#Riratte

[goldenkamuyhunting]

Wondered if you answered this or not but did Wilk genuinely love Asirpa’s mother or no? I’m sure he loved Asirpa but idk about her mom because not much info about her but I can see why he married her when we saw how she was like aside being the chieftain’s daughter.

This also made me think too since Kiro saw a change in Wilk and saw he wasn’t in for the revolution much anymore but mainly for the Ainus now, somewhat told me that having Asirpa changed him or learning about Ainu culture or something. Or maybe it’s just my imagination shrug.

Another is did Kiro realize who Tsurumi was or he never realized Tsurumi was the glasses dude bc only Wilk did.

Well...

chap 254 has Wilk tell Asirpa he loved her mother.

We've no reason to think Wilk lied so I take this is the truth.

As for Wilk... it was Sofia who was in for the revolution, Wilk and Kiro were always in for the minorities. Sofia is a revolutionary, Wilk and Kiro are partisans (as well as Karafuto Ainu, though Kiro has also Tartar blood and Wilk Polish blood). Wilk's goal was to create a far eastern federation for minorities so that their culture and way to live would survive.

However, after he moves in Hokkaido and has Asirpa Wilk changed his plan.

As you can see their discussion is focused solely on the minorities, not on improving the conditions of all the people in Russia, that was Sofia's goal.

Wilk claims he believes his change of plans is due to his new plan being the best option, Kiroranke doesn't believe him and claims he's moved merely by how he now views Hokkaido as his home.

It's up to the reader to decide if Kiro is right or wrong.

If you ask me they're both right. Wilk's plan is easier, but Wilk can go through it and ABANDON PART OF HIS COMRADES IN RUSSIA, because to him now Hokkaido matters MORE, so it's easier for him to sacrifice them (though, to be honest, Wilk was never shown as one who had problems cutting loose companions who made his life complicate).

So for him dumping the Uilta wasn't really a problem.

Kiroranke never met Tsurumi up close so, as far as we know, he never had the chance to realize he was Hasegawa.

It was just Wilk and Sofia who got to give Tsurumi a good look and could realize who he was.

[kingslayerstew]

who do u think is the best dancer and best singer out of wilk, kiroranke and sofia

omg :DD i actually have quite some hcs for them when it comes to music ^_^

short answer: kiro>sofia=wilk (singing) sofia>>kiro>wilk (dancing) wilk>kiro>sofia (skill with instruments)

long answer:

i dont think any of them were particularly good at singing but being mediocre together made them feel more comfortable singing around each other.

understanding how music can bring people together, sofia often asked people in her group to sing or play songs from their respective hometown, family or culture, and to teach her as well even if she didn't speak the language. she's a loud singer especially when drunk, and her favorite songs are funny or vulgar. she attended dancing lessons as a child and went to concerts and ballet performances with her parents, the latter of which she does miss a little. she used to hate dancing but enjoys it now and picks different dances up very quickly.

wilk is a quick learner with a good memory so he'd play songs he was taught as a boy on his tonkori. he only sang with other people and was a bit of a clumsy dancer. in riratte's kotan he learned how to play some new songs and the two of them would bond through music and dancing, after she passed music became a bit painful to him so asirpa has no memories of him singing or playing his tonkori.

kiro was the better singer out of the three but still not stellar. he liked sad or longing love songs the most especially as a teen, he tried to convince wilk and sofia it's because girls are charmed by them but really they just resonated with him. but he wasn't entirely wrong, people were charmed by his ability to sing in multiple languages. not shy about singing, would sing tatar lullabies to his children. could learn an instrument easily if he tried. his dancing is fine, he and sofia enjoyed dancing together a lot but when they separated their ways he largely left dancing behind too.

[chibivesicle]

Golden Kamuy chapters 267 & 268.  Filling in the gaps and learning how Tsurumi was involved in the gold.

After a few chapters that I was expecting to be more rewarding falling flat, things are starting to pick up.  We first learn about Kiro’s involvement and how his relationship with Wilk became strained.  Before they broke Sofia out of prison, Kiro decided to tell Sofia more details before actually reuniting with her.  It is unclear if this story was relayed to Sofia via the milk ink or if Kiro wrote this with regular ink meaning anyone could have read the information.  What this page does tell us, is that Sofia learned this information prior to meeting Asirpa and Ogata likely knows something about what was written.  Noda wouldn’t just throw him in the background for no reason.

I wonder if this information was already shared between Kiro and Ogata? 

The chapter title page has an image of Wilk, Riratte and Asirpa as a family.  Clearly, a visual parallel with Tsurumi, Olga and Fina indicating that the two men have fates that are intertwined.

When Kiro saw Wilk holding Asirpa, he knew that something was different; he loved her and his family and as a result his priorities would change.  Kiro is not happy with this while Huci smiles next to him.

This is an interesting story since Tsurumi is retelling what Kiro wrote to Sofia, clearly in Russian.  Tsurumi is dominant and in charge of things as he makes Sofia when he mentions the man Kimuspu.  The last remaining person who knew where the gold was hidden.  At the same time, somehow Tsurumi learned of this information.

The panel informs us at certain key members of his elite inner circle knew about this, Kikuta in the back, potentially even working for Central at that point in time, Usami close to Tsurumi and Ogata and Tsukishima in the front with Ogata also more distant from Tsurumi.

This confirms what Ogata told us all the way back after the Barato arc with Hijikata.  That he referred to how Tsurumi knew what happened to the seven Ainu men without indicating if he was there or not.  I loved how Ogata just said that Tsurumi was the intelligence officer who examined the crime scene.  Time and time again Ogata speaks but only gives enough information to catch someone’s attention.

The flashback told my Tsurumi who wasn’t there at the time is in part based on what he knows from Kiro as well which is something to keep in mind.  The men convened at Noboribetsu, clearly in a kotan close to where Ariko is from.

The group of men were meeting to discuss it and Wilk is leading the discussion.  Not surprising at all since he is a natural leader.  His back is to us in the middle panel as they talk.

The rest of the men are revealed.  The first man who speaks is clearly Ariko’s father, Siromakur based on those eyebrows. The cast of the soon to be doomed men are revealed with a wide range of beards and eyebrows.  I’d guess it took a lot of effort to find seven Ainu names and this might be why this plot point is so late, as it is known that Noda avoided names currently in use to be culturally respectful.   I will note that Mesira, Irenka and Ratci all have no light or sparkle in their eyes, making them look like they may have had more bad experiences. Sukuta looks like a nice guy.

Maybe it is just me but Oskeporo gives me major Kirawus vibes?  I want to see your eyebrows Kirawus!  Are you related to Oskeporo?  They are both wearing dark clothing, my brain wants to say Oskeporo has a blue attush with white trim.

It looks sort of similar to Kirawus’s - or maybe he’s also from the Kushiro region? In the next chapter we learn that Oskeporo is from Nemuro.  That is pretty close to Kushiro since Kirawus was working in Nemuro at the fisheries when he met Hijikata.

