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#Sekiya Waichirou
goldenkamuyhunting · 1 year
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Hello! I really love your analyzes of the GC characters, they are always so interesting to read! Thanks for your hard work! 🥺❤️
And... My question is... I am really wonder, do you have any headcanons about characters like Henmi, Sekiya, or Toujirou (Kikuta's younger brother)? Especially Toujirou, because we haven't received any information about him at all, except that Mokutarou is very sad because of his death.
Thank you so much for enjoying my analysis!
I don’t really have many headcanons for those guys...
...I tend to assume if Henmi hadn’t seen his brother die and his body has reacted inappropriately and if Sekiya hadn’t lost his daughter, they would have continued their lives as pretty ordinary and harmless guys, but tragedy reshaped them.
Henmi didn’t quite realize the change it went with him, because he was young, his personality taking shape so when it deviated from the norm, he just assumed it was always meant to go in that direction.
Also, since he was the older brother, he was likely blamed for his younger brother’s death as he didn’t protect him, which might have lead him to think he was always wrong from the start.
He didn’t immediately start a murdering rampage, but at first he lived like a meek and polite boy, ostracized and bullied by others because blamed for his brother’s death, working hard to survive as he’s from a poor family.
The first time he kill he actually didn’t mean to kill anyone, he was young and attacked by someone attempting to bully him and fought back and... killed his opponent. And his body reacted again.
He was confused but there weren’t witnessers so he hid the corpse and waited. And nothing happened except that now he was older and... wanted more of that feeling.
When a friend/friends of the boy he killed corners him in a secluded spot demanding to know what happened to the guy, he first tries to stay quiet and play it as if he has no idea of where he could be, but inside himself a voice wispers to just murder them as well.
When he’s attacked again, he’s more ready to get aggressive and, since his opponent/opponents don’t expect him because he previously has always been meek, he easily deals with them. And again his body reacts.
From here it’s an escalation, as he decides he has found his way. This is who he is meant to be, though at the same time he makes a point not to attack the weak and the people who’re kind to him.
The strong and the bullies though, are a perfect target. He starts to plan the way he could dispose of them, the body counts starting to rise, first slowly then quickly, forcing him to move if he doesn’t want those deaths to be connected to him and him get discovered.
As for Sekiya, I picture Sekiya as a man who lost his wife due to childbirth since his daughter seems to be all he had. I like to think he loved his wife and that it was really hard for him to accept she died but his daughter kept him going. Due to this he was a very doting father to the point losing her too broke him.
Death by childbirth was pretty common and he could grieve but accept it as something that could happen, plus he still had his daughter, so although his faith might have wavered temporally, he recovered fast, but seeing his daughter die in in such a horrid way should have been a terrible blow and he had nothing else to hold to in order to support himself, hence he crumbled and went mad, pain and anger mixing inside him in a unhelathy mix.
People tried to confort him at the beginning but he rejected them, feeling they were merely pitying him and not really understanding him.
He didn’t expect to kill 30 people, he assumed they would arrest him and condemn him as soon as he were to try to kill one but he took the fact he wasn’t stopped as another proof that God wasn’t there, only worsening his psychological state and pushing him to go forward murdering people.
As for Kikuta’s younger brother you might find a bit of the headcanons I listed for Kikuta would apply to him as well.
I see Toujirou as quieter than Kikuta, the kind of younger brother who worship his elder and want to follow him and be useful to him, which is why he follows Kikuta in the Army at his prompting but he’s nowhere as good as Kikuta in it.
He loved his family and was pretty quiet and a generally good boy, not really suited for the Army. If he had survived he might not have managed to handle the PTSD he would have as a result of being involved in a war.
As you can see, there’s not much.
Still I hope it can help you! Thank you for your ask!
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osomanga · 1 year
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axolloyd · 7 months
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game night gone wrong gone silly💔💔
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fishyoctopus · 5 years
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Clean version of a GK Drawpile sketch (Original date Mar 29 2018)
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goldenkamuyhunting · 2 years
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Ok, it's been some months since a read that chapter that we find out that the last tattoo is from Kadokura, but i don't remember if they explained it or if i was just dumb, but did he really had the tattoo on his back or it was just a "shirt" or something that he had with him? Because i can remember that we already saw part of his back when Noda stripped him in the ice lake and i don't remember seeing any tattoos there.
Yeah...
...he has a partial tattoo (there’s just the outline of it and it didn’t go further than part of his back) tattooed on his back (chap 257).
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We saw Kadokura naked in chap 174... but we only saw the front...
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...and his backside....
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...so yeah, there could be a tattoo on his back.
Of course we could argue if there was one, that one should have been higher than what it seems watching the tattoo in chap 257, because in chap 174 we see a bit of his back which is clean.
We can also wonder if it was a last minute idea and, originally, in chap 174, there was no tattoo, but I think, if that’s the case, we’ll never find out the truth.
The whole premise of the convicts getting tattooed and escaping was poorly constructed and retconned but, since it was a premise and premises OFTEN have those problems and works more on the suspension of disbelief than anything else, no one really cares.
Thank you for your ask!
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axolloyd · 5 months
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sekiya and his unnamed daughter, who ive decided 2 call Hikari + a panel edit/redraw :3
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goldenkamuyhunting · 2 years
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(1) This is more a confession than an ask, (i don't know anyone who reads GK and i NEED to speak about it, i'm sorry lol). Sometimes i feel a little sad about what will happen to Ogata, i mean, i know that maybe he'll survive due to the "Survival Road" theory, but IDK... There's so many things that i want to see, and also, being alive is the best thing that can happen to him? I still want to see him not feeling guilty anymore, i want to see him "free" and without his ghosts...
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Hum...
the situation with Ogata is complicate. He's on the survival road so he should survive unless Noda drastically changed his plans.
Noda said: "I don’t intend to write Golden Kamuy as a manga that’s mainly about solving the gold mystery. I write it thinking of it as a story of each person searching for their role in life. Because I write it like a drama with multi-protagonists, I feel that I have to write each character with some depth, or else the work would end up half-baked." [Noda Satoru from Yukimura Makoto x Noda Satoru Interview: Part 2]
So I think that the idea isn't that 'staying alive' is the best that can happen to Ogata but more like 'finding his role, his place'.
Premise: we still miss a piece in Ogata's story, which might be relevant.
