thanks to Shiraishi forcing him to move the rifle away that the bullet Sugimoto shot doesn’t kill Boutarou.

Shiraishi, bless the man as the voice of reason, point out how Sugimoto HAS TO CALM DOWN and that killing Boutarou would mean they wouldn’t be able to find out where Asirpa is.

In short, even if finding Asirpa was Sugimoto’s PRIORITY and he’s doing all this in order to find her, his blind rage somehow managed to obfuscate his mind to the point he lost sight of his own goal. Through the whole fight Noda left Sugimoto’s irises white and, I think, the idea is that in a way Sugi is close to the state he reached with Gansoku.

He lost control.

He didn’t mean to, he attacked Boutarou to find Asirpa but somehow in the heat of the battle he lost control and sight of his goal and was going to jeopardize everything for the sake of killing Boutarou who had betrayed him.

Boutarou is fast to point out how Asirpa was taken by the 7th and how they need to team up if they want to get her back.

Sugimoto refuses demanding to know if the ones taking her were Tsukishima and his men and where they went.

Now… okay for asking for directions but it’s pretty unlikely Tsukishima introduced himself before taking Asirpa. Boutarou might remember his name because Koito called Tsukishima but, hadn’t Koito done that, to Boutarou Tsukishima was merely a random soldier among many other random soldiers.

To be honest Boutarou doesn’t really seem as invested as Sugimoto in getting Asirpa back as he suggests to try to use the skins they got and the info he has to try to solve the code, discharging Hijikata’s group… because Sugimoto might not understand this but Boutarou’s betrayal was hinged on the fact Asirpa joined forces with Hijikata and planned to sponsor his plan to the detriment of Boutarou’s goal.

Boutarou could probably stay loyal to Sugimoto with no problems if Hijikata hadn’t been involved as Sugimoto only wanted a meager amount of yens. It’s when Hijikata joins the group that problems arise.

Sugimoto though claims he can’t trust the guy who hit him in the head with a shovel, much better Hijikata…

...who only left him in a jail with a fake Nopperabou planning to use him as a bait and diversion and, in their last meeting, made clear he wouldn’t mind to dispose him (and let’s not forget how he didn’t exactly rush to check on his whereabouts when the brewery started burning).

Honestly no, Sugimoto, Hijikata is not better as he rightfully views you as an hindrance to his plans he would probably need to dispose sooner or later, where instead Boutarou planned to leave you penniless but alive.

Then Sugimoto goes on about how the 7th can’t take Asirpa away because Vasily would stop them.

Too bad Vasily couldn’t care less about all this as Vasily was in this SOLELY to fight Ogata and would probably willing to hand Asirpa to the 7th complete with a nice ribbon if they were willing to give him the chance to fight Ogata.

Overall Sugimoto seems to have a poor comprehension of his allies’ goals, which is what ultimately lead him to end up betrayed by them, as he constantly seems to assume they will put aside their goals to serve to his own when this is clearly NOT THE CASE.

Hijikata wants his republic, Boutarou wants his kingdom and Vasily wants his fight with Ogata. They don’t care about what Sugimoto wants, if not in terms of how much Sugimoto can be useful to their own goals.

However, differently from Sugi, they seem more aware of how Sugimoto isn’t invested in helping them pursue their goals, which lead them not to lean on Sugi as much as he’s leaning on them.

But let’s go on.

While Vasily and Ogata, as anticipated previously, are checking their surroundings in an attempt to spot each other with Vasily expecting Ogata to come out and Ogata apparently not moving from where he is, Sugimoto ends up meeting a tied man. As he frees him and asks him what had happened it turns out the man has other tied companions and that they’re the fire brigade from the Susukino district.

Tsurumi, completely uncaring of how the fire could spread, stole the firemen’s clothes and the carriage with the steam pumper and left them tied there because who cares if Sapporo burns down? He has to have Asirpa.

Well, it’s a tactical choice and it’s very clever but also pretty cruel. I do however wonder though if Ogata or Hijikata noticed that a firemen’s carriage with a group of firemen, instead than remaining where they’re needed, is discreetly leaving as fast as they can.

Anyway Sugimoto thinks that’s why Vasily didn’t stop them, completely missing that, at that point, Vasily wouldn’t have stopped them not even if they had waltzed right under his nose introducing themselves one after the other. Vasily is busy with Ogata, he has no use anymore for Asirpa so if someone gets her, why should he care?

It’s, ironically, a parallel with how Sugi, who instead CARES, was however so caught up with Boutarou and his idea to kill him he forgot if he murdered the man he wouldn’t know where to search for Asirpa.

Anyway Sugimoto realizes that, at this point, Tsurumi has the advantage and they wouldn’t be able to catch him by foot any longer and wonders if there are horses they can use.

Please Sugimoto don’t start you too stealing the firemen’s equipment.

Boutarou, supported by Shiraishi because he’s clearly in a very poor shape calls him, telling him he has found something nice.

It turns out it’s a Sapporo Beer car used for advertisement. With it they can go chase Asirpa.

As Sugimoto asks him how Boutarou learnt to drive a car, Boutarou explains when he met boss Wakayama, he was also introduced to Eddie Dunn, you know, the American who liked to dance naked, wearing solely an Ainu heirloom.

Apparently they really hit off, which means they drove Dunn’s car with Boutarou solely in short, Wakayama possibly naked wearing a collar and Dunn wearing female underwear.

Oookay, I’m not sure I want to know more details but I’m starting to think Boutarou didn’t try to seduce boss SOLELY for his skin. He really might be into this sort of things.

Anyway Dunn taught him to drive so Boutarou can now drive the car and therefore off they go, chasing Asirpa. We’ll see if they’ll manage to reach her before Tsurumi will jail her in that horrible dungeon he planned to use to keep her segregated until he gets all the info he wants from her.

Honestly I hope so as this isn’t something I want to happen to Asirpa… though I wonder if Tsurumi might try to use the steam pumper to stop Sugimoto’s car. We’ll see.

#Golden Kamuy #Ogata Hyakunosuke #Vasily Pavlichenko #Asirpa #Tsurumi Tokushirou #Kikuta Mokutarou #Usami Tokishige #Koito Otonoshin #Tsukishima Hajime #Nikaidou Youhei #Oosawa Fusatarou #Sugimoto Saichi #Shiraishi Yoshitake #Eddie Dunn #Wakayama Kiichirou #Golden Kamuy Ramblings and Theories #Matsuda Heita #Kadokura Toshiyuki #Hijikata Toshizou

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goldenkamuyhunting · 4 years

Photo

FULL LIST OF THE KNOWN TATTOOED PRISONERS (23 OF 24)

1. Gotō (後藤): Status: Deceased (Killed by a bear) - Crime: He murdered his wife and son while he was drunk. - Skin owned by: Sugimoto Saichi, Tsurumi Tokushirō.

2. Sugimoto-tachi o Bikō Shite Ita Shūjin (杉元達を尾行していた囚人 “Prisoner who was tailing Sugimoto’s group”): Status: Deceased (Killed by Ogata) - Crime: Unknown. - Skin owned by: Sugimoto Saichi, Tsurumi Tokushirō.

3. Hijikata Toshizō (土方歳三) aka Oni no Fukuchō (鬼の副長 “Demonic vice-commander”), Bakumatsu no Baragaki (幕末のバラ餓鬼 “Lingering ghoul of the Bakumatsu”), Baragaki (バラガキ “Brat with a thorny personality”): Status: Alive - Crime: He was on the enemy side in the battle of Hakodata and therefore is considered a political prisoner. - Skin owned by: Hijikata Toshizō (copy).

4. Shiraishi Yoshitake (白石由竹) aka Datsugoku-ō (脱獄王 “Escape king”): Status: Alive - Crime: Robbery was what put him in juvenile prison but due to his many escaping from prison to prison he ended up in Abashiri. - Skin owned by: Shiraishi Yoshitake, Hijikata Toshizō (copy), Tsurumi Tokushirō (copy), Sugimoto Saichi (copy) (?) [We don’t know if Sugimoto made a copy].

