Never doubt Noda’s ability to top himself.

For obvious reasons, it doesn’t feel like we’re coming to the end of another season of Golden Kamuy.  It’s out of synch with the rest of the season, having started last fall and aired almost half its episodes.  I don’t worry about this series too much when it comes to continuation – it remains very (surprisingly, to me) popular, and even with the manga finished it seems likely to me there’s enough commercial bite there to see the adaptation finished (which would take about two more cours).  But if not that’s going to seriously suck, because there’s absolutely nothing out there like Golden Kamuy.

The whole intro sequence with Boutarou on the paddle-wheeler was pretty wild, but it was 1000% the tame part of the episode as it turns out.  He’s found Heita’s notes amongst our heroes’ possessions, and decided to pre-emptively take out his rivals now that he knows why they’re here.  That underwater fight between Boutarou and Sugimoto was a thing all right, especially when Boutarou used his hair (how does that work, exactly?) to drag his opponent into the depths.  In the end that hair gets caught in the paddle, and the Pirate would have met the same fate as his underling if Sugimoto hadn’t intervened.

This is going to be an uneasy partnership for sure, but I’ve grown very fond of Boutarou already so I’m glad he’s sticking around.  He’s yet another GK magnificent bastard, a main character poses as supporting cast.  He’s pretty sharp too, to the point where both Sugimoto and Asirpa get seriously annoyed with his line of questioning about their relationship.  Asirpa chooses this moment to catch a sturgeon, and I couldn’t help but imagine what all that caviar would be worth in London or New York today.  Might be more than Wilk’s gold.

The real Noda madness is going on in Sapporo, though.  Kikuta and Usami are hot on the trail of the serial killer, and okay, that’s all fine and dandy.  But then things get seriously weird even for Golden Kamuy.  It’s the first fap battle I can remember seeing in anime – or at least the first fap battle that was literally just that.  Usami uses his jerking off mojo as a means to locating traces of the enemy, and manages to find just that.  Then the killer himself shows up – just as Ussami predicted – and the two of them really go at it.  Even Kikuta – a hard man if ever there was one – is pretty freaked out by all this.

At this point I’m operating under the assumption that this isn’t a Jack the Ripper copycat or otaku, but the man himself.  The timing certainly matches up, he’s a European, and he knows the minute details of the Ripper murders.  But he slips away from his pursuers, and according the the murders he’s copying the next one isn’t going to be coming for 40 days.  In the meantime there’s evidence that Sofia is headed to town soon, and Hijikata’s group are all out on the streets in an array of increasingly ludicrous costumes (even Ogata).

There are two more twists to go here.  Kikuta stumbles upon Ariko in Sapporo, and accuses him of being with Hijokats’s group now.  The real kicker though is Kikuta’s reveal that he’s working for the government, with instructions to kill Lt. Tsurumi as soon as he’s found the gold.  And there’s yet another serial killer on the loose, one who hunts children rather than prostitutes (I don’t know about child prostitutes).   Boutarou suspects he may be Ueji Keiji, one of the tattooed prisoners, but Asirpa and Sugimoto almost certainly have met this man before.  Everyone and everything is converging on Sapporo, and it seems very likely will see it get pretty rough and ready.