Noda provided us with this information:
Q50: Tsukishima’s life was hinged on learning Russian. How did he do it? I’m curious about whether he went to classes or used study materials available in Japan, or had to learn on site. Noda: Russian knowledge was used merely as a pretext for the army so it’s not that he needed to learn it immediately. He started learning after getting out of prison, from Tsurumi and on site. Ogata was studying together with him, but he wasn’t as diligent about it as Tsukishima. [Q&A section from the Golden Kamuy fanbook translation courtesy of @piduai]
This means, in 1897, Ogata was with Tsurumi and Tsukishima in Vladivostok. Ogata was born 22nd of January, 1882, meaning he was 15 at the time, yet they chose him, who didn't even know Russian like Tsukishima, to take part to such a mission. Why? Who found him or recommended him?
We aren't even sure he was already part of the army back then.
Did Hanazawa himself do it deluding him into the idea his father might hold some interest in him? If it was Hanazawa who pushed him into becoming a sniper this would make an interesting contrast with how, instead, he wanted Yuusaku to remain innocent... but truth is we've no idea. It could have been Tsurumi who picked him up.
In 1901, at 19, we see he's a second class private under Tsurumi, meaning he has recently joined the army (second class private is the first rank you get and it was kind of a 'training' rank, which is why everyone who took part to the war was already a first class private) yet Central came to chose him as a spy for Tsurumi despite him being so young back then anda relative newby in the army.
There's likely a story we don't know yet about Ogata being chosen while being so young. Maybe the trip in Vladivostok could have been just because he was an amazing sniper already (but still, how they came to know him?) but for Central to come to believe they could use him against Tsurumi... well, this is kind of big.
Why this premise?
Because as I don't know his backstory my understanding of him might be flawed.
Anyway, from what I could observe, Ogata has lived, up till now, tied to his personal disgrace and his toxic copying mechanisms to deal with it.
Almost everything he does or comes to believe is tied to his father in a way or another.
He kills his mother so that his father will come back.
He pities the kidnapped Koito because he believes him to be discharged by his father same as him.
He kills Yuusaku because he believes this will bring Hanazawa to get interested in him.
He accepts to kill Hanazawa because this will give him a chance to talk with Hanazawa himself.
He believes he lacks something fundamental because his father didn't love him and his mother.
He saves Shinpei from his father likely because he saw himself in the way the man rejected his son.
When he tells Asirpa about 'his last talk with Sugimoto' he basically has 'Sugimoto' says all he wanted Hanazawa to say, including mentioning his mother's name and Hanazawa's favourite food.
He interprets Wilk's intentions toward Asirpa as matching Hanazawa's intentions toward Yuusaku, assuming Wilk too wanted to make an icon out of her and that's why she had to remain 'innocent'.
And, as if to drive home better the message Ogata is still tied to his father we got this:
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iOf all the disguises he could chose for Ogata, Noda put him in a disguise that remarks a father/son bond.
So I like to think that part of Ogata's arc will include him dealing with his relationship with his father.
The other part needs to probably include facing his unresolved feelings of guilt. Ogata and Yuusaku's dynamic raised the question of 'does guit for killing people exist?'
Ogata claims it doesn't, yet he's haunted by what he did to Yuusaku (and, possibly, to his mother) and it gets worse when he deals with Asirpa. That's because he comes to see Yuusaku in her... but considering the many parallels between Asirpa and his mother, because he also sees his mother in Asirpa.
Meanwhile Asirpa has her own problems..
Not only she has been entrusted with basically carrying out to complexion her father's plan and from the start of the story her involvement in it was tied to Wilk (first she wanted to avenge him, then to see if he was Nopperabou, then to understand why he betrayed the Ainu and why he was killed, currently she has to fulfil his dream as well as dealing with the grudge Tsurumi had against him), making her a person who's also acting due to the strong ties she has with her father... but the thing is further complicated by how she too decided she could kill (especially if this is to protect Sugimoto)... but when she was about to do it to save her own life, it's a flashback of Ogata falling after her arrow hit him what stills her hand.
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Asirpa didn't want to kill Ogata on the ice field, she threw that arrow by mistake, due to Sugimoto startling her. Up until the moment she discovered Ogata lied to her, she was determinate into considering him a friend and had invested a lot into their relation. Her feelings for him due to the betrayal were, of course, complicate but what was clear and yet she tried to bury it because she too, like Ogata, uses as copying mechanism to hide her own problems, was she felt guilty for almost killing him, yet she never actively faced it but this messed her up.
So their arcs might overlap because they're dealing with similar issues (ties with their fathers and guilt) and copying mechanisms (attempting to bury problems deep inside themselves instead than facing them).
Said so, I don't know if their arcs will overlap because they will intersect or merely because they will narratively mirror each other.
Sekiya's arc overlaps the one of Tsurumi's past but the two never met, Sekiya's arc is merely used as a stool to better drive home the message for the Tsurumi's past arc.
We'll see.
Now, I don't know how Ogata's arc will go beyond that I expect him to survive, if his failure to deal with his issues will become the motivation for Asirpa to instead manage to deal with her own or if they'll both suceed.
Ogata had more than one moment of 'save the cat' (also known as 'pet the dog' trope, it's a moment in which a villain does something nice with no gain, or that even brings disadvantage to him, these being making sure Huci was spared, saving Shinpei, rubbing Koito's back and, although it was only mentioned in a Q&A, repaying the old man who helped him in Karafuto with a cod fish) which are typical of redemption arcs. I doubt Noda wants to go for a redemption arc in a traditional way but it could be he's aiming to a growing arc, in which Ogata grows out of his problems.
On another note chap 296 reminded us Hijikata is needed so as to bring the land deed to Enomoto. If Hijikata were to die in this arc though, this would become impossible. Ogata has been sent there by central likely to retrieve the land deed. If it'll be possible to use the land deed maybe he'll be the one who actually could bring it to Enomoto (it's speculated his grandfather too might have fought on the Shogun's side so it's possible his recommendations into involving him in Army work came from there).
Either way they'll better hurry as Enomoto canonically died on 26 October 1908 and in GK we're in 2008 already, spring being in chap 241 so I'm not sure if we're still in spring or we've moved to Autumn already.
So anyway I think Ogata's arc will definitely go somewhere in form of personal improvement, possibly also in form of moral improvement but I'm not so sure about it because really, there's a long way to go.