5. Tsuyama (津山): Status: Deceased (Killed by Tsurumi Tokushirō) - Crime: He killed 33 people. - Skin owned by: Tsurumi Tokushirō.

6. Ushiyama Tatsuma (牛山辰馬) aka Fuhai no Ushiyama (不敗の牛山 “Ushiyama the Undefeated”): Status: Alive - Crime: He killed his master, wounded several of his master’s students causing one to remain bedridden for the rest of his life. - Skin owned by: Ushiyama Tatsuma, Hijikata Toshizō (copy).

7. Nihei Tetsuzō (二瓶鉄造) aka Kumauchi (熊撃ち “Bear hunter”) and Tōmin-chū no higuma mo unasareru akumu no kumauchi (冬眠中の羆も魘される悪夢の熊撃ち “The bear hunter who gives hibernating bears nightmares”): Status: Deceased (Killed by Retar’s mate) - Crime: Murdered three thieves who stole prey from hunters and also killed them when they threatened to do the same with him. – Skin owned by: Sugimoto Saichi, Tsurumi Tokushirō.

8. Henmi Kazuo (辺見和雄): Status: Deceased (Killed by Sugimoto Saichi) - Crime: Murdering over a hundred of people around the country. - Skin owned by: Sugimoto Saichi, Tsurumi Tokushirō.

9. Ienaga Kano/Chikanobu (家永カノ/親宣): Status: Deceased (Killed by Tsukishima Hajime) - Crime: Killing a bunch of patients and transfusing their blood into himself. - Skin owned by: Hijikata Toshizō (copy), Tsurumi Tokushirō (copy).

10. Barato de irezumi ninpi nomi torihikiki sa rete ita shūjin (茨戸で刺青人皮のみ取引きされていた囚人 “Prisoner whose tattooed skin was traded in Barato”): Status: Deceased (Killed by Wakayama Kiichirō) - Crime: Unknown. - Skin owned by: Wakayama Kiichirō, Hidoro Tamotsu, Ogata Hyakunosuke, Hijikata Toshizō.

11. Wakayama Kiichirō (若山輝一郎) aka Oyabun (親分 “Boss”): Status: Deceased (Killed by a bear) - Crime: He’s a Yakuza boss who makes his living with gambling and clearly has killed other people… though we don’t exactly know why he ended in the jail. - Skin owned by: Sugimoto Saichi, Tsurumi Tokushirō.

12. Yūbari no tankō jiko de shibō shita shūjin (夕張の炭鉱事故で死亡した囚人 “Prisoner who died in an accident in the coal mine in Yubari”): Status: Deceased (Killed by a mining incident) – Crime: Unknown. - Skin owned by: Edogai Yasaku, Tsurumi Tokushirō.

13. Suzukawa Kiyohiro (鈴川聖弘): Status: Deceased (Killed by Koito) - Crime: Being a con artist. - Skin owned by: Sugimoto Saichi (copy), Tsurumi Tokushirō, Hijikata Toshizō (copy).

14. Sakamoto Keiichirō (坂本慶一郎) aka Inazuma Gōtō (稲妻強盗 “Lightning Bandit”): Status: Deceased (Killed by Tsurumi Tokushirō) - Crime: Thief sentenced to life prison in Kabato. He escaped and was captured and sent to Abashiri. - Skin owned by: Tsurumi Tokushirō.

15. Anehata Shiton (姉畑支遁) aka Anehata Sensei (姉畑先生 “Professor Anehata”): Status: Deceased (Died of heart attack while raping a bear) - Crime: Animal rape and animal slaughter. - Skin owned by: Sugimoto Saichi, Tsurumi Tokushirō.

16. Toni Anji (都丹庵士) aka Mōmoku no tōzoku-dan no oyadama (盲目の盗賊団の親玉 “Leader of the Blind bandits”): Status: Alive - Crime: Unknown. - Skin owned by: Toni Anji, Hijikata Toshizō (copy), Sugimoto Saichi (copy), Tsurumi Tokushirō (copy).

17. Gansoku Maiharu (岩息舞治): Status: Alive - Crime: He expressed himself through violence so likely he was sent in jail for brawling and since he kept on doing it even hen in jail his sentences piled up, in fact, he says he spent most of his life incarcerated but never that he murdered someone. - Skin owned by: Gansoku Maiharu, Sugimoto Saichi (copy), Tsurumi Tokushirō (copy), Sofia (copy) (?) [We don’t know if Sophia mande a copy].

18. Yōichirō/Doi Shinzō (用一郎/土井新蔵): Status: Deceased (Killed by Hijikata Toshizō) - Crime: We know he was a hided assassin who killed countless people for a samurai who served the emperor but what caused him to end up in prison was merely the fact 8 years ago he murdered a man to get his wife back. - Skin owned by: Hijikata Toshizō.

19. Sekiya Waichirō (関谷輪一郎): Status: Deceased (Killed by Hijikata Toshizō) - Crime: He killed 30 people with strychnine. - Skin owned by: Hijikata Toshizō, Tsurumi Tokushirō (copy).

20. Matsuda Heita (松田平太) aka Dōtō no higuma otoko (道東のヒグマ男 “The Bear Man of East Hokkaido”) and Heita Shishō (平太師匠 “Master Heita”): Status: Deceased (Suicide) - Crime: He was discovered while murdering and eating a man while wearing a bear pelt… but actually he had killed much more than just one man. - Skin owned by: Sugimoto Saichi.

21. Ōsawa Fusatarō (大沢房太郎) aka Kanbō no kaizoku (監房の海賊 “Pirate of the prison”) and Kaizoku Bōtarō (海賊房太郎 “Pirate Bōtarō”): Status: Alive - Crime: 55 known cases of robbery, murders, injury, arson, theft plus many more still unknown. - Skin owned by: Ōsawa Fusatarō, Sugimoto Saichi (copy) (?) [We don’t know if Sugimoto made a copy].

22. ? (?) aka Jack the Ripper (ジャックザリッパー): Status: Alive - Crime: around 10 years ago he stabbed multiple times a prostitute in Yokohama. – Skin owned by: Michael Ostrog.

23. Ueji Keiji (上エ地圭二): Status: Alive – Crime: he’s a murderer who abducted tons of kids and buried them in his garden. - Skin owned by: Ueji Keiji.

24. ?

AT CHAP 240 THE SITUATION BETWEEN THE THREE MAIN GROUPS CHASING THE TATTOOED SKINS IS AS FOLLOW

Sugimoto (3 skins?)

Gotō Sugimoto-tachi o Bikō Shite Ita Shūjin Nihei Tetsuzō Henmi Kazuo Wakayama Kiichirō Suzukawa Kiyohiro (copy) Anehata Shiton Toni Anji (copy) Gansoku Maiharu (copy) Shiraishi Yoshitake (copy) (?) [We don’t know if Sugimoto made a copy] Heita Matsuda Ōsawa Fusatarō (copy) (?) [We don’t know if Sugimoto made a copy]

Hijikata (9 skins)

Hijikata Toshizō (copy) Shiraishi Yoshitake (copy) Ushiyama Tatsuma (copy) Ienaga Kano/Chikanobu (copy) Barato de irezumi ninpi nomi torihikiki sa rete ita shūjin Suzukawa Kiyohiro (copy) Toni Anji (copy) Yōichirō/Doi Shinzō Sekiya Waichirō All the 6 fake skins

Tsurumi (15 skins)

Tsuyama Yūbari no tankō jiko de shibō shita shūjin Shiraishi Yoshitake (copy) Sakamoto Keiichirō Gotō Sugimoto-tachi o Bikō Shite Ita Shūjin Nihei Tetsuzō Henmi Kazuo Wakayama Kiichirō Suzukawa Kiyohiro Anehata Shiton Toni Anji (copy) Ienaga Kano/Chikanobu (copy) Sekiya Waichirō (copy) Gansoku Mahiru (copy)

Sophia (1 skin?)

