Golden Kamuy S4 – 02

「繭」 (Mayu)
“Cocoon”

That’s no kitten that young Chiyotarou has there. What an incredibly bizarre situation, the hardened Ushiyama becoming the giant robot of sorts for a boy while under the influence of datura poison. Yet Golden Kamuy pulls it off. Ushiyama’s penchant for dried peaches played well into the humorous innuendos-“momo” can also mean “thighs”. In a satirical callback to the 1931 Frankenstein movie, the monstrous Ushiyama befriends a child until things turn violent. The innocent Chiyoharu turns out to be a shitty kid, immediately deciding to lure Ushiyama to a watery grave when he saw how scary the man could be- voiding himself of any responsibility for taking in the stray “cat”.

Such a pitiful (yet hilarious) irony that Chiyoharu was torn up over “killing” Ushiyama when the icy plunge actually woke Ushiyama to his senses. Furthermore, Ushiyama now remembers nothing about the moments they shared. It’s absolutely brilliant how they connected the wackiness of Ushiyama’s ice skating escapades with Chiyoharu to randomly popping up from the ice in the middle of Kadokura’s chase. Such a crazy turn of events actually seems logical in the end.

There were so many twists and turns in the span of just 23 minutes. I was already expecting the handoff with Sekiya to go wrong given Kadokura’s unlucky star. That was a cunning move, purposefully messing it up so Sekiya would run off, leading the pair to Hijikata-a stellar example of turning one’s weakness into a strength. They really played up on the visual irony of a former jail-warden playing as detective while looking like a flasher. Kirawus had every reason to be concerned about where Kadokura was going to be hiding his knife. It takes a certain kind of person to smugly face down the enemy while in their birthday suit in zero-degree weather and Kadokura is no exception to GK’s cast of brazen characters.

Sekiya’s craziness gets stripped down to the core. Scarred from witnessing his daughter’s freak lightening accident, he becomes convinced that luck is God’s judgement, using poison and chance to justify his beliefs. Sekiya and Kadokura faceoff in a final battle of fate, trading Hijikata’s whereabouts for a poison-filled cocoon-whoever wins saves Hijikata. Kadokura probably could have just thought about the cocoons logically and avoided the whole unpleasantry of poisoning. Just prior, Sekiya mentioned experimenting with cocoon weights-Kadokura could’ve looked at the weights on the rotating scales-the ones with no poison would presumably weigh less.

All’s well that ends well and fortunately, both Kadokura and Hijikata evade death in the end by taking fugu poison to counteract the wolfsbane. I found the science behind this intriguing. Wolfsbane creates an electrolyte imbalance in the body by creating a dam of sorts (it blocks a sodium channel to be precise). The channel is sensitive to fugu poison, so flooding the cells with it breaks the dam, tipping the electrolyte balance in the opposite direction. Interestingly, there was a murder case in Japan in the 90’s where someone was dually poisoned with wolfsbane and fugu poison. While the fugu delayed the time of death, it (obviously) did not ultimately prevent it from happening-so, don’t try this as a medical remedy at home.

I never cease to be amazed at the bombastic near-death escapes Golden Kamuy pulls off. Even when characters do die, it becomes a moment of import. In the end, Sekiya is satisfied with his demise, dying painfully, whether by a stroke of the divine or of luck. I’m a little sad we won’t get to see anymore of his wild roulette games-he was a fun divertissement while he lasted.

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