English Dub Review: Golden Kamuy “Igogusa”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Asirpa and her group make it to Karafuto only to find a fox farm instead of a Karafuto Ainu village. They find out it’s been abandoned for 20-30 years and it’s where Asirpa’s father lived during his childhood. Meanwhile, Sugimoto’s group sends Maiharu off as Tsukishima warns Sugimoto not to go berserk again. Tsurumi attempts to coax a soldier with morphine, however, he fails to get the soldier to eat as the wounded soldier hides under the bed covers. Tsukishima recalls telling his story to Tsurumi in prison as a death row inmate for killing his father.

He had a lover in his hometown but joined the army because he didn’t have a place on the island. Tsukishima returned home to find that his lover committed suicide and turned to think who spread the rumor that he had been killed and murdered his scumbag father. Tsurumi inquires about the woman to reveal that she’s alive in Tokyo and gets Tsukishima out of prison as a Russian interpreter. However, nine years later Tsukishima runs into somebody from his hometown who tells him that his lover was dead and buried near his father’s house. Tsukishima runs to Tsurumi in a rage as their location turns into an explosive scene of carnage. Tsukishima then devotes the rest of his life to Tsurumi after the incident as Tsurumi receives the cover to protect his head.

Our Take:

This week’s episode was alright with the brief glimpse of Asirpa’s group in Karafuto. I expected another scene on how the adults will try to gain Asirpa’s trust, but we switch over to Sugimoto’s group before we get the chance to explore that. There’s also the historical fact we get out of the episode about Russia and Japan with the Karafuto Ainu being crushed because of the two along with the cultural fact on the episode title.

The majority of the episode adds weight to Tsukishima’s words to Sugimoto on not losing control and Maiharu on learning Russian like his life would depend on it as we get his backstory and how he ended up following Tsurumi. His backstory offers an interesting perspective on how Tsurumi operates with the subtle manipulation to get Tsukishima to join him. The implications with the random soldier telling Tsukishima about his lover’s corpse at the opening of the tent and Tsurumi’s grin before the bomb went off only adds suspicion to Tsurumi’s hook to get Tsukishima to join him. Furthermore, Tsukishima figuratively died and came back because of the news of his lover which speaks volumes of his feelings for the seaweed haired woman. His backstory runs with how most of the Golden Kamuy characters seek a reason to live after the war. Furthermore, how he lost control and murdered his father gives the episode that unique violent Golden Kamuy vibe.

Overall the backstory was good at fleshing Tsukishima out, but the present plot needs some attention too. Hopefully, the backstories won’t consume the majority of the episode so that the story can focus more on the present.