Anyways back to the main events.  The men realize they need to find the old man, Kimuspu quickly so no one beats them to him, since of course people told other people about it. . .

As they head out Kiro finds Wilk and he’s pissed off.  The text bubble tells us he’s beyond upset and he’s got a clenched fist.  Finally, we are getting some clarity on why things broke down between Kiro and Wilk.

Even though Kiro had integrated himself into the local Hokkaido community, his best friend left him out of things.  Of course, Kiro was always dedicated to their original greater cause as he’s Tatar/Karafuto Ainu and perhaps knows that Sofia is in prison in Karafuto?

Wilk tells the other men to go ahead and so that he can talk to Kiro one on one.  Kiro is hurt and angry being excluded from these plans.  It indicates that knowledge of their meeting was more well known than Wilk likely would have preferred.  Ainu told each other about the gold, the old man, and the leaders meeting to discuss it since Kiro found him easily.  Or did Ogata tip him off?  Was this the beginning of the cat alliance?

Wilk tells him that they should change focus to only protecting Hokkaido based on logistics.  This ignores the places where they grew up and therefore the other ethnic groups.

Tsurumi then asks Asirpa if she understands the difference between a regional ethnic nation that shares land borders with Russia and other countries making them difficult to defend.  Which is the exact same reason Tsurumi wants to make Hokkaido an independent state and why Hijikata also likes it.  From a strategic perspective it does make a lot of sense, but it excludes most of the minority groups they were fighting for all these years.

This exchange between Kiro and Wilk explains so much of why Kiro said Wilk changed.  He sees it as a betrayal and abandonment of the Russian far east and Karafuto.  Wilk calmly states they will encourage immigration of different groups.

This is clearly upsetting to Kiro as his skin is covered with the chaotic screentone.  This is always used when a character is upset and reeling from learning something that they don’t want to hear.  I love the fact that a very similar screentone is used in Ogata’s flashback in 165 talking to Yuusaku.  Ogata appears calm but there is emotion behind his ice cold responses.

Interestingly, the screentone with the curved lines is only used with Ogata specifically, and it doesn’t show up again, but both show an inner turmoil.

Kiro argues that because Wilk’s village immigrated to Hokkaido, that is why they failed in part due to going to a place they were unfamiliar with and different ways to survive.

Wilk replies that he understood by the Karafuto Ainu immigration failed and just says ‘we need to avoid repeating those mistakes’.  Really?  Why do you tell us what they are Wilk?  Does he really have an answer for that or is he just saying this hoping Kiro will calm down?

Kiro is quickly able to point out flaws for some of the ethnic groups and Wilk has a cop out of an answer, it will be up to individuals to make that choice.  Kiro may be upset, but I think he is correct by telling Wilk his priorities have changed with the birth of Asirpa.  These men have known each other for most of their lives and acted in an organization where they had to trust each other deeply.

I do like the switch to see Asirpa’s reaction, she loved her father but she definitely saw Kiro as an uncle figure and did no know about their falling out at all to change her opinion of them when all of this started.

Wilk artfully dodges Kiro’s question by saying he’s being realistic.  I don’t think Wilk wants to confirm what Kiro said in stoic Slav fashion.  If anyone has been following my meta for some time, you’d know I’m a huge fan of Kiro, so I like the next page. Knowing Wilk, he calls him out on it - he found a place to call home, he loves his family and his priorities have shifted to protect his current home.  But Kiro is still holding a torch for Sofia, and wants to break her out of prison and help his own people.  The fact Wilk doesn’t even respond tells us Kiro is right.

Asirpa quietly reflects on this.  It clearly explains so much about what happened and in a way Kiro showed her Wilk’s original plan with the intention to help the partisans.  Tsurumi summarizes the legitimacy of these contrasting goals.  His position in the chair reserved for the priest as well as his contemplative expression makes me think that Tsurumi is confessing to his own feelings that are divided within himself. 

The page ends with Tsukishima watching things blankly, a frown and stress lines under the eyes - how is he feeling in this very moment?

The flashback continues as Kiro loses it mentioning that Sofia is still waiting for them.  This must mean that Kiro has continued to keep tabs on her or maintain some knowledge/limited communication with her.  He charges towards Wilk and the two fight, but Wilk manages to get him in a headlock victorious.

Asirpa then is able to tell Sofia that she knew that Kiro had feelings for her, so of course he’d want to go back for her.  Of course she didn’t learn this until Kiro died but it does make a lot of sense. Sofia listens closely, but it is still unclear how well she understands Asirpa speaking Japanese.

The fight ends with Kiro on the ground and he lost his shoes in the fight somehow.  It is unclear if this is a drawing error by Noda since Kiro is frequently shown bare feet, partly to signal his death in Karafuto, but other times he seems to like having free toes. 

Asirpa’s explanation is that Wilk knew the Kiro loved Sofia and he avoided Kiro.  It a way it would be a dick move to have a family that he loved, while Kiro can’t do anything about the woman he loved who was their comrade in arms. 

Sofia looks so sad here, two men she loved and cared about are dead in this entire mess.  The chapter ends with a beat up Wilk tying Kiro to a tree and we see him now barefoot.  Did Wilk take his shoes off to prevent him from chasing after them?  I don’t know or if Noda accidentally gave Kiro shoes a few pages prior.

But now we finally know the event that lead Kiro to tell Inkarmat that Wilk changed.  And we as the readers know he changed.  Kiro is pissed off at Wilk and this was the rift that separated the men and their goals for the gold.

Kiro realized that he and Wilk now had different goals and it was what ended their friendship.  The next chapter starts with a somber and sad looking Kiro writing the letter.  Which now we can see is an ink letter.  He reflects on how that was the last conversation he had with Wilk, which likely wasn’t how he had wanted it to go.

Wilk tells him this is for Asirpa’s benefit and her happiness.  Apparently, he decided to gift Asirpa with this path based on the fact that he felt Sofia was a good leader/role model.  I mean besides the fact that Sofia gave up her chance to live a normal domestic life.  It is clear Wilk was impressed with Sofia and her character but it still shows that Wilk is putting her in a situation she didn’t ask for.  

Yet, Asirpa isn’t upset by this.  She echoes Wilk’s way of thinking which is just like Koito Sr.  So in a way she has more in common with Koito and his role to do things his father expects from him.  Though Koito’s older brother already died in the service so it isn’t like she has a younger sibling.

Tsurumi seems to suggest that Wilk could have just slid into obscurity and live his life in peace and quiet.  Does this mean that Tsurumi wanted to live in peace and quiet with Fina and Olga?

Asirpa boldly tells him that it isn’t possible as the Ainu would disappear.  As the Ainu are intrinsically linked to the kamuy.  The Ainu must respect the kamuy and in return if they forget them they will disappear. 

In reality this was the assimilation of the Ainu into Japanese society, losing their links to the kamuy and their cultural identity.

Tsurumi finally responds that the fate of those wanting to protect the kamuy was not good.  He looks like he’s barely able to control himself as he’s got his deranged look on his face.  So scary that Sofia and Asirpa are shocked.

