Trasposed in: Episode 2 ‘Nopperabō’

Currently the story is at: Chap 171: ‘Karafuto Ainu punishment’



What follows are my ramblings over Golden Kamuy chapter by chapter, comprehensive of summary of the chapter, comparisons with the anime transposition, spoilers, theories, discussions about how a page or a panel was drawn and whatever else caught my attention.

As Golden Kamuy hasn’t ended yet I might miss some details that will be relevant in the future or make a wrong theory (or change my mind in the future on that theory). Consider yourself warned.

Also occasionally you’ll find ramblings for the covers or the extra contained in the volumes.

CHAP 5: ‘Hokuchin unit’

The cover starts the beginning of ‘weird’ covers… this one has Asirpa being friendly with a squirrel… instead than being interested in eating it.

The title of the chapter refers to how also was called the 7th division, about which we get some info written in superimposed text, while Ogata and Sugimoto face each other.

After the info dump we’ve Sugimoto thinking at how it was bad enough to deal with the prisoners but the soldiers would be a real problems… even if he thinks Ogata and Co would be the dregs of the unit… which is actually his assumption as Tsurumi’s unit isn’t bad at all and Tsurumi himself will admit Ogata is one of his best men.

Ogata, who was ready to fight him (we see him at first in combat position, blade toward Sugimoto), seeing Sugimoto isn’t attacking him immediately, relaxes as well and asks him what unit Sugimoto is from. Sugimoto replies he was from the 1st, though his term has ended and he was discharged.

Ogata comments they might have met up at 203 hill. It’s sort of fun how they’re chatting casually, but it hints at how neither of them is really invested in just killing the other if they can avoid it. Not that they aren’t ready to do it if needed, it’s just that they aren’t bloodthirsty.

Ogata suggests Sugimoto to let them (the 7th) have the tattooed body, implying otherwise they would have to kill him.

Sugimoto refuses, claiming he’s not doing this for money but for the woman he loves. This sentence is twice as relevant.

In that moment it will mark the point in which the chatting has to end because clearly neither is willing to back away from the tattooed skin. Ogata made clear that if Sugimoto insists in wanting to keep it, they will have to kill him and Sugimoto made clear not only that he won’t give up on it but also that he won’t even let himself be bribed as he’s not doing this for money. Hence they can only fight to death for the possession of the skin.

There’s to say that actually Sugimoto in that moment was in this for the money. Money he wanted to use for Umeko, all right, but always money. It’s not as he’s in this because Umeko is a skin collector. But well, I guess since Ogata hadn’t really offered they’ll buy the skin from him, especially at the price Sugimoto needs, the real meaning of the sentence is ‘I’m not in this because I’m greedy but because I need money for the woman I love’… so maybe there was still room for bargaining… though I don’t think Ogata was allowed to offer 200 yen for a skin, so it’s not like Ogata could bargain anyway.

The other thing due to which this exchange is relevant is that Ogata will remember it.

I don’t know if, at first, Ogata thought that Sugimoto was talking about Asirpa or not (Asirpa is a child and, although she has a crush on Sugimoto, contrary to what some think, Sugimoto so far doesn’t absolutely see her as a potential love interest and he’s still completely taken by Umeko…and the same goes for the whole cast as none of them see Asirpa as a potential love interest or a woman, Ushiyama, who would chase whatever female he were to meet, specifically tells Asirpa to grow up), but when Sugimoto will talk to Asirpa about how he’s doing all this for his best friend’s widow, Ogata will connect the dots and say that she’s the woman he was talking about when he said he was doing it for the woman he loved… indirectly informing Asirpa hers is an one sided crush.

There’s to wonder what Ogata thinks of the whole thing, since he saw his mother pining for a man who never returned her feelings. The whole parallel between Asirpa and his mother is made more ironic by how Asirpa will keep on feeding him and taking care of him, to the point we might say she’ll become his replacement mother…).

As a sidenote in the anime it’s Ogata who’ll bring the money topic up, asking Sugimoto if he’s doing this for the money, to which Sugimoto will reply he’s doing it for the woman he loves… while in the manga it seems it’s Sugimoto who does it, by saying he’s not doing it for money but for the woman he loves. Not a big difference though.

Oh, as Sugimoto spoke he fixed his hat… which is sort of weird (wouldn’t it be better if he had removed it?) but I guess it’s the visual way in which the manga shows us he prepared himself to fight… and this might be twice as powerful if hats are really meant to represent soldiers, as it would imply Sugimoto is ‘ready to go at war against Ogata’. But well, it might be just me.