Would it be better for him to die instead than just survive and psychologically improve?
The real key here is not that people in the story were presented as 'better off dead' but that, before dying or through dying they got what they longed for.
Nikaidou saw again his brother, Toni could repay Hijikata, Usami heard from Tsurumi the words he wanted to hear, the overmentioned Sekiya rediscovered the existance of God and so on.
For others, like Kikuta or Koito senior, death didn't really provide anything but they still died with hope because, before it, they got what they wanted, Kikuta believed Sugimoto would cause Tsurumi's downfall, Koito senior managed to destroy the cannon, Toraji managed to save Sugimoto by managing to throw him away for the first time.
None of those people was saved by death, it's not like death is presented like their way out to the pain, it's either the realization of something before dying or the accomplishment of something before dying that gave them 'salvation'.
Now... I don't know what Noda is planning for Ogata and if his plans were forced to change due to some reason but, since Ogata was introduced back in chap 4 (before Tsurumi and, possibly, at the same time as Hijikata as I think Kasahara is referring to him) as a major player, Noda should have had plans for him, his arc and its conclusion.
I don't know if I'll be satisfied with them, or if the fandom at large will be satisfied because surely with Ogata he's playing a complicate game, but I want to hope the plan will be more than him just 'living'. There would be no point to having kept him alive for so long otherwise, Noda could have just killed him on the ice field.
Though well, this is just me. We can only wait and see how his arc will develop.
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goldenkamuyhunting · 2 years
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Hey, i saw today a new theory (actually not "new" but i just saw it today) about the last supper paiting reference. If we put "who is who", Sugimoto is Peter, Shiraishi is John the apostle and i can't remember the rest. I also saw that if it is a "hint" of what maybe can happen, Sugimoto (as Peter) can maybe betray Asirpa (who was Jesus in the paiting)... Of course, this can also be just a coincidence and fan theories, but at this point of the story i really can't doubt anything anymore
To be honest...
I’m very, very familiar with that theory.
While you’re right, at this point we can’t really tell what will happen, Noda dropped the religious references long ago.
Ogata is clearly no more paralleling Matthew, the role of ‘Jesus’ went to Wilk who ‘died’ (or better was assumed dead) and then was resurrected (or better it was discovered alive) and then was raised to heaven courtesy of Ogata and Kiro, Ienaga (Philip) is the first to die when instead the one who should have been martyred first was meant to be James the greatest (Ushiyama) and “Golden Kamuy” is not of 28 volumes like the gospel of Matthew it directly referenced.
I don’t know how much this is true or not but I’ve heard the Japanese fandom didn’t like the Christian references so Noda mostly dropped them and used them solely in relation to Ostrog’s insane beliefs, possibly because the fandom had no problems in seeing them being used in relation to Sekiya’s insane beliefs.
At least, I’ve heard no criticism for that part of the story but I might have missed them.
So yeah, it can be that Noda will keep it but honestly I doubt it. Though in truth... who knows.
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goldenkamuyhunting · 4 years
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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
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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)
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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! ^_-
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goldenkamuyhunting · 4 years
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Did you start making chapter theories in ch. 179? I would have liked to see your take in the psychology of certain convicts, like Sekiya, Gansoku and Henmi
Actually...
I began a little earlier at around chap 162, but at the time I didn’t really make a rambling post for each chapter.
I’ve also a re-reading series, but I ended up interrupting it at chap 18 (even if I actually wrote it till chap 38) for various reasons.
If you feel like listening to me ramble about those three I don’t mind doing it, just keep in mind it’s not a real psychological analysis. Those take a professional and much more information about their lives than I have at hand and I’m not even sure if Noda wanted to make them THAT psychologically accurate.
So take this more as a character analysis than a real psychological take of them.
For a moment let me group together Henmi and Sekiya as, like most of the characters of Golden Kamuy, they’ve in common they lived a traumatic event that influenced the rest of their lives and became their Freudian excuse.
Mind you, the trope is called Freudian excuse but in Noda’s case often it’s more a Freudian explanation, a ‘why they ended up like this’ a showing that they weren’t just random bad men born evil but once they were just ordinary guys like you and me and then something happened and they reacted to it in the entirely wrong way, turning them in complete monsters. A For Want of a Nail effect, if you want, something happens, and this event has a ripple effect, resulting in massive change in the character changes radically.
So, with this in mind, let’s go dig into those two.
Henmi is the first convict we meet whose life was totally screwed over by a traumatic event.
The previous convicts are:
- Gotou who, according to Shiraishi, murdered his wife and child while drunk, even though I would be more prone, analyzing his interaction with Sugimoto during which he’s friendly and harmless when drunk and attempts to murder him when he’s sober, to assume he was actually not drunk when he did it and merely said he was hoping this would result in a less
- Prisoner n 1, of whom we know nothing about except that he viewed himself as a small fish
- Tsuyama, whom we know is a murderer but not why
- Shiraishi, who’s not a murderer
- Hijikata, who’s actually a political prisoner
- Ushiyama, who killed out of self defence
- Nihei, who just couldn’t let go whose who attacked him but had to take revenge on them.
And then comes in Henmi, who actually has a backstory that explains why he became a monster.
Henmi himself doesn’t consider it an excuse, just his starting point, albeit it’s possible that, had Shiraishi never asked, he would have never wondered why he took that turn.
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Henmi saw a board killing his little brother, apparently eating it alive.
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We’ve no info on why this incident took place, but this seems to point out Henmi didn’t deliberately cause this.
So really, this is what turned him from an ordinary kid to a monster, so it’s not something he had caused.
Henmi watched this from his hiding spot, meaning he either arrived on the scene, was scared and hid or that both siblings were there but only Henmi managed to reach a hiding place and from there he couldn’t move to help his brother.
Henmi describes his brother’s death vividly. It was horrific, his brother was helpless and it wasn’t even the boar’s fault as the animal couldn’t understand him. Henmi thinks his brother was in a lot of pain and fear, in despair and hopelessness.
But then he says something that clearly leaves into us an impression. He says that each time he thinks at his brother ‘he really, really want to kill somebody, anybody’, and he seems to have an erection as he says so.
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Due to this it’s easy to think that Noda is trying to depict him as someone committing ‘lust murders’, murders done by someone who searches for erotic satisfaction by killing someone… by is it really so simple?
