Golden Kamuy S4 – 11

「蒸気船」 (Jōki-sen)
“Steamship”

The Candy Man is here- but he’s no ordinary one (and nothing in GK is ordinary)- he looks like he could play in a rock or metal band and gives out pranks and coal instead of confectionaries. I did like the eye to detail on his jacket- the print comprises shapes of Higashi (powdered candy used at tea ceremonies) and the purple was reminiscent of the pastel hues Higashi candies generally come in. In pursuit of a new tattooed lead, Shiraishi and Sugimoto proceed to brazenly ask every candy man in town to strip (and the candy shop doesn’t come cheap). One of the funniest moments was Shiraishi’s head popping out of the gutter- I’m amazed the kid remained so composed.

Lucky for them, this guy’s willing to show what he’s got, no charge. As it turns out, it would’ve been a waste of money because the tattoos are in the wrong place, though the Candy Man’s hella proud of his handiwork. That takes some serious grit and skill to tattoo your own face. It was a big mistake for Sugimoto and Shiraishi to let him go like that- tattoos on the face doesn’t mean they aren’t elsewhere or that he doesn’t have some other intel. He’s clearly up to something and it’s not selling candy- coal mines aren’t really a hot-spot for customers. Asirpa realizes this a little too late when she hears him yelling “You’ll never find the gold”. I doubt this is the last we’ve seen of him- he’s too delightfully bizarre to be just a minor cameo.

I think one of the themes Noda has running through GK is that it’s never too late- he has so many outrageously fun moments of grey-haired characters finding a new lease on life in the heat of battle. Today’s action hero makeover story features a postman who gets a little too trigger-happy when he discovers he’s the master of the one shot kill despite having never fired a gun before. The kicker is, it was actually Vasily, standing at the ready with the horses, who delivered the fatal shot.

Asirpa’s rubbed off on Sugimoto, even in the thick of the fight. We actually see him stop to consider how not to kill the shipman, then throw him overboard, out of the line of fire. Of course, such benevolence only lasts so long before Sugimoto goes into berserker mode. The fight levels up another degree of epic with a steamboat fight a la Mr. Pirate’s graceful steering, topped off by an anchor lasso. Mr. Postman got in deeper than he could handle, abandoning his mail to doggie paddle to safety, assisted by Asirpa. Not many people besides Sugimoto would have the guts and luck to successfully face off against an anchor-swinging pirate. That whole scene, I could do nothing but bask in the craziness escalating like a plane going into take-off.

The anchor wasn’t the only heavy thing dropped- it turns out all those skins might mean nothing in the end- if you have one piece missing, the whole map falls apart, at least according to what mob boss Wakayama (the same Wakayama the crazy candy man calls out) told Mr. Pirate. It’s common sense- with so many pieces to the puzzle plus the unpredictability of life, it’s only a matter of course for one or two prisoners and their skins to be unrecoverable, whether from being eaten or drowned- it would be an unreasonably large stroke of luck for every single prisoner to make it in one piece. Nopperabo had to have realized that and surely made provisions- clues perhaps from the river like what Asirpa’s crew is after. It would be a brilliant stroke of planning if it turned out the skins were just a red herring all along- Tsurumi and Hijikata would be really screwed.

We already know that Sugimoto is haunted by many ghosts from the past, not the least of which involves his family. That pause after Mr. Pirate asks Sugimoto what happened to his family was as terrifying for him as it was for me- I was almost afraid to know the answer (though Sugimoto doesn’t come across as the kind of guy who would murder his family). When ensues is a devastating flashback (what a symbolic touch with the drab color palatte). Sugimoto was orphaned by tuberculosis, something he can do nothing about no matter his determination to stick by his parents. That raw pain, the desire to outlast death while watching family suffer watered the seeds of the Immortal Sugimoto we know today. Mr. Pirate understands- he’s been there too, but with a different approach. Mr. Pirate’s response to a society that looks the other way at illness and death is to ditch those losers and make his own kingdom. A rather naïve fantasy. Sugimoto and Asirpa are looking to use the gold for independence as well, but the difference being their vision is shaped around the Ainu people, their culture, their livelihood- and not around a single person.

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