The flashback then continues from Tsurumi’s point of view.  Though we need to realize he may not be telling the truth.  The fact that Tsurumi was able to track down Ariko Sr. implies that the secret wasn’t super secret!  Good job of keeping things under wraps Wilk and other Ainu dudes.  Tsurumi starts off with flattery to get comfortable with Simorakur.

For example he clearly comments about his son being in the army and making sure he is sent the knife to remember his identity.  Interesting the other men with Tsurumi are Usami and Kikuta.  Tsukishima and Ogata are no where to be seen. 

Tsurumi is told he is too late, the other men went in search of the older man and therefore the gold over a month ago.  Of course Ariko’s dad decided to leave the group because of the disagreements that began to occur as some of the men threatened the families of others including Cikapasi’s grandfather.  Not sure why bringing Cikapasi into this part of the narrative makes sense since he was fine in the story as an orphan who found his family in Karafuto. . . .  I wonder if this was supposed to read that the man was Sukuta and he had a younger brother and grandfather.  With Cikapasi being the younger brother . . .

Tsurumi turns on his charm and calls Simorakur, a polite Mr. Ariko (obviously Ariko-san in the original) and ties the loyalty of his family to the Japanese to be important.  That his family is serving the government in a good way.

The tells Tsurumi that the six men all had pretty big egos, and drastically different viewpoints so they were not a good alliance.  But that one man was able to draw them together and resolve conflicts easily and he was a natural leader.  That man of course, was Wilk.  The flashback allows Tsurumi to learn about this natural leader who is also knowledgeable and even used a fact that Tsurumi told him when talking to the men.

The next page shows Wilk as a mystery to Tsurumi at first.  Of course, he’s got the cross scar on his face marked likely to link him with Christian symbols and he’s offering his hand to the viewer, not unlike how Asirpa first offered her hand to Sugimoto.

Tsurumi is impressed and wants to know more about this man.  Of course the big reveal is when he learns who the Karafuto Ainu man is.  His eyes go white in shock and likely out if his desire to kill him.  We also get an even better view of his torn sleeves.  Likely the kidnapping of Koito happened recently and he did a poor job of repairing his white uniform.

So, Koito was kidnapped in Hakodate, recently but Usami wasn’t involved in it.  Did Usami just join him?  As Koito’s flashback only reveals Kikuta, Tsukishima and Ogata.  Not surprisingly, his calm exterior is shaded with the hatched screentone again, just like Kiro in the last chapter.

Tsurumi then tells Asirpa and Sofia that he shot a single poison arrow at Wilk, his eyes completely white.  He tells Simorakur that Wilk was a partisan fighting against the Russians and had come to Hokkaido for the gold for the partisans.

And he quickly departs and watches as he lead Tsurumi, Kikuta and Usami to the gold.  They hear gunfire and are unable to keep up with everyone else.  In the morning they find one of the men stabbed with a makkiri.  So Tsurumi knows that Wilk didn’t kill any of the men.

If we go back to chapter 70 Ogata tells Hijikata what he knows as Hijikata implies he knows that Kiro is likely a partisan.  Now it is hard to tell if the knife in chapter 268 matches one in 70.  But Ogata makes it clear that all of the knives had notches on them.

Does this mean that Wilk actually did damage everything?  Or did Tsurumi make this up to frame Wilk for the deaths so that Wilk appeared guilty?  Or did Wilk actually do this out of cultural obligation?  I want more information since right now Tsukishima and Ogata aren’t involved. 

Did Ogata find Kiro and untie him from the tree?  Did the cat alliance form while he was out of the range of Tsurumi?

The chapter then ends with Tsurumi telling them that Wilk skinned himself, removing his face and putting it on another dead person’s severed head.

Yay!  This now at least lines up with Asirpa’s statement that they found her Aca’s nose and ears to identify he was one of the dead. 

A long time ago I had reasoned that Wilk disfigured himself by cutting off his nose and ears, but this is a much more gruesome way to fake his death.  Did he know someone like Tsurumi was onto him?  My biologist brain really wonders how he was able to do this with out a sterile environment and way to protect the healing skin and face and protect the muscles and argh it just seems far fetched to me from a biological perspective.  I figured the nose and ear part would make more sense since GK has had ear removal and off page nose removal.

But hey this is GK!  People seem to have great healing abilities!  So might as well extend this to Wilk’s entire face.

What these two chapters have show is that Tsurumi has let his own emotions control his place in the hunt for the gold.

I wonder when Kikuta started working for central and if he told Ariko what really happened to his father.  Or did he always keep this secret from him and instead betray him, which is in part why he felt so guilty when Usami beat the crap out of him before sending him off to be a double agent?

Kikuta does have more of a moral compass that Usami and we now know he has some sort of inspirational role he played with Sugimoto before he joined the military.

I am still underwhelmed by these developments.  I was hoping for something bigger but right now Tsurumi looks like a man who was already angry at the Japanese government for the death of his family in Russia, who then doubles down on it when he learns the man leading the Ainu was Wilk so he goes after him.

At least we know why Kiro was so upset with Wilk and why he felt like Ogata had to kill him so that they could take Asirpa to Karafuto and to meet Sofia.

[goldenkamuyhunting]

TY for answering my Q! Its been a long time and i read your blog years ago. Wilk was a subtle yet interesting character. My Q is while he was influenced by Asirpa changing his plans do you think Wilk actually wanted a family too? I know Sofia wanted one with Wilk but lo and behold when Wilk marries an Ainu woman and has a child for his cover he ends up genuinely loving his new family. Maybe he wanted to go back into his Ainu ways in a sense? he seemed true to OG plan but again long time for me

Well...

I'm not Noda and we don't really know much about Wilk beyond what's said of him (and small flashbacks). My impression is that Wilk was previously a very focused partisan so he just wasn't thinking at having a family but he happened to fall in love with Riratte.

Of course it's possible he tried to do what Tsurumi did, marry so as to better mix with the other Ainu, but Kiro wasn't instructed to do so and won't feel the need to do it so I guess they didn't though it was mandatory to mix with the other Ainu... and from the little we heard from others and from Wilk he fell easily enough in love with his wife so... I think there's a good chance he chose her for her and not due to some sort of plan... which I think made him similar to Sofia as I think back then Sofia wasn't planning on having a family until she met Wilk and fell for him.

I might be wrong on this one though, as Japanese mangaka are very big on representing women as people who ultimately are very willing to sacrifice their cause to the idea of love and family because 'deep down they're just women' unless they're evil (think Hidoro's wife who didn't care at all about her family) so it can be Noda used that stereotype for Sofia as well.

Sorry if I can't be of more help and thank you for your ask!

[goldenkamuyhunting]

While anon's ask about the GK women isn't wrong about love being a central part of their character arc/plot, I personally think it's very surface level to say love is the only big part of the female character's arcs in Golden Kamuy. Personally when I think of the most important characteristics of charas like Asirpa, Inkarmat, Sophia, etc etc I don't think of how they show/depict love right away (though no doubt it's a big part of their character and arguably what distinguishes them from the men/male charas), but more their own personality and strengths/abilities, which help support how they give and receive love. It's a lot more indepth than most female characters would give in most shounen stories so I appreciate Oda writing female characters with the dignity and respect they deserve.

