#Kumagishi Chouan

[goldenkamuyhunting]

Replies to asks regarding what happened to Ogata in chap 310

New group of asks, this time tied to what happened to Ogata in chap 310. Sorry if I placed them together and it I’m late in replying to them.

@somethingelse-notunique​ said:

EASY MODE!! Thank you! That’s exactly what I’ve been thinking these last chapters, but I just couldn’t find the words. I’m not sure how everyone else felt while reading it, but I was super interested in the physicological parts of the characters. Especially Asirpa, Sugimoto, and Ogata (I know you’ve been getting a lot of asks about Ogata but…hopefully it not too annoying lol). I was really hoping we’d dive deeper into what makes them tick and force them to answer uncomfortable questions. All that we have been getting recently has felt rather shallow. I didn’t hate what the Ogata death soliloquy gave us, with him seemingly not feeling too guilty over his parents murders. I liked that, it was interesting(If expanded upon).I just wish he was forced to stew in it a bit longer. Deal with the more advanced questions. It especially annoying when Asirpa seems to take some of his ideas later on. It just set up perfectly for Ogata to impact her. Imagine the train scene with an Ogata already well in the process of coming to terms with himself. Even if that still ended in his suicide, I think it would have been the perfect place to truly shake both Sugimoto and Asirpa viewpoints/morals. Which they did a little with Asirpa, but no follow through. I feel the rest of the story probably not going to make them question themselves that much. Hopefully I am wrong, perhaps Tsurumi will pick up Ogata missed potential

If I could help, then I’m glad!

I’m the same, I’ve been very interested in the psychological aspects of the characters. The story previously used to care a lot about it and Noda was really doing a great work with it in previous chapters.

Asirpa, Sugimoto, and Ogata were among the most complicate, Asirpa was doing a lot of personal growth, Sugimoto was dealing with his PTSD and I’ve lost count of how many issues plagued Ogata.

Credits when it’s due, the manga didn’t completely drop the psychological aspect, but it ended up mostly overshadowed by the action scenes and neglected or going nowhere. “Golden Kamuy” is also an action manga, and I’m sure there’s a part of the fandom which prefers this but I fear I belong to the side that favored the psychological side.

I don’t mind Ogata asks, though I’m trying to put them all in a single post so as not to fill people’s dashboards with posts saying similar things. Sorry if I gave you a different impression.

I wouldn’t say Ogata feels no guilt for his parents’ death, at least for what his mother is concerned (but I’ll develop this more later, after I reply to the following anon ask if, it’s okay for you) and I fear, from the way Noda constructed the scene, we couldn’t get more out of him. This isn’t him rationalizing his feelings, this is him breaking down. It’s emotional, not rational.

I’m… not sure which idea of his you think Asirpa took later on. If it’s the one about the gold bringing misfortune and leading people to more fights and death the first to suggest it is Makanakkuru (if we go by the volumes in the story) otherwise it’s Kimuspu (if we just follow the chronological order) and it’s overall correct.

And yeah, it would have been great if Ogata’s death was used for… something… but ultimately the story and the characters have no time for it. Asirpa and Sugimoto have to face Tsurumi so what happens to Ogata feels like a parenthesis, which is why I wish Ogata’s death had happened sooner, so it could be processed better.

Well, it would be great if Tsurumi could actually promote some food for thoughts… but I fear if we’ll get it, it’ll be when all has ended.

Chap 216 in a way foreshadowed the situation we’re in now, with the group chasing after a white bear in a reckless manner hoping in a maximum gain, with the result they only worsen Sugimoto’s wounds and lose the bear. Chasing the gold was equivalent to chasing that bear in such a way, a lot of harm and no good came from it but somehow the group didn’t even realize the lesson.

I wonder if, at the end, Noda will remind us of this parallel or not. We’ll see.

I appreciate all of the writing and thinking you do about GK. Thank you for being in this fandom and enriching it with your work. :) I do disagree with how I interpret Ogata's finale (and only chapter 310, I'm with you on Noda assassinating him being smart, cautious and independent character) though: I think the poison gave him an epiphany into realising, that he was indeed normal and not defective. And him killing himself instead of leaving it to the poison was his (only) way of taking responsibility for the sins he committed. I don't think he wanted to escape his pain by dying. He was so calm and collected, when he readied the rifle and specifically went for the eye, instead of the forehead, as a target. That seems like his analytical and composed self, and his guilt integrated back into one person - and allowed him do die with peace of mind. (This interpretation is actually what keeps me from not being completely devastated with how the story turned out, so I am quite invested in seeing it this way...) So, you who has been having issues with the plot for a while, would naturally disagree, but i'd like to hear your thoughts on it nonetheless ^^

Thank you for enjoying my work!

Having different interpretations is fine, I don’t really own the truth and that scene is complicate. I’ve seen tons of different takes and who knows which one is the right one and if your interpretation helps you, then it’s all the more good for you to embrace it. I thank you for wanting to share your interpretation and for wanting to know mine. I love to hear other people’s interpretations and if they enjoy to hear mine it makes me happy!

And yes, I view the scene in a way that’s slightly different from yours or from the anon of the previous message. So, if it’s okay with you, I’ll go and explain my thoughts.

I fear it’s pretty long as this will be more of a meta about the whole of Ogata’s psychological arc more than just about his suicide in chap 310 because 310 goes back and forth in his story and so it feels easier to cover it all. I apologize to you and to the previous anon for the length and thank you again for wanting to hear my two cents. So, without further ado…

LET’S HAVE A TRAVEL IN OGATA’S WAY TO DEAL WITH GUILT

So, how do I interpret the whole thing that happened to Ogata in chap 310, if I discharge the idea it’s just ghost possession (an idea as I’ve said in the past which I personally disliked but that was foreshadowed and might work well for Japanese readers as it would be digging into their culture) and consider it from a psychological standpoint (which might not be wrong either)?

Ogata killed his mother when he was a child. Afterward he should have felt guilt, all the more because his father didn’t even come back to her.

Now, guilt and the shame it causes are extremely unpleasant emotions and with good reasons. They exist to stop us from doing again something we regretted doing afterward. However children don’t like to have to deal with unpleasant emotions, their brain isn’t ready yet to unpack them on its own and turn them into something that help us take a better course in life. They need the help of an adult to do it and, if they don’t get it, they do the only thing they know how to do on their own, try to push the painful thing away from them with various maladaptive copying methods.

Some persuade themselves the misdeed never happened, some push the blame on others, some… just suppress the guilt and shame. We’re adults, we know this is wrong, but they’re children and for them this is the equivalent of self defense. The brain must protect the child’s psyche. What’s painful needs to go away one way or the other and there’s no one who is capable to blindly believe to his brain’s lies like a child.

But while overall this seems a quick and easy fix, the brain isn’t really capable to cause the guilt to disappear entirely by just pretending it isn’t there. Basically, metaphorically closing the child’s eyes won’t really erase what the child doesn’t want to see.

Feelings that don’t get unpacked and processed in a healthy way remain trapped inside the child, behind the walls the brain has built to keep the child from seeing them and, therefore, feeling bad. The guilt bangs on the wall of its prison, it causes subconscious stress but, exactly because it’s subconscious now, it’s even harder to deal with it. The more it goes on, the more damaging it is. The walls chips, guilt oozes out but the conscious can’t even name it because it can’t see it.

Meanwhile, since the memory of guilt was suppressed along with guilt, it couldn’t work as a stop from repeating the same mistake, so more mistakes can been done, then guilt is suppressed again and stuck into the same prison with the previous guilt.