Gansoku Mahiru (copy) [We don’t know if Sophia made a copy]

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goldenkamuyhunting · 4 years

Text

So let’s again theorize on how to solve Wilk’s riddle...

When coming up with or rejecting theories a fundamental pre-requisite is to have enough RELIABLE information (Umineko readers might know this as part of the ‘Later Queen problem’).

In an action story we generally tend to assume if nothing comes up fast, it’s because nothing was meant to come up, which is what pushed me to dismiss the idea there could be more in the Wakayama arc than what we knew and that Wakayama had been an overall reliable narrator.

Just to give you some data, the Wakayama arc covered chap 63/69, which appeared on the magazine in a period that went from January 21, 2016 to March 3, 2016 and were collected in Vol 7 printed on April 19, 2016.

From those info Wakayama was depicted as someone who was focused in handling his business, not in searching tattooed skin and who merely sent his men to Barato to help a guy who, in the past made him a favor and might not have the slightest idea there’s a skin in Barato.

As for the Barato arc it was printed even earlier.

The whole thing goes from chap 55 to 59, which appeared on the magazine in a period that went from November 5, 2015 to December 3, 2015 and were collected in Vol 6 printed on March 19, 2016.

And now, in chap 236, printed in April 9, 2020, in short 4 YEARS AFTER those two arcs were printed on a volume, it turns out that the mystery of how the Barato skin ended in Barato wasn’t meant to stay a mystery forever and originally Wakayama was interested in collecting the tattooed skins and that HE is the one to blame for the skin in Barato or so he claims.

Long story short this made me think that no, just because we got an info back in the past and then it was never be touched upon again, it doesn’t necessarily means it’s a ‘case closed’.

So I’m re-reading old theories that were ‘dropped’ or not touched upon again just because no more evidence came up and so you could assume they were ‘case closed’.

Among them I found a post dated October 2018 from @chibivesicle.

In this post @chibivesicle wondered if there was a reason why we were never shown Hijikata’s tattoo, just a tiny scrap at his collar (I’ve coloured it in red for better view)

when normally, when a convict was introduced, Noda would hurry show him naked... hem... I mean, he would hurry to show us his tattoo so that I ended up having a collection of images of naked men... I mean of convicts’ tattoos for reference.

My reply at the time was that we actually were shown a copy of Hijikata’s tattoo when Hijikata showed the copy at Ushiyama really early on.

Now, showing Ushiyama a fake copy was risky, since Ushiyama could have had in the future the chance to see Hijikata’s tattoo and, while he might have not memorized the lines, he might have remembered the kanji on it (雨仮) so, at least, the kanji had to be genuine.

Time went by and now we know that what Asirpa was meant to remember was Wilk’s Ainu name, Horkew Oskoni (ホロケウオシコニ Horokeu oshikoni) and that Asirpa assumed there was a connection between Wilk’s name and the kanji written on the convicts’ backs.

In short, if Asirpa’s theory were to be correct, we wouldn’t need to collect 24 skins, just 8, the ones in which one of the kanji written on them could be read as one of the katakana used to write Wilk’s name.

Following this theory Golden Kamuy central compiled this useful list:

ホ＝Ho　？

ロ＝Ro　呂 (on Tsuyama)

ケ＝Ke　記 (on Nihei)

ウ＝u　迂 (on the convict shot by Ogata in book 1)

オ＝O　？

シ＝Shi　歯、仕 (on Gotou)

コ＝Ko　？

ニ＝Ni　弐 (on Shiraishi)

Interesting enough, the two kanji we were shown on Hijikata’s copy do not seem to be useful, however there could be other kanji we didn’t see and anyway, as we saw the copy of Hijikata’s skin in chap 12, a chapter printed on a magazine on November, 06 2014 and collected on volume 2 on February 19, 2015 and, in-story MORE THAN A WHOLE YEAR has gone by without Ushiyama claiming the copy he was shown was fake, I ended up thinking that the copy was the real deal.

Now, as Wilk wanted an allegiance between Hijikata and Asirpa which is why Hijikata is the only one who knows Asirpa’s Japanese name and search for her, it would have made a whole lot of sense for Wilk to give a ‘right kanji’ to Hijikata as well so I assumed that yes, Hijikata should have a right kanji, only we merely hadn’t been shown it yet because we hadn’t seen the whole of Hijikata’s tattooed skin.

So yes, I was more or less on the same page as everyone else.

Wilk sent out 24 tattooed convicts, the ones who’re relevant to find are only 8 and the rest are mere disturbance.

Now in the past I remember Tumblr used @scyllua raising the problem of how Wilk was playing a huge hazard sending the map to find the gold tattooed in 24 convict skins as everything could happen to those convicts so there was no way to be sure that the map could be reconstructed (I apologize for any inaccuracy in reporting @scyllua’s point but I failed to track down that post so I’m going by my poor memory. Any correction or help into tracking it down is hugely appreciated).

At the time for me it didn’t feel like a big deal because, right in the first chapter, we were made aware of how hard it would have been to pass that info outside of Abashiri. So yes, Wilk played a huge gambling in an absurdly high-stakes game, making the whole thing a gambit roulette but he had no better options and, as in many stories, ultimately Wilk’s plan would wear a plot armor because otherwise the story would end way too soon, with the cast simply accepting (Like Wakayama and Boutarou did) that it was impossible to track all the skin and we’ll do better to apply for more concrete jobs and less dangerous live choices.

We also have discussed many times on Discord on how cruel and absurd it was from Wilk to ask Asirpa (or anyone for the matter) to track 24 dangerous convicts… convicts that might require getting killed and skinned before they would ‘spontaneously’ let her check their tattoos… but this seemed to be the basis of the story so be it.

I remember wondering, really early on, if it could be that actually all the tattoo were fake and the convicts were merely a disturbance, a way to distract Tsurumi from pursuing Asirpa and using her as a hostage to blackmail Wilk into revealing him where the gold was. Yes, it’s not a theory I wrote down because I wasn’t really confident in it.

Now though, I try to piece all that past thinking together and come up with something inspired by all that… which again, might be completely wrong and just another guess as we don’t know if we’ve all the info we need.

So let’s go on with this new theory.

The first premise is that the copy Hijikata showed us of his tattooed skin was fake, and @chibivesicle was right in saying there was a reason why Noda, in around 24 volumes, never showed us Hijikata’s real skin, because we would have realized it.

The reasoning between this is:

1) As mentioned previously, since Noda wanted Asirpa and Hijikata to be in an alliance it would make sense if Hijikata’s tattoo were relevant.

2) In chap 208 Tsurumi gave Kikuta a speech about how copies aren’t reliable. Of course in the context it makes sense, as Kikuta asked him why they didn’t give Ariko a written copy, unaware that Tsurumi had fake copies of the skins.

3) When Hijikata showed to Ushiyama that copy, they weren’t allied yet. Ushiyama could have grabbed it and try to run for it. Hijikata likes risky gambles but he’s also a careful bastard willing to sacrifice allies and he’s aware Ushiyama is a dangerous foe. In Ushiyama were to escape with a copy, thinking it was the real deal, he would remain with nothing in his hands. So, Hijikata is similar to Tsurumi, who wears one of the skins to make sure no one will get it. He wears his own tattooed skin and let everyone believed they can still get it through a copy that’s actually fake… which is more or less what Tsurumi did as he handed out fake skins.

4) We usually get to see a relevant piece of the tattooed convict either when he shows up, or when he’s acknowledged as a convict (we see Heita’s tattoo only when we discover he’s a convict) the only cases so far being Hijikata and Sekiya and, for Sekiya, we didn’t get to see his tattoo merely because so we could be tricked into thinking the one Ariko bought to Tsurumi was Toni and that he wasn’t in an alliance with Hijikata (on a sidenote it’s possible the candy peddler is also a tattooed convict and we don’t see his tattoo because, as Wakayama hinted, he has ruined it).