Hum...

credits when it's due, anon said and I quote ""love" be a part (or central) to their character plot", not just that 'love is central to their plot'.

Note how central not only is the second option but it's also between brakets. I might be wrong but I think not even anon meant to imply love is all there is to those girls (anon is free to correct me though).

As I've linked in that same reply my rather long and detailed view on female characters, I didn't feel necessary to rewrite all their respective strenghts. As I said in the past, I think that for being a Seinen GK does well enough in regard to characterizing female characters.

It's also worth to note that shonen are aimed to a younger audience compared to seinen, so characters aren't necessarily expected to have the same depth (mind you, I'm not saying they can't be deep and well characterized, just that there's often less request for it... but in the end it depends on the author).

Now, just to put things into perspective on why people has disappointed by the way females seems not to exist independently by males, there are 30 female characters (sort of) in GK which, as I've said in the past are many, diverse and well characterized but yes they're almost all tied to 1 or more male characters and, if they weren't, they wouldn't be in the story.

Let's see how they're split.

They've no name and are just some male character's mother/wife/daughter/grandmother

1 Nihei's female populated family

2 Kiroranke's wife

3 Hidoro's wife

4 Edogai's mother

5 Tanigaki's mother

6 Ogata's grandmother

7 Youichirou's wife

8 Tanigaki's daughter

9 Makanakkuru's wife

They've a name but they're in the story because they're some male character's mother/wife/daughter/grandmother/love interest/sister

1 Kenmochi Umeko (Sugimoto's initial love interest, Toraji's wife)

2 Chiyoko (Hidoro Tamotsu's lover and love interest of Hidoro Shinpei)

3 Inkarmat (feels one sided love for Wilk, will become Tanigaki's wife)

4 Tanigaki Fumi (Tanigaki's sister, Aoyama Kenkichi's wife)

5 O-gin (Sakamoto's lover/wife)

6 Ogata Tome (Ogata's mother, Hanazawa's ex-lover)

7 Harumi Chiyo (Tsukishima's love interest)

8 Hasegawa Fina (Tsurumi's wife)

9 Hasegawa Olga (Tsurumi's daughter)

10 Koito Yuki (Koito Otonoshin's mother, Koito Heiji's wife)

11 Noriko (Heita's brother's wife)

12 Hanazawa Hiro (Hanazawa's wife and Yuusaku's mother)

13 Kaneko Kaeko (Yuusaku's arranged fiance, she gets a crush on Sugimoto)

They are strongly connected to a male and won't be in the story without said male but they've also a goal/role that's independant from male characters

1 Asirpa (Wilk's daughter... she's dragged into the gold quest because first she wants to avenge her father and then discover his role in the Ainu slaughtering, she's also Sugimoto's partner... but through the story she manages to develop a goal that's independant from males, aka protect the Ainu culture)

2 Riratte (Wilk's wife... though yes, she's also Asirpa's mom which is more important.. though Asirpa doesn't know her if not for what her father told her)

3 Sofia (one sided love for Wilk which lead Kiro to think she's the best to give them info about Wilk that might help them solve the code, Kiroranke's love interest... but she's also a revolutionary who wants improve Russia... too bad she sacrifices her goal to fulfill the one of Wilk and Kiro)

4 Svetlana (leaves her family to follow a male but wants to see Saint Petersburg)

5 Sister Miyazawa (Shiraishi's idealized love interest, she doesn't even know of his existance and wants just to do her role as a nun)

6 Monoa and the other Ainu women of her village (they were the mothers/wives of the Ainu of their village, who were held captive by escaped Kabato convicts and would want to marry Ushiyama... actually I'm placing them here solely because in the end they carry on living on their own without men but without the Kobato convicts they wouldn't likely be in the story)

7 Osoma (she got a totally unncesssary crush on Tanigaki... that she overcomes thanks to a crush for a boy her age... but she's also Asirpa's cousin and that's more relevant)

8 Enonoka (while she was doing good at being a female character on her own, ultimately the story implies she'll marry Cikapasi once she grows up... and yeah, technically she's in the story to help her grandfather with his job and to carry Sugimoto's group through Karafuto)

They aren't in the story due to a male!

1 Susupo (she's Asirpa's grandmother and while it can be argued she became as such by marrying a male... well, said male is deceased and never seen in flashbacks and it's only worth is it's established early on Susupo is an important figure in the village because her husband was)

2 Kaneko's maid (not only she's not in the story due to a male but encourage Kaneko to not think her worth is tied to how handsome her husband will be)

It's... basically almost the totality of the female cast who's dragged into the story due to male characters who're mostly the focus of the story so that even well rounded characters like Asirpa or Inkarmat or Sofia just feel too tied to the male characters... and the fact the story feels the need to give them unnedessary crushes for male characters (did Asirpa really need to have to crush on Sugimoto? Couldn't she just see him as a brother figure? Especially since Asirpa is rather young? Did Sofia really need to have to crush on Wilk? Couldn't they just be companions? Did Inkarmat really have to crush on Wilk also? Same as Asirpa couldn't she just see him as a brother/father figure?)

So while I think that GK is doing remarkably well in regard to female representation for being a Seinen... well, this is very far for equal opportunities representation and I'm not surprised if someone is annoyed and feel like females are ALWAYS sidelined compared to male characters in manga... especially because in many countries shonen and seinen are the predominant manga which get translated, so if you aren't aware of what's a shonen, shoujo, seinen, josei but collect each story under the umbrella term of manga, the disparity gets even more marked.

That's why my stance is to aknowledge GK for how he's doing better, but also aknowledge that female representation in it is far from perfect.

Also... I think it's just a typo but Oda is "One piece" creator... "Golden Kamuy" was made by Noda... ^_-

Sorry for the long reply you probably didn't ask for.

The whole 'females in GK' would probably deserve a full meta which, at this point, I'm not going to write but, in honor of all those who complain, I wanted to write I also understand why they've problems with them, because indeed there are problems with them, even though I tend to see GK as a work that, for a seinen, deserves more praises than criticisms in that aspects.

Again sorry for the long reply.

[goldenkamuyhunting]

I love GK, but like most mangas, good female characters scarce. Inkarmat and Sofia are the only two developed female characters; Asirpa's character is currently indistinguishable from the standard stock heroine. When Inkarmat and Asirpa had that conversation on the lake, I was hoping they'd talk about anything other than... oh well they talked about Wilk, sigh. Also that recurrent trope of killing off female characters as plot drivers for male characters is starting to grate. What do you think?

Hum...

I’ll discuss your points one by one if it’s okay with you.

1) I love GK, but like most mangas, good female characters scarce.

“Golden Kamuy” has, comparatively, a much smaller female cast than a male one. However this is not because it’s a manga, it’s because “Golden Kamuy” is a seinen, a manga aimed at adult Japanese men between the ages of 18 and 40 and, sadly, it seems this kind of target audience has made clear they aren’t that interested in female characters, beyond the ones who are written to exist to support the male cast.