On the surface it seems easier for the brain to do so, the prison now already exists so it becomes a fast process to stuck the guilt in it, and the person can really delude themselves they don’t feel guilt at all. However new guilt adds in to the pressure of the previous one.

Walls will be eventually torn down as they won’t be able to hold forever and, if the process is too abrupt, all the guilt will get free and pour on the psyche like a crashing Tsunami with devastating effects.

And that’s more or less what happens to Ogata.

He makes again the same mistakes under the false beliefs he won’t feel guilty, even though guilt slowly oozes out of him and fill its prison.

Chap 243 shows a scene in which Ogata asked for confirmation of his mind setting to Usami. Asking for confirmation is the easiest signal no matter what you say, you aren’t secure of your beliefs…

This seems hinted also in chap 165. As Ogata insists that nobody feels guilty there’s a swirling shading on him, which actually is normally used to indicate inner turmoil. To make matters worse, Yuusaku, differently from Usami, doesn’t validate Ogata’s beliefs.

It’s worth to mention chap 243, 165 and 187 contrast slightly with each other as in 243 Ogata seems more aware of his insecurity (in fact in the volume version Noda adds a scene in which he questions if he’s the odd one because he was unloved… even though since Usami has agreed with his mind setting, this would make two of them and Usami had loving parents) while in chap 165 it seems less aware and in 187 he has worked out a conditio sine qua non his theory that everyone can’t feel guilt works, ‘you won’t feel guilty IF YOU HAVE A REASON TO KILL SOMEONE’ a condition he didn’t include in 165 where his point of view was just, nobody feels guilty when they kill, everyone fakes.

Whatever.

Anyway Ogata kills Yuusaku in hope this will lead Hanazawa to him and then kills Hanazawa in exchange of a last, and possibly first, talk with him.

Guilt fills him just the same and gets suppressed and, since years have gone by from his mother’s murder, his brain is fast into placing guilt in the prison built for it. The walls are old and torn though.

Again chap 310 implies we never see Yuusaku’s face out of his guilt and his inability to face it, and this can be applied to his mother’s face as well. Chap 310 won’t even bother to reveal Tome’s face. On the other side we saw Hanazawa’s face just fine in the flashback so it’s hard to quantify how much Ogata regretted killing him and if he did at all.

Hanazawa was, after all, a complete stranger to him, and one that discharged him and his mother and showed disgust toward them. He and Ogata are tied together by a biological link but that’s all, he has no kind memories of his father so murdering him might not have made such a big of an impression same as murdering his mother or Yuusaku.

We go on with the story.

Chap 243 implies it was already leaking out more consistently than it did previously by showing that, when Ogata was sleeping and his mental defenses were low, he calls his brother and is overheard by Usami, who immediately figures Ogata, deep down, is regretting killing Yuusaku. On the opposite side Ogata is still fully in denial but, if the leaks were to keep being slow, maybe they could have forced Ogata to confront them so he would have lead with them in a better manner. Or not.

We’ll never know because it wasn’t meant to go that way (and because we can’t tell if he dreamt Yuusaku again out of his fever dream in 164/165 because the manga never showed him doing so and the fact it happened in 243 might be merely due to him not having fully recovered yet… though this would mess up a bit with the timeline but whatever).

Anyway we don’t really know in details how Ogata was prior to the gold hunt, but through the gold hunt we see he’s a risk taker when trying to reach his goal. Very likely it’s not all bravado and recklessness.

Ogata’s maladaptive copying mechanism is showing its downsides.

Not only it doesn’t stop Ogata from making the same mistakes over and over but leads him to be subconsciously suicidal which is a side reaction suppressed guilt can cause. It’s not conscious otherwise Ogata would have just gunned himself much sooner, but it’s there, subconscious, and it makes him reckless.

It’ll get worse though.

In chap 164 Ogata gets delirious with fever, his mental defense weakens and he starts seeing Yuusaku in place of Asirpa. If before Ogata would see Yuusaku just in dreams which Ogata might or might not remember, now he sees him in front of himself. Kind Yuusaku, mortally wounded Yuusaku, he’s in front of him in place of Asirpa. A part of Ogata’s consciousness probably starts connecting the dots but is again suppressed as Ogata continues to deny everything because it’s safer, it’s less painful and he never fully graduated from being a child who believes if he closes his eyes bad things will disappear for real.

Again, maybe with time (and, likely, with help from an external source) Ogata might have processed it better but that’s not that kind of story and, as he gains strength due to recovering from the fever, his mental defenses go back in place and he likely goes back on seeing Asirpa instead than Yuusaku.

It was just the fever, nothing more, he likely told himself.

Only it wasn’t so simple.

On the ice field, in an effort to get Asirpa’s cooperation, Ogata put in Sugimoto’s mouth the words he wanted his father to tell him and he’s so emotionally involved by his narration he makes the mistake of telling Asirpa Sugimoto would want to eat something that’s absolutely not connected with Sugi, anglerfish nabe instead than, let’s say ‘citatap’ or something else he KNEW Sugimoto liked (Ogata couldn’t know of the dried persimmons but picking a random food was way more risky than trying with a food he knew Sugimoto liked to eat). Asirpa discovers the lie and Ogata cracks a little.

He challenges Asirpa to kill him.

Officially because she’s like him and so she can kill too if she has a reason.

According to chap 310, because a part of him, which he still keeps suppressed, has realized his own sense of guilt thanks to her and now he wants to be killed by her.

Yes, the mind can fracture in such a way, keeping your wishes hidden from your conscious yet moving to act you in a certain way and manufacturing fake reasons so that you don’t have to face your real ones but also yes, I would have wished Noda had explained it better.

Anyway Asirpa refuses. He tries to threaten her into compliance, and we might wonder if he sees Yuusaku as he aims at her. We’ll never know if he sees him or just thinks at him as he says ‘it’s simply not right that people like you exist’ (the you is a plural in Japanese meaning it doesn’t refer just to Asirpa).

Asirpa, by mistake, hits him with a poisoned arrow.

Ogata loses his eye but, later, manages to escape and go back to Hijikata’s group.

The loss of his eye can have caused him to suffer of minor visual hallucinations which might have worsened his state as they can be a consequence of enucleation. As Ogata got himself a glass eye he might have been told he might get them, so the scientific explanation would work for him also as a way to deny them, to deny that his hallucination mattered and were caused by guilt.

Or not.

Chap 164 has Kiroranke say the Orok believed Ogata was possessed by an Anba, an evil creature (悪い化物 ‘warui bakemono’), and connect the whole thing with Yuusaku. Ogata will call Yuusaku a akuryō (悪霊 “evil spirit”) in 253 and 310 so he too embraced the idea a ghost is haunting him (let’s remember his father cursed him and that being haunted by the ghost of the one you’re killed are part of Japanese traditional beliefs).

So yeah, it can be Ogata is being plagued by more hallucinations which are actually for a physical reason, the guilt that’s slowly oozing out of its prison pushes him to interpret them as ‘Yuusaku haunting him’, making him embrace superstitions, which is convenient as he can continue to deny his guilt by painting it as an evil ghost haunting him.

The story goes on and doesn’t really dig on him beyond two occasions in which he tries to shoot Asirpa… and senses in his blind spot ‘someone’, the visual telling us that someone is none else but Yuusaku.

The fracture in Ogata’s mind is more visible.

He tells himself he would be fine by killing Asirpa and tries to do so and his sense of guilt goes to plague him in roundabout ways as he isn’t ready to face it, bet effectively stopping him from killing Asirpa.

Ogata still manages to kill Usami, and this might have been important because Ogata might have realized on the ice field, despite threatening to kill Asirpa, he just remained staring at her and didn’t press the trigger and so this can have caused him some doubt. But then he kills Usami no problem and this proves not only he can shoot accurately but that he can shoot to kill.