5) Current developments showed that just because it’s years we don’t talk anymore about something it doesn’t mean something new about it can’t be discovered. If we believed the mystery of who carried that skin in Barato would remain a mystery… well, we were wrong. Who knows, we might even learn more about its owner in the future, or finally see Tsuyama’s face. For the same reason so maybe it’s premature to write off the copy Hijikata’s showed to Ushiyama as true, just because the idea it was fake never came up before.

So okay, LET’S ASSUME THE COPY IS FAKE AND HIJIKATA’S TATTOO IS DIFFERENT.

Why would this be relevant? Are we going to assume someone will steal it and think he has collected all the tattoos only to be disappointed later on because he has a copy? Possible but that’s not where I want to go.

The following part of the theory is that actually the kanji written on Hijikata’s skin share the reading of all the 8 Katakana syllables of Wilk’s name, meaning THE ONLY TATTOOED SKIN NEEDED TO FIND THE GOLD IS HIJIKATA’S.

The reasoning between this is:

1) As Asirpa reminded us in the new pages included in Vol 21 and many other times along the story, her father wanted her and Hijikata to join forces, meaning it would be good if he were to give Hijikata a useful tattoo.

2) If Asirpa had immediately remembered the code and Hijikata had the only tattoo needed they could have found the gold as soon as they got together.

3) It’s clear Wilk didn’t blindly trust Hijikata to care and prioritize Ainu interests (in fact Hijikata’s goal is to protect Japan and he doesn’t hesitate to put Ariko in troubles), so not telling him his tattoo is the only one needed insure he’ll have to go search Asirpa’s allegiance and until he doesn’t show her full cooperation and hands her his tattoo the code can’t be solved.

4) It’s also likely that Wilk knew Tsurumi was aiming at the gold. Sending him on a wild chase for 23 dangerous convicts would provide Wilk, Asirpa and Hijikata time.

5) Wilk likely assumed Asirpa won’t manage to do things on her own, she needed allies and Hijikata could be a solid ally. If Hijikata were to fall in Tsurumi’s hands before the gold was found it was game over anyway as Asirpa would lose his help and Wilk might have assumed without someone with the connection and experience Hijikata had she wouldn’t manage to handle the situation as young as she is.

6) Being cunning, motivate and dangerous Hijikata is the less likely convict that would fall easily in Tsurumi’s hands. As Tsurumi doesn’t know he would have to go solely for him he would likely leave him for last, possibly thinking if he were to collect the 23 tattooed skins he could still crack the code on his own.

7) We know that kanji that could fit the reading of Wilk’s name were placed on convicts. It’s possible that actually there are more so as to complete Wilk's Ainu name. If Tsurumi were to get the skin from 23 convicts but not Hijikata and learn the code from Asirpa, he could assume he already owns all the pieces of the map only to be sent again on a wild chase because his map is wrong.

8) Boutarou pointed out how sometimes you might have something really close to yourself and yet be unable to find it. It might be an ironic way to point out how Hijikata always had the tattooed skin he needed right under his hands and yet, persuaded more were needed, he couldn’t even realize his tattoo would have been enough.

9) Wilk too might have realized something could happen to the convicts that could cause their tattoos to never be retrieved. In this sense sending the only relevant tattooed skin to Asirpa by means of Hijikata searching for her reduces greatly the chances the relevant tattooed skin won’t reach Asirpa’s hands.

Also, but this is just something I’d like

10) This would make Wilk a less jerk of a dad as he didn’t ask his daughter to chase dangerous convicts and kill and skin them but just to make a copy of the tattoo of his ally to solve the riddle while, at the same time, providing her all the time to act while Tsurumi is busy elsewhere. In short although he pushed on her a huge burden, he still tried to help her, not to give her more troubles than needed. Also his plan becomes less of a gambit roulette and more of a Xanatos Gambit where the winning condition is that Tsurumi will never get the gold.

Of course, this is just a theory that suffer of a huge lack of information as there’s probably still a lot we don’t know and therefore I might be completely off track and, of course, if this were Wilk’s plan, he failed to take into calculation external interferences like Sugimoto joining forces with Asirpa and beginning to collect tattooed skins, Tsurumi not really devoting himself much to the work thinking he could let Sugimoto do the work and then steal them from him, Asirpa not remembering the code, Hijikata failing to find Asirpa and get her trust and give them his own so that he too starts chasing tattoos and Asirpa has no idea he has the right tattoo.

Long story short, Wilk’s Xanatos Gambit was hugely complicated by misfortune… though since I think it will be unlikely Tsurumi will get the gold for himself, its Xanatos Gambit nature will probably live till the end.

At least… this is my speculation. We’ll see how it’ll go.

Still I’ll be waiting for the moment in which Noda will show us Hijikata’s tattooed skin as it’s tattooed on his skin.

Come on Noda! We wanna see Hijikata naked! Or at least shirtless! We’re sure he still conserve his manly charm! Give him to us! ^_-

#Golden Kamuy #Hijikata Toshizou #Asirpa #Wilk #Tsurumi Tokushirou #Ushiyama Tatsuuma #Wakayama Kiichirou #Ariko Rikimatsu #Sekiya Waichirou #Oosawa Fusatarou #Matsuda Heita #Golden Kamuy Gold Hunt #Golden Kamuy Pondering #Kikuta Mokutarou #Tsuyama Mutsuo

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goldenkamuyhunting · 4 years

Text

Ramblings and crazy theory time about GK chap 236 “King”

And so in this chapter we learn something important about how someone was…

…yeah, an unreliable narrator as there was more than a bit of trouble in Barato and it was caused by a tattooed skin, tattooed skin he left there. Still, kudos to @bloody-fabre for guessing Wakayama was the one to blame for the skin which ended in Barato.

There’s to say the situation is much more complicate than what it looked like when we first met Wakayama and a side of me is very happy that a arc that seemed to go nowhere (the Wakayama arc didn’t seem to have effects on the plot beyond giving Sugimoto an extra skin) is now becoming a relevant part of the plot.

But let’s dig into the chapter.

We resume where we have left, with Boutarou and Sugimoto fighting.

Despite the punch Boutarou doesn’t even let go of his gun but hurries to point it to Sugimoto. Sugimoto however put to good use his experience as a war veteran and grabs the gun in such a way not only he manages to move it slightly away from his face but also takes care to place his hand between the hammer and the bullet, so that when Boutarou pushes the trigger, the gun can’t fire.

Hand-to-hand combat is where Sugimoto excels after all, with tons of life threatening battles on the battleground, surrendered by other soldiers all willing to kill him. It’s in these moments Sugimoto’s six sense and experience, let him find a safe way out in the blink of an eye.

It’s kind of amazing as he just knows how to do.

This is not being a tactician genius though, that requires long term planning. Sugimoto doesn’t have the time to plan, he’s just a man who, when in extreme danger in a hand-to-hand fight, can find the right countermeasure in a blink thanks to his huge experience and talent in this sort of things.

Give Sugimoto two days to think of a plan and he likely will come up with only a vague idea of what to do. Give Sugimoto five second to stop a fatal blow and he’ll come up with the perfect method to stop it and, if possible, to retaliate.

So, now that he has stopped Boutarou from firing, Sugimoto tries to retrieve the gun from himself and at the same time damaging his enemy by attempting to cut away his fingers from it with his bayonet.

Who has good memory might remember Sugimoto doing the same with Nihei, cutting his fingers to stop him from holding his weapon.

(Japanese people knew very well how big of a harm it was to lose fingers, that’s why Yakuza used to cut the pinkie of a Yakuza who failed them, because afterward he would have troubles holding his sword)

Boutarou though isn’t a rookie either.

