What a long strange trip it’s been.  We haven’t seen Golden Kamuy for half a year, first of all.  It went on hiatus after the death of a staff member – one who  still hasn’t been identified.  I’ve always felt, on some level, as if it and Vinland Saga were fated to go head-to-head someday.  Noda Satoru and Yukimura Makoto are huge mutual admirers, and as unique as both their manga are they do share traits almost nothing else does.  Each preaches a message which flies in the face of orthodox Japanese political thinking.  Each is obsessively researched to maintain historical accuracy,  And each delivers a brilliant end product, easily in the top 1% of all anime I’ve watched.

Fast forward to May 15, 2023 (or just past midnight on the 16th, in Vinland’s case).  After years in which the two series sidestepped each other (not by choice, obviously), when it seemed that fated meeting might never happen, the strange circumstances of Golden Kamuy led to their rendezvous.  An hour after this episode ended, Vinland Saga’s  began.  And as if that weren’t enough, each was airing its 43rd episode.  It’s kind of cruel for me as a blogger, both these masterpieces airing on the same work night – alongside Kimi wa Houkago Insomnia no less.  But somehow, it feels as if this was meant to happen.

I’ll do the best I can to keep up, but it’s not going to be easy.  The idea of delaying watching either show is almost unthinkable – each is a past anime of the year at LiA, and both figure to contend for that this time.  Vinland made my 2010’s top 20, Golden Kamuy just missed, and both would likely factor into the equation for the current decade if such a list comes around again.  This isn’t really about comparing them – more celebrating their greatness – though if pressed I’d say Vinland is slightly ahead when considering the entire body of work.  But as I’ve noted many times over, there’s nothing in the world like a Golden Kamuy episode.  Oh, how I’ve missed it.

As we rejoin the action (we hit the ground running – Brain’s Base provides no recap to bring us back up to speed), the fated meeting between Team Sugimoto and Team Tsurumi is about to take place on Karafuto.  One could always question the wisdom of Sugimoto and Asirpa throwing in with Tsurumi; now, when they meet face to face, Asirpa is immediately displeased with the vibe she gets from him.  As cerebral fluid drips, then pours down his face (perhaps the excitement of being so close to his goal, or the fact that Asirpa is defying him) the two verbally probe at each other.  Tsurumi’s plan is to isolate Asirpa in a military warehouse basement until he gets the gold – as soon as he proposes separating she and Sugimoto, Asirpa immediately knows the game is afoot.

Once Asirpa makes the decision to run – Sugimoto picks up on it immediately without needing to be told – the alliances of the first half of the season go up in smoke.  The arrow trick is clever and buys them some time, but his allies on this recent journey are now his enemies and Tsurumi has many men with guns.  He takes at least two of three gunshot wounds during the flight, but this only serves to put him into berserker mode, and Sugimoto single-handedly takes down much of Tsurumi’s personal guard (Usami quite brutally).   They head for the ferry to Hokkaido, where Shiraishi knows he can find them, but they leave Tanigaki behind to go to his true love and to convey a message to Huci.

There are so many characters in this story, but the genius of Noda is that they’re all so distinctive that they never bleed together in one’s mind.  Vasily re-enters the fray, becoming an unlikely ally for Sugimoto and Asirpa (and that was no leg).  But his white whale, Ogata, is not far behind – he never is.  Thanks to Sugimoto’s genius the ferry takes advantage of Tsurumi’s destroyer “opening the kimono and revealing the slit” in the ice, and the four of them flee across the ice floes.  Tsurumi, as hardened to danger to his own mind as he seems to have become, recognizes that it would be suicide to follow them across the ice when they have a genius sniper covering their backs.  And thus the chase, once again, is on…

To be honest, Sugimoto and Tsurumi being on the same side never grokked with me, so this turn is not a surprise.  Hijikata, Sugimoto, Tsurumi, Ogata – I think this story is fated to be everyone being on their own side, for their own reasons.  Only Asirpa and Sugimoto (and Shiraishi, for now) stand together – and each of them is primarily concerned with protecting the other.  Sugimoto clearly plans to die at the end of this quest, and Asirpa clearly plans to stop him from doing so – and that could pit even them at odds at some point.  It’s a miraculously convoluted and fascinating tale, full of larger than life players, and there’s absolutely nothing else like it.  Welcome back, Golden Kamuy.