The thing with Asirpa should have been a fluke, he can tell himself, and dismiss he just stood there with his rifle aimed and did nothing.

Though Noda didn’t really develop this so it might be it’s just me.

And so we get to 304/309/310.

People know I’ve plenty of grievances for how those chapters handled the story, despite them confirming almost all my speculations.

I’ll skip 304 for now.

309 shows Ogata aiming at Sugimoto at such a close distance even the worst shooter could have blown his head off aware Asirpa is watching him and shooting.

I don’t know if the bullet at least hit some part of Sugimoto, it clearly didn’t blew his brain out. Then Ogata recharges his rifle, turns and is hit by a arrow.

Ogata pulls the arrow out.

As far as we know he never had a crash course on how this isn’t a bright move or on how he also has to remove the flesh around it as he wasn’t around when Kumagishi was shoot (apparently in the exactly same spot and Asirpa didn’t even try to save him because since the arrow was in his stomach there was nothing they could do). Anyway Ogata wastes precious time pulling out just the tip of the arrow by carving his stomach to pull it out.

It tells us he didn’t know that this wouldn’t be enough, that nothing would be enough.

Ogata talks about ‘something that has been bothering him for a while and that got resolved’.

The vague phrasing that really has no reason to be vague could refer to Asirpa being able to kill or not, as his wording seems to match the one he used in 187 as @deepfriedegg​ observed or they can refer to him having been able to kill Usami as he might have been bothered by the fact he couldn’t kill Asirpa and the fact he can’t die yet is tied to how he has to prove himself he can shoot her… because if what he consciously wanted was just to kill her he could have let the poison do his work.

So the fracture in his mind becomes even stronger.

However his stress level rise too high for him to handle. He’s poisoned, he has a wound in his stomach and one in his leg and fighting with Sugimoto, as brief as it was, wasn’t the equivalent of a stroll in a park.

His mental defenses crash down and, instead than seeing Yuusaku in his blind spot, he sees Yuusaku ahead of himself.

The following scene is confusing but the easiest psychological interpretation is that all he had kept trapped in his subconscious, all his guilt, all his fears, all his negative thoughts overwhelmed him.

It could happen because Ogata was in a situation of extreme stress, but exactly because he’s at his weakest psychological point and has suppressed all that for so long, he’s absolutely not equipped to face it.

Among his worries there is that his mother’s murder was meaningless, which hints he felt guilty for it or otherwise he wouldn’t have cared if it mattered or not… and Tome’s face is still not shown (but maybe Noda will fix this in the volume).

The way I see it, Ogata can’t stew in it any longer or face the more complicate questions because at the moment he can’t face not even the simplest ones. It’s a tsunami, even the visual implies that his head is spinning and water is dragging him away.

Him begging to ‘stop it!’ and ‘that’s enough!! Don’t think anymore!! I lose!! No more!! Don’t think anymore!!’ it’s him trying to apply his maladaptive copying mechanism of suppressing what cause him pain, but it clearly can’t work anymore. The prison for his unpleasant feelings which he built over the years has shattered and he can’t push them in any longer.

When this happens the mind breaks and, often, presents solutions that basically lead to suicide (or, if you’re ‘lucky’ just to self harm… or to harming others… it really depend on the situation) as the only way to stop the pain because the pain comes from within yourself and you’re all of sudden your worst enemy and you might not even realize it because you aren’t thinking straight and you can’t realize harming yourself is not the way to fix things.

Going for his eye is not just symbolic of how the bullet came out of Yuusaku’s eye, but an actually ‘safer’ way to stop yourself from seeing things and thinking (moments ago Ogata reminded himself in order to hit a bear’s brain he should have gone for the eye not for the head).

It’s unlikely Ogata is calm as he pulls the trigger.

Not only he was overwhelmed a moment ago, but his seeing eye is open wide, which isn’t a sign of inner calmness.

If we look at the scene from a psychological angle, what we see is not exactly him having an epiphany in which he experience sudden and striking insight about his guilt, it’s more him having an episode of psychosis (to not confuse with psychopathy, psychosis is an abnormal condition of the mind that results in difficulties determining what is real and what is not real) through which his suppressed emotions come to light.

One would need help to overcome this and Ogata gets none.

People watch him break down but they are his enemies and, even if they weren’t, they aren’t equipped to help him, they don’t get what’s going on, they can’t even predict what will happen, in fact they’re all surprised by the outcome.

Ogata fundamentally dies alone and his death, at the moment, hadn’t been used by the plot. It didn’t affect any of the characters in a significant way. It just happens so that the cast can move to the next step.

In fact Asirpa had already decided to kill people for the sake of her goal, starting with attempting to do it with Ogata and, if she felt pain for him, it lasted two panels… but it might also be she’s just saddened/worried by her resolution to handle the mess on her own and ask Sugimoto and Shiraishi to remain behind so they’ll stay safe as an old defining trait of Asirpa was her fear to be left alone.

Everyone is free to speculate on this but, for now, she doesn’t seem affected by what had happened, nor were Sugimoto or Shiraishi. It happened. Let’s move on.

So that’s the end of my two cents. I might be wrong of course as I’m not Noda and my interpretation is influenced by my studies, my experiences and by my culture and they’re no the same of the intended target audience so I guess everyone can choose his own while we wait for the release of the volume and see if things in it will be different.

Still thank you to you both for wanting to hear me out.

[lostinlogicerror]

I looked at that drawing every day, imagining what she would be like. What does her voice sound like? What does she look like? I really wanna meet her! I fell in love, and that's why I decided to escape. I got imprisoned and escaped from all prisons in the country. They eventually began to call me... The Escape King.

[piduai]

Interview with Noda Satoru from the Golden Kamuy fanbook

sharing anywhere is fine, but please credit me.

Q: Tell me how you feel about passing 6 years of serialization. Noda: I was already serializing at the time of my debut, so I guess I’d be able to give a summary when I’m finished. I don’t really think about how many years it’s been, it’s merely a checkpoint.

Q: What made you decide to become a mangaka? Noda: I feel like I wrote it down as my goal in my yearbook back in middle school. I also wanted to become a movie director, but as a mangaka you can create the entire thing by yourself. 

When Golden Kamuy just took off I was living in a tiny apartment and the postman, a young fellow and a reader of Young Jump, realized that I’m Noda Satoru. The magazine was sending me a lot of things, so it was rather obvious. “Are you the author of Golden Kamuy?”, he asked in a surprised tone while looking around the cramped entryway. I could feel feel his confusion regarding the fact that that vast Hokkaido world of the manga was being created in this modest apartment. Or maybe he just expected me to be making more money and afford a better place. Anyhow, I just thought again about how a manga can be created in even the smallest room in the universe.

Q: Who is your favorite character and why? Noda: As always, it’s Tanigaki. But well, I love all of them. I want to showcase only the best parts of them, and it hurts when I fail. For example I’m very happy that there’s a character who stirs the pot as well as Usami. He’d be Katsuo in the world of Sazae-san.  

Q: Which characters are the easiest to draw, and which ones are the most difficult? Noda: Characters like Shiraishi, Tsukishima and Nagakura, they don’t have a lot of hair and even if they turn out a little ugly their faces are well-defined so it’s easy to draw. In general faces that are strongly distorted and resemble caricatures are easy. Meanwhile Asirpa, Kiroranke and Inkarmat have neat facial structures on top of wearing Ainu clothing, so they are a very high-calorie effort for me. Ogata and Kikuta are difficult too. Their faces are distinctive and I have to make them look cool too, which is wearing me out the most.

