English Dub Review: Golden Kamuy “The Great Plan to Infiltrate the Asahikawa 7th Division!!”

Escape mission.

Overview:

Shiraishi is taken prisoner, and needs to be busted out.

Our Take:

Shiraishi’s fear is getting the better of him lands him in the custody of the Seventh Division- bad luck for all parties. Shiraishi being under that heavy supervision means that he can’t pull his usual tricks, and that he can’t break free. The only other option is rescuing him, which Hijikata and Kiroranke set out to do.

You’d think that the escape would go wrong somehow, with only two men up against a small platoon of people, but it does succeed. Hijikata manages to cause a distraction and get Shiraishi away from the division, and Kiroranke managed to reach Shiraishi. But in the end, Shiraishi refused to go with them, because it isn’t Hijkata or Ogata that he’s afraid of, it’s Sugimoto. For all of Sugimoto’s comedic moments, he is absolutely brutal in battle, and has survived this long for a reason. If it comes down to hand to hand combat, there’s no way that Shiraishi, a mere thief, would be able to survive.

The problem is that Shiraishi is necessary to break into Abashiri Prison (which is a place that actually exists in real life, surprisingly). Without Shiraishi’s talents as the Escape King, in being able to squeeze out of restraints and blend into places, they have no hope of contacting Noppera-bo. Without Noppera-bo, there’s no way to tell which skins are real and which are fake. Even if most of the group doesn’t actually miss Shiraishi for his personality, in this case he’s not dead weight. He’s still goofy comedic relief, but he has a purpose to serve- and for that, he needs to not be imprisoned by the Seventh Division.

They enlist the help of another prisoner to imitate Abashiri’s warden Inudou, but I can’t help but feel that’s going to go terribly wrong somehow…

As we find out at the end of the episode, Shiraishi’s fears aren’t entirely unfounded, either. Sugimoto remembers where he saw Hijikata, and the air turns grim. Sugimoto’s loyalty lies to Asirpa, not anyone else. The rest of the group he’s friendly with, but it’s heavily implied that he wouldn’t hesitate to harm them if anything they did hurt Asirpa. Sugimoto gets that gleam in his eye, and it’s nothing that would be good had Shiraishi actually been around. Asirpa goes to stop him, and the episode leaves off there, but it looks like Shiraishi’s massive paranoia wasn’t entirely without reason.

Also, that meme panel that everyone parodies doesn’t look as good animated, huh?