Back to the story at this point Ogata attacks Sugimoto but, as said before, Sugimoto is AMAZING at close combat so it’s not like Ogata had a chance as Sugimoto immediately grabs his arm, sends him on the ground and breaks said arm.

In the anime, to make the scene a bit more action oriented, Ogata gets to swing the blade a little before Sugimoto grabs him. I understand why they did it, but Sugimoto and Ogata are actually meant to be opposite in their own abilities, with Sugimoto being horrible at shooting but amazing at fighting and Ogata being exactly the reverse, amazing at shooting, poor at fighting (though maybe not so bad as Sugimoto is at shooting).

When Ogata’s arm is broken, Ogata is also forced to let go of the bayonet, which Sugimoto grabs and try to use to stab his neck, fundamentally planning to kill him.

In the anime it’s not so clear as we only see Sugimoto holding the bayonet and remaining still but in the manga is more visible both by Sugimoto’s expression and how he was holding the bayonet pointed at Ogata’s neck and how his hand was already moving to deliver the blow.

Even Sugimoto’s gaze through the whole scene can tell us Sugimoto is ready to kill.

In short, Asirpa calling Sugimoto effectively stopped him from killing Ogata.

I’ve always wondered how Ogata sees Asirpa’s intervention. Is he grateful she saved his life? Or annoyed? Or he just didn’t realize it? Hard to say.

Anyway now we more or less know who Ogata is and the fandom has its own opinions about him but, back then, Sugimoto had no idea who Ogata was beyond that he worked for the 7th. Ogata could have been a good guy, like Tanigaki or even more than Tanigaki for all that Sugimoto knew, merely forced to obey orders. After all, later he’ll complain that Ogata betrayed the 7th, meaning he didn’t expect Ogata to go against the orders he received.

So why is he so ready to kill a guy that, for all he knows, might only be obeying to orders and that he had just rendered helpless?

Later Sugimoto will tell us when he was in war he learned to tell himself that Russians don’t have human hearts so don’t feel pain when they die and therefore there’s no point to feel guilty about killing them (chap 100).

It’s a belief Sugimoto tried to impart to Asirpa as well and that he applies to all his enemies. Ogata is an enemy at this point, nothing else matter, killing him for Sugimoto is the only way to survive, the way war brainwashed him into thinking, and it doesn’t really matter if Ogata is helpless. For Sugimoto he’s an enemy, a threat and threats have to be destroyed.

Even though Sugimoto didn’t manage to kill Ogata, Sugimoto will always distrust him. This moment will be always between them, haunting Sugimoto’s relationship with Ogata.

In the beginning it’s possible Sugimoto simply couldn’t let it go because, if Ogata had turned out to be a good guy, Sugimoto would have to face the guilt for having tried to kill a good guy who was only doing his duty. Later though, when Ogata (and Kiroranke) will escape with Asirpa after Ogata killed Wilk and shoot him, Sugimoto will likely start to see his failure in killing Ogata as something negative. If he had killed Ogata right then, the other wouldn’t have managed to take Asirpa from him.

We’ll see in chap 171, when Enonoka will be taken as hostage by a man, how Sugimoto will subconsciously see her as Asirpa and he’ll face the man in a way that will present various parallelism how his fight with Ogata went in this chapter…



…including the fact Sugimoto will try to kill that man by stabbing him after rendering him helpless. Sugimoto will be stopped from killing him again, by some Ainu this time, but he’ll insist it would have been better if they had let him kill that man.

After all, in the story, despite Asirpa speaking over and over against killing people and Sugimoto trying to humour her here and there, Sugimoto will remain persuaded that’s the best way to deal with enemies, and, after she was taken from him, this belief likely only grew stronger.

Sugimoto knows killing is wrong…



…but he will still think it’s the best option for him most of the times.



It will be interesting to see if he’ll ever manage to embrace Asirpa’s view against killing.

Back to the story, Sugimoto stops from killing Ogata because Asirpa called him, however, since Asirpa called him ‘Sugimoto’, Ogata finally manages to figure out he’s facing ‘Sugimoto, the immortal’.

…Really Sugimoto should have been hellish popular during the war, everyone and their moms know about him….