If you’re interested in manga with a bigger or a better female cast you might consider trying shōjo or josei manga, which are aimed at female readers.

Sadly in almost all the countries of us western readers, the manga that get more imported are shonen (aimed at young boys) so the general impression is that manga as a whole have a scarce female cast.

I’m not saying so to excuse shonen or seinen, this is just a characteristic of their genre and, since their target audience is often not interested in a better female cast, I fear things aren’t going to change.

2) Inkarmat and Sofia are the only two developed female characters; Asirpa's character is currently indistinguishable from the standard stock heroine.

Now... for a Seinen, “Golden Kamuy” has a decent female cast, with females that are different among them for age, race, interests and characteristics and who often try to be in control of their own lives.

Yes, they’re all females who, one way or the other, are tied to the male cast because the male cast is the real main character, as, as said before, this is a work that aims at male readers and male readers want to identify with male characters but, at least, female characters are different among them and, although way too many of them are minor characters, many of them are developed. Development isn’t necessarily measured in how much pages you’re given but in how much of you (your story, your character, your goals) is developed. Many female characters have this.

Let’s go through them starting from Asirpa:

ASIRPA: Main character along with Sugimoto. I wouldn’t say she’s the standard stock heroine more than Sugimoto is the standard stock hero. She has, of course, some character traits who’re mandatory for the action heroine, she’s intelligent, mature and capable well beyond what would be expected for someone her age. Her character arc is one of growing up, because she’s a child and this is the sort of character arc you usually give to a child, but she isn’t just ‘growing up’ as in ‘becoming more mature’ she’s growing up in the sense she becomes aware of the Ainu and the other minorities problems and how hard it is to solve them, she’s also growing by learning tragically what a war means, what it means to watch people you care about die all around you, what it means to have your life threatened, to have the lives of the people you care about threatened, if it’s easy or not to pull a trigger. Her non violent beliefs are challenged as she is asked more and more to decide if she wants to fight or to keep on not killing people. Men around her, starting from her own father, are also killed as a plot device for her grown.

KENMOCHI UMEKO: Sugimoto’s love interest and childhood friend. She challenged her family by still getting near Sugimoto despite his family situation and was willing to go with him when he considered escaping. We don’t know why ultimately she married Toraji, might be to forget Sugimoto, might be because he loved her more than Sugi, but when she did she was firm in her purpose and didn’t walk out of it or mourned her fate once Sugimoto came back. She made clear she would stay with Toraji. And she also doesn’t remarry despite social pressure and the fact she’s losing her sight.

SUSUPO: Asirpa’s grandmother. She’s caring and nurturing with everyone, Tanigaki included but she’s also strongly tied to old female roles. However, when Asirpa beats Sugimoto up, she doesn’t scold her and even though she believes Asirpa would be better married she doesn’t try to force her but let her free to live her life.

OSOMA: Asirpa’s very young cousin who knows how to speak Japanese. She’s friendly, gets a crush on Tanigaki and then grows out of it.

NIHEI’S FEMALE POPULATED FAMILY: Although we don’t really see them beyond Nihei’s first born daughter, we learn Nihei’s wife is tough and scary and that Nihei had to babysit his own daughter.

They survive, differently from Nihei only male son who dies... same as Nihei himself.

KIRORANKE’S WIFE: Although Kiro didn’t love her as much as Sofia it’s implied he loved her. She’s tough enough to manage even when Kiro is out and can count on the support of her siblings in case things are too hard.

HIDORO’S WIFE: Cruel, tough and clever, she’s the real boss in the family. She got ambitions, when she can’t get pregnant from her husband she’s not afraid to question HIS fertility instead than blaming herself, and even concedes herself a lover. She’s not a positive character but she’s basically the opposite of Huci.

CHIYOKO: She’s the damsel in distress of “Golden Kamuy” and the opposite to Hidoro’s wife. She looks kind and gentle. Lover to Hidoro Tamotsu, she however falls for Shinpei and gets pregnant from him. She’s willing to leave with him to make herself a new life.

INKARMAT: Strong willed, clever and manipulative, she’s not afraid to travell alone through Hokkaido or cooperate with Tsurumi, betraying the rest of the group. Yes, she can’t grow out of her childhood crush for Wilk, but, at least, she’s the one who’s in charge when she decides to spend the night with Tanigaki and, differently from Tanigaki, can plan things. She’s also generous and motherly with Cikapasi but she’s not afraid to attack Kiro when she believes he’s involved in Wilk’s death or to place herself in front of Tanigaki when Tsukishima threatens to kill him. She can read the mood and doesn’t reveal how Koito stole Nikaidou’s hand but use it to affirm her authority and get money from Koito.

EDOGAI’S MOTHER: Abusive and manipulative to the point she castrated her own son so that he wouldn’t become like his father, managed to traumatize Edogai so much that, when she dies of heart attack, he keeps her alive by turning her into a stuffed corpse.

TANIGAKI FUMI: She marries the one she loves and is beloved by her family. When she falls sick with smalllpox her actions are similar to the ones of Sugimoto’s father, she doesn’t want the village to be infected and wants her husband to leave her and find happiness.

TANIGAKI’S MOTHER: She falls into depression due to her daughter’s death and Tanigaki leaving the family and, ultimately, dies.

SISTER MIYAZAWA: Although she wasn’t a beauty to Kumagishi she was so lovely he kept her printed in his own memory. She’s tough enough to travel from male prison to male prison to offer her services as counselor.

MONOA AND THE OTHER AINU WOMEN: Although they ended up prisoners of the fake Ainu and forced to cooperate with them they tried challenging them by trying to ask for help to Sugimoto’s group and when they could they even fought the fake Ainu personally, killing some of them.

O-GIN: Deranged criminal, madly in love with Sakamoto, she’s not even afraid of Tsurumi.

OGATA TOME: Ogata’s mom, madly in love with Hanazawa. However, as her love isn’t returned she gets insane and lives in a delusion until her son poisons her. She’s kind of the opposite of O-gin.

OGATA’S GRANDMOTHER: As far as we know it’s her and not her husband the one who took back home Ogata and his mom and raised him. Ogata was so fond of her he couldn’t kill Huci because she reminded him of her.

ENONOKA: Karafuto Ainu kid. She’s the one who deal with Koito when he rents her grandfather’s sleds and dogs. She knows Japanese and she can count and handle business. She goes with Cikapasi when they’ve to retrieve the dog and cooperates with him to come up with a plan to retrieve it.

HARUMI CHIYO: She was willing to marry Tsukishima but disappeared short before he came back from war. Tsukishima believes she killed herself out of grief for his death, instead she merely accepted to marrying another man since she believed Tsukishima to be dead.

YOUICHIROU’S WIFE: Beloved by him, according to him helped him to become human again, giving him peace. She loved him back and gave him a bird beak so he would always remember Nemuro, even when far. They were living peacefully when a man took her hostage because he had a grudge on him. He killed the man and was arrested. When he escaped he came back to her because she had fallen ill and was about to die, remaining with her till she died and only then he left their kotan and clearly lost his will to live.