Q: Have you decided on all 24 convicts at the very start of the story? Noda: Wouldn’t I sound like a badass if I said that that I have? Anyway. There were the ones that were based off real-life Meiji era criminals, such as Shiraishi, Kumagishi Chouan or the lightning couple, and of course there was Hijikata.

Q: Tell me of a funny thing from the manga that you are fond of. Noda: Gansoku’s “Hah! ☆”. And also when Koito Jr. Was flapping his arms and legs around trying to keep himself in mid-air.

Q: Why did you decide on Otaru as the starting point? Noda: I am from Hokkaido, so I’m familiar with Otaru and Sapporo. Otaru is close to both the mountains and the sea. Sapporo used to be a swampland, it’s wide and flat and there is no sea. Otaru is a place where foreigners come and go, there are many criminals roaming around creating danger, and money is found. There aren’t many big cities in Hokkaido. There were Ainu living in Otaru but sources are scarce, however Nakagawa-sensei, the supervisor over the Ainu language, told me not to worry too much about the difference of location, so I figured it would be best to make it Otaru.

Q: Was there any real life experience you had while growing up in Hokkaido that you turned into a scenario? Noda: When I was about 19 someone I knew told me that there is a locust graveyard on a nearby mountain, which sounded so ridiculous I had to laugh in their face. Turns out it indeed was a heap of locusts and their eggs left after a locust plague, that place was the Teineyamaguchi locust mound (a real historical site). I realized I ended up using this in my story. I owe that person an apology.

Q: Was there any scene that was particularly difficult to draw? Could you elaborate on it? Noda: The time Sugimoto went against Nihei and Tanigaki. It gave me a very hard time. Who goes where and does what, how does Nihei carry Asirpa, stuff like this. I had no time to waste either, I just remember that sequence overall driving me insane. 

There was also the sequence with Wilk, Sofia and Kiroranke being at Hasegawa’s photo studio. It’s really frustrating to draw something that you know will bore the readers, the story flow becomes less exciting too. I was praying for everyone to have a little more patience and keep reading, because the twist was so good.

Q: If you were to take part in the gold hunt, which group would you like to belong to? Noda: It seems that Hijikata’s group doesn’t have funding problems, and because Kadokura is there the atmosphere is relaxed too. I’d go there.

Q: If you were to find all that gold, how would you use it? Noda: No idea. Had a couple when I was younger, though.

Q: Were you planning to eventually transfer the action to Sakhalin from the very beginning of the series? Noda: Asirpa and Kiroranke have roots there, so I anticipated that the story will eventually move to Sakhalin. I also expected to have to travel to Amur river myself, but couldn’t go after all, only went as far as Khabarovsk. 

I was thinking of making Sugimoto eat permafrost mammoth. There was talk of a research team or an ivory excavation team’s dog eating mammoth. However there was no reason to make Sugimoto and Co go as up north as needed for permafrost, so I scrapped the idea.

Q: Tell me something about the hardships you experienced while doing research is Sakhalin. Noda: It was tough, but fun. I was only able to understand the clear differences between Nivkh and Orok people by going there; I couldn't by only looking at records and materials while in Japan. 

Complete unrelated, but I was surprised by how many stray dogs wander around there. One time my cameraman and I ended up being chased by one while looking for a factory and we had to run for it. The beast was big, about the size of a German Shepherd. The guide also warned us about junkies, it was really scary.

I also went to the Japanese military pillbox over 50th parallel north and prayed at a cenotaph deep in the mountains. I met a group of Japanese people in the hotel by the place where it's said you can still find remains of Japanese soldiers and their driver, a Russian, seemed to help with collection of the remains on the regular. He said that he's doing it out of reverence, even as a former enemy. As a Japanese, I felt gratitude. The 7th Division are villains in my story, but I don't have any personal bias against either side.

Q: What were the biggest differences between drawing Hokkaido and Sakhalin? Noda: Well... it's Russia. Even though Sakhalin is so close, it's already Europe. The structure of houses is strikingly different. There's also the differences between Hokkaido Ainu and Sakhalin Ainu, and differences between Orok and Nivkh people. There is no manga that will conveniently lay the differences of those down for you. 

It seems that the Orok and Nivkh's relation with Japan only got more difficult by the beginning of Showa era, there is only one person in the whole of Japan who can supervise on the Orok language. The professors in cultural studies I consult for Golden Kamuy are truly top-level; not only are they tremendously knowledgeable, they also understand how important to me is to stay impartial.

The wildlife, as well. There's a biogeographical boundary between Hokkaido and Sakhalin, observing animals I would never be able to see in Hokkaido was riveting. 

Q: Did Sugimoto really have a hidden plan during the whole stenka business? Noda: No idea. Even if he used it as a pretext to get everyone involved, though... cut him some slack. He's only a man. Sometimes he just wants to fight and win. Not for Ume-chan or Asirpa-san, just for the sake of proving to himself that he's strong.

Q: Your art is dynamic and detailed. I think your style changed quite a bit with time, though. How would you describe yourself as an artist? Noda: I want to preface this by saying that in no way do I think of myself as more skilled than other mangaka, but if you're drawing everyday for more than 10 hours you're going to improve a lot eventually, whether you want it or not. People who are able to keep the same style for years without change are the ones who are impressive, because it means that they achieved the peak of their potential. Ageing and health problems influence your art a lot, you know. I try to draw by observing. I use a lot of references. Drawing by memory alone is not a good thing.

Speaking of other artists, I once had one of the assistants I had working for me for years draw me a door knob from memory, and the result was a truncated cone resembling pre-packaged pudding. The actual shape of a door knob has an intricately angular circular shape. It's the result of being unobservant in everyday life. Good art requires constant observation.

Q: What was the foundation for your style? Is there an artist you were influenced or inspired by? Noda: Araki Hirohiko-sensei, for sure. During my time as an assistant, many authors told me to not even try to be original when it comes to battle abilities, it's already been done in JoJo, it has it all. He's kind of the Beatles of this industry, isn't he? 

By the way, I usually have no intention of parodying JoJo in Golden Kamuy, but my friends will tell me that they identified this or that reference from time to time. I read Part 1 about 30 years ago but I was obsessed, so maybe some things were just left in my subconscious. I only did one obvious parody, during the stenka fight. Funnily enough that trope started in Fist of the North Star, though, not JoJo.

Q: What's one thing that gives you the most motivation to write? Noda: Fan letters. I know how straining it is to write long and neat sentences by hand, and am thankful for them. I'm happy that people go that far to share their thoughts about my work with me. I'm really grateful to the people who keep reading and supporting Golden Kamuy.

Q: Did you have an interest in Ainu culture before starting the series? Noda: I did not. I'll be glad if my work makes people interested in the Ainu. Prejudice is born out of ignorance, so if you want to learn about the Ainu, don't limit yourself to Hokkaido only; there are museums all around Japan, and they have knowledgeable curators. It's important to remember to take into account the time period and the occupation of the person on which the research materials are based when you're trying to learn about the subject.

Q: You showed us a lot of aspects of life during Meiji and Taisho eras. Tell us about what surprised or impressed you in the process of research. Noda: It's not that I was particularly knowledgeable, so having to check every single thing was quite exhausting. The Ainu, the military, katanas - all of these needed research on my part. 

There are more regulations and rules set for things out there than one could assume, and mangaka who base their works on real life need to be especially careful about this. You have to take into account things like the size of the buttons on a military uniform, how a tea cup is held, and and how different people talk in different ways. For movies there's staff working on costumes and props, there's the cast, there are screenwriters, but in a manga you are the one responsible for every single detail. I wish I had a time machine and travel back to those eras. There are things I couldn't get right here and there that I keep having regrets about.