Ogata then manages to stab with his fingers Sugimoto’s eyes and catches that moment to escape. It’s worth to mention that, despite Sugimoto breaking his arm rather badly, Ogata too hadn’t made a single whimper when this had happened.

In this Ogata and Sugimoto are similar as Sugimoto too won’t flinch when hurt.

Anyway Ogata plans to escape because he knows he can’t win against Sugimoto the immortal, especially without weapons and with a broken arm and so, as Ogata is trying to run away Sugimoto… tosses his rifle at him. There’s to say Sugimoto is better at rifle tossing than at rifle shooting because he hits Ogata right in the head, causing him to fall down the slope, to hit his face hard enough he’ll broke his jaw and then to end up in a river… and I’m not even sure if Ogata remained conscious after he was hit by Sugimoto’s rifle as he didn’t really move as he fell.

But well, since he survived to it, he probably either was conscious or woke up fast enough.

Asirpa and Sugimoto watch the river, likely assuming Ogata couldn’t survive to the fall, but it’s interesting how Sugimoto’s figure is completely in the dark.

Sugimoto defends his actions, claiming that if Ogata had escaped, the rest of Ogata’s unit would have come after them so this was for the best. In short he’s claiming it’s a good thing Ogata supposedly died… even if, truth to be told, although he was about to murder him with the bayonet, I don’t think he planned to murder him when he tossed the rifle at him. That one had been purely an incident.

It’s interesting how Sugimoto is in the dark because the visual isn’t shying away from telling us that, although what Sugimoto is saying makes sense, what Sugimoto did is in no way good. Remember the whole talk about wenkamuy murdering and hell? Because that’s the subtle way Golden Kamuy has to tell us it hadn’t forgotten about it. Murdering is wrong, no matter the reason, and brings you to hell.

Sugimoto in the future will feel that, if he had killed Ogata back then, things would have been better. Things however could have been better also if he had managed to strike an allegiance with Ogata back then, as he’ll do with Tanigaki.

After all if Ogata had died, even if Sugimoto were to hid the body, for the mere fact Ogata would have gone missing the 7th would have come to search for him anyway, sooner or later forcing Sugimoto to deal with them. Really, I doubt there was a way out for Sugimoto at that point.

Also I wonder if Golden Kamuy also will face another discussion point.

Asirpa doesn’t want to kill people and she’s trying to desperately keep Sugimoto from doing the same… but, since she’s aiding him, she’s not completely blameless (and we’ll see here and there she’ll feel sorry for the ones who die). But well, only time will tell and I can’t really blame Asirpa as murders would probably happen even if she were to refuse to aid Sugimoto. Sugimoto wouldn’t have just given up on the gold as he’s desperate to help Umeko so it can’t really be helped. She’s in a harsh situation, really, where there’s no winning side.

Still, it’s really ironic how Ogata will, much, much later, return the favour and shoot Sugimoto in the head, leaving him for dead and causing him a head injury instead… with Asirpa witnessing both scenes.

I guess since they both attempted to kill the other they could consider each other ‘even’.

Back to the story Asirpa asks Sugimoto what his nickname ‘the immortal’ means. Instead than just telling her that it means he managed to survive to the harshest situations where people wouldn’t think he could, Sugimoto gives her a rather dark reply, its darkness emphasized also by how the visual shows his face is in the dark.

Sugimoto claims during the war he found out the trick to stay alive, which was not to let the others kill him. He doesn’t say out loud that this, to him, meant killing the others before they could kill him, but he defends himself by claiming he doesn’t enjoy killing however, if his life is on the line, he won’t hesitate to kill whoever Sugimoto will grow to believe he has to kill.

Sugimoto then goes on using Asirpa’s words to support his statement…

…reminding her how the strong survives and the weak perishes and how this is an universal truth and sort of normalizing the ‘law of the strongest’ as well as subtly implying he still feels he’s at war.

In the manga Asirpa doesn’t look at him, but she’s clearly troubled by his words.

In the anime instead Asirpa looks at him as he says so, and… well, we can’t see well her face so we can’t see if she’s troubled or just accepting.

I guess the anime is less invested in exploring Sugimoto’s dark side…

On a sidenote Asirpa takes really well the view of dead bodies and death in general.

Not only she didn’t flinch when seeing Gotō’d dead body but she just had a person murdered in front of her eyes (prisoner number 1) and another supposedly killed (Ogata) and she’s handling the whole thing in a really calm manner.