SOFIA: Although she’s a noble she’s also a revolutionarian who can fight on par with Gansoku, shoot and plan the murder of the emperor. Beloved by her men, for whoms he care and who doesn’t get behind, she has a motherly side. Kiro falls for her and will always love her but she falls for Wilk and will always love him... though she wanted to avenge Kiro when he was killed.

HASEGAWA FINA AND OLGA: Tsurumi’s beloved wife and daughter. While Olga is too young to do anything else but being loved, Fina loved Tsurumi and was loved back. Tsurumi spoke with her and, differently from him, she could pin why Sofia couldn’t learn Japanese. He believes she was smart enough to figure out he was a spy yet remained with him anyway, actually, when she believed he was in trouble she came back for him despite the danger and ended up killed with her daughter.

SVETLANA: Leaves her family because she wants to see Saint Petersburg, gets arrested, escapes, gets found by Tsukishima but decides she won’t go back home so she travels with Gansoku proving she know how to use a rifle.

KOITO YUKI: Not much is know except she’s a proper woman who worries a lot for her own son.

RIRATTE: Asirpa’s mom who died short after Asirpa’s birth. She gave Wilk his name and she was cheerful and bright, capable to make funny faces and be strong spirited. Wilk loved her a lot.

NORIKO: Assuming she was as Heita portraied her she likes to seduce/play with men and she’s easily bored.

HANAZAWA HIRO: Although she’s also a proper Japanese lady she’s not shy to try to plot behind her husband’s back to try to spare Yuusaku from becoming a flagbearer. In a way she’s the opposite of Koito Yuki who instead passively accepts for her sons to become soldiers.

KANEKO KAEKO: Upperclass girl in a rush to get married due to social pressure. She’s willing to sleep with ‘Yuusaku’ to force him to marry her. She likes good looking men but she’s so impressed by Sugimoto’s bravery that, despite understanding he’s a nobody, she would be willing to marry him instead than Yuusaku. She’s an excellent student, marries a big name in the world of finance and dedicates her energies nursing men who were back from war and helping their widows.

KANEKO’S MAID: She’s very supportive of Kaeko but also makes that beautiful speech you can read above so she gets a mention.

There’s more females, I know I’ve skipped a bunch because they were minor but the ones I mentioned, despite often being minor, still are all different one from the other, and, often, in charge of their own fate. Although they’re almost all tied to men, many of them are not subservient to them, but this doesn’t mean they all fall into the action girl trope.

It’s much, much more than what other male authors do with their female cast.

Is it a dream cast, the representation females wants? Hell no, but, at least, there’s an attempt at making them people. Yes, they’re often tied to the male cast or in service of it, but that’s also typical of this genre.

None of them is sexualized despite some of them being sexy or having sex. For each of them Noda though to a different character design. Noda tried to make them characters with their own wishes, histories and personalities.

Again, it’s far from perfect, but this’s not the story I would pick up for poor female representation.

3) When Inkarmat and Asirpa had that conversation on the lake, I was hoping they'd talk about anything other than... oh well they talked about Wilk, sigh.

It’s true that to pass the Bechdel test a story should have at least two women in it, who talk to each other, about something other than a man but the main topic of this story are men.

Everyone and their mom has talked with Asirpa about Wilk, we had Hijikata, Sugimoto, Ogata, Shiraishi, Tsurumi and so on doing it, because Wilk was a huge topic of interest. If the characters aren’t talking about Wilk, Sugimoto’s group is talking about Tsurumi, because he’s chasing them and he’s a rival in the gold hunt, and, if they’re not talking about Tsurumi, they’re talking about Hijikata or of another adversary/member of the group who, incidentally, is male.

It’s worth to mention though, that in their first discussion Asirpa and Inkarmat talked about Inkarmat’s predictions and how Asirpa didn’t believe in them.

Also, Inkarmat talked with Huci about Asirpa being in danger, Asirpa talked with the Ainu women in the fake Ainu village about the Osoma, Svetlana talked with Sofia about Saint Petersburg, Asirpa talked with Enonoka about the differences between minorities while Yuusaku’s mom told Kaeko her experience as a nurse.

It’s all minor because it’s often not really that relevant in the plot because this is a story about men, so they’re what’s relevant but still they can have conversations about something else.

4) Also that recurrent trope of killing off female characters as plot drivers for male characters is starting to grate. What do you think?

The first character killed as a plot driver is Toraji. Then we’ve Wilk (who’s first assumed dead and then dies for good) and who’s a plot driver for 3 female characters (Asirpa, Inkarmat, and Sofia) as well as male characters since his death affected them too... only not so emotionally, more on a practical side. We’re told Sugimoto’s father is the last to die in his family and this triggers him to leave his village (which ties in with the discussion Sugimoto and his father had in whcih his father encouraged Sugimoto to do so). Then we’ve Youhei. Then there’s the bear trio (sort of, they more tip Tsurumi on how he has a rebellion in his ranks and trigger some other events so more than plot drivers for male characters they’re just plot drivers). Then Nihei. Henmi’s maddness is caused by his brother’s death. And then many other men until, finally, Fumi gets killed.

Characters can be killed off in order to be plot drivers for other characters. This is what makes a story. The real problem comes not when a female met this end (females can die and it would be tragic if men were to remain unaffected by their death) but when ONLY females met this end or when the scale is tipped so that plenty of females die for this, while only 1 or 2 males do.

5) What do you think?

I think “Golden Kamuy” is a seinen and that if I want to read it I must be aware of the characteristics of this kind of manga which, among other things, are that it’s a story that panders to a male readership so the female cast will be scarce and aimed at supporting the male one.

I think that “Golden Kamuy” if viewed as a story targeted to general audience instead than just to males, is definitely not perfect, that due to this there’s no balance between female representation and male one, that often females are in the story merely because their story is connected to the male cast (they’re love interests, wives, daughters) and that the fact that we’ve plenty of male protagonists force them to focus on the males.

I think that sometimes Noda ends up including ties to males that aren’t really necessary, like Asirpa’s crush for Sugimoto or Osoma’s crush for Tanigaki, or how Sofia felt obliged to carry on Wilk and Kiro’s goal (instead than doing it to help Asirpa or to help her people) and ultimately felt guilty toward Tsurumi to the point she let him shoot her and needed him to absolve her.

I think sometimes he just ends up letting himself influence by popular tropes (like how everyone fall for the main character) and this caused him to make choices who weren’t really that needed by the plot but, since they’re part of the genre... he just included them.

So yeah, I’m not always happy with what happens in “Golden Kamuy”, as who read my meta knows, sometimes I protest loudly about things I don’t like (see, for example, Sofia’s death scene).

However I try to give it credits when it’s due.

This is just me though, everyone is entitled to see things the way they prefer.

Thank you for your ask and sorry for the late reply!