Q: Golden Kamuy was the main visual in the British Museum manga exhibition between May and August in 2019. I know you went there in person. How was it? Noda: The trip felt like a reward for all of my efforts. The exhibition is jam-packed by opening time, but I got special treatment and they let me inside early in the morning so I could walk around the vast British Museum in solitude. I also travelled between Jack the Ripper's crime scenes at night by taxi.

The driver in a taxi I caught by chance was wonderful, she looked up photos of the crime scenes and surroundings taken at the time of investigation on her smartphone and showed them to me one by one, saying things like "the third victim was found here!". 

I've always had a soft spot for Jack the Ripper, back in middle school I even wrote a screenplay for a school festival stage and played him in it myself. It was done in very poor taste, like that one scene in the Addams Family movie where there are arms blown away and fountains of blood gushing out. The audience loved it. 

Q: Please leave a message for the readers. Or maybe some advice for the troubled youth. Noda: I want people to say that everyone in Golden Kamuy had a satisfying ending, and I want that for everyone involved more than anything. As for advice for the troubled youth, there's none. Life is survival of the fittest. The weak ones get eaten.

[goldenkamuyhunting]

Ramblings and crazy theory time about GK chap 274 “Obsession”

So this chapter is mostly a chapter that works to expose stuff except the most important one.

Come on, Sugimoto, let us know what you know about Yuusaku. We need to know. For science. No, okay, we’re just curious, that’s it.

So anyway, exposition time.

As the guys are at Sapporo station Asirpa tells them a story about an Ainu woman making beautiful red clothes. However, when her husband wore them, wet them under the rain and then rested his iron axe against them, they changed colour and turned brown.

Asirpa interprets this by saying the womans’ ‘obsession' for a perfect red colour made it delicate.

Meanwhile we see Shiraishi walking away from the bottle-mobile carrying Asirpa’s things. Now, okay, Asirpa has just lived a traumatic experience but I’m not really fond of how they turned Shiraishi into the boy that carries the luggage. Whatever, as he walks away he looks back at Boutarou’s corpse still in the bottle-mobile, thanking him, acknowledging him as the king ‘Thank you, king’.

In a way it’s important, as Shiraishi has never taken seriously Boutarou’s dream yet he now validates it, he can recognize its importance and the fact Boutarou lived to fulfil it… and, it’s possible, in a way he inherits it, he inherits the fact he’ll pass Boutarou’s memory on, so as not to let him die out completely.

On another note… I hope he didn’t have to skin him.

I would get the sense of it, how he might want to be the one to take care of it because Boutarou was his friend and saved his life but… I think skinning a person has also a damaging psychological effect so I don’t want this to happen to Shiraishi.

Anyway Asirpa goes on and remembers when Boutarou and Kadokura died the wet skins touched the metal stove, they changed colour.

So although @okapimstari​ was so kind to point out to me how the boiler should have been made in copper… well, evidently Noda took artistic licence and made it in iron. Or did they use iron stoves in the past?

No idea, anyway Asirpa noticed how one of the skins touching it has turned black while another hasn’t, which was what I expected for that scene to meant originally

Anyway Asirpa points out how Sugimoto uses alum to tan the skins and Nagakura confirms they do as well so Asirpa suggests Edogai instead used another method to tan the skin, basically guessing Edogai uses tannins from a spiketail plant, which would match with what Kumagishi suggested, that Edogai wanted to make fake skins that were better than the original.

At this point we see they had placed 6 skins on the rails, under the rain.

And here things can become troublesome.

Likely of whose 6 skins, 5 are the ones Ariko brought back. The last skin should be the one that Hijikata found in Edogai’s house. But Hijikata also had another fake skin, the one he got from the oil seller. When Asirpa figures out that, among those 6 skins, the skins that didn’t follow the rules were fake but that she has 2 who follow the rules...

...she, Nagakura and Co, instead than praising Tsurumi for his guts, should have realized this means there were 2 MORE FAKE SKINS UNACCOUNTED FOR and should have checked the other skins whose provenience they weren’t sure so that they would have figured out the oil seller skin is fake too.

The fact that a fake skin could still follow the rules isn’t so hard to figure out, after all, as Edogai was writing Kanji at random and could pick some which would fit.

But whatever, maybe they’ll realized they’ve to check those skins too and it will be revealed in the volume version… or they just didn’t try this method on the skin which already changed colour (but in this case why they didn’t test Ogata’s skin as well? Asirpa doubted it too)... or they’ll have troubles solving the code until they realize which can make for a more interesting plot. We’ll see.

Anyway Asirpa reveals that the key to solve the code is her father’s Ainu name ‘Horkew Oskoni’.

She gets such a sad look as she say so I feel bad for her.

Sugimoto comments it makes sense as what he realized in Karafuto was that some of the kanji on the skins shared the same sound when one would read them…

...and I facepalm here because this is irrelevant.

I mean, Wilk could very well insert in the skins kanji that read ‘pa’ 14 times and this would mean nothing because ‘pa’ isn’t the right kanji.

Either Wilk had been cautious to repeat only the kanji that could be read as his name… which gave people an additional way to figure out the code should they not know his name, or he mixed them all at random so that who didn’t know the key couldn’t say ‘okay, let’s consider all the kanji that sound the same and assume they’re the one which are relevant and discharge the others’ and then started a game of scrabble to see which word they could form with them so as to backtrack the key. But whatever, let’s let this slide.

Shiraishi, hearing how the name means “to catch up with the wolves” figures Asirpa remembered thanks to Kiro, another of Shiraishi’s friends who died in this gold hunt.

I wonder if Shiraishi is going to have a more relevant role in future developments since all this clearly affected him.

We’re shown a panel in which Sofia, Hijikata and Nagakura talk. I do wonder if Hijikata knows Russia or if Sofia is using her broken Japanese to talk with him but whatever, they’re probably coming to an agreement or some sort of allegiance.

Meanwhile Asirpa answers to Ushiyama’s question confirming she told Tsurumi about the code, the visual giving us an image of Tsurumi rolling above the fake skins under Tsukishima’s eyes. Really, Tsukishima, wake up, this is not a normal man you should follow.

Ushiyama points out they’ve to hurry so Sugimoto says they’ve to bet on the info Boutarou gave them about the place in which the Ainu gathered the gold long ago, so they should solve the code while going there, as the new hideout is likely near it.

To go there they decide to take the train.

There’s a panel showing they’re reached by Kantarou, Toni Anji, Kirawus and Kadokura before getting aboard the train. As Ogata, in the previous chapter, noticed Kirawus and Kadokura, I wonder if he is merely tailing them or he even went so far as talking with them.

We’ll see.

Anyway, once aboard the train, Hijikata points out they need a spot in which they can spread the skins so they can work on solving the code. Shiraishi points out the first class is perfect for that.

A first class passenger though, in a bit of a rude fashion, take in their poor look and warns them they’ve to hurry back to the third class.

Now… Hijikata usually has plenty of money so maybe he bought them tickets for the first class… but since they didn’t march straight to it but considered the third class I’m not so sure.

So, although the guy was rude with them, I don’t find particularly funny how Sugimoto just grabbed him and suck him out of the wagon in order to take possession of the first class wagon, and this stay true even if Hijikata is willing to pay the extra for a first class ticket for all of them.

He doesn’t own the train and that guy, albeit clearly rude, paid for the ticket, So Sugimoto is just being a bully, worse than the over mentioned rude guy.

Anyway, as Asirpa Hijikata and Nagakura start spreading the skins in attempt to work out the solution of the code...

