I don’t necessarily want to give the “coda” speech again. But so help me, it demands to be bowed to here. We have two eps of Golden Kamuy left. That’s a fair amount of time, but we have 60 eps worth of some of the busiest plot and character anime around to wrap up. If you’ve been here a while you know my feelings on this – long-running series need a coda at the end. The audience needs and deserves a chance to reflect and say goodbye – along with the characters. It gets criticized – see Return of the King and Boku no Hero Academia. But screw that – you have to do a proper epilogue. Seirei no Moribito had maybe the best ever.

As such, I’m a bit torn about this week’s entry. It was great but absolute non-stop action – and brutality. Maybe it’s better to get as much of that as possible in now, to save some time at the end. It’s sort of funny that Winter’s AotS air on consecutive nights – as much as I love Champignon Witch, Ikoku Nikki and Golden Kamuy are the two shows that will be in the conversation at AotY time – and you couldn’t design two more opposite series. This is certainly one of the many modes GK excels at. I just hope it doesn’t take us right up the final moments of the show.

History has always been a character in this series, but never more than in this finale arc. Hijikata really was here of course – he fell when the Ezo Republic did, at Goryokaku. I don’t know if there really was a ship called the Kaitanmaru fighting for the Shogunate but there was in this version of events. The fort fell and so did the ship. But the men of the Shinsengumi moved its big gun and hid it in a temple on Mount Hakodate, which is the errand Hijikata sent Kadokura and his team on.

But the Vice-captain’s connections to this myth don’t end there. After being wounded he was saved by Kimuspu and the other “gold men” of the Ainu. They saw him as a possible way to get their deed book to Enomoto in Edo, though that plan fell apart along with the Ezo Republic. But Hijikata declared that he owed the Ainu men a debt, and for all intents and purposes it seems that fate is calling it in now. What will the old man do? I was worried he might leave the main trio trapped down that well, but in that at least he was faithful. And the way he looks at Asirpa reflects an awareness of what his past asks of him. But her dreams for the Golden Kamuy don’t align with his, so I consider this an open question.

As for Tsurumi’s dreams, as  sharp as he is he does kindly remind us at times that he’s quite mad. A glorious kingdom of opium, stretching from Hokkaido to Manchuria. All to glorify his dead wife and child (and comrades, to an extent). His men are resolutely loyal, and Tsurumi is without question a genius. He’s formidable to be sure. It is, as Shiraishi says, a historical reckoning between the veterans of the Boshin War and the Russo-Japanese war. And Hijikata is not to be taken lightly. His plan is a good one – decoy fortifications, with his forces actually in foxholes. He’s the one thinking in more modern warfare terms, even if his secret weapon is an antique gun from another era of war.

This is a bloodbath, no two ways about it. And worse. Wall to wall action and some of the most graphic gore you’ll see in mainstream anime. Tsurumi positively glories in it, which says a lot about the sort of man he is. Lt. Koito’s father is anchored in the harbor, bombarding Goryokaku from his four ships at anchor. What he doesn’t know is that Kadokura and Nagakura are about to level the playing field in a big way. And the two with them, Kirawus and Mansur, are to play critical roles too. Mansur, the silent Russian, happens to be a brilliant artillery man. And he puts the Kaitenmaru’s big gun to good use.

While the death toll is high – and grisly – this episode, most of the big names skate through to see another week. Admiral Koito, on the last ship Mansur hits, goes down with the ship after returning fire – possibly taking down Kirawus and Mansur in the process. Lt. Tsurumi and the 7th now must take the fort without artillery fire to soften up the enemy, but they still have the advantage in numbers. There seems little down that the showdown that’s been building for five seasons is finally here. But did Noda bring Ogata and Vasily here just to be bystanders when the shit really goes down? For once, Chekov’s gun may actually be Russian.