English Dub Review: Golden Kamuy “Catching Up to the Wolf”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Asirpa’s group hunts seals before they attempt to break Sophia and the rest of the prisoners out of Ako prison. However, the explosives didn’t go off properly because of how they got stored in the lighthouse. At the sound of the explosion, the prisoners make their way to the hole, but a tiger blocks their way. The prisoners find a way to escape and Sophia sees Asirpa and remarks on her eyes. Then she slaps Kiroranke and questions what he did to Wilk. They successfully escape using the fishers as cover to walk on the ice. Sugimoto’s group hears the explosion and heads to Ako prison.

Meanwhile, Shiraishi separates from the group and tries to head back to find a better path to reach them. Sophia tells Asirpa about her father and a bit about herself. Asirpa upon hearing the origin of her father’s name she recalls when he told her the name that her mother gave him. Then she remembers the characters on the tattooed skins and asking Sugimoto what they meant. Finally, she realizes the key to breaking the code of the tattooed skin maps is the name her mother gave her father. On the other end, Shiraishi almost falls in the water but Sugimoto saves him in time.

 

Our Take:

After ten episodes there’s been a breakthrough in the code of the tattoos as Asirpa gets the origin of Wilk, which means wolf in Polish. In addition to that, we get a reunion with Sugimoto and Shiraishi at the end. On a minor note, Shiraishi and the comedy that surrounds his dick is amusing as he using the dick talisman to prevent himself from falling into the cold water. I’m looking forward to the reunion between Asirpa and Sugimoto and the tense situation with Ogata as he did shoot him and Wilk at Abashiri prison.

Now it wouldn’t be a Golden Kamuy episode without some facts as Sophia stops the prisoners from killing tigers as it would be bad luck according to the Nanai. Even if the prison break was brief, we got to see Sophia in action with the tiger and not leaving behind her prison buddies. Sophia’s past as a rich girl turned revolutionary was good. It offers some details on Wilk from her perspective as she considered him to be beautiful. Wilk’s history took up a decent portion of the episode. It goes into detail about his fascination with wolves and how his calm personality got him through life.

Asirpa’s realization about her father’s name being the key to crack the code is great. From her memory of Wilk telling her the name, her mother gave him which meaning “catching up to the wolf,” and asking Sugimoto about the characters on the tattoos. The sequence worked well to capture the realization of the information given to her. Furthermore, Wilk’s lesson on the bears and being cruel rather than being kind is emphasized with Sophia’s story on how he killed one of their badly wounded allies to ensure the survival of the group. That lesson is most likely going to help Asirpa in some form or another as she continues this journey.

Ogata notices a lot in this episode which emphasizes his observational skills as a sniper. For example, the gunshot he heard from Sugimoto’s group even though Asirpa’s group is far from their line of vision. His observation will most likely start a conversation with Asirpa on her reaction in the future. Now it’s only a matter of when he’ll bring it up or when Sugimoto finally reaches their group.

Overall the episode was good with the prison break to storytime with Sophia on Wilk. I look forward to seeing if Asirpa will withhold information on the key to the gold from the group.