There is, indeed, nothing in the world like a Golden Kamuy episode. Dandadan in anime form comes as close as anything to recalling the experience. But it’s a measure of just how unique GK is that it’s really only a passing similarity – that sense of breathless momentum and the screen overflowing with characters acting like they own it. It may be a function of watching this episode at 9 AM on a highway bus in Okinawa, but trying to recall who all these nutjobs are was a bit of a struggle at first (we got basically no recap). But everyone Noda Satoru writes is so distinct that it starts to come back to you pretty quickly.

There was a movie – Sapporo Beer Koujou-hen – that covered the events unfolding in the premiere of this final season. But it seems as if we’re going to get a more or less complete retelling of them here (which I think is a good thing). Sapporo is indeed where the shit is going down – Golden Kamuy’s impossibly large cast of characters is converging on it in their quest for the Ainu gold. Two serial killers are one the loose, one of them an essential part of all three main groups’ plans to find the gold. And soon enough Tsurumi himself will join the party, meaning pretty much every principal player will be present in the metropolis of the North.

One of those killers, Ueda Keiji, is the dude who loves disappointed faces and killing little boys to try and murder his own self-loathing. He seems peripheral to the main mystery but when Ushiyama stops him in the commission of his next murder, he swears mid[-beatdown that he has key info for the finding of the gold. He later slips away when the Hijikatagumi meets up with Sugimoto and Asirpa’s team at a curry house, and the two leaders immediately set about trying to kill each other.

The notion of Team Hijikata and Team AsirapaMoto teaming up has always been an elephant in the room for GK. If you follow the “enemy of my enemy is my friend” mantra, there’s obvious common ground here. But the real question now – as it’s always been – is whether Hijikata is any better for the Ainu than Tsurumi would be. Is he merely trying to use them in a slightly more subtle way? Asirpa immediately (as soon as Hijikata and Sugimoto can be dragged apart) sets about trying to find out.

Hijikats’a vision for the “Ezo Republic” sounds idealistic enough. It can function as a multicultural international entity, free of the isolationism of the Yamato nation (much like the Ryukyu Kingdom did for centuries). But my sense is that ultimately Hijikata is hoping to exploit the Ainu just as Lt. Tsurumi is. In a kinder and gentler fashion perhaps – for a while – but exploit just the same. Nevertheless Asirpa is willing to give him a chance, and preaches the gospel of cooperation against Tsurumi. For now she and Hijikata team up to pool information, and he agrees to show her his skins – but only her. Tsurumi, however, has skillfully played the game of obfuscation with his judicious mix of real and fake skins.

Another key player in this early endgame is Ishikawa Takuboku, the future famous poet who’s currently acting as a reporter and information gatherer for Nagakura. He’s pieced together a theory about where the serial killer will strike next, based on the similar layout of Sapporo and Jack the Ripper’s haunt of Whitechapel. That’s the Sapporo Brewery, and Takuboku manages to keep that info from falling into the soiled hands of Tsurumi’s chief masturbator by the narrowest of escapes.

Indeed, the planets have aligned, the wheels are in motion, and it’s all going down in Sapporo. 13 episodes should be plenty of time to take the adaptation to the end even with the movie content included, and – together with Dekin no Mogura – this premiere seems to suggest that Brain’s Base is finding a slightly higher gear production-wise. It’s been an incredible run for Golden Kamuy, a series which I still consider sort of an unlikely hit. Smart, hilarious, disturbing, frequently brilliant – this is one hell of a ride, and it’s great to see it getting the sort of adaptation every great manga deserves.