...Sugimoto and Shiraishi just enjoy the softness of the seats in the first class, which are like VIP seats, Sugimoto falling asleep, rocked by the train.

Due to Shiraishi’s comment though, Sugimoto ends up remembering/dreaming Kikuta, telling him he has a VIP seat for hell which makes for one hell of a bad omen for their trip...

(I think you all read in the notes how this was the litteral meaning of the sentence both Sugimoto and Kikuta said back in the past which, back then was translated as ‘rolling a red carpet for them’ because in English it justs works better)...

... anyway Kikuta tells Sugimoto due to this Sugimoto should forget about him… and about Hanazawa Yuusaku too.

‘Wasurete kure. Hanazawa Yūsaku no koto mo zenbu wasurero’

忘れてくれ。花沢勇作のことも全部忘れろ

“Forget about me. Forget everything about Hanazawa Yuusaku also.”

Kikuta is wearing civilian clothes, his hair is cut short and his face is shaven as he smokes, which, in addition to the years who went by, might explain why Sugimoto didn’t immediately recognize him.

Sugimoto also has his hair cut short and no scars.

As Sugi got his scars very early at the start of the war, this is likely PRIOR to the start of the war, maybe when Sugimoto was in Tokyo about to be recruited for it.

It’s hard to tell though, as it can be also during his wandering prior to go back to his village and discover Umeko had married… but since he’s in a city I would say it’s after he made sure he wasn’t contagious any longer.

Kikuta is from the Saitama prefecture, which borders with Tokyo, so, combining it with how Kikuta is a spy for Central, and Sugimoto is from Kanagawa prefecture (which also borders with Tokyo) and got enlisted in the Tokyo Division, it makes sense he might be in the Tokyo area.

Now… the implications of the discussions are that Kikuta did something for Sugimoto that might have put the latter in troubles since the two seem to be in good relations and yet Kikuta urges him to forget about him, as if to say ‘do not care about what could happen to me, I’m a bad guy and I’ll end up in hell’.

Kikuta then suggests to Sugimoto to forget about Hanazawa Yuusaku, which, in case someone has forgotten, is the name of Ogata’s half-brother… which prior to the war should have been in the Imperial Japanese Army Academy which, again, is located in Tokyo so yeah, I’ll say they should be in Tokyo.

So what’s the connection between Yuusaku and Sugimoto?

In all of Ogata’s memories Yuusaku was presented as a model boy, a good boy, DESPITE BEING HANAZAWA’S SON AND HANAZAWA BEING A JERK.

Ogata assumes his nice disposition is due to being raised with love by loving parents.

Now, it can be that Yuusaku did something nice for Sugimoto but still Kikuta is urging him to forget Yuusaku.

It would match with the Yuusaku we knew up till now, who’s a nice boy… but I somehow don’t get this wibe from this conversation.

SO, REALLY CRAZY THEORIZING TIME UP, CONSIDER YOURSELF WARNED YOU’RE ABOUT TO ENTER IN THE TWILIGHT ZONE!

Back in the far past, Sugimoto suggested Suzukawa should disguise as a high ranking officer from a division in Tokyo and Ogata shoot down that idea, saying that the higher you to in the army, the better everyone knows each other so they would see right through a fake high-ranking officer. He said so looking down, as if he had experienced something similar and, back then, many had wondered which could be the story behind this.

So what if the story behind this is that the Yuusaku he met actually wasn’t the real Yuusaku?

Please, follow me in this crazy theory.

Let’s assume something happened to Yuusaku, be it that he died or that he decided he’s not up for going to war with all that high mortality rate and escaped.

Depending on what happened to him, it can be that, in order not to lose face, either Hanazawa or Tsurumi covered up his death and replaced him.

It might explain why Yuusaku doesn’t seem to look at all like Hanazawa, down to his nose who looks more like Kikuta’s than Hanazawa.

But the trick would be quickly discovered should Yuusaku interact with higher ups.

So Yuusaku instead tries to spend all his time with the lower ranking soldiers. If the trick is staged by Tsurumi, it might be Tsurumi himself which instructed him to use as excuse to hand with the lower ranks, Ogata. Ogata doesn’t know ‘Yuusaku’ isn’t actually his brother, while the poor ‘Yuusaku’ just obeys to all the instructions given to him by who had placed him there. This might be why his explanation about why he shouldn’t kill people felt disconnected, not like it wouldn’t match what Hanazawa would tell him, and a bit hollow, as if he hadn’t had a lifetime to make it his own.

I mean, Hanazawa would want his son to become a great soldier like him, and kill people. He didn’t act like he cared about his troops (or anyone for the matter) so why should he care about them feeling guilt?

I think the stand in Yuusaku might have been a kind person, he might have been genuine in how he reached for Ogata, telling him it wasn’t possible he weren’t to feel guilt, maybe he even regretted tricking him.

But the stand in is set up to be killed.

He has to.

Partly because he would be eventually recognized as a stand in should he interact with the higher ups, partly because Tsurumi, by manipulating Ogata into killing him, basically breaks whatever kindness remained in Ogata that pushed him to feel sympathy for Koito’s situation in a way similar to how he broke Tsukishima as well as any loyalty he might feel for Hanazawa when the latter won’t care about searching him.

And Ogata might have discovered he killed the ‘wrong’ Yuusaku after he killed Hanazawa. Hanazawa had a Yuusaku portrait. Ogata might have discovered the face on it didn’t match with the one of the Yuusaku he killed.

And if that fake Yuusaku were tied to Kikuta somehow this would make it for an even more interesting situation, because it’s implied that Ogata and Kikuta are supposedly working together, but Ogata was nervous when he met Kikuta and felt the need to pat his head as Kikuta walked past him… and Usami was so kind to tattle out how Ogata was the one behind Yuusaku’s murder.

And Ogata probably now regrets murdering ‘Yuusaku’ also because that Yuusaku wasn’t the real deal and didn’t deserve it at all.

Also if the REAL Yuusaku looked like Hanazawa, he would have looked like Ogata too… and if he did something that upset Sugimoto this might explain Sugimoto’s initial hostility to Ogata as he subconsciously saw REAL Yuusaku in Ogata.

Okay, so this is the end for this really CRAZY THEORY TIME.

I’m probably off track big time and this is just insane theory time but it would explain some things nicely.

Anyway we’ll see if Noda will develop more the initial scene, telling us about Yuusaku from Sugimoto’s point of view, finally showing us his face.

Thank you for staying with me along my insanity and let’s wait for the next chapter!

[goldenkamuyhunting]

I love reading your thoughts and ramblings. I always look forward to reading them every chapter release. Do you have any thoughts and ramblings on shiraishi, particularly on how smart he is at times. I know most of the time he is comic relief but imo he strikes me as a the type of guy that is lot more strategic and capable than we think.

Thank you for enjoying my rambling and sorry for the very late reply.

Sadly this is a very work busy month.

You’re absolutely right, Shiraishi is very smart and much more capable than it looks out.

Well, actually, the interesting thing is that Noda spelled out right at the beginning how capable Shiraishi is, explaining us how he’s a genius at breaking out of confinement...

...showing us how he’s clever enough to hide carefully on his body various objects that can help him to escape, how he can wait for the time to do it, how he knows when to withold informations, refusing to answer Sugimoto’s quesitoning and orders where Prisoner Number 1 immediately gave up...

...and how he managed to bargain a deal with Sugimoto.

Shiraishi is extremely sensible to the cold, yet he managed to keep a cool head and deal with Sugimoto from a position of advantage (Sugimoto is freezing in the water and desperate for help, Shiraishi remains out of the water, aware he is hiding upon himself a bullet, never betraying this fact to Sugimoto until the latter has agreed with him).

