Okay, sorry, I couldn’t help it, I have to talk about this episode.

In itself many things in this episode aren’t badly done… the problem are that various cuts done previously or during it or even changes in the placement of the scenes affected it greatly.

This chapter starts with the continuation of the scene of the crane dance from the previous episode.

I’ve already discussed of how I’m strongly disappointed by how they handled the dancing crane scene but I guess repeating it helps get some relevant points.

For who’s not familiar with the manga but is watched the anime I’ll explain that the Ogata flashback you see at the end, in the manga, was presented much sooner, before Asirpa got the chance to do that crane dance, and I’ll also add that dance wasn’t done just because, but due to a certain discussion.

In this discussion Asirpa asks Sugimoto why he’s searching for the gold, Sugimoto replies he’s doing it to help the wife of his deceased friend. Ogata, who’s also present, connects this info with how Sugimoto told him he was searching the gold for the woman he loves…

…and claims that this means the woman Sugimoto loves is that widow. Sugimoto doesn’t reply. As in the manga Asirpa has a completely one-sided crush on Sugimoto of which Sugimoto is COMPLETELY OBLIVIOUS and the situation is getting uncomfortable she does the crane dance to change the mood and divert the discussion on a neutral topic. Sugimoto doesn’t understand why she did it (I told you, it’s an one-sided crush of which Sugimoto is oblivious) but it’s implied Ogata connects the dots and we see him smiling gently (the Japanese onomatopoeia used for his ‘heh’ in that scene is the one for soft, gentle laughs and one that normally is never used with him) and, possibly, sort of sadly in Asirpa’s direction.

It can be speculated that in this love triangle (Umeko/Sugimoto/Asirpa) in which Sugimoto is oblivious of Asirpa’s feelings, he saw the triangle between his father, his father’s wife and his mother and this can turn out to be a relevant plot point because, interesting enough, Noda had Asirpa waiting 11 volumes before asking Sugimoto why he was searching the gold, just while Ogata was present and could connect the dots.

But anyway, that was the previous episode’s problem.

I’m reporting it here as well, merely because the moving of the flashback at the end of this episode when it was fundamentally meant to be PRIOR to the ending of the previous episode affects things.

Let’s go on with the story now.

They decided to cut ENTIRELY the whole Anehata arc.

I’ve made no secret of how I expected it to suffer censoring and how I would wholeheartedly approve parts of it being censored.

If you’re not a manga reader you might not know who’s Anehata. Well, simply put, Anehata is an animal lover. No, it’s not he likes them, he rapes them and then kills them. He dies while raping a bear. Yeah, that’s not the sort of things you want to see in an anime.

What I expected however was for the anime to just cut the.. ‘animal loving side of Anehata’, not fundamentally the whole arc as that was a relevant arc filled with character development for basically all the cast. I was fine with them making Anehata a hunter, an animal pelt thief, a guy into crazy things, whatever really. I’m not so much fine with them removing the whole story he spurred.

And I’ll immediately start to tell you why.

In the manga the Ainu we met in the episode had no idea who’s violating the animals and ends up thinking it’s Tanigaki. They chase Tanigaki and he escapes.

So when Cikapasi will see Asirpa dancing it’ll be only him and Inkarmat and they’ll report the problem Tanigaki is in. Sugimoto and Asirpa will rush to help him but… Ogata will also go search for Tanigaki on his own. That’s because to Ogata Tanigaki is Tsurumi’s man and very loyal to him so he thinks Tanigaki is there to hunt him.

The anime tried to keep this part but mostly postponed it (let’s skip the subbing mistake of Tanigaki calling Ogata just ‘private’ when he’s a ‘superior private’)…

…making Ogata’s reaction to Tanigaki’s presence nonexistent at first, as it’s actually Tanigaki who worries about Ogata being there and not vice versa (again let’s ignore another subbing mistake as the truth was Tanigaki was actually worried because Ogata was there, not because they were there)… which is silly, really.

The assumption Tanigaki was working for Tsurumi was a logical one and showed how Ogata is clever and cautious. The fact he ignores the whole thing and, even when he touches it he doesn’t really dig deep into it, either tones down his fear Tanigaki might be working for Tsurumi or his intelligence.

A good character development for Tanigaki gets lost as well. In fact Tanigaki refuses Ogata’s help (I won’t dig into how Ogata came to offer his help to Tanigaki) against the Ainu threatening Tanigaki because he fears Ogata will kill the Ainu.

This is the guy who, in the past, refused to talk things over and used Asirpa as a human shield…

…and that now is willing to allow the Ainu to harm him in order to protect them from harm from Ogata.

This is character growth that goes skipped.

Many other things got changed.

First of all the arc which established how Inkarmat and Tanigaki were getting close got cut. In the anime having Cikapasi claiming he and Inkarmat are a family with Tanigaki as the gigolo doesn’t help to convey how, while they were travelling together, they really had started becoming a family.

