I’ve said a good many things about Golden Kamuy over 16 write-ups, and I could say a good many more.  That it’s the best show of this season is something I’ve noted already,  but here’s what really stands out as I step back and think on it – I can’t recall the last time a show had this much of a gap over the rest of the field.  Don’t get me wrong, I like Gridman and Gurazeni and several others, some quite a lot.  But Golden Kamuy is way, way better – even if it’s not an outright masterpiece (it may be an AOTY candidate, but this is a weak year) it stands head-and-shoulders over anything else airing in a way few series I can recall have.

What stands out about the second season is that GK has managed to be outstanding while really only embracing one of its many stylistic identities.  To be as absorbing as it has on pure bombast and spectacle is a great achievement, but there’s always been more to this show, and we saw some of that this week.  It’s a series with a huge and intricate plot that’s also character-driven, and that’s fairly unusual to say the least.  We saw more of that in the first season than the first one of the second, but that may be starting to change.

The cliffhanger, of course, is the rescue attempt for Shiriashi, as Kiyohiro and Miira-Sugimoto enter the base and enter into a tense negotiation with Lt. Col. Yodogawa (also known as Tsurumi’s lap dog).  Kiyohiro is a real professional – not just a master of disguise but a hell of an actor, and a whiz with dialects to boot.  He’s just about managed to convince the sniveling Yodogawa to trade Shiraishi for a genius counterfeiter he claims to have brought from Abashiri when a desperate call to Tsurumi brings an intervention from one his lackeys, Lt. Koito (Konishi Katsuyuki).

One of would have thought the well would run dry and whack-jobs in this mythology, but so far Noda-sensei shows no signs of it.  Koito is another freak, but like most of the crazy people in this cast, he’s very good at his job (he’s also very loyal).  Kiyohiro manages to keep up with the Satsuma dialect Koito tries to trip him up with, but Koito catches him out on the subject of drinking – and Koito promptly shoots both Kiyohiro and Sugimoto (the former through the head).  Yodogawa flips out when the truth is revealed, and he turns his gun on Shiraishi – if it’s not for Sugimoto catching a second bullet, the master escape artist might be a goner too.

Lest we forget this is still Golden Kamuy, we get a wild escape scene where the Sugimoto group (which eventually adds Asirpa) manages to escape on a small dirigible pilfered from the 7th.  After shaking off Koito (Tsurumi will be mad at him) they get about 40 km out of the tiny motor before it conks out, leaving the group an easy target to be found and staring down the cold and impassive face of the Daisetsuzan mountains.  It’s like Hoth all over again – except the part where Shiraishi is possessed by a sex God (or more likely, altitude sickness and hypothermia).

How many series could cap a chain of events like that with an incredibly tender scene of Sugimoto and Asirpa – hiding inside a deer carcass munching on raw liver, for goodness sake?  That it can do so is the magic of Golden Kamuy, which as I’ve said has as astonishing tonal range.  Sugimoto talking about the battlefield always gets to me – a good man forced to do terrible things in order to survive is as effective a vehicle of exploring the horrors of war as there is.  That Sugimoto told Asirpa of his love for dried persimmons with a bullet lodged in his chest gave the scene an even more somber and foreboding feeling – in truth, how could one expect a character named “immortal” anything to survive a series?