He’s quick enough to let go the now useless gun, so that all that Sugimoto’s bayonet hit is the gun itself and uses his powerful legs to kick Sugimoto hard enough not only he send him flying against the wooden railing but makes it partially crack. As someone who can jump out of the water like the merman he obviously is Boutarou clearly has strong legs and if he had kicked that way another men, the poor guy might have been sent out of commission.

Meanwhile the postman is still shooting like crazy, Boutarou’s accomplice swearing he’ll kill him but, thanks God (or should I say thanks Kamuy?), Asirpa is there to save the day.

She calls him and hurries him to come with her, telling him there’s spare ammunition there, then catches her chance to retrieve Sugimoto’s rifle and kick him off the boat at the same time, forcing him to swim away.

Asirpa is a genius and this constitute as planning as she considered her options, laid out a trap for the postman and put it to work.

Boutarou, on the other side, has recovered his anchor and is tossing it at Sugimoto, who manages to avoid it before Asirpa reaches him. Sugimoto worriedly asks her if she’s hurt.

I wonder if he realized how, while he was busy punishing Boutarou for putting her in danger, he had left her to fend for herself as Boutarou had an accomplice and that postman was completely out of it.

Boutarou’s accomplice informs him the postman has escaped leaving behind the money.

Shiraishi in a scolding tone stops Sugimoto from fighting further, reminding him there’s something they have to ask Boutarou.

This is the problem with Sugimoto losing control and getting himself into battle. In his attempt to ‘avenge Asirpa’ he had left her on her own and has risked jeopardizing his chances to get info out of Boutarou. His actions weren’t a smart move, they were just the result of his feelings overtaking him.

However, after a moment of hesitation, Sugimoto now makes a powerful and rather smart gesture, throwing Boutarou’s gun in the water.

Why is it a powerful gesture?

Because normally it’s assumed that the one with a gun is at a huge advantage toward the one who haven’t it. By tossing it away and therefore by apparently tossing away an advantage, Sugimoto gives a clear demonstration of not having aggressive intentions and only wanting to talk.

Why is it rather smart?

Because Sugimoto is rather bad with firearms and much, MUCH better with his bare hands and therefore for him the gun is more of a disadvantage than a help as it keeps one of his hands busy and, if he were to lose it by mistake, Boutarou could manage to get it back.

Boutarou accepts the truce with another of his smiles, acknowledging Sugimoto by his name. I wonder if his name also rang a bell or he’s just repeating it to make sure he would remember it/got it right.

‘Omae… Sugimoto tte iu no ka’

「お前… 杉元っていうのか」

“You… are called Sugimoto, right?”

We’ll see.

Honestly I doubt Boutarou heard of Sugimoto before but it’s possible. Everyone and their mom know Sugimoto in the 7th so that they could even open a fanclub. People talk and maybe rumours of Sugimoto had reached Boutarou as well. But still i think it’s unlikely, as Boutarou didn’t act as Sugimoto’s name rang a bell.

Meanwhile Shiraishi asks for clarifications about what Boutarou said on how there’s a rumour about how it’s no more possible to solve the code, also asking him if, due to it, he’s no more collecting tattoos.

In the panel we can see clearly Shiraishi and Sugimoto. Asirpa is present too but she’s in it only partially due to her head and due to the ballons covering her partially, hinting at how in a way she’ll be cut out from the discussion even if she saved the day.

Boutarou tells Shiraishi that a little over one year ago he met Wakayama in Sapporo… and approached him planning to murder and skin him. From the way the scene looks like, with Boutarou naked on a bed, I’ll say his way to approach him, was to try to seduce him.

Wakayama though, evidently realized something was off, had his men encircle him. Among them there’s Nakazawa (princess), while the others are all dressed in black suits with sunglasses (okay, no, they don't have sunglasses, it's just their eyes are so deeply shadowed they seem to wear sunglasses, which fits with the stereotype of Yakuza wearing them so I love Noda's visual choice).

Wakayama tells him that the code can’t be solved. He then explains he killed (and skinned) one of the tattooed men just after he escaped but then dropped by to Barato and left it as a payment for a game he lost.

As he says so we see the same image we saw in the Barato chapter, showing how the Hidoro gang got the skin, but not showing it was Wakayama giving it to them.

As Boutarou asked him why he did so, Wakayama claims the tattooed code can’t be solved because the other convicts might have ended up in the sea and be swallowed by a fish (and at this we’re shown an image of Henmi meeting this fate) or killed by a bear on the mountain (and at this we’re shown an image of Gotou).

Or that a certain weird guy (which I bet is our dear candy seller) might ruin it on purpose.

Long story short, Wakayama leaves without skinning him, which convinces Boutarou he was sure that the tattoo code couldn’t be decrypted.

At this Asirpa is reminded of how the candy peddler commented that ‘Boss Wakayama’s disappointed face was pretty great too, though’.

Shiraishi also whispers to Sugimoto that this might be connected to what Asirpa overheard the candy peddler saying, both of them sweating as, after this story, the possibility he was right, seems even more concrete.

And maybe it means nothing but in the panels, even though the group thinks exactly the same thing Asirpa is visually ‘parted’ from Sugimoto and Shiraishi.

They’re in separate panels, the panel with the candy peddler divising them.

Now… let’s stop a bit and recap what we knew about Wakayama and the Barato skin PRIOR TO THIS CHAPTER.

Time unknown (It could be before Wakayama was arrested or afterward): Wakayama entered a gambling den by chance and was charmed by Nakazawa’s (Hime’s) skill in rolling the dice. After an initial refusal, Nakazawa betrayed his group, ran away to Wakayama’s place, spent a hot night together, but the yakuza pursuers were already outside… we’ve no idea how it ended as Noda interrupted the story here. [Noda Satoru’s Q&A]

FEBRUARY

- Wakayama escapes with the other prisoners… [GK according to Noda begins at the end of February, the convicts, supposedly, escaped a bit sooner than that]

MARCH

- Wakayama with a young man drops by in Sapporo World Hotel. Ienaga locks the younger man in the underground and tortures him, and the guy admits that the man he was with has the same tattoo as Ienaga and is an escaped convict from Abashiri. When Ienaga goes to check on him the morning after Wakayama has disappeared, supposedly planning to go in Hidaka to meet an American named Dun. [The guys went to Ienaga’s hotel in April, she said Wakayama was there a month before] [Chap 55-63]

APRIL

- Things escalates in Barato between the Hidoro gang and the Umakichi gang after a guy went to their gambling hall, lost a lot of money and left a tattooed skin as a collateral. Nagakura, Hijikata and Ogata went there and manage to retrieve the skin from Hidoro. [Chap 55-59]

- Wakayama buys horses from Dun [chap 69: When meeting Wakayama again, Dun said he’s the guy who bought horses from him a month before]

- Kiroranke takes part to the Tomakomai race on Wakayama’s horse in place of the jockey who has escaped. However, instead than throwing away the final race he wins it. [Chap 61-62]

May:

- While trying to deal with 3 bears Sugimoto group ends up hiding in the same place in which Wakayama and Nakazawa (Princess) had met the guys who organized the race. Wakayama explains the oddity of him not having men around with sending all of his men to Barato to help a guy in Barato who did him some favors. It’s unclear if the guy is Hidoro or Umakichi but I would say it’s Umakichi as the visual shows him.

It also turns out it was Nakazawa who exposed the heads in plain view because Wakayama cheated on him with a prostitute.

It also turns out the prostitute ended up being killed, although Nakazawa denies killing anyone (was it Jack who killed the prostitute? I wonder... after all Jack kills prostitutes in Sapporo although so far it seems he focused on females).

Wakayama complains he should have left him in Sapporo.

Due to various happening Wakayama and Nakazawa die, Wakayama’s skin ending up in Sugimoto’s hands. [Chap 65-69: Noda said chap 64 is placed in May]

And this is were I thought Noda placed the words ‘THE END’ to Wakayama’s story.