In the manga we see Asirpa and Sugimoto leaving the place to walk toward one of Asirpa’s hunting huts. Sugimoto asks Asirpa who taught her so much about hunting and she replies it was her father as she has no brothers. She also admits to prefer being out there hunting than at home knitting.

Sugimoto’s stomach starts grumbling, surprising him and Asirpa claims it’s proof he’s alive.

The anime skipped the previous bit, immediately jumping from Ogata’s supposed death to Sugimoto’s grumbling stomach… and yes, I can understand the bit that got cut wasn’t necessary but the whole thing made the experience a whole lot more casual.

I mean, we jump from Sugimoto supposedly causing someone’s death to Sugimoto being hungry. It really reduces the impact of what had happened. What’s more, the dialogue about Asirpa learning everything about hunting from her father is removed. Yes it isn’t really lost as it will be placed later on while they make citatap so it’s not so bad… but well, why moving it then? But maybe it’s just me.

Back to the manga Asirpa decides they’ll make Citatap (an Ainu dish) with the squirrels they captured.

Again we see Asirpa being completely casual as she skins and cuts the squirrels because this is everyday life to her, how she normally prepares her food. Asirpa kindly tells Sugimoto he can eat the squirrel’s brain. Raw.

Sugimoto’s reaction is… well, not enthusiastic as he’s definitely not used at this sort of things and I think a lot of Golden Kamuy readers unused to eat squirrel brain can empathize with him. Asirpa takes his reaction as him criticizing Ainu cuisine so Sugimoto feels sort of forced to eat it and doesn’t really sound sincere when, pressed by Asirpa, says it’s good.

We will see he’ll grow used to eat brains but he’s not at that point yet. I love character evolution though.

Interesting enough when she’ll offer woodcock brain to Ogata and Ushiyama she won’t force them to eat it. With Ushiyama she’ll just be sort of pleading instead than pressuring, with Ogata she’ll just let him not eat it when he’ll refuse… to Ushiyama and Sugimoto’s shock. Character evolution for Asirpa as well and, later, for Ogata too, as he too will start to eat brains.

In a way though, this contributes to define the relationships between characters.

In the Asirpa-Sugimoto relationship it’s Asirpa who mostly dictates the rules (and Sugimoto calls her Asirpa-san while she just calls him Sugimoto), although Sugimoto tries to do as he pleases here and there.

In the Asirpa-Ushiyama one Asirpa admires Ushiyama… or better ‘professor Penis’ and he’s sort of fond of her so she doesn’t force him but pleads him and he gives up to please her.

Ogata and Asirpa are complete strangers when she offers him the brain and, in a way, equals. She can’t force him into eating it nor she is invested in persuading him to eat it and the same goes for him, who, fundamentally, doesn’t trust her claim it’s delicious and turns her offering down even though he’s the one who took three of the five woodcocks they have… although he’ll do it politely.

Back to the story, we’re then explained what’s citatap. Citatap is often made through the story but I think it’s not meant to be just a random dish. The whole idea between citatap is that everyone take turn mincing the meat and the word citatap that’s meant to be said as they mince means ‘We mince it’. When they will be about to try to get into Abashiri prison Asirpa will explain how she wanted everyone to work together as a team, hinting that she views Ogata’s refusal to say ‘citatap’ as a refusal from him to be ‘part of the team’. In fact Ogata so far had been the only one who had refused to say citatap even if he had taken turns in mincing the meant and, only in that instance he’ll say ‘citatap’ but so softly only Asirpa, who fundamentally was the only one interested in making him part of the team, will hear it. The others won’t hear and won’t be interested in the matter.

On a sidenote I mentioned previously how Sugimoto and Ogata sort of mirror each other. Ironically the food Asirpa will give Sugimoto in this episode matches with the one she’ll give Ogata (and Sugimoto and Ushiyama) the first time she’ll give him Ainu cuisine. The meat will be different as in this case is squirrel, in that case it’ll be woodcocks but it’ll always be citatap and then ohaw… but maybe it’s just a coincidence as Asirpa explains she makes ohaw because Sugimoto is a Sisam (Japanese).

By the way, in the anime they have Asirpa explains during the citatap how it was her father who taught her how to hunt, a scene that in the manga happened previously.

Sugimoto ends up enjoying the ohaw and learns from Asirpa how Ainu says ‘hinna’ to show appreciation for the food/thanks for the food a habit that Sugimoto willingly adopt… while Ogata will take a lot of time before he’ll be ready to say it. Again this chapter raises parallels between the two.