Also, who remembers the previous anime episodes in which Inkarmat and Asirpa met might remember Asirpa didn’t like Inkarmat. The reason was Inkarmat expressed interest on Sugimoto by claiming she liked men with facial scars and Asirpa got jealous and hurried to try to discourage her by telling her Sugimoto eats Osoma.

This plays a relevant part in how Asirpa will react when she’ll see Tanigaki and Inkarmat together and it’ll be VERY obvious the two are close. She’ll stop feeling antagonistic and she’ll encourage them to GET MARRIED ALREADY.

In short there will be no staring at Tanigaki in disgust thinking he’s a gigolo… which, really had no reason to be.

And then we have many, but really many other things that get cut due to the whole Anehata arc being cut, like Asirpa asking Ogata to protect Tanigaki and Ogata actually doing it without killing anyone, the whole thing causing a shift in their relation… or Sugimoto continually expressing his distrust for Ogata and being unfriendly with him even after the man saved Tanigaki. Or Asirpa challenging her fear of snakes to save Sugimoto and actually saving him and Sugimoto standing in front of a bear without fear in order to get Anehata’s skin.

Those were RELEVANT things that got lost so we could have three minutes of the Kamuy hopunire ceremony in which Asirpa will repeat part of the talk she gave Sugimoto in Ep 3… which is not so good really, both because it takes away time that could have been used to show us things that instead got censored but also because it implies Sugimoto already forgot all of it.

Mind you, I appreciate they wanted to show some Ainu culture but it sort of felt very random. In the manga the Kamuy hopunire took place because Sugimoto killed the bear Anehata raped. Here they just got invited to it at random so the whole thing seems an excuse for exposition.

It makes matter worse because it implies Tanigaki waited a lot to tell Asirpa what he came to tell her, which is plain stupid.

I appreciate they left Sugimoto’s comment about the gold at the end as well as Asirpa’s worried gaze. This was good.

It’s also very cute and a complete anime addition the scene in which Cikapasi is sleeping with his head on Inkarmat’s lap (in the manga Inkarmat and Cikapasi don’t take part to the ceremony).

What’s not so good is Ogata questioning Tanigaki ONLY NOW about his motivations… and what’s probably worse is him accepting so easily the whole thing, fundamentally moving to a next topic as soon as Sugimoto says Tanigaki isn’t the murder of those three soldiers.

In the manga Tanigaki proved his good intentions by letting the Ainu arrest him, so when Sugimoto cleared up it wasn’t Tanigaki who killed the three that were with him and Asirpa also explained how Tanigaki wanted to return to the Matagi and how devoted he’d gotten to Huci, Ogata decided he wasn’t a danger…

…never mentioning his opinion was also influenced by his budding ‘friendship’ with Asirpa which in the anime is completely glissed over…

(in the manga Asirpa was the only one in the group which showed interest and worry for him almost playing the role of the mother figure… and we’ll learn in this episode how Ogata’s relation with his mother was… or better wasn’t as the woman was focused on waiting Hanazawa and was ignoring him… which explains how important is how Asirpa instead is paying him attention and giving him care…).

In the anime Tanigaki proved nothing. He might not have been the one who killed his companions but really, this doesn’t mean he isn’t there on Tsurumi’s order.

Ogata dropping the whole thing to jump just at how Huci’s dream is just a dream is abrupt and not really logical.

The anime instead did something interesting by keeping both the expression Sugimoto had on the magazine and the one he had on the volume version at Asirpa’s words she wouldn’t go back to Otaru.

It’s also good how we’re shown that Shiraishi and Cikapasi are sleeping while Inkarmat is shown watching the starts outside, a hint something is on her mind.

In the manga Inkarmat, Cikapasi and Shiraishi don’t take part to the discussion because they weren’t present, the anime did a clever thing by showing Shiraishi and Cikapasi were sleeping and Inkarmat was outside.

I won’t get into the whole discussion about Sugimoto’s gun that got skipped as, if the anime plans to stop at Abashiri, is not really relevant to have it remark that Ogata now owns the rifle Sugimoto took from a soldier of the 7th. Sure, it was character interaction that got skipped and this is bad but I can understand it.

I REALLY, REALLY LOVE HOW THEY HANDLED THE NIHEI FLASHBACK.

That was very good and I love how Nihei voice actor managed to make Nihei sound gentle as he talks about his son. That’s a side of Nihei the anime had cut previously so it’s good they had included it now.

Ryu joining the gang in the manga happened in a completely different situation but it can work and it’s not handled that bad. Okay, it’s weird Sugimoto, who’s not into guns as Ogata, realized Tanigaki had Nihei’s gun but it can work.

The scene of Ryu chasing Nihei’s rifle is emotional and well done and I love it.

The scene with Koito is very well done, if I’ve to complain about something the only thing I could find is that they didn’t explain how Koito’s dad is an important admiral.

Now… I was worried sick on how they would handle the whole Ogata flashback.

I shouldn’t have been.

It’s a thing of beauty.

I couldn’t have asked for more.

First of all there’s that music that just tells you how you’re watching a tragedy. I NEED TO GET IT AT ANY COST.