Not quite because it’s not murdering someone what turns Henmi on, it’s the idea that this someone will murder him.
Henmi is not identifying with the boar, he’s identifying with his brother.
I’ll go and assume the idea here is that part of the problem here is that when Henmi saw his brother being killed, his body reacted in an inappropriate manner.
When one is scared the body produces dopamine. Some individuals may get more of a kick from this dopamine response than others do as, and according to some studies dopamine can trigger penile erection (though they’re still debating over this but whatever, Golden Kamuy isn’t meant to be a medicine text).
Anyway, in between the trauma to seeing his brother being killed in such a horrific way and his body’s reaction somehow Henmi came up with the idea he wanted to die like him.
We see Henmi doesn’t get an erection when he kills the Yakuza,
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just when he thinks to how Sugimoto could kill him. We see Henmi thinks Shiraishi is masturbating to the thought of getting killed, not to the thought of killing someone.
Possibly part of all this is also due to guilt, he just stood there, watching as light died in his brother’s eyes (it’s interesting how he carve the kanji for ‘eye’ in his victims, as if to mark them with his sin) and let his younger brother be killed and even got off by it and that also explains his wish to die. In a way in this he’s similar to Sekiya, who thought he should have been the one who died, and not his little girl.
And it’s interesting Henmi has to think at it, before explaining this is what turned him into what he is, because this hints he tried to forget what he saw, that he buried it inside himself, for him it wasn’t ‘oh, okay, so this is how my brother die so let’s start killing people’, Henmi didn’t try to understand his impulses, he just followed them.
But, long story short, Henmi’s wish to die a beautiful death, like his little brother, lead him to become completely twisted.
Maybe the boar attacked them because they attempted to attack him, that’s why Henmi began to attack people, attempting to murder them in hope they would instead murder him, attempting to recreate what happened with his brother. Maybe if this experience had never happened to him Henmi would have just been an ordinary well-mannered and very sociable guy who helps friends (when Shiraishi sees Sister Miyazawa and follows her Henmi stops the guard from chasing him).
This however wasn’t meant to be.
Henmi flips, develops an obsession on his own death, whom he wants to be terrible like the one of his brother and maybe the second tragedy of his own story is by misfortune he had to kill over a hundred people before he met someone who could give him ‘his beautiful death’, hundred kills he likely felt insensible about because, when you start thinking being killed is the most exciting experience ever, you probably don’t even connect you’re doing something bad, which is also why we can label Henmi as a monster, because he’s absolutely remorseless toward his victims.
Henmi is dangerous, a serial killer that can only be stopped by death… but it would be interesting if we could peek to an universe in which he was never exposed to the trauma of losing his brother and see if in it he could have become an ordinary guy instead.
Oh well, we’ll never know.
Sekiya now as he’s similar to Henmi, yet very different.
While it’s likely that Henmi’s traumatic event or turning point took place when he was young, Sekiya’s traumatic event takes place when he’s a man and, in the volume version, Noda pays special care to it.
We know Sekiya used to be a livestock veterinarian who went around to different ranches in Hokkaido and looked after their horses and things like that.
The traumatic event that ruined his life is well known to the fandom and easy to understand and sympathize with.
Sekiya himself tells it to Kadokura, in a way that mimics a confession.
It was a Sunday morning and he was walking home with his daughter, who was still a toddler, she being right at his side, plodding around.
The images shows us a Christian church and this, combined with how it was a Sunday morning, tell us that Sekiya was probably walking home from Sunday mass.
We see him smile as he watch his daughter, light in his eyes.
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Sekiya probably used to be a normal person, likely nothing over the top but what you would easily label good, and probably he felt that since he also has done his religious duty and gone to mass, God should smile down on him and protect him and his family.
(It’s possible he’s indulging a little in the capital vice of pride here… and considering his future actions in the future too)
We never hear Sekiya talking about a wife so it’s possible she died and he had to overcome that loss. Assuming a wife existed and died, he clearly overcome losing her and, evidently, being with his daughter, just watching her walk next to him, gives him joy.
Then something exploded behind him and he lost consciousness. When he wakes up he can only see that his daughter head and feet had been blown apart…. Which should be a pretty horrific thing to watch, especially for a father, but it takes him a while to realize this was due to a lighting having struck her, his eyes losing their light as he realizes this.
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Abruptly Sekiya had lost his daughter, in a way that he didn’t even understand at first, a horrible way. She was a beloved child, a reason of joy for him and it could be she was the last member of his family alive.
Now there’s a really common characteristic in humans from various cultures.
Many of them tend to think that the lightning is ‘the weapon of God/a God’.
Wikipedia even have a full page in which they list the various thunder gods from all around the world and the bible too implied God can toss thunders and lightnings.
So Sekiya, man of faith, who believed to be a good person likely blessed or at least protected by his God, is facing such a terrible tragedy just after he left the church in which he probably received the Eucharist, a tragedy that took place by a mean that’s considered by many ‘a weapon of God’, a tragedy that should cause him agonizing pain because losing a child so young should be terrible.
Now… sadly the best thing Sekiya could have done at this point was just to mourn his own child and learn to cope with the pain of her loss, possibly without losing his faith but using it as a crutch in his darkest hour.
Sekiya though, doesn’t find in himself the strength to chose the best option for himself.
Sekiya can’t accept his own disgrace and the way it happened, mourn and move on.
We see Sekiya back in the church, wondering why this happened to his daughter and not him.
Actually he asks himself (or God) why his daughter was chosen and not him.
どうして娘が選ばれたのか… どうして俺じゃなかったのか
‘Dōshite musume ga eraba reta no ka... Dōshite ore janakatta no ka’
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His next step, he explains to Kadokura, is to ask himself the following thing:
“Is ‘luck’ the will of God… or does the fact that a man like me was left alive prove that there is no such thing as God?”
「運」とは神の意志なのか…神のような人間を生き残らせるということは神など存在しないのではないか?
‘“Un” to wa kami no ishina no ka… kami no yōna ningen o ikinokora seru to iu koto wa kami nado sonzai shinai node wanai ka?’
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It’s this thought that likely pushed Sekiya to test people’s luck over and over, ending up on murdering quite a bunch of people.
Now…
I think part of Sekiya’s problem is that he was a man indulging in the capital vice of pride.