[goldenkamuyhunting]

Ramblings and crazy theory time about GK chap 267 “Severed”

So we have a new chapter that deals with a painful topic...

...which is nothing else but Wilk’s betrayal of Kiro and of their cause.

We resume the story with… well a flashback showing Kiro writing a letter to Sofia while they were in Karafuto.

We see a glimpse of Ogata behind him, teasing us readers who’re wondering WHERE IN THE WORLD HE IS CURRENTLY AND WHAT THE HELL HE’S DOING as it’s from chap 261 we’ve no info on him and this silence is worrisome.

I love how Noda divided the page in three panels, the top one showing Kiro, while the lower one showing Sofia (Svetlana behind her mirroring how Ogata was behind Kiro) with Akou prison parting them, mirroring how it was the prison who was keeping them parted back then.

Above the images we’ve the content of the letter Kiro is writing.

He’s basically telling her that it might be too early to talk about what happened between him and Wilk in those years with Asirpa, which is why he’s writing it to her.

So, once in Hokkaido he and Wilk parted ways, searching for info about the gold. Their plan was to mix witht he local Ainu and integrate among them so as to get info more easily.

Poor Inkarmat likely got involved with Wilk during this period.

In the end, to better do this, Wilk married and had a daughter.

The following page shows the cover of the chapter, that carefully mirror the cover of chap 256. In chap 256 we had Tsurumi/Hasegawa with his family, while in this chapter we’ve Wilk with his family, each of them in the same exact position as they were in the Hasegawa picture.

In a way it’s kind of painful to place one image next to the other.

Two men, two fathers with their beloved daughters and wives.

Tsurumi lost his family and blamed Wilk for it, Wilk, who made his own family, who had a daughter like Tsurumi, who was among the Hokkaido Ainu trying to discover where they hid their gold, like a spy in short, like Tsurumi.

There’s a huge parallel between these two men and, in a way, I think for Tsurumi the real enemy has never been Hijikata or Sugimoto or Ogata.

He’s still fighting Wilk’s ghost, Wilk who still lives in his own daughter where Tsurumi’s daughter is long dead.

It’s a tragedy, in a way.

But there’s another parallel between them.

They both married to better integrate with the local... but the marriage that was meant to be merely a toll, ultimately caused them to love the daughter who was born out of it and their wife.

They thought to use it to further their goals and, instead, were changed by it. They, who prized themselves so much for their control over the situation and their emotions, lost control.

Anyway let’s go on.

Wilk’s expression as he holds Asirpa impresses Kiro, it was an expression of gentleness he never saw before on Wilk’s face.

This page too is cleverly constructed.

On the top panel we’ve Kiro, with a not pleased expression. As he blamed Wilk’s change to Asirpa’s birth, it’s easy to speculate that seeing such expression on Wilk’s face worried him, it made him think Wilk might not remain loyal to their cause.

On the lower panel there’s Tsurumi.

He also doesn’t look pleased, but likely for different reasons from Kiro. He knows what Wilk might have felt holding his daughter, he know he might have felt the same he had felt when he had held Olga... but the thing probably burned him. The man whom he viewed as the cause of his loss had the chance to hold his own daughter, a daughter Tsurumi can’t hold anymore.

In the middle, parting Kiro from Tsurumi there are three panels, one is the one of the church, that divides the flashback from the present time, and the two below it shows, one the inside of the church with Tsurumi, Sofia and Asirpa, Tsurumi though completely a dark shadow and the other Asirpa’s face as she heard her father, holding her, made an expression Kiro had never seen on his face.

Asirpa seems happy of hearing this, of hearing his father looked at her with a gentle expression he never had before, her eyes shining and her checks slightly redded.

In a way she’s in the middle of those two men, for Kiro she’s the cause of Wilk’s change, for Tsurumi she represents Wilk’s gain at the expenses of his own loss, as well as the embodiment on Wilk’s will.

The story continues.

The flashback moves forward of some more years.

We’re told that a strange rumor starts being spread, the rumour of the discovery of an old Ainu man who was supposed to have died of smallpox (remember? There was a smallpox epidemic in which Cikapasi’s whole family died), and who was instead living alone in the mountains.

Tsurumi suggests the guy could have been Kimuspu, one of the Ainu who were involved in the attempt to buy weapons from Russia with the gold 50 years before and who, therefore, knows where the gold is.

Tsurumi explains that they too got the same info (though he doesn’t tell them HOW they got it), the image showing him, Kikuta, Usami, Tsukishima and Ogata (hinting how they were all involved in Tsurumi’s Ainu plan) and that they were in the 1902.

Now… a little break here.

The summer of 1902 is the summer in which Tsurumi staged Koito’s kidnapping.

If Asirpa’s dream is reliable Wilk told her his name when it was snowing. Asirpa said that after telling her his name her father went away, implying this was the last time she saw him.

We’ll see Wilk later on in the flashback and his beard is shorter than in Asirpa’s memory.

This might mean that between the discovery of Kimuspu’s body and Wilk’s death time went by. The Ainu aren’t dressed so heavily it suggests we are in winter, but neither so lightly it suggests we’re in summer (Kiro has his undershirt, which he didn’t wear in summer). This means this either happened in spring or in autumn.

We’ll see if the next chapter will tell us more and why when this happened might be relevant… for now let’s just say this seems to hint that Wilk’s death happened in the last months of that year and not in the first.

This, of course, if Asirpa’s dream/memory is reliable.

Anyway, let’s go on.

Kiro continues his narration, telling how this discovery changed the situation radically.

We move then to Noboribetsu where Wilk is having a reunion with 6 more Ainu

Yeah, Noboribetsu is the place where there was the hot spring in which Toni Anji was investigating and Kikuta and Ariko recovering. It’s also the place near which there was Ariko’s village, and it might even be they’re having their reunion in Ariko’s house.

This might also explain what Toni Anji was doing there, that place could have been the place in which Hijikata suspected the gold was hidden, hence he sent Toni to check it. The gold could very well be hidden in the same old mine in which Toni escaped or in a similar one as Ariko said there were others and he went to explore them when he was younger.

It’s entirely possible Hijikata had Boutarou’s same idea but Hijikata found sooner about Noboribetsu and went there to investigate. Maybe he talked to Ariko’s mom and, from her, discovered about Ariko being the son of one of the men involved.

If that’s the case, I’m pleased.

I’ve always wondered WHY Toni Anji was in Noboribetsu as it seemed weird he was there just to investigate on Tsurumi’s men.

But let’s go back to the story and to the conversation Wilk has with the others.

Wilk asks to Siromakur, who’s clearly Ariko’s father if his skin tone, eyes and eyebrows are meant to be taken as a reference, if he couldn’t ask Kimuspu the location of the gold.

So Ariko’s dad is the one who met met Kimuspu.

Now, remember how I said Tsurumi didn’t say how he got info about Kimuspu?

In hindsight this makes me wonder if Tsurumi has a man among the Ainu because if a rumour about this Ainu man being found spread, it should have spread among Ainu, not Wajin. They should have known him, known he was involved with the gold and known he was assumed to have died of smallpox.