The visual is also beautiful the scenes are really pretty and emotional per se. I’ve often though Golden Kamuy was nothing special visually (I’m used to Joker Game levels) but here they did a really good work. The sky, the sunset light, the grass, the night sky with the moon, the flowers, the sun light, the sea. It’s all pretty.

Ogata’s voice actor, Tsuda Kenjirou, bless the man, does a wonderful job. I think he’s really fond and understanding of Ogata (or, as he calls him, Hyakunosuke-chan) because really, he makes such an awesome work of portraying him here I’m still AMAZED.

Ogata is speaking very calmly, almost distantly, as if he was worn out… and yet there are all the pauses in the right moments, the way he draws some letters… the tiny moments in which some emotions transpires, like when Ogata says he liked the monkfish stew, the way he pauses before admitting his mother kept on making monkfish over and over. The way he later will repeat over and over while the visual shows us the image of his mother cooking and smiling in a beautiful sunset. The way he says no matter how many birds he took her nothing would change. The way he pauses when he’s about to admit he put poison in her food as if he wasn’t capable to admit it smoothly. The pause he makes before admitting Hanazawa never come… the way he calmly replies to Hanazawa’s spiteful accusation… It breaks my heart when he comments on Yuusaku’s serene smile and than draws out that ‘ahhh’ before commenting how he realized Yuusaku was a boy loved by his parents.

Tsuda Kenjirou really stops each time there’s something that’s hard/painful for Ogata to admit so as to hint at how hard it’s for him to voice it..

The whole monologue is not an easy thing and he delivered it beautifully, remaining detached and yet, at the same time, giving us small glimpses of how in truth Ogata was really emotionally involved in all that.

How Ogata is emotionally involved is also in the tiny details you see as this is made really well visually also.

How Ogata clences his hand a little when he says he loved monkfish stew, for example underlines how he’s actually affected by what he’s saying.

The choice to make Ogata’s shoot resound as he says his mother had gone crazy is brilliant. The two scenes fundamentally superimpose and this is pure genius because Ogata’s words also were a shoot in a way.

The way Ogata’s mother didn’t look at him when he brings her the bird but raises her head and looks at something only she can see…

The way they visually remarked how Ogata was waiting for his father to come see his mother.

Hanazawa also had few lines but they were spoken in such a spiteful manner you can hardly feel any pity for the man…

I love how they showed the background behind Ogata in darker tinges, the window disappearing, when Ogata realized Yuusaku was a child loved by his parents.

Yuusaku’s death is also very emotional and they let the reference about him being another bird offered to a different parent in hope of love and attention.

I love how they showed him falling twice, the last time making clear Ogata was watching the scene (as he’d been the one shooting him).

I love how they showed Ogata’s mother holding baby Ogata as Ogata hoped Yuusaku’s death might mean his father could show some interest into him. The background of that scene is also wonderful, with Ogata’s mother holding him to her chest, that serene sky and all those flowers blooming.

I love how Ogata moves slightly closer to his father as if he asked him if he ever had a chance.

I love how we saw child Ogata watching in the distance, a parallel of how Ogata’s mother watched in the distance, hoping for Hanazawa to come back for her. This speaks so strongly of how in Ogata there’s still that child that’s hoping for his father to be back for him.

The sunset is also beautifully drawn and meaningful, as a parallel of how their story is coming to an end… and how child Ogata isn’t really looking at the sun but in another direction, where the night has already started to fall…

I love how as Hanazawa speaks, we’re also shown Ogata’s expression. His mouth is open, these weren’t the words he was hoping to hear… before he forces a smile. This is really the end then. There had never been hope for him, no matter what he were to do.

It’s a pity they don’t show Ogata’s face as he left…

…but I guess they wanted to show us his meeting with Tsurumi just after the whole thing.

And here there’s another visually clever thing. Through all the talk Ogata stares ahead of himself expressionlessly. When Tsurumi pats his legs he turns toward him but we see only his eyes. They’re empty eyes. There’s no pride or joy or whatever. It’s almost as if he mechanically reacted to being touched. Tsurumi praises him again. And the camera then pans from Ogata’s empty eyes to how his lips are actually turned up in a smile… but, as we saw his eyes were empty we can now clearly say it’s a smile that lacks heart behind it. His lips are curled up but there’s no substance. It’s an act.

And, in fact, Ogata’s thoughts imply he’s not believing to a single praise Tsurumi made him (though I wish they hadn’t used the word ‘seducer’ in the translations as it implies a sexual contest that’s just not there).

The scene then skips and jumps into showing us the group having reached Kushiro’s sea. While everyone is cheering the camera instead focuses on Ogata, who’s standing there and checking with the binoculars if the place is safe, refusing to play with the others, as if to tell us that what we saw before is the story that hides behind this calm and collected man.

And all this everyone is perfect.

I can just forget all my complains in face of such an AWESOME handling of this flashback scene, really.

I LOVE IT, I LOVE IT.

Whoever did this episode did great in transposing this part. It really touched my heart. I can’t stress it enough.

I LOVE IT.