He sounds like he believed he believed he knew how things worked (God would punish the wicked and protect the ones who walk on the right path as hinted in chap 172) and viewed himself and especially his daughter as people who should be protected, blessed by God and just couldn’t accept to be proved wrong when his daughter died, demanded an explanation, deluded himself he could understand what no human had ever understood, God’s plans or that, if he can’t, this would mean God doesn’t exist.
Of course Sekiya’s view about who God would bless and who he would punish is extremely limited as it implies God should murder whoever would deviate by the right path and would protect from everything whoever would remain on it and it doesn’t take a genius to know IT DOESN’T WORK THIS WAY, bad things can happen to good people and terrible people instead might be blessed with good luck.
But part of the problem though is that Sekiya’s obsession with trying to understand why his own misfortune happened to him works as a copying mechanism that distract him from the agonizing pain of his loss.
What’s more it makes him feel as if he has the power to control things.
What Sekiya wanted to get in fact was exactly what he got, for God to protect someone righteous and punish him for not being righteous anymore.
He’s overjoyed when he’s proved right, Hijikata survives to an extremely risky bet and kills him.
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Although he says he has great interest in observing how fortune play out in people he’s never delighted when they die. He’s just businesslike, this is done, let’s move to the next.
Instead he’s delighted when he’s proved right even if this means he’ll die… but well, life had probably lost part of his meaning to him, circling about a sick game that couldn’t give him any satisfaction.
Nowadays may countries would have given psychological help to both Sekiya and Henmi after they suffered their trauma, so that they might not have ended up turning into monsters like they instead did.
However, in Golden Kamuy’s time, this possibility didn’t exist and if you couldn’t find by yourself the strength to overcome in the right way your traumas and problems well… no one would be capable to help you.
Most of the cast of GK would benefit from psychological help, Henmi and Sekiya are merely among the people who reacted to trauma in the worst way.
Now… Gansoku… well, the guy is hard to pin.
As far as we know he didn’t have a ‘traumatic moment TM’ that turned him into who he is.
When he explains himself, Gansoku says he expresses himself through violence the same way one would express himself through art but acknowledges this made others hate him as they didn’t understand him, which lead him to get jailed.
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Gansoku doesn’t view this as bad as prison was a place busting with violence in which he made friends who were happy if he punched the guards and where he would go on a rampage and could only be stopped by Ushiyama.
His explanation seems to pain the picture of a violent man who can’t control himself and beat people left and right.
However when we met Gansoku we discover he’s a guy who basically promoted the stenka fights by encouraging people to bet on them. He’s a man who doesn’t attack at random but in a fight, can play in a team, tries to understand Sugimoto and helps him with his problems, helps Tsukishima when he’s wounded and can’t walk, can travel with Svetlana and protect her and wouldn’t fight with Sofia because he believed she wouldn’t be up for it.
He just love fighting and make no difference if he’s the one beating others or he’s getting beaten up. As long as he’s fighting someone strong he’s happy.
In short he’s not an uncontrollable abuser but a guy who loves to fight and who goes all out when fighting, a guy who can control himself and even being nice.
I wonder if he ended up in jail for a reason similar to Ushiyama, because he overdo it in a fight or in an argument. He said he was hated so maybe it’s the other people who would start the fight but, due to his superior strength he would hurt them too bad when he would react and end up in jail.
It’s hard to say, he’s undoubtedly strange but, at the same time, as he seems someone who doesn’t attack at random, that’s why he remind me of Ushiyama. But well, we’ll see if he’ll get more development.
For now that’s all I can say.
Thank you for your ask!
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goldenkamuyhunting · 4 years
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FULL LIST OF THE KNOWN TATTOOED PRISONERS (20 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 Saichi-tachi o Bikō Shite Ita Shūjin (杉元達を尾行していた囚人 “Prisoner who was tailing Sugimoto Saichi”): Status: Deceased (Killed by Ogata) - Crime: Unknown. - Skin owned by: Sugimoto Saichi, Tsurumi Tokushirō.
3. Hijikata Toshizō (土方 歳三): 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): 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), Sugimoto Saichi (copy), Tsurumi Tokushirō (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): 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): Status: Deceased (Killed by Retar) - 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: Alive - Crime: Killing a bunch of patients and transfusing their blood into himself. - Skin owned by: Ienaga Kano, 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 (Cause unknown) - Crime: Unknown. - Skin owned by: Hijikata Toshizō.
11. Wakayama Kiichirō (若山 輝一郎): 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 (original), Hijikata Toshizō (copy).
14. Sakamoto Keiichirō (坂本 慶一郎): 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): Status: Deceased (Died of heart attack while having sex with a bear) - Crime: Animal rape and animal slaughter. - Skin owned by: Sugimoto Saichi, Tsurumi Tokushirō.
16. Toni Anji (都丹 庵士): 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 managed to make 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): 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. ?
22. ?
23. ?
24. ?
AT CHAP 222 THE SITUATION BETWEEN THE THREE MAIN GROUPS CHASING THE TATTOOED SKINS IS AS FOLLOW
Sugimoto Saichi (2 skins)
Gotō Sugimoto Saichi-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) Heita Matsuda
Hijikata Toshizō (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 fake skins
Tsurumi Tokushirō (15 skins)
Tsuyama Yūbari no tankō jiko de shibō shita shūjin Shiraishi Yoshitake (copy) Sakamoto Keiichirō Gotō Sugimoto Saichi-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)
Sofia (1 skin?)
Gansoku Mahiru (copy) [We don’t know if Sophia managed to make a copy]
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goldenkamuyhunting · 4 years
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Now that you mention the skin from barato, I happen to have a theory of my own. As we know, prisoner number one claimed "the convicts started killing each other". Which should by all means leave at least ONE dead convict right off the bat. Also we know Oyabun has been in barato and even left underlings there. And he has killed people. So my little theory here is that Oyabun got one of the skins, trusted it to an underling, and it was "lost" as payment in barato.
Many, many apologies for my lateness in replying but I somehow missed that message.
Now... for your theory...
...the possibility Oyabun/Wakayama Kiichirō had been the one leaving the skin to Barato is rather interesting but now let’s dig into it in details.
To be honest Oyabun doesn’t say he went to Barato, but just that he sent his men there... but it’s possible he went there as well and then left but his men remained there...
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If we look at Hidoro Shinpei’s tale though I’m not sure he would play this part.