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Turned out that’s not the case.

In fact, whose info made it look like Wakayama had no interest in the skins, in fact he was back handling his betting business instead than searching for convicts, which made me think it would be weird if he had taken his time collecting a skin and then… dropped it somewhere, as if it were to be useless.

I mean, if he went through the trouble of getting that one skin, I would expect the guy who beat a bear wouldn’t let it go easily.

However this chapter and chapter 233 added some interesting info to Wakayama’s story.

The first is that yes, Wakayama in the beginning wanted to collect the tattooed things but then something, or more likely ‘someone’ (read ‘our dear candy peddler’) persuaded him that it would be impossible to do it, suddenly making the skin he had collected to look worthless.

Hence it was possible for Wakayama to have an abrupt change of heart and drop collecting skins.

I wonder if the candy peddler, to persuade him, told him about Henmi’s death, or just showed him he has completely ruined his own tattoo.

Hard to say.

However he and Wakayama likely met pretty early on, likely in March as, by then, while he was in Ienaga’s hotel he was already thinking to go meet Dun to buy horses from him, meaning he wasn’t going to devote all his strength in pursuing convicts but was going back to his horse betting business.

Note that this is just my speculation, I might be completely off and maybe he wanted to pursue both.

We don’t know what pushed him to leave abruptly Ienaga’s hotel, maybe he couldn’t find the man he was with and assumed Nakazawa killed him, or maybe Nakazawa dropped by in his room and he left with him or maybe he was actually penniless and couldn’t pay the bill of the hotel nor the man he came with and left.

Hard to say.

We aren’t even sure back then he was already with Nakazawa as we don’t know when the two met.

However, according to what he says to Boutarou, we’re to suppose he moves to Barato alone, went into a gambling hall, lost a lot of money and left the skin he had with himself as collateral, tattling out the whole tattooed skin matter that could set everyone and their moms hunting for him.

As he did so he clearly didn’t act like a Yakuza boss, Shuhei wasn’t impressed by him and even said they planned to have him work in the fishery, meaning they didn’t realize Wakayama could be a dangerous fighter or even a Yakuza himself.

Why going there alone?

We get he likes to gamble but unless it was Nakazawa who again worked against him as Wakayama complained Nakazawa kept on trying to screw him over it seems weird he would just put himself into a huge debt.

Or did this happen really early on, when Wakayama hadn’t yet managed to reach his underlings?

After all it seems his headquarters are in Sapporo, it can be that moving from Abashiri to Sapporo he just stopped to Barato, which is on the way...

...ended up losing money in the gambling hall and, not wanting to lose face, he hid his own identity.

Anyway, after he left the skin there, he meets Boutarou in Sapporo.

The cover of chap 233 showed Sugimoto and Shiraishi looking at huchen/Adonis flowers, which we know can be observed in April, so if Wakayama and Boutarou’s meeting in Sapporo happened a year before than we supposedly were in April. Boutarou says a little over a year though, so it can be it was in March.

This time Wakayama has plenty of his men around himself, among which Nakazawa.

But figuring out when this meeting exactly takes place becomes hazardous and that’s not the only problem.

When talking with Sugimoto Wakayama declared he went to meet Dun alone because he sent all his men to help someone who helped him in the past (supposedly Umakichi).

As his men were with him when he was in Sapporo we’ve to assume the fight in Barato hadn’t taken place yet (Umakichi will die during it so he can’t really ask for support afterward) so he hadn’t sent his men there yet.

Overall the thing seems to be a bit shaky.

If Umakichi was someone who helped him, why did boss went to bet at Hidoro’s place instead than at a friend’s place? Or was that the moment in which Umakichi helped him? Because Umakichi should have helped him BIG TIME if boss sent ALL HIS MEN to help him… yet he didn’t warn him pursuing that tattooed skin was useless as we know Umakichi was actually pursuing it?

And Umakichi didn’t know Wakayama was also someone who escaped from Abashiri?

Because if he had known sending all his men to help him retrieve the tattooed skin would be dangerous as then Umakichi might try to get Wakayama’s one.

Besides we don’t even see a single man, among the ones with Umakichi, dressed in black suit and tie as Wakayama’s men. Sure, maybe they changed so it’s not big deal but overall the whole thing is weird, so weird even Sugimoto found odd how Wakayama went there alone.

Did Wakayama lie to Sugimoto, whom he knew was searching for the tattooed convicts?

Is there another reason why he sent all his men to Barato but didn’t go there himself?

Or actually he was there also for some other reason than punishing the two at the race (he said he wasn’t expecting Kiro and the others to show up and it makes sense, Wakayama didn’t meet Kiro back then so I’m not even sure if he would have recognized him)?

I don’t know but I’m starting to wonder if we’ll learn more about boss and how that skin ended up in Barato, maybe through Shinpei, who left Barato with Chiyoko and might have transferred temporally to Ebetsu.

It would be interesting to meet Shinpei again as we were never told exactly how his meeting with Ogata ended, we just saw that Ogata gave him a scolding...

...then the scene was cut and we dealt with Hijikata’s group reaching the place, Hijikata and Nagakura getting in to talk with Ogata who now owns the skins, the bodies of Shinpei’s parents nowhere to be seen.

The next we see Shinpei he’s with Chiyoko, first observing the place burning down,

then ready to start a new life with her.

Besides, Shinpei was there when the skin was left to his family, he might tell us exactly how things went and if Nakazawa or the candy peddler were involved and if he knew if Wakayama had a relation with Umakichi.

LOL, overall I’m curious.

When I first read the Wakayama arc it felt like its only purpose was to hand Sugimoto a new skin as it seemed to bring no other development, so now I’m extremely intrigued at the idea there could be more behind it.

And always about Wakayama… what the candy peddler said that made him so sure the tattooed skins can’t be used anymore? Did he ruin his own tattoo? Or, since Wakayama was spot on about a convict ending eaten by a fish and another by a bear someone warned him about Gotou and Henmi’s deaths? Because okay, Gotou’s death is normal enough and one could guess it but Henmi’s death is a bit of a stretch. They were supposed to go to Otaru after all, not go to fish whales or orcas so one of them drowning wasn’t something one should consider a normal occurrence yet it’s the first thing Wakayama comes up with.

But yes, it could also be a lucky guess.

Long story short though… I don’t know anymore which of Wakayama’s words were true and which were a lie, making him an unreliable narrator. I’m only sure that he believed they couldn’t use the tattooed skins anymore to find the gold but that’s it.

I wonder if more will come up in the future.

Back to the story, Boutarou explains that since Wakayama was sure the tattooed skins couldn’t be collected he also decided stopping collecting them.

Shiraishi, clever guy, asks him if he found the place in which the Ainu gold is hidden.

Boutarou though, might act friendly but he’s clearly not a stupid.

He doesn’t directly answer, he just says it’s possible to get close to it but he’s confident Noppera-bou wouldn’t have hid it in a place that’s easy to spot once you get close by.

So Boutarou asks Shiraishi and Sugimoto to join forces with him and help searching for it. He claims he wants Shiraishi in his team because Shiraishi is fun and Sugimoto because Sugimoto is strong and both are things he likes he claims as he wraps his arms around them.

Shiraishi though, using a joking tone, points out they might end up on fighting over how to split the gold.

Boutarou claims they can become his vassals as he wants to become the king of a warm Southeast Asian small island on which he can grow and sell fruits to other countries and have so many kids he can make a country of his own family.

The way Boutarous smiles as he asks them to become vassals in his kingdom is kind of cute, like the one of a happy child.

Shiraishi laughs a bit uncomfortable at his ambitious dream while Sugimoto wonders on why everyone wants to be in charge of something as huge as a country.