Those aren’t info they would have shared with the Wajins.

Whatever, let’s go on.

Siromakur says the man didn’t want to talk with him so another Ainu, Mesira, suggests they should track him down and 'convince’ him to talk.

This worries me because it implies they might end up being forceful with him.

Sure, partisans in all the countries, despite claiming to stand with the local population, hardly had qualms in forcing the population to cooperate should they decide they didn’t want to align with the partisans’ wishes... and partisans are fighting a war, a war with different means but always a war and wars are dirty things but... but it always rubbed me the wrong way because while soldiers go at war merely because they obey orders, partisans claim they chose to go at war for ideals that include protecting people...

...and then sacrifice the people they wanted to protect.

It kind of reminds me of a dark joke popular in my country about this kind of people.

“Against violence, bullying, suffering we must all be united... and if someone doesn’t agree, we'll kill him.”

...because yeah, when they said they’re against violence they were talking of violence perpetrated by OTHER PEOPLE, they’re completely in favour of violence perpetrated by them...

Sukuta wonders if someone else, apart the 7 of them, knows about Kimuspu. As Irenka, another Ainu who so far hadn’t spoken, looks at Siromakur, the latter admits he talked about it with several people but didn't tell them where Kimuspu was.

Great move, Ariko’s dad, now we know who might have spread the rumour until it reached Tsurumi’s (and Kiro’s) ears. -_-

Do you want the news to be reported on newspapers too?

Just to make sure everyone knows....

Ratci, who seems to be the older among them and therefore the only one who has a chance to be the older brother of the old Ainu Boutarou met since the guy was supposedly one of those who died in the incident, comments Kimuspu was living deep in the mountains without anyone knowing, so he couldn't be found easily.

Oskeporo, who somehow reminds me of Kirawus, although his eyebrows looks more like Cikapasi’s, comments they too could have problems tracking Kimuspu.

Siromakur tells them he knows where he sets his arrow traps so they can wait him there. At this they decide to go find Kimuspu before others will track him down.

It’s clear they’re searching the old guy because they’re interested in the gold.

However, as they’re about to leave, Kiro shows up and demands explanations from Wilk. He’s clearly angry if his expression, his tone of voice and his clenched fists can be taken as a hint, and wants to know why Wilk hadn’t called him.

Did Ariko’s dad tattled out the discovery of Kimuspu to Kiro as well?

Great move, Ariko’s dad, really. -_-

What about informing Russia about it as well now?

They might want to know too...

Wilk tell the other Ainu to go ahead. As he does so, in his same panel we can see Ariko’s father and Mesira, who was the guy who wanted them to ‘convince’ Kimuspu to talk. They seem to accept it.

In another panel we see Sukuta and Osikepor. Sukuta seems just worried, Osikepor is clearly not pleased, a frown on his face but all he says is a line of dots.

Once they’re alone Kiro again, loudly demands some explanation and Wilk informs him he has decided they need to change plans, that his Far East Federation would be too wide to protect from Russia if they were to count on minorities alone, but if they were to make only Hokkaido, which is encircled by the sea, independent, they could manage it.

Now, please, let me facepalm.

Yeah, an island is a bit easier to protect than the huge land Wilk originally planned to involve, part of which was attached to Russia, but not that much it makes it an inexpugnable fortress.

The Far East Federation was a pure utopia but this is really no that much better.

They would then need to find another Russian captain willing to sell them weapons and warships, get some Ainu who know how to handle them all, chase away the 7th division who, by then is residing in Hokkaido along with all those military settlers who has stopped serving the army, beat the Ominato fleet and then whatever fleet Japan would send against them.

In case Japan were to give up on re-conquering Hokkaido they would have then hope that Russia wouldn’t try to do it or wouldn’t join forces with Japan in exchange for some compensations. Or that China wouldn’t lend a hand in place of Russia in exchange for compensations.

In short, yeah, you’ve less land to defend and it’s a little harder to get there but not by much considering how Kiro’s group could even cross the La Pérouse Strait on a small boat and Asirpa did it by walking on drift ice.

We’ve no info on how the Tsugaru strait was crossed back then but it’s half than the La Pérouse Strait, so Hokkaido can be attacked easily by two points and with a little more work as it would require a longer boat trip, from other points as Hokkaido’s coast is approximately 4,183 kilometres which is quite a bit to guard.

Islands had been conqueered through all the centuries, it’s not like the thing is unprecendented so really, Hokkaido might be slightly more difficult to attack but it’s not such a stronghold Wilk can hope to defend it with his meagre forces.

Of course things would be slightly different if Wilk were to plan to join hands with Tsurumi who, in that same year, managed to have Koito Heiji indebted to him and who has professional soldiers under him.

If Wilk’s state and Tsurumi’s state were to overlap this would provide them more tactical advantages. This, assuming Tsurumi wouldn’t, once he got control of the gold, kick the Ainu out of the deal.

But we don’t know if Wilk and Tsurumi know each other is in Hokkaido and, at this point, I’m not sure these two chessmasters would shake hands in an allegiance.

Anyway Kiro’s furious at the new plan.

We jump back into the present where Tsurumi explains to Asirpa the benefits of Wilk’s plan… or better how his plan diverged from the one of Sofia and Kiro’s which is something that would end up promoting discord between Wilk and his own allies.

(It’s also worth to remember that Sofia in truth wasn’t a partisan, she was a revolutionary who cared about the Russian population. Hokkaido Ainu are considered Japanese so it’s unlikely she would be interested in them. Wilk’s plan basically meant he will let her to her own devices... great way to handle your allies Wilk.)

Tsurumi claims he understands Wilk’s plan, and of course he does as he plans to do the same but Tsurumi is much better organized, with better men, connections, inside knowledge, trusted allies and back up plans to support his country so Tsurumi’s chances of success are WAY HIGHER than Wilk, despite his plan remaining very hard to pursue successfully.

Meanwhile we go back to the flashback.

Predictably Kiro sees Wilk’s idea as a betrayal. Wilk came up with such plan without discussing it with him or Sofia and it’s a plan that is not beneficial to the other minorities, the minorities to whom Kiro belongs or has grown to care about who live in Karafuto or in Russia, just to the Hokkaido Ainu.

Wilk says according to him they should migrate in Hokkaido and he would be willing to welcome them there, which again, is naïve.

For start he’s not the ruler of Hokkaido. The migrants might end up being seen by the Hokkaido population as no better than the Wajin, never mentioning he’s just asking to all those people to leave their lands and move there.

It’s similar to Hijikata’s plan but Hijikata at least didn’t have to really care for the migrants he wanted to welcome, nor for their living style. For him they were just an usable commodity. Wilk should care about them instead and yet he’s not.

Still, I love how cleverly this page is constructed.

We’ve three panels.

The two above show Kiro and Wilk and their contrasting positions.

The visual pins them as contrasting in every possible way, Kiro is angry, Wilk is calm, Kiro is seen frontally, Wilk from behind. With their images Noda is setting up the premise for the fight between them that will follow.

The line that divides the