Yet characters (and sometimes readers) are easy to dismiss him as useless.

So what’s Shiraishi true self?

An useless moron who cares only about wine, bets and women and can’t make anything right or a genius planner that can carefully hide his intentions and manipulate others?

This question makes me think of this scene.

Suzukawa is also a genius, capable to impersonate anyone and trick people to believe in what he says.

But why is he judged a letdown?

Suzukawa assumes Ogata calls him as such because he’s not strong as other the other convicts and hurries to assure him his strenght is in his head.

Sugimoto tries to counter and Suzukawa reminds him of how easily Sugimoto was fooled (Ogata wasn’t so for him Suzukawa is a letdown both in terms of strnght and brain but whatever).

But the thing that’s the most insteresting is that Suzukawa tells them the ‘him’ they’re looking is not the real ‘him’... but that actually there’s not a REAL him.

Back to the question that started this, ‘is Shiraishi an useless moron who cares only about wine, bets and women and can’t make anything right or a genius planner that can carefully hide his intentions and manipulate others?‘ the answer is that he’s probably both. An neither.

Shiraishi is a complex, realistic character, with weaknesses and strong points and the most clever thing he did was to take into consideration his weaknesses to turn them into advantages.

In fact I think Suzukawa and Shiraishi might have in common the fact they were aware about how they were intelligent but weak in a world that value strenght.

Shiraishi, after all, ended up in juvenile detention before than in jail.

We don’t know how his life was before this but it’s easy to assume juvenile detention and jail, places where guards and other convicts would take advantage of their power and strenght with Shiraishi being phisically unable to stop them.

Shiraishi should have realized soon he couldn’t beat people in terms of strenght. Beating others with intelligence only though, required not to flaunter that intelligence unnecessarily under their eyes, otherwise they would be on guard and Shiraishi needed them to lower their guards if he wanted to be at advantage.

Shiraishi alternates presenting himself as a harmless guy and making shows of intelligence when needed.

Look at his time in prison.

Shiraishi makes deliberately a declaration that attracks Kumagishi’s (and possibly other people’s) attention and that prompts someone who can’t be doubted to informs everyone he’s an expert at escaping.

Shiraishi is likely searching allies for his next escape but then he plays dumb. The guards were instructed to keep a careful watch on him but, after saying so Shiraishi just makes a silly face. They give him a full body search likely trying to intimidate him and show they’re competent only... to find a beetle under his armpit.

They don’t take him seriously and try to intimidate him further by killing the beetle and he plead them not to. This satisfy them enough they let the beetle go. Shiraishi has just gotten there, with a big reputation but he’s actually not looking like he’s living up to it. They’re probably thinking they can keep on bullying this weak guy into submission and not have troubles and feel satisfied he had to plead them.

Yet, in a moment, Shiraishi turns the tables.

By reminding them of his reputation Shiraishi makes them wary in a way that’s different from before.

They don’t know anymore if he’s capable as his reputation suggests or harmless as he looks like.

The ‘I hate that guy’ combines with how they sweated probably is there to point out from now on they’ll try to interact with him as little as possible, despite remaining wary enough.

The result is that Shiraishi now has drawn the convicts’ interest as they hope they can escape with him and, while the guards remain wary of him, they won’t get too close either.

Shiraishi to them seems harmless but if he were actually as capable as his reputation says he might cause THEM PERSONALLY troubles by escaping when they’re on duty. They don’t want to get on his bad side.

Meanwhile the story further explains us how Shiraishi got what he wanted, accomplices helping him what he needs for his escape, and Shiraishi’s careful planning.

And then we see Shiraishi fully tricking his accomplices and the guards.

Shiraishi has himself be reported so he’ll end up in the black rooms which the guards patrol less, while Kumagishi and the others will assume he was betrayed and won’t hold it against him. At the same time he will be free to escape without dragging them along.

He also hides a piece of metal in his mouth. This causes the convicts to think their plan was completely twarted because they assumed the guards discovered the key... and causes the guards not to search further on Shiraishi, allowing him to walk away with the real key.

As he’s in the black rooms Shiraishi notices a beetle. Remember? Before he had a dung beetle but this one is a stag beetle.

There were probably plenty of such insects in the prisons, and Shiraishi has likely worked out their potential already, that’s why he had a beetle with himself before, because when the guards notice the stag beetle and he insists he’s a friend they believe him even if now it could be much more suspicious. The beetle is used as second hideout for the key, as Shiraishi has likely predicted they would still be suspicious, especially since the piece of metal they found can’t be used as a key. Note how to further make sure the guard will keep away from the beetle he threatens the guy in the same way he did before, knowing for sure now that guards are weak to this kind of threats.

And then all he had to do was to wait a storm so that the storm will cover up the sounds of his escape...

Shiraishi’s plan is beautiful. Shiraishi played his part perfectly, planning everything carefully and tricking and manipulating everyone.

It’s not just Kumagishi and the guards, other convicts helped him.

But we see other circumstances where Shiraishi uses his weak and strong points at the same time.

Think at when he went in the red-district to drink with Ishikawa. He’s not just there to enjoy drinks and women but also to get info from him.

Yet, people thinks, since he enjoy drinks and women, he went there solely for that.

Or also when he met Ushiyama in Sapporo and then told Sugimoto’s group he actually went to the red-district to collect info. No one questions him saying he went to the red-district... because they actually assumed he went there in the first place and he merely played along.

Ushiyama is warier of him. While he still can’t think at him as more than a clumsy dope...

...he has figured Shiraishi is more than what he looks like and shouldn’t be trusted easily.

Ushiyama had to ‘fight’ with Shiraishi. When he chased him through the city Shiraishi managed first to escape his grasp by slipping out of his coat, then he persuaded the pimp to attack Ushiyama, caused a wall of high-piled snow chunks to drop on Ushiyama, pushed a horse attached to a carriage to run toward Ushiyama and even managed to use the 7th division and turn it against Ushiyama.

Compare Shiraishi’s escape with Ueji, it’s clear that Shiraishi handled it much, much better, wherein Ueji escaped only by a mere stroke of good luck.

And when Ushiyama attacks him directly, Shiraishi manages to remain cool and calm enough to escape his hold by dislocating his joints and even attack him with a nail.

While Ushiyama was clearly at advantage, if Hijikata hadn’t distracted Shiraishi, the latter might heve even managed to find a way to escape Ushiyama... and Ushiyama must have been forced to realize this guy that doesn’t seem too much actually managed to somehow hold his ground against him, not through strenght but through brain.

Yet, even through Ushiyama understood he’s intelligent... still can’t get past the fact Shiraishi looks like a clumsy fool.

Because Shiraishi is clumsy and not strong at all and, has he doesn’t really have much of a deep aim, he just enjoys life as it is, in a very ‘carpe diem’ fashion, longing to spend time only on women, wine and bets.

And the GK cast, who’s made by characters who’re often very strong and very driven by a purpose, seeing Shiraishi is different, undervalue him... which often plays at Shiraishi’s advantage so that he can encourage it.

Shiraishi might be useless as a hunter but being a hunter isn’t all that there is int he world, and Shiraishi has other strenghts that make him very useful.

It’s meaningful how Boutarou, who knows Shiraishi well, seeing him with Sugimoto, thinks Shiraishi is the brain and Sugimoto is there to be only the brawns.

Shiraishi is damn clever but not the perfect genius in a Yagami Light style. He has flaws that cause others to undervalue him... but since Shiraishi is aware of them, when he can, he even uses them at his advantage. And I think this too is very bright.

Thanks for your ask and sorry again for the late reply!

