We have a sparser episode compared to the one last week, but believe me it’s still a dense episode with many seeds being planted and this week is essentially your Ainu 101 episode. The mangaka does a thoroughly research over Ainu culture, and he’s more than happy to show off here. But apart from the Ainu cooking porn in which I still feel out of place, Golden Kamuy uses the Ainu traditions and their culture to inform us about who Asirpa is and where her perspective comes from. Take the matter of rising a cub for example, Anui’s belief is to raise them and send them back to their kamuy (Anui’s god) life through sacrifice. It’s a fascinating view to how they approach life and death and I do really respect their belief. Asirpa belief grows beyond that view, the way she approaches it more realistically and she says it best herself “Our beliefs contain our way of life”. It could apply to any culture, to any individual belief out there. She really is mature and wise beyond her age.
Plot-wise, the duo gets chased down by more members of 7th Hokkaido unit, this time they all meet their miserable end, but not without a good fight. There of the soldiers are in hot pursuit for Sugimoto, and he escapes them just by a hair only because of Asirpa’s wisdom (although I like his quick resolve I have to say the “Bears won’t attack people who enter their hole” setup was hastily set up here). And the three still manage to take down the bear before dying themselves, just to show us the fighting spirits of those men (one of the men even had his face ripped off. Badass). Another soldier pursuits Asirpa and nearly kills her when he realized that she’s involved, but soon taken by the white wolf, Retar. If there is one central moral of this Golden Kamuy story, it is you need to kill your opponent properly because otherwise they’ll come back to haunt you. Asirpa leaves that poor soldier Tanigaki alive, and he vows to kill the wolf at all cost. I’m not keen on this development at all. It means trouble.
Speaking of Sugimoto and Asirpa’s real troubles, I’m worried for Asirpa’s kotan right now as the two seems to forget that they are being followed by a bunch of ruthless and skilful teams. The enemies’ character designs have now gotten to Rurouni Kenshin’s level of ridiculousness, which personally I’m not fond of, but well I can’t disagree that both teams following our duo are badass and will prove to be real threats. On the one hand, we have the army unit, lead by a “missing-the-front-of-his skull” Tsurumi, so you know he’s mad as hell, and on the other we have Hijikata himself, who figures out the way to take the tattoo NOT by skinning them off, so naturally he just kills for the fun of it (that’s half-true though). The next step should be for those two hot pursuers to kill off each other, right?
I really dislike the method of skinning, its not normal. Asirpa should just draw it. Also I really doubt that the maps is not real it was only a disguise for them to be able to sneak out from the authorities.
Consider the era when they don’t have camera or… smartphone, and consider the settings that they’re in the snowy wilderness, I think it makes sense about the skinning (not to say I agree with the method). What baffles me in the premise, however, is how the heck the gold thief can tattoo those complex shapes for more than dozen other prisoners without getting caught in one of the strictest prison in Japan at that time. It’s just downright impossible.