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I mean... not only the guy who lost the skin doesn’t really resemble him but I would expect Oyabun not to get himself in such situation and, in case he were, not to surrender so easily the skin.
On the other side we can speculate one of Oyabun’s men was in charge of holding the skin for him and bet it... but it seems the situation between Hidoro and Umakichi escalated DUE to the skin as both Shinpei and Yamamoto (the barber), think the skin is the main reason for Umakichi’s moves.
It’s hard to say but it’s sure an interesting possibility so thank you for suggesting it.
On the other side regarding Prisoner number 1′s words we get into a situation that’s a real mess... both for your theory and in general... but let’s check them first.
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A bloodbath implies that one or more convicts were attacked by one or more convicts.
The image implies convicts jumping on convicts with one convict being stabbed through his eye.
This however generates any sort of troubles.
For start let’s check the possible reasons for which one or more convicts would attach the others.
First of all there’s the reason Sugimoto suggested, wanting to skin them. Not all the convicts though were interested in the skins so let’s divide the convicts in 2 groups, interested and disinterested.
I’ll consider ‘interested’ those who right from the bat started pursuing the tattooed skins or remained in Otaru/very close to it as Nopperabou told them to go there. Those who left for other destinations or only grew an interested when contacted by Hijikata will be labelled as ‘disinterested’.
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I’ve placed 3 convicts in the unknown section because Heita seems to be forced to cooperate with Boutarou so I don’t know if he’s genuinely interested in getting that particular type of gold, I’ve no idea if Tsuyama was catched near Otaru or not and/or if he expressed interest into the gold and we’ve no idea from where the skin in Barato came.
Everyone else was minding their own (often murderous) business until one of the groups searching for the gold found them.
The result is... basically we have only 4 people who could have started attacking the others for the gold because they possessed the necessary viciousness for it as well as the fighting skills, Hijikata (who so far has proved he was more interested in cooperating and only takes copies of the skins), Ushiyama, Sakamoto (who likely took so long into getting in the gold hunt because first he spent time with O-gin and ended up getting her pregnant) and Boutarou (who, we just learnt, is searching the gold through means different than the skins but this could be an idea that came to him afterward).
As you can see I didn’t place Oyabun in the ‘interested’ group, as not only he leaves Otaru to handle his business but he doesn’t search for the skins at all. Even if we assume yur theory is correct and he got the skin of a convict who died in the massacre or managed to escape to it but died due to his wounds or was even killed by Oyabun for some reason, later Oyabun handed his skin off to pay a debt and didn’t bother to try his hardest to retrieve it, a sign he wasn’t really involved in the gold hunt.
So let’s go to look again to those 4 people.
Could one of them have started a bloodbath?
Highly unlikely.
First of all the idea of a bloodbath would involve people seriously wounded or murdered. So far we only have one known deceased who might not even have died in such a circumstance.
none of the overmentioned 4 at the time was in an allegiance with other people so if he wanted to attack it would be 1 against everyone else... and many of the convicts are seriously dangerous.
We know Nihei got his hands on a rifle and with or without one he’s a dangerous foe. If Henmi were to put his hands on one wof the soldiers weapon (we don’t know if he did or not) he would be equally dangerous in a fight. Oyabun also is someone you don’t want near to a sword and the same goes for Youichirou. There’s Gansoku that’s pure brutal strenght.
If one of the overmentioned 4 would attack the others the others would likely gang up on him not escape. And if a fight among such powerful guys were to ensure yes, we would have had a bloodbath but also more than 1 dead convict.
Overall I think the whole thing ended up being retconned, in fact he doesn’t come up again in the following volumes, Noda introduced the idea the convicts didn’t see each other faces and didn’t know each other except for some guys who were popular or were closed in a jail together and so on (not even Hijikata knew them even if according to Shiraishi HE was the one who passed down the plan to them all).
This of course allows things like Shiraishi not realizing Wakayama was a convict or Hijikata having to ask Kadokura info about the convicts so the retcon wasn’t a bad idea... but when we go and try to figure out what happened during the convicts’ escape of course we get stumbled because the bloodbath got somehow erased.
Retcons happen, especially in works like GK and this one is a minor one.
At least this is the most likely Doylist explanation.
A Watsonian one can be that Prisoner number 1 misunderstood the situation.
If they actually ganged up on a single convict because that one was dangerous, he might have assumed the convicts were brutally slaughtering each other when instead they were attacking just one convict in self defence. The guy would be the one who ended up as a skin in Barato. The problem with this theory is it wouldn‘t explain why the convicts then escaped in different directions, if they had murdered the threat and it was more convenient for them to stay together. Surely, even if they didn’t want the gold, Hijikata would have demanded a copy of their skin before letting them go.
Another possibility is Heita lost it, the convicts knew he wasn’t responsible for his actions so, although he managed to kill a convict, he ended up not murdered by the others but just knocked out... or he went back to normal. Again we stumble back in the same problem as before. Once gotten the situation under control, why escaping? If Hijikata had exposed his plan Ushiyama and Toni would have joined him as they did later.
Last but not least, it’s possible the convict starting the fight is one we hadn’t met yet.
Still, with only 1 convict ending up dead, I find calling it a bloodbath was an huge exaggeration.
We’ll see... but so far I tend to think Noda just retconned the bloodbath and we’re meant to suspend our disbelief and just pretend to forget it... still thank you for your interesting suggestion! I’ll look forward to see if it’ll be proved to be true!
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goldenkamuyhunting · 5 years
Text
Quick outline of the changes in Golden Kamuy Vol 18
Here is a general outline of the more relevant changes that take place in Vol 18 compared to the magazine. Note that I won't dig into minor changes (like Tanigaki having a larger breast or shift into positions unless they seem to be relevant for the plot or characterization).
For start let's talk a bit of the colour pages.
On the plus side they turned the color cover of chap 164 into an extra illustration included in the volume.
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To be honest though, isn't one of Noda's greatest illustration. I would have preferred for them to use the cover for chap 166 (chap 166 was included in Vol 17) or the one for chap 172.
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But well, I don't make the rules and people might prefer the Tsurumi picture.
As usual, all the covers that instead were left in the volume were cleaned up so that the only writing they contain is the number and title of the chapter.
And now let's talk of extra pages (as in the past, I'm not going to post them all, they're a tad too many).