He covers his eyes with his hat at this, shadowing them completely even though he smiles, making hard to read his expression. It’s usually no good when Sugimoto’s eyes can’t be seen.

I think Sugimoto believes Boutarou is moved by either ambition or greed or both, therefore by something negative, and that due to this he’s getting in his way when he instead aims at something much smaller and that should also help a person he loves.

I think Boutarou gets what Sugimoto is implying and that’s why, although he keeps his smile he looks much more serious as he makes Sugimoto a personal question.

‘Do you have any family?’

Sugimoto’s face is shadowed and his eyes fully black as he says he doesn’t, Boutarou clearly touching a sore spot.

Boutarou goes on, asking him if they’re dead. He’s still smiling but he’s not being overly cheerful.

Sugimoto, also smiling but with his eyes downcast, admits they died due to tuberculosis.

I think that’s the first time Sugimoto talked with someone about how his family died. Sugimoto, Asirpa and Shiraishi are a group but, except for Asirpa who occasionally talk about her father or about Huci, they hardly talk of any personal matter. Credits when its due both Shiraishi and Asirpa tried talking with Sugimoto about personal matters but both stumbled on the Umeko issue (Shiraishi asking him if he had someone and Asirpa asking him what he planned to do with the gold) and Sugimoto closed up to Shiraishi and wasn’t quite honest with Asirpa so talks never went that far… when instead it was probably important they did. They’re risking their life together, they should be able to share the burdens of the pasts with the others.

Anyway at Sugimoto’s reply Boutarou’s smile stay even if his expression is much more serious.

Then Boutarou goes closer to Sugimoto (WOW, Boutarou seems quite a bit taller than him), wrapping his arms around him in some sort of conforting or kinship gesture and telling him his family died too, although what killed them was smallpox, and adding ‘you know what it’s like, right?’.

He’s likely not referring to smallpox but both to the pain of losing your family but also to the sad fate of victims of contagious illness. Places in hospitals were scarce, which means they would have to stay home until one would free, infecting, if they hadn’t already, their family members.

Back then there was no cure for illness like smallpox or tuberculosis same as there is no cure for coronavirus now and they also had a lot less mean to protect themselves from infection.

The result would be that neighbors, in fear of getting infected, would ostracize the families whose members would fall prey of an illness, mock them, claim if they got sick it was because they did it was due to something they had done, as if illness was some sort of divine punishment, abandoning them to their sad fate and refusing to help.

It’s easy to feel empathy for Boutarou and Sugimoto’s conditions, especially considering how even now, in a time in which superstition shouldn’t rule us way too many people had felt entitled to mock or blame or turn their backs to those who would get coronavirus cases.

Boutarou found himself living this situation when he was a child and, as he was a child, he came up with this naïve dream.

‘If I become a king, nobody would ever shun my family.’

For a child this makes sense. He was powerless to fight what was happening so he assumed if he were to be the most important person he would have had control and would have been able to stop the world from rejecting and abandoning him and his family to their fate.

In a way it’s not a completely wrong assumption as we see that people in position of power or with a lot of money can get tested sooner than people who aren’t and they also get better health care, everyone hurrying to find a comfortable place for them in the most comfortable hospital.

Child Boutarou was aware of this as well but instead than thinking that the system was unfair and wanting to fight the system decided he would ride it.

If only who’s in power, who’s rich get help, he would be that person.

A king.

And then he wouldn’t have to suffer that fear and that pain anymore.

This thought helps him to survive.

He decided to stop being afraid of getting smallpox, to pursue his dream and look at the world in a positive manner and this allowed him to carry on to the point that adult Boutarou thinks it was his own attitude that kept smallpox away from him.

Boutarou makes it simple but it doesn’t really work like turning a switch on. You’ve to persuade yourself that you aren’t afraid, that you’ve to feel positive day after day, wearing these thoughts as if they were a mask that covers fear and negativity until the mask becomes you and you believe in all this… but sadly it’s not so easy and it doesn’t necessarily work smoothly.

Often the mask remains just a mask that stops us from facing what we’re really thinking. Only we’ve been wearing by so long we just delude ourselves the mask is us when it’s always just a mask and, since what’s behind it remains there unchallenged, it slowly poisons our life.

For Boutarou by now it’s probably hard to say if he smiles because he’s genuinely happy or if he smiles because HE MUST BE POSITIVE.

And he’s not the only one who hides behind a smile. We saw how in this chapter Sugimoto too smiled as he said his family died. His smile is a lot less cheery than Boutarou, it’s clear it’s a sad smile but Sugimoto too tries to cope with pain through a smile… although Sugimoto more often than not use it to cover his fear.

We saw him smiling when he punched the bear and it didn’t work, when he faced Tsurumi for the first time he smiled and even joked around even though he knew he was in deep troubles.

Although smiles are usually connected to happiness, they don’t necessarily mean the one showing them feels genuine happiness because they’re also more often than not used as a mask to show confidence, to hide troubles, pain and fear to the others and to yourself.

So I’m not so sure always smiling Boutarou is as happy as he looks like, and I don’t know if his obstinacy in having a positive outlook might cause him to miss facing something negative, becoming a maladaptive behavior. We’ll see but, for now, I think there’s more in Boutarou than just a happy guy, and the same goes for other Golden Kamuy smiling prone characters.

Who knows, maybe as @osomanga has suggested, maybe the funny Shiraishi too has behind himself a sad backstory and let’s not forget the friendly Kiroranke hid behind himself a partisan fighter who had remained alone after he believed Wilk, his hero, betrayed him.

Golden Kamuy is a story with characters with a complicate psychological background after all, we shouldn’t just wave them off as just black and white.

So, back to Boutarou, now we know it’s not greed or ambition what’s behind his wish, but merely a traumatic past that forced him to face on his own the powerlessness of watching your parents and relative die due to a terrible illness and the people turning their back to you.

What Boutarou GENUINELY wishes is fundamentally to never again live that experience, to erase it from the universe but, as this is not possible, he came up with this, with a dream that deludes him he won’t be abandoned, that he will be able to control his fate, that he and his family will be able to live happily.

Not being abandoned, having a measure of control over our fate and live a happy life with our beloved ones are really normal things, things we all wish and that we normally pursue through more normal means but as Boutarou lived in desperate times he decided to use desperate measures.

And, in a way, Boutarou’s dream is overall pretty similar to Tsurumi’s goal and to his men’s dream. They want a country in which they will be safe, happy and in control.

And yes, although what they fundamentally wish is something really normal and human… their wish is sadly a very selfish one as, to fulfill it they would sacrifice other humans. Their world is not a perfect one where everyone is safe, happy and in control but one in which they are.

However, as they perceive they were sacrificed first, they have a hard time realizing sacrificing others is wrong, that they should just accept they were wronged but that it’s not okay to retaliate, to return just retribution for the pain they were made to suffer.

It’s sad. It’s wrong. And it’s also something that happens way too often in life.

As Boutarou explains his dream, Sugimoto’s eyes are still downcast...

...and he remembers himself as he watched over his sick father, Sugimoto’s eyes back then, completely void of light.

This transition reminds me a bit of the transition Noda used to shift from when Asirpa asked Ogata which was his favourite food to when we saw him with Hanazawa.

We know that Sugimoto’s father was the last to die, before him Sugimoto lost three other family members.

One of them was likely his mother, the other two are either his grandparents or two younger siblings (Sugimoto’s name implies he’s the firstborn as it contain the kanji for “1”).

His father is probably the last surviving member of Sugimoto’s family and he’s there, sitting at his bedside, watching him slowly die due to illness.

There are many stress lines under Sugimoto’s eyes and his expression is grim. He likely knows there’s no hope, that there’s nothing he can do, that he can only stay there and watch.

