Well, nothing of interest happened until the very end. The introduction of Inkarmat was nice but I’m not sure what her position is and what kind of significance she would bring to the series. She was mainly used for Shiraishi’s stupid gambling, but she doesn’t seem like an actual con woman. She mentioned Asirpa’s eyes being just as beautiful as her father’s, which just makes all of us question just who is she really, and how does she know Asirpa’s father?
Another bit of significance was in the end where Ogata meets with Hijikata and offers him to be his bodyguard and work with him? We also learn good info from Ienaga, telling them of a thief that stayed at their hotel. He snuck into a house that had tattoo skins in it. It’s strange and mysterious and there’s not much info after that, but the gang decide to head to Yuubari to find the house and get more info, in case their Abashiri plan doesn’t work out like intended. I’m guessing the shadow figure we saw Lt. Tsurumi pursue is the person behind that house of skins.
And honestly, that’s all that mattered from the episode. Because after the gang meets Inkarmat, it turns into a gag where Shiraishi has a gambling fix and uses her fortunes to bet on the horse that’ll win. It was mostly uninteresting, and Shiraishi’s gags don’t entertain me anymore, but it was interesting what he said to Sugimoto when Asirpa wasn’t around. At first the gambling was for his own greed, but when Sugimoto stops him from gambling all of their money, he spouts that this was a sure way to make the money that he needed. Does he really need all that gold, or at least a good portion of the gold? Using Inkarmat’s accurate fortunes to make bank at the racetrack is a way for them to make the money that he needs without risking his life. And yes, that’s true, but it’s really shitty for Shiraishi to think that way without even considering Asirpa. Sugimoto absolutely does though and tells Shiraishi so. I mean, you have this little girl who’s now confused on who her father truly is, and she’s setting on this journey to find this all out while also trying to find the gold that belongs to her people with people she truly trusts. For them to just make money at the track and say “Well, this is all I wanted!” and abandon her? That would crush her. And again, this is one thing about Golden Kamuy that I love.
Final Impression
Sugimoto really cares about Asirpa, and they have great chemistry. I love them both as separate characters, but I also love them as a duo too. I gushed about them individually from the beginning, and noted their strong chemistry and gushed about it a lot. They still continue that strong bond, but with the introduction of more characters and the group getting a little bigger (slightly), they haven’t had much interaction. I honestly think this show would be much more interesting if it were just Sugimoto and Asirpa. Shiraishi’s gags got old fast, and I think I would have liked him more if he were instead a recurring character. And honestly, everyone else I’m sort of indifferent to, or I literally have no opinion about them. Honestly, I can hardly remember everyone’s names without looking them up. Of the non-main characters, the only one I find interesting is Lt. Tsurumi. His personality is crazy but intelligent, and I like his motive for the gold search. Inkarmat is another character to keep focus on, but she was only in this one episode.
But wait! Another season has already been announced, and it’s going to air in this year’s Fall season!
Isn’t that surprising. But, I think I’ll pass. I don’t think I’ll review it, but I might tune in to the rest of the story. I’ve already said this last week, but Golden Kamuy might not be for me. I was tuning out in the last half with how slow paced the show is, on top of the unfunny humor which dominates almost all the episodes. To me, there’s not a good balance of the comedy with the serious, and the humor just simply isn’t to my taste, which is totally a personal thing.
But darn it, I loved Golden Kamuy’s premise. We touch on a part of history that anime doesn’t focus on, we touch on a group of people, the Ainu, that never gets the light of day, you stack an interesting gold rush plot with two great main characters, and it sounds like a sure winner. And it was for me because I loved it. But then that love gradually turned into….eh. It turned into me catching the new episode on time to sighing as I downloaded it. I mean, I still am interested to see how the story is going to continue, but I’m not dying for it.
The humor, the slow pacing, the mostly plethora of uninteresting characters, and the bad production quality bogged all this down for me. I don’t know if I would recommend this to people. But, I still love Sugimoto and Asirpa. So…I think those two are the only reason I’ll check out the second season this Fall.
6/10
