Golden Kamuy Season 4

Episodes 43-45

Golden Kamuy season 4 was delayed due to the tragic passing of a staff member many months ago. It is good to see the show return, though there remains a bit of melancholy with the show coming back and my thoughts are certainly with the staff member's family at this time.

As for the episodes themselves, it's the usual quality we have come to expect from Golden Kamuy. Brain's Base has done a great job adapting the material and putting out a terrific anime week after week, bringing this excellent manga to life for us.

The events here are full of the usual drama and intensity wrapped in the macabre. Episode 43 has a slightly more adventurous bent with lots of gunplay and close-quarters fighting as Sugimoto, Asirpa, and the rest escape from Lieutenant Tsurumi's gang. It's violent and visceral and full of bloodshed and belly laughs as you'd expect.

Episodes 44 and 45 skew more toward the grotesque. Heita the bear man, a Jack the Ripper-esque slayer, and Tokishige all do their part to ramp up the sense of desperation that hangs over the show. To call these guys a murderers row might not be strong enough language. For all the intensity that Sugimoto and Asirpa possess, they really are being chased by beasts in human form - and all for the greed of gold.

I think Tokishige's story is the most disturbing if they can be ranked. I understand that Lieutenant Tsurumi is very popular in the wider Golden Kamuy fandom, and though personally I don't find him all that interesting it's clear that his popularity is alive and well within the text too. We have yet another case of "please notice me Tsurumi" that drives him to stomp on the throat of another child in a flashback sequence, a crime of passion cemented by his coy reference to being Tsurumi's "partner in crime." Again, I'm not sure what everyone sees in him, but Tsurumi sure does attract a certain type of subordinate who loves him without limits.

For more knife-twisting, my actual favorite characters - Tanigaki and Inkarmat - are now caught up in Tsurumi's schemes. It's a tragedy of the worst kind, the kind that affects me.

As an aside, it's certainly interesting to see how far we've come when the bears are no longer CG - something that was much lamented and meme'd back when episode 1 aired years ago. Great to have you back, Golden Kamuy.

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

Golden Kamuy Season 4 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.