The scene switches and it turns out that Ogata has survived and was found by the 7th. They comment on how amazing it was that Ogata managed to crawl up onto the bank with those injuries and that had they found him any later he would have succumbed to hypothermia.

The soldiers have no idea what happened to him or why he was out there alone in the mountains and conclude they’ll have to wait for him to regain consciousness.

On a sidenote the visual of the scene is amazing. On one side there are Sugimoto and Asirpa enjoying their meal, on the other side there’s Ogata in a bad shape. In the middle there’s Asirpa’s hut… but it’s not at the center but on a side, the side next to Sugimoto and Asirpa eating happily. Next to the side where Ogata is there’s nothing, only the darkness of the night and a ballon saying ‘hinna, hinna’. Note also how, although both Sugimoto and Asirpa are in the hut, the one who’s clearly visible and clearly happy is Sugimoto.



Really, although subtle this page is set up to parallel Sugimoto and Ogata’s conditions at the moment. While Sugimoto is happily enjoying a nice dinner in a warm place with someone kind, Ogata is injured, barely conscious, hardly capable to eat food and likely feeling rather alone. Although the soldiers are around him, NONE of them is represented next to him. His situation strongly contrast with Sugimoto and the visual makes it very obvious.



Now, in regard to the soldier see some of them but their faces are kept in the dark, though, among them, one is clearly Tsurumi.

We could put up to debate if the other two who’re clearly visible are Tamigaki and Tsukishima but they seem slightly different from them (Tanigaki’s hair are slightly different and so is Tsukishima’s nose) so I won’t try to push for it.



Personally I know I’m repeating myself but I would really like to know why Ogata went ‘escape convicts hunting’ (Tsurumi acted as if he had no idea what Ogata was doing out there but it might be he’s lying for his own reasons so with him it’s hard to say) as well and if he really managed to pull himself out of the river or if he was helped by someone (Kiroranke) who made sure the soldiers would find him. We know that Ogata will change after this experience, that he’ll feel liberated which is why he’ll let his hair grow (soldiers should carry them short, especially if they’re low ranked)… and we know that he’ll end up being Kiroranke’s partner but we don’t really know when the two of them teamed up.

It might completely be that Ogata managed to pull himself out of the river on his own, but, as everyone remarks he was really in a bad shape since he had a broken arm, a broken jaw and I’m not even sure if he was conscious when he fell in the river… and I’ve no idea if the river was running fast but Asirpa (and possibly Sugimoto) looked down and she likely didn’t see him coming up for air… and we’ll see Kiro saving another man who’ll fall in a river (Shiraishi) so maybe that was the point in which Ogata ended up roped in Kiroranke’s plot.

Or maybe not.

After all if he was really in such a poor shape he couldn’t pull himself out of the river he probably wasn’t in the shape to make a deal with Kiro either, so maybe the deal happened in another time.

Really how Ogata and Kiro’s allegiance came to be is a huge mystery but I’ll say Kiro too was warned about Sugimoto’s presence by Ogata (he reacted oddly to the whole ‘immortal’ thing) so I think that allegiance came to be prior to Sugimoto and Kiro’s meeting. Though exactly when it’s hard to say. Kiro and Ogata both fought in the Russo-Japanese war so they might have met up there as well… or it can be that they got to know each other because they were both under captain Wada or… who knows. Everything is possible as of now.

The chap ends here.

The anime is faithful enough but… it has all the soldiers except Tsurumi dressed in the same way as Tanigaki (the manga had the soldiers dressed differently) and the scene ends rather abruptly so I think they could have handled it a little better… but I guess they wanted to patch in it as much as possible, in fact this episode covers the story till chap 7 included.

Something else that’s worth to mention is how many people assumed that Ogata wasn’t that important of a character as he was apparently defeated soon enough and, for a while, he won’t show up again. However if we look at the introduction order of the cast we get first Sugimoto, then Asirpa, then Ogata and only after him Shiraishi, Hijitaka and Tsurumi. Of course we can point out how Hijitaka’s existence was hinted prior to Ogata’s apparition (although in the same chapter in which Ogata shows up) and Tsurumi’s is hinted prior to Shiraishi’s appearance but well, they’re definitely introduced later. And Ogata will be mentioned more than once in the chapters following his apparition, just to make sure we won’t forget him. In short those were all subtle warnings he was meant to be important… but the author didn’t want to give it out too soon.