Same as in vol 17 the new pages seems to have the purpose to expand scenes that already were in the magazine version so we can better understand what's going on, or get extra explanations and background pictures.
Let's start with chap 171.
Noda expanded the scene of Sugimoto studying the copy of Gansoku's skin which from 1 now is of 2 pages. A noteworthy addition is now we see Tanigaki preparing kanemochi.
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Noda also added a page explaining everyone's position in Karafuto and in Hokkaido and I honestly I appreciate this addition a lot.
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Another good addition is the scene of Enonoka's kidnapping. In the magazine it was just shown she was being restrained while in the volume we see her being taken captive.
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The images are also enlarged so while her being restrained in the magazine took one page in the volume take 2.
We move to chap 172.
Gone is the magazine smiling and apparently tame looking Sekiya.
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Now we've a much more serious man.
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Chap 173 expands Kadokura's explanation on Sekiya's methods during a kidnapping as well as the whole scene with the kid and Obencho/Ushiyama.
The result is that from 7 pages we move to 5. Theres no noteworthy addition, just some extra images and some bigger pictures. Ah, and Ushiyama now hits the kid with his left hand instead than with his right hand.
We move to chapter 174. Often what's written on the cover page is just an editior addition removed in the volume version but this time we can see the writing was meant to stay as it's in the volume too.
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Also they removed the shadows on Kadokura's backside. No idea why.
Chap 175 gives us some more relevant changes.
In addition to expanding the images of the scene in which Kadokura accepted to take part to Sekiya's 'game' they fixed Sekiya's eyebrows (he got wrong eyebrows in the manga)...
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...and expanded his past so that now we can see a young Sekiya and how the trauma of losing his child changed him.
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(note how his eyes from bright and filled with light first whtiened then became completely black, with no light in them. The same happened to Hasegawa/Tsurumi)
Chap 176 adds some background images when introducing Kiro. It also moves the scene in which we're shown Shiraishi with half of his hair longer so that he can pass for a convict.
In the magazine it was just after Sofia wrote to Kiro. In the volume version, after Kiro, Sofia and Shiraishi talk about if it would be of some use to help Sofia and her men escape, we see a new page of Sugimoto travelling toward Ankou...
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...and after it Shiraishi with half his hair long and the other half short.
That's because the bag Shiraishi passes along actually contained Sofia's Nivkh clothes so it came out smoother to have the scene of Shiraishi passing that bag to another ocnvict and then the scene of Sofia opening it and finding those clothes.
It's also worth to note the scenes are expanded a bit and the Nivkh clothes drawn in a more detailed way.
We jump at chap 177 where the background below the photo on the cover is slightly different, although nothing big.
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Hasegawa's shop now has a signboard and Fina is drawn smiling from the start.
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Hasegawa will welcome Kiro, Wilk and Soia still wearing his coat and his clothes will be slightly different through the chapter.
It's noteworthy they added an interaction between Hasegawa, Wilk and Kiro involving a wolf. I don't know what it's said during it but I wonder if it will be relevant in the future, considering Wilk's name means wolf and the code is also tied to the word 'wolf'.
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And interesting things is that while in the magazine we were shown Hasegawa burning the photo of the view he took,
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in the volume he's burning Kiro, Wilk and Sofia's picture.
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Noda also redrew the men shoot by Kiro and added Wilk shooting two men to death without showing particular emotions (in the magazine he killed no one).
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I guess this is meant to show Wilk too took part to the slaughtering.
Noda also expanded Sofia's action scene and gave a close up to Fina's body.
Chap 179 expanded the goodbye between Kiro, Wilk and Sofia, focusing more on Kiro and how he had to say goodbye to Sofia.
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Also redrawn is the scene in which Sofia discover Wilk died, showing Svetlana was next to her when she discovered about it.
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There's also an extra image of Asirpa watching the ice drifting close.
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Chap 180's cover has he seal being shadowed, opposed to the magazine version.
For some reasons Noda also redraw Kiro and Ogata as Ogata commended the deer might have been chased.
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It's nothing big, I'm pointing it out because it felt just a bit weird.
The tanks are entrusted to Kadokura.
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goldenkamuyhunting · 5 years
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Do you want cat to change? If cat dies, will you keep working on gk? It's more like a personal question so you dont have to answer it if you dont want to.
I guess with ‘cat’ you mean Ogata, don’t you?
Now, in regard to your questions...
First the easy one.
If cat dies, will you keep working on gk?
While Ogata is my fave character and one of the biggest reasons due to which I started reading Golden Kamuy I’m not here SOLELY for him.
He’s part of a story, a part that for me is very interesting, but he’s just a part of it. If the story were to turn boring I would probably stop being interested in it even if Ogata were to live, and if the story remains good I will probably remain hooked to it even if Ogata were to die.
Of course though I’ll be very sad if he were to die very much so, and Ogata’s eventual death will likely bring away a big part of my enjoyement of Golden Kamuy no matter how  well executed it will be because I’ve lot of fun trying to figure him out, way more than what the other characters give me.
But I really can’t tell you if the story will become boring all of sudden.
It really will depend on how Noda will develop it.
For example if Golden Kamuy were to start supporting the idea Asirpa's compassion is wrong and she has to become a person who kills without hesitation... if the story were to start supporting murdering without guilt... if characters simply stopped evolving and the story were to support that the way they are is the RIGHT way to be... then I will likely be disappointed a lot as well.
At the moment though I think it’s a big early to worry about this.
It’s pretty unlikely Ogata will die in the next chapter as it will probably continue/end the Koito flashback, so we’ll see what will happen in the future.
Next...
Do you want cat to change?
Hum... not quite, though it really depends from what do you mean with ‘change’ and what do you think makes the core of who Ogata is.
Let’s pick Shiraishi.
Shiraishi is consistently a friendly guy, who can be clever on some things and a complete dunce on some others, who can be fearful for his life but can also take risks if he judges it’s worth it as he likes betting and who’s definitely not prioritizing honestly. He is lazy, would like an easy life and longs for a woman.
This is his core. This doesn’t change through all Golden Kamuy.
Yet we can say that Shiraishi ‘changed’ as when he formed meaningful relations with Asirpa and Sugimoto.
