No matter what else happened, the headline here was always going to be the bear.  As in, the great Golden Kamuy CGI bear meme can finally be laid to rest (as if that’ll ever happen).  It’s almost as if Nanba Hitoshi and Geno were overcompensating for past sins by giving us not one, not two, but three hand-drawn brown bears – actually red (that happens) and enormous.  But this story was taken from the manga so really, it was just a good opportunity for the anime to redeem itself.

The bears themselves were fine – nicely drawn and animated, though the production for the episode as a whole was clearly done on a budget.  And they weren’t window-dressing either, but pretty much the stars of the show.  As for the ep itself, well – these OVAs have tended to be Golden Kamuy on steroids (or maybe acid) with the weirdness and depravity turned up to eleven and beyond, and this one was no exception.  At some point the avalanche of gore and absurdity wore on me, but it was certainly an entertaining 22 minutes.

In sum, we have Asirpa trying to reclaim a family heirloom (a wedding garment) from an American named Dunn who apparently bought it for 30 Yen from a crook in-law who stole it.  He offers to sell it back to them if they can kill a “monster” – a gigantic bear that can heal itself – though it’s obvious all along that it’s actually multiple bears.  Then we have a couple of Yakuza tracking Kiroanke down in search of revenge for the racetrack scam (Season 1, I think?) who also happen to be lovers fond of extremely dramatic pronouncements of romantic devotion and pique.

As with the last OVA there’s an overload of sight gags and Asirpa pulling faces, but there is sort of a point to this in that the yakuza boss turns out to be one of the convicts from Abashiri (though for the first time, with the tattoo below the waist).  We also learn a valuable (assuming it’s not totally bogus) survival trick for bear attacks – throw your belt and they’ll think it’s a snake.  Apart from that this is pretty much a pit stop to tide us over till Season 3, which we still don’t have a date for but seems likely to arrive sometime in 2020.