English Dub Review: Golden Kamuy “Everybody, Get Together! It’s a Murder Hotel!”

Contraption murder palaces.

Overview:

The team finds themselves staying in an inn for the night, only to slowly realize that it’s a lot more than they think it is.

Our Take:

This episode is completely wild. The gang enters a hotel to stay for the night and accidentally runs into Ushiyama. Ushiyama isn’t against them directly this time, but since he’s still an agent of Hijikata, his presence is still terrifying. As we saw a few episodes back, Ushiyama is completely unstoppable when it comes to physical combat, and incredibly stubborn. He’s not

Ienaga, the proprietress, ends up being both the mastermind and one of the escaped convicts. She has escaped, changed her identity, and killed the previous owners to then take over the hotel. She preys on travelers instead of the locals, so they wouldn’t be as noticeable missing. Ienaga is a combination of Elizabeth Bathory in that she wants to bathe in blood to preserve her beauty, Hannibal Lecter in that she is polite to and then cannibalizes her victims, and H. H. Holmes with her Murder Hotel/Murder Castle. Her potential victims this time is Ushiyama for his incredibly powerful body and Asirpa for her eyes.

Despite this being an action-packed episode, it’s also darkly comedic. Since the hotel is filled with trapdoors, hidden passages, and lots of contraptions, a lot of the characters tend to just miss each other by seconds. Ushiyama, as usual, is obsessed by women, so he wants nothing but to sleep with Ienaga. Since she knows his identity and isn’t keen on being found out herself, she spends most of her time avoiding him. Shiraishi is also infatuated with her, so between the two of them, she’s constantly running around instead of having an easy time. Of course, this ends up working in the team’s favor, as it gives them enough time to stay alive and find a way out in one piece.

The combination of humor and action worked quite well together and makes this episode an experience. For once it doesn’t overlap with other stories, so it acts quite well as a standalone. It has everything from the usual Golden Kamuy violence, humor, chase sequences, and everything blowing up at the end. And of course, Ushiyama being able to power through just about everything, from doors to traps to an entire explosion. It was a fun episode, and definitely worth watching.