If it weren’t for Ikoku Nikki, Golden Kamuy: Saishuushou would be skating to best of the season status. That would certainly be no surprise, as every season has made the top 10 and S3 was 2020’s LiA anime of the year. But that’s nothing to complain about, especially as you could hardly design two series more different to each other. As I’ve noted before the calling card of Winter 2026 for me is diversity – no two shows I’m covering are remotely alike. But those two are the best, and this is the best run of form for GK since that note-perfect third season.

Our trip back in time ends in an appropriately zany and bloody Golden Kamuy montage sequence. Norabou bursts in to try and save Kaneko and the fists – and kicks, and eventually bullets – start flying. Tsurumi immediately recognizes that this naked man is not Hanazawa Yuusaku (whether Oogata was already aware is unclear). He also recognizes Kikuta – who has taken a bullet for Sugimoto – and figures out what’s really happening here. Clearly the plan is kaput and Kikita, Kaneko, and Sugimoto flee. But Kaneko – having gotten a look at “Yuusaku’s” vital components – declares that she’ll wed him even if he’s a peasant. Her minder dissuades her of that possibility and the two men leave her to a future as a tycoon and benefactor for military families.

One thing is clear – both Kikuta and Sugimoto are good men in their own way, and each is pushed to do bad things by the military. Kikuta blames himself for his brother’s death – “I have a first-class ticket to Hell” – and is none too thrilled with the idea of Norabou joining up. But the lure of white rice is just too powerful. Kikuta finally lets his brother’s cap go, leaving it with the young street urchin whose life has briefly intersected his. Not for the last time, though neither of them can be sure of that in the moment.

Kikuta’s next twist? Okuda Hidenobu (the First Division commander) recruits him to spy on Tsurumi. And Oogata too, who’s present when Okuda delivers the orders. That, of course, is an absolutely brilliant callback to that “two ships passing in the night” meeting between them in the burning Sapporo Beer factory. Unfortunately Kikuta has slipped up and allowed Usami to catch him in the act, which the dying pervert passed along to Lt. Tsurumi in his final moments. Kikuta had raised enough death flags that you more or less saw this coming, but it’s still a hard blow – he was one tough bastard and a genuinely decent guy. He warns Tsurumi that he’s doomed – not from the army, but Norabou. Which is fascinating because know-it-all Tsurumi has no way of knowing who that is. I like the foreshadowing there…

With that, it’s a straight-up sprint to the finish line. As Tsurumi tells his men, by killing Kikuta they’ve cut off their own line of retreat – the high command will now know the jig is up. Tsurumi has figured out the code of the skins, at more or less the exact same time Asirpa and Hijikata have. The map depicts Fort Goryokaku, a massive Meiji-era citadel in Hakodate. It was built as a bulwark against European imperialism but saw a different sort of action, as Hijikata knows all too well. And when one says “massive” that’s no exaggeration – the outer moat is 1.8 KM and the interior is 550 meters across at its widest point.

The Hijikatagumi does have one advantage – thanks to Boutarou’s dying tip, they’re already in Hakodate. That tip told of the abandoned Russian ambassador’s mansion, where the seven Ainu went to track down the gold on Kimuspu’s direction. There’s more to that story for sure – Kimuspu was hiding something and the men seemed alarmed at what they found there. But both searcher groups are operating on the assumption that the Ainu moved the gold to the now-empty fort and buried it somewhere inside. Team HijikatAspira has perhaps a 12-hour head start, but that’s not much help with a target this huge – and even if they could locate the gold, they would have little time to actually move it.

The solution? Fight. This small band against the entire Seventh Division seems hopeless indeed, but Hijikata is a wily old dog and has made contingency plans. Sofia is on the way with 120 of her Far East guerrillas, persuaded by Sofia that by settling in Hokkaido and using it as a base to attack Russia, they can honor both Wilk and Kiroranke’s dreams for the gold. Hijikata declares another advantage too – he’s actually fought a battle at Fort Goryokaku. Of course it was a losing one, the last stand of the Shogunate forces against the Imperialists, and history recorded that he died there. It’s not auspicious, but it is rather poetic.

So there we have the setup for the final battle, but as elegant as that setup is, with Noda Satoru I can’t imagine it’s going to be that simple. There’s plenty of time for more twists in the road, especially with Oogata and his eternal rival both headed for Hakodate too. My gut tells me that when the smoke clears from this battle – if it happens – the gold isn’t going to be there after all. Everyone chasing a ghost for the entire series is more in line with Noda’s aesthetic it seems to me, but we’re going to find out soon enough.