[goldenkamuyhunting]

Do you think Sugimoto will get any significant character development? He's my favorite character and I worry that he'll be stuck in the same place as he always has been by the end of the series.

To be honest...

I’m also among the many people who hope Sugimoto will change and who worried a lot when The report of the Golden Kamuy staff talk event 19 April 2019 came out.

That’s because in it “Noda-sensei told Geno Studio that Sugimoto was already a completed character, so they didn’t need to think too much about his growth.”

On Discord we’ve been worrying a lot if this means that Sugimoto won’t get character growth, or psychological healing or whatever.

As we don’t have the exact Japanese sentence we can’t know if it can be subjected to nuances or interpretations so we’re only left with the translation which might not be litteral.

Long story short, the translation isn’t really reassuring.

So I’ve been trying to see how other characters develop, to get some sort of reference for Sugimoto.

From what I can see it’s not like Sugimoto or the others never changed but Noda actually went at it in a much more realistic way than many other stories do.

There are assorted types of changes in a character behaviour in Golden Kamuy.

The easier to spot are the ones caused by trauma and they’re often the most drastic type.

Almost everyone in this story has a trauma that changed him or her.

Even in the last chapter we saw how Ueji transitioned from a normal kid who wasn’t good at school or particularly social and liked to play with his dog whom he deeply loved but was also hurt by his relatives pressures to the man covered in tattoos who enjoy disappointing others and who murder kids after torturing them and buries them in his garden.

The pressure, coped with the trauma of the loss of his dog, whom he believed to have been murdered by his father due to Ueji shattered him and turned him into a different person.

There are however also changes in behaviour that are spurred by facts that aren’t that terrible in nature but are actually caused by positive experiences.

Koito discovers his father actually loves for him and this pushes him to realize his own worth. He likely stopped thinking he had to die heroically to gain value in his father’s eyes or that his father would have preferred for him to die instead of his brother, and starts devoting all his efforts in the Army Academy instead than in the Naval one.

There are changes caused by the relations that the characters form.

Shiraishi originally was a selfish person who prioritized himself... however he slowly developed tight bonds with Sugimoto, Asirpa and Kiro. Even through he used to insist people have to escape alone, when he believed remaining with Kiro was dangerous he wanted to escape WITH HER and remained with her when she refused to escape. While he shrugged Kumagishi’s death off and the same is true for Nihei or Henmi, with whom he seemed to have good relations, he cried for Kiro and buried him on his own despite always attempting to skirt hard labour before.

There are changes caused by a growing awareness of the situation or, more simply, by learning something.

The story starts with Asirpa sure that she doesn’t need the gold nor does the Ainu so she can let Sugimoto first and then Shiraishi also have it all. Then Kiroranke teaches her of the situation of minorities and she realizes the gold could become a powerful toll to use to help her own people.

Koito also worshipped Tsurumi at the start of the story and pleasing him was all he cared about but then he learns Tsurumi deceived him and his father and loses that blind worship. He still trusts him but no more blindly, he wants to be sure what Tsurumi pursues would sit well with him also.

There are changes merely caused by... well, growing.

Cikapasi at first tails after Tanigaki and Inkarmat mostly because he hoped they would become his new parents. We see the way he interacts with them, he’s very much the child he is, playing and asking for money to buy sweets and depending on them to solve situation. During the travel to Karafuto he takes a more proactive role, protecting Enonoka from the wolverine, helping her to retrieve the dog, taking part to the circus act and so on until he manages to let go of Tanigaki and Inkarmat and decides to stop where he thinks he belongs. While he still has a long way to go, he has grown a lot from where he started.

Note that, except when trauma is involved, those growths don’t turn a person into another overnight but it’s a slow growing process (and even when trauma is involved they still have a transtioning time).

So, Sugimoto and his possible growth.

We know that in his past he did some changing due to trauma, one time when his family got sick and consequently died and his own village ostracized him and another when he went to war.

Even though we don’t know much about Sugimoto prior to all this, it’s clear pre-war Sugimoto is someone who likely never killed a soul and wouldn’t have been capable to think ‘I’ll kill and skin 24 convicts to get money’.

This however is the past and I’d like to think he won’t receive further traumas.

Sugimoto is an adult, so he clearly won’t get a growth caused by merely growing as, although he might underwent some more.... let’s call it tuning, most of his personality and mindset are already well shaped.

It can be that’s this what Noda means when he says he’s a complete character.

In fact Sugimoto's behaviour has changed due to relations.

When the story started he was okay with involving Asirpa, a child, in a bloody gold hunt. When he grew fond of her he tried to keep her out of it, first leaving her behind then trying to entrust her to Tsurumi.

We saw that he wasn’t really paniched about her when Tamai and Co hunted him even though Tanigaki went after her. He even paused to watch the scene and talk a little with the cub bear. Compare this to how nowadays, as soon as he’s parted from her and the situation is somewhat dangerous, he run after her screaming ‘Asirpa-san’.

But on the other side it’s possible Noda doesn’t see this as ‘personal growth’. Sugimoto might have been a person who would always react this way for the people he really cares a lot.

So what changed isn’t Sugi, it’s just his relationship with Asirpa.

What we see now when he interact with her isn’t a Sugimoto different from the start of the story, it’s just a Sugimoto who acts accoding to the deep caring he had developed. If Umeko had been there at the start of the story, we would have seen him acting with her the same he does with Asirpa.

Sugimoto’s behaviour has changed also due to awareness of the situation.

When he was told Kiro has betrayed him, he switched by being on friendly terms with him from deciding to murder him.

When Hijikata revealed his plans for the Republic of Ezo he went from desperately wanting to murder him to grudgingly accepting to cooperate with him.

But again, this is not personal change, it is adapting to the situation.

We also saw how, when he got lost, he knew what to do in order to survive out there in the wilderness because... he had learnt it from Asirpa.

So again, although he acted differently, he wasn’t a different person, just someone who knew what to do.

What I think many people would want through, is for Sugimoto to either psychologically heal or try to fix some of his character flaws.

Now... I expect Golden Kamuy to cover 28 volumes and we’re at around the ending of vol 26 so there might be not much time for Sugimoto to do either.

However I like to think there could be the possibility that Sugimoto will, at least, gain an awareness of his own problems, along with the will to try to fix them or improve himself.

This would be a giant size step for him and one that could bring him to evolve, to improve himself.

There’s who managed to get awareness of his own problems, like Inkarmat who got aware of how ‘obsessed’ she was with Wilk and unable to let him go (even though in Abashiri she still was unable to move on... but whatever, now she’s with Tanigaki and she can try doing so one step at time).

Shiraishi might have realized his goal of living life as it came, merely enjoying it, was a bit shallow and might aim for something more fulfilling.

Koito too decided in life he had to adopt an approach who was less ‘accepting blindly’ and more ‘making sure things were right’. Koito is trying to be less prejudiced and blind in his views (through Koito’s change was prompted by various things combined together an not just by self reflection).

As for Sugimoto, I think the character flaw he should correct is his overconfidence in his own opinion. Suzukawa too pointed out how when Sugimoto gets persuaded of something he brushed away everything else.

This often leads him to make mistakes.

If he could learn to reconsider his opinion or ask for other people’s input instead than just taking a decision on his own and take everything inside himself, I think for him things could improve.

He could learn for a start that the ones who love him don’t think he’s doomed to hell because he killed people in war, that they would accept him anyway, that they would go to hell with him... but also how if no one does something it’ll be impossible for Asirpa to keep her lifestyle so just telling her to turn her gaze away and go on with her life doesn’t help.

At least that’s what I hope for him.

But for now we can only wait and hope as the final part of the story unfold.

Thank you for your ask!