English Dub Review: Golden Kamuy “Bad Sign”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Asirpa and Shiraishi find out about Kiroranke’s past in Russia along with Asirpa’s father when they killed Czar Alexander II. Meanwhile the snipers’ face-off and after the Russian sniper notices a trail leading to the Uilta coffin he shoots the coffin. However, Ogata hid in the spot from earlier, and he kills the Russian sniper. After the shot, he regroups with the others with a fever because he ate too much snow. In the Uilta tent, Ogata is quickly warmed up using the Ainu and Uilta methods.

While Ogata gets the care he needs, the sniper sees his personal demon in the form of his brother. He reminisces about his time with his brother during the war. Meanwhile, Shiraishi has a private conversation with Asirpa outside about running away from the others. However, Kiroranke catches them and explains his reason for participating in the murder. Afterward, Ogata gets better and they prepare to leave Shiraishi behind. Shiraishi considers sticking up to Tsurumi, but he remembers Sugimoto’s words to him and catches up to them.

Our Take:

The week’s episode concludes the sniper battle and Asirpa’s reaction to the news of Kiroranke’s kill of Czar Alexander II.

The sniper battle was an arduous battle between Ogata and the Russian sniper. In the end, Ogata enduring the cold while keeping still won the battle with the Russian sniper shooting the uilta coffin instead of him. However, it does bring up Ogata’s personal demon, his brother with the cold. His brother being his personal demon does imply guilt from Ogata even if he doesn’t admit it. It also shows a bit more of him a person with him trying to corrupt his half-brother with women and killing a prisoner. Everything that Ogata did is the exact opposite of his noble brother. This episode worked well in bridging his memories of his half brother with the Ainu fact of the week.

It’s interesting to see how the Ainu treat their illnesses. When Asirpa explains using the suwashi, a branch that means bitter bush, and the steaming method known as yaysumawkare. There’s also the cousin Sama who communicates with the gods to drive the demons away from the ill. Ogata doesn’t believe in gods or anything mystical preferring to stick cold logic. However, he gets better the next day thanks to all of those remedies. It was a bit amusing to see Shiraishi with a charm and Asirpa and Kiroranke joke about the next day.

Then there’s Asirpa’s decision to stick with Kiroranke even after hearing what he and her father did in Russia. Despite Shiraishi trying to convince her to flee, Asirpa decides to stay as she wishes to find out more about her father. Then she questions herself on whether or not the gold is worth finding after all the bloodshed. It took a while for the anime to touch on the topic for her thoughts on the matter. It does bring up the question of when they’re going to find the gold. Hopefully, there’ll be an answer to that in this season.

Overall it’s a good episode with that foreshadowing with the fortunetelling bone as a bad sign for the group. Since their hint was that someone was coming from behind, it’s mostly like hinting towards a confrontation between Sugimoto and Asirpa’s groups.