That’s because his priorities shifted and he included them among the things he judged precious. So, even though he was afraid for his life, even though he believed betting on Tsurumi would be more advantagious, he remained with Asirpa. And because he also grew close to Kiroranke he couldn’t wave away his dead like he did with Kumagishi, whom he tricked and then abandoned in a prison and then, when he heard the guy died trying to escape labelled as a dummy because he told him not to escape during outside labor [Chap 86].
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He complains Kiro was too serious but it’s clear Shiraishi is grief-striken by his death and buries him with special care.
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It’s not that this Shiraishi is another person compared to the Shiraishi who shrugged away Kumagishi’s death. This Shiraishi is merely a Shiraishi who cared for Kiro, who was his friend and wanted the man to live, that regrets he’d dead even if he knows he betrayed them and would just like for Kiro to at least rest in peace.
Kumagishi instead, for Shiraishi, was just a guy who was in his same prison. Not a friend, a mere aquaitance, one he didn’t care for.
Everyone can grow to care for someone else, even the Lighting bandit and O-Gin, who were notable for their viciousness, loved each other and loved their child.
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And now let’s move to Inkarmat.
Inkarmat is consistently a clever and independant woman, who can use her brain and her gift of foretelling to try to influence people and get what she wants. She however blindly believes in the prophecies she makes and is strongly tied to her past with Wilk.
However, although her prophecies told her she would never meet Wilk again,
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she resumed hoping she would meet him again.
That’s because due to the meaningful near death experience she had she learnt fate can be changed.
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It’s not she became a completely different woman. She just acquired a new knowledge that changed her mindsetting.
Sugimoto is a bit of the same as originally he believed Ainu to be against him but soon enough he learns they have no ill intentions toward him.
So what I want for Ogata isn’t exactly ‘to just change’.Ogata, the core that makes him who he is, has to stay the same.
I simply want him to form meaningful positive relations, to go though new positive experiences that will expande his understanding of the world and will cause a shift in his priorities.
I like to think the result will be that even if Ogata will remain Ogata, his path will change.
In short I don’t want him to be a character who remains still, who stagnate where he is, but one who grows, like each human does.
But so far he didn’t quite have chances to have positive interactions and experiences.
We don’t know much of his childhood but during the was he was under Tsurumi and become his accomplice.
His partnership with Tsurumi is, in a way, similar, to Shiraishi’s partnership with Hijikata.
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Hijikata gave him the choice of giving him a copy of his tattoo and become his ally or not, but he made clear Shiraishi would not walk away if he were to choose ‘no’. As a result Shiraishi officially agrees and does his bidding but ultimately betrays Hijikata in favour of Sugimoto, even if back then he didn’t trust Sugimoto either (he was scared by him and believed Sugimoto would have killed him if he were to knew of his partnership with Hijikata).
Ogata too could have refused when Tsurumi wanted him to become his hitman and murder people in the army who were against Tsurumi, he could have refused when he was told to make friend with Yuusaku (whom Ogata wanted to avoid) in order to corrupt him, could have refused when told to murder Hanazawa but... what then? Tsurumi would have found a new hitman and dispose of the people he wanted to dispose along with Ogata.
Ogata clearly couldn’t denounce Tsurumi, no one would listen to him.
So he joins forces with him and then, like Shiraishi did with Hijikata, betrays him.
We don’t know if Ogata first joined the rebel group or Kiroranke.
We know though he joined Kiroranke prior to joining Hijikata and that allegiance is part of what stops him from forming connections with the members of the Hijikata group or of the Sugimoto group.
He knows he’s there not to make friends but to kill Wilk.
It clearly doesn’t help Hijikata doesn’t trust him at all and tries to keep away from himself by placing him with Ushiyama first and then with Sugimoto and will go ask information about him.
Sugimoto made matters even worse by not only refusing to trust him and generally being a jerk but also by stating that ‘any man who turn traitor once will do it again’...
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he is basically trying discouraging Hijikata from cooperating with Ogata in case Hijikata hadn’t realized Ogata has diserted from the 7th who was anyway a traitor unit and Sugimoto knows... and worsen matters further by trusting Tanigaki instead, who also has left the 7th but that Sugimoto doesn’t consider as a traitor... and by trusting Shiraishi who yes, hadn’t betrayed Sugimoto but had betrayed Hijikata and so is technically a traitor.
Add to this how Ogata was made fun of due to his mother in the Army and you get why he doesn’t really manage to relate with the people in the groups he is in.
And things turn slightly sour with Kiro as well, as it’s implied Ogata had no idea the guy planned to drag Asirpa in Russia or to free Sofia from Ankou prison. Ogata loses faith in him as a partner, loses faith in a partner who had him kill his best friend and now is manipulating his best friend’s very young daughter and praising how Wilk was capable to kill allies easily when they were wounded and useless.
Probably Ogata ended up seeing Tsurumi in Kiro even if the two are so very different and Kiro is actually so blinded by his great ideals and his care for the minorities he’s not really seeing what he’s doing.
But Asirpa?
Some might ask.
She consistently tried to get friend with him.
And in fact he made small progresses in that way... not huge but there was a tiny start in this direction... but everything was tained by the fact when all is said and done he was her father’s murderer and he’s sure she would kill him due to it and by how he didn’t quite realized she cared about him too.
Long story short, what I want is for Ogata to have experiences that will affect him and his behaviour so that he’ll end up making better choices.
You can see this as him changing or, more simply, as him evolving, growing, like it happens to... almost all humanity.
What however I specifically want is for those experiences, for those relations to be positive, to have a positive influence over him as what he had experienced so far actually influenced him in a negative way. It was still evolution, it was still growth but in the wrong direction.
I’d like for him to find the right path for a change. But well, I don’t know if this can be done. He’s in a horrid situation because after being shoot by Asirpa’s arrow he ended up prisoner of people who hated him and wanted him dead and with Asirpa in shock and rightfully very upset at him.
Not the best setting for positive experiences/relations.
And now he’s trying to escape to those people and I can’t genuinely see how he’ll manage to do so in the situation he is and this too isn’t the best setting for positive experiences/relations.We’ll see if things will change in the future, or he’ll never get a chance.
Noda clearly has a plan, we can just wait and see if he’ll end up like Youichirou, who managed to find peace and love among the Ainu and lived for a long time with them
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or like Sekiya, who fundamentally found peace only when God punished him by having Hijikata survive at his test and kill him.
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We’ll see. Thanks for your ask and sorry it took me so long to reply!
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goldenkamuyhunting · 5 years
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