This is gripping stuff, no question about it. I’m not sure it would be right to say I’m enjoying it, though. I can’t say it’s wrong that a series about what a lust for gold does to drive men mad should end in this fashion. It’s perfectly fitting, in fact. But damn, this is brutal. It’s some of the roughest stuff I’ve ever seen in anime, frankly, because this isn’t meaningless cartoon violence. These are people being graphically ripped apart. As outlandish (and sometimes fantastical) as it is, the characters in Golden Kamuy – even the minor ones – are so vibrant and distinct that seeing them massacred this way it especially gut-wrenching.

So, I think it’s fair to say I want the last episode to be something different. I don’t want these past two episodes to be the Golden Kamuy I carry with me in my memories. It is that, but it’s a lot of other things too – things which offer more insight and meaning. I don’t know how all this is going to end in 23 minutes, frankly. But I’ve seen no indication that the finale is going to be longer than that, or that there’s anything like a surprise OVA or movie to follow. So buckle up, Buttercup – it looks like next week is going to be freakishly busy, at the very least.

The end has already come for some – though not for Kirawus or Mansur, it seems. The former has a broken leg and the latter lost his right hand, but they live. Nagakura tells Kadokura-san to get the wounded to safety and not return to Goryokaku, their debt having been more than paid. The old man says he’s going to return to be with Hijikata at the end this time – stating very clearly how he expects all this to turn out. And with a division of trained soldiers going up against old men and ragged street fighters, it seems unlikely it can end any other way.

Anji Toni is one of those who checks out here. He literally takes a bullet (from Nikaidou) for Hijikata and still considers his debt to be outstanding, but Toni has done all he can. He stays behind to hold the bridge (a bit of a cliche that, but it works) and prepares to embrace the blessed silence he’s longed for. The loyalty Hijikata inspires is truly impressive – that’s something he and Tsurumi have in common. But there are limits to that in the latter case, as we’ve already seen. Loyalty is a funny think in Golden Kamuy (and in real life too, to be sure).

I’m not sure where Lt. Koito stands at this point, to be honest. “Alone”, for starters – when he walks out on Tsurumi Tsukishima doesn’t go with him. He probably realizes what’s happened to his father. He still feels loyalty to the uniform he wears, which means whatever his feelings towards Lt. Tsurumi, Hijikata and his allies are still the enemy. Koito ends up in a showdown with Nagakura, who mocks him for being a shadow of the Satsuma samurai he fought four decades earlier.

As things go from bad to worse for the defenders, Sugimoto is wounded twice – and quite graphically. He winds up in a showdown with Nikaidou, whose hard-fought flashes of sanity were all in the pursuit of getting him to this point, where he can give full vent to his crazy. This has only ever been about revenge for him, but Sugimoto is not about to be ended by this unhinged shell of a man. Death is probably kinder for Nikaidou at this point, though I don’t feel compelled to search for reasons to be sympathetic towards him.

Things are, in a word, bad. Only the north gate holds, on the sheer will of Sofia. Shiraishi has been tasked to stand by with Asirpa and flee if things get bad enough, and he finally gives the signal – setting fire to the stable – that he’s going to do so. But his escape route has been cut off and his plan to disguise himself as a soldier and throw off pursuit with a dummy sack of Ainu girl is foiled by Lt. Koito. Sugimoto and Hijikata stand back to back, wounded and bleeding, and Sugimoto urges the old man to flee and fight another day.

But one senses that Hijikata has seen all the other days he intended to at this point. Be it Bushido or anything else, Goryokaku is going to be his last stand, the final quixotic act of defiance for the last of one of Japan’s most defiant and quixotic bodies of men. Sugimoto is prepared to escape without him – Asirpa is his priority, now and always. But Tsurumi is in hot pursuit, and waiting in the shadows somewhere is the proverbial snake in the grass waiting to strike – a snake who know full well that he’s both hunter and hunted.