Sugimoto’s father tells him not to hope he’ll manage to get a bed in the sanatorium. For who’s not familiar with the term, in a time in which they had no antibiotics against tuberculosis, they assumed you could cure the illness just by giving the ill person a regimen of rest, fresh air and good nutrition. But beds in sanatorium were scarce, that’s way Sugimoto’s father is warning him he won’t get a bed in one… and since sanatorium were assumed to be the only place in which one could heal and he finds unlikely he’ll get a bed in one, basically Sugimoto’s dad is telling Sugi to prepare to the idea of his death.

His father then tells Sugimoto he’s kind and this causes him to end up stuck with the worst roles… same as it used to happen to his father, a personality trait which didn’t seem to want to change.

Sugimoto’s father looks like Sugimoto, only older, thinner and sick. He’s in a bed whose covers are dirty with the blood he should have coughed. The poor guy choughs occasionally but he’s smiling and, contrary to Sugimoto, there’s a light in his eyes.

Sugimoto’s father probably sees the shortcomings of being kind but, at the same time I think he also sees the good sides of it.

It’s not a personality trait that doesn’t want to change, it’s him who didn’t want to change it.

And this makes me think at how it should have been terrible for Sugimoto to accept to kill in order to survive. Because killing is all but kind and he should have made a lot of mental gimmicks to accept to do it and receive a lot of mental scarring.

So of course his reasoning to cope with it is that enemies are soulless bad guys, which Asirpa waved off as an excuse one would give to a child.

Probably a side of him, to protect himself, reverted to a kid and came up with such a silly excuse, same as Boutarou who can’t let go of his childish dream, and then he clung to it and he keeps clinging to it even now, a maladaptive copying mechanism that helped Sugimoto survive the war but that’s now plaguing him, a mask he uses to try to cover the fact he views himself as no more kind as his father said he was.

Sugimoto is a complicate psychological mess and I’m sorry for him because deep down he should be suffering a lot inside and hiding it deep inside himself, covering it with a smile and a kind attitude and not really facing it, which only result in more psychological harm for him.

Again, it’s sad.

The scene changes, Sugimoto is outside of the house and a black cat comes to him.

Contrary to what us westerns say Japanese people back then believed black cats to bring good luck and ward off against illness.

As the cat comes to him to be patted Sugimoto, who has shown through all ‘Golden Kamuy’ to be superstitious enough he even absorbed Ainu superstitions, complains with the cat that the cat was supposed to cure tuberculosis and asks him if this is happening because the cat hardly comes there, therefore making the cat useless. The cat leaves at that, leaving Sugimoto alone to watch him walk away, bringing away with itself even the silly hope the cat could fix everything.

It’s another bit of life experience that forms Sugimoto’s mind, a bit that explains why he’s not very good at cooperating, because back then he could do nothing but entrust his hopes to a black cat and yet he was left alone to deal with it.

Sugimoto stands there as he watched the cat leaving, clearly trying hard not to cry. He’s alone stripped even of the delusion the black cat would magically save his father. No one will help him.

He can’t do anything and no one will help him.

At this point I think he remembers what his father told him, he told him to leave the house and not let himself trapped by tuberculosis. He told him he could live for his own sake, that it wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

The words, the memory of them after the cat’s abandonment, push Sugimoto to run.

He wants to do it, to escape from that house, but more exactly to escape from that pain. However, as he’s about to get out of the fence he stops, unable to go further.

He looks at the world that extend itself outside the fence, he looks at the freedom, at a place in which he isn’t plagued by the specter of getting infected with tuberculosis each day. He squeezes his eyes shut. In his home his father is still lying in his bed, coughing.

And, I think, at this point Sugimoto knows he can’t leave him to die alone.

In fact in the past flashback we learnt that his father managed to find a spot in a sanatorium… but then he died there and only when the note he was dead reached Sugimoto he managed to leave his home.

So, even though Sugimoto wants to escape, even though he can’t bear it any longer, he can’t leave either. For his torn mind not to crack under the pressure of this two contrasting things, wanting to leave and wanting to stay, his psyche build up a narrative meant to help him to cope.

Sugimoto is a good judoka, isn’t he?

Well, this is a fight, a fight to death against him and tuberculosis, a fight Sugimoto isn’t going to lose. He states he’s going to live and then challenges it to try and kill him, like he will challenge the Russians much later on war, stating he’s immortal.

The image depicts him as if his aura was a fire, a fire burning around him but his expression is contracted, ugly. Not as bad as Usami when he murdered Tomoharu but still… ugly.

You can see in it determination… but it’s a forced determination.

Sugimoto is forcing himself to think all those things to overcome his fear.

Telling himself he’s immortal is the copying behavior he has chosen, a behavior that fits with how he’s a fighter at heart but it’s also just a big lie. He’s not immortal and he’s not really facing the realty of the situation, that he’s a mortal taking upon himself a risk.

He’s young, the situation is so traumatic and terrible he simply CAN’T face the truth, but that copying behavior will follow him traumatic situation after traumatic situation, covering his fear behind a wall of fake confidence into something that’s simply not real.

It’s true that a strong will can overcome a weak body, but will can’t do miracles. Sugimoto is a normal person and therefore he can die like any other person. Just because he has more endurance and luck (and a solid plot armor) than others it doesn’t mean all of sudden he’s immortal and this wrong belief might end up doing him more harm than good.

The flashback ends and we go back to present time and to Boutarou, asking Sugimoto what he plans to do once he finds the gold to reach HIS OWN HAPPINESS and if he doesn’t have any dream.

It’s clear Sugimoto started this adventure hoping he could get gold enough for himself to cure Umeko but also to be capable to present himself in front of her as a man who’s better than the one who left her, if not in actions (Sugimoto is plagued by the fact he’s a killer now), at least in finances.

Although Toraji clearly wasn’t rich I always had the feeling he was a little better off than Sugimoto and Sugimoto was afraid this influenced Umeko’s choice... so, since he can’t clean away the blood he has shed I think he hopes he can ‘hide it’ by presenting himself as someone who’s better off economically and can provide Umeko with the means to cure her eyes.

I think he’s afraid to present himself to her but wanted to believe by going back rich and capable to cure her he could find the guts to show himself to her again and get what he truly wanted, her love back.

However many things had happened and more than a full year went by from when he started hunting skins, not mentioning the time that had gone by from when he returned from war.

This goal had moved always further from him while his hunt for the gold became a sidequest that didn’t help him to go back to Umeko but that actually kept him away from her.

So Sugimoto likely knows what he used to dream for when all this started, what he believed would give him happiness… but instead than getting closer with any skin he gained, it only got far. The shading on him isn’t uniform, it’s swirling, I think it hints Boutarou’s words forced him to realize, if not this, at least ‘something’.

Meantime the boat has almost reached Ebetsu.

Boutarou, the gentleman pirate, apologizes to the passengers, telling them he didn’t mean to cause them troubles and commotion so he won’t steal things from them, he’ll just settle for taking the money that was sent as registered mail. As he says so though, he spot Sugimoto opened back with, inside it, Heita’s skin and the tobacco case he always carried with himself.

It doesn’t take a genius to guess this means troubles for his alliance with Sugimoto, Shiraishi and Asirpa… which, to be honest, never got involved in the alliance. Boutarou just wanted Shiraishi and Sugimoto and they didn’t mention having a third member in their group even if it was kind of obvious Asirpa was connected to them.

I’m a little annoyed at this, it’s not the first time Asirpa is handled as a minor part to the group even though today she’s the one who saved the day by handling the problem of the crazy postman (along with Shiraishi who got information from Boutarou and set the basis for an allegiance)… but well, I guess it can’t be helped. We’ll see if things will change in the future.

#Golden Kamuy #Sugimoto Saichi #Asirpa #Shiraishi Yoshitake #Oosawa Fusatarou #Matsuda Heita #Wakayama Kiichirou #Nakazawa Tatsuya #Henmi Kazuo #Golden Kamuy Ramblings and Theories #Hidoro Shinpei #Hidoro Tamotsu #Gotou Takechiyo #Ueji Keiji

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