Golden Kamuy Season 4

Episode 49

Golden Kamuy Episode 49 seems like a direct continuation of the last episode in many ways. Plot-wise they are all continuations of one another, but thematically speaking this is a very similar episode in terms of what it is trying to establish for the audience.

Just like in the last episode, we are putting all the pieces in place for the next big arc. We need to check in with all of our primary cast members again just to remember who the key players are. This is perhaps the most back-to-basics we can get, with Asirpa and Sugimoto spending a -lot- of time together. One creative to another I appreciate the very obvious method used here to separate them: a bunch of trees falling and blocking anyone else from interacting with them for a while. It's a fun woodland variant of having the characters trapped by rubble or in a collapsed structure of some kind. In a similar sense, we also check in with Ogata though despite interacting with others his check-in is far more lonesome (very fitting for him). He is very much a singular entity in terms of his skill and how he carries himself, regardless of who is around or who he might be aligned with within a given moment.

The serial killer subplot takes a back seat this week. I thought this was an odd choice truthfully speaking, as the ending of the last episode led me to believe that we were about to jump into this storyline straight away. There's nothing wrong with letting it simmer, mind you – it wouldn't be the first Jack the Ripper copycat story I've encountered over the years, so I'm not exactly chomping at the bit. That said, it did make for an odd sense of lost momentum going from through all that character setup last week and then preparing for the killer, only to… go back and do a bit more setup with the cast.

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Grant is the cohost on the Blade Licking Thieves podcast and Super Senpai Podcast.

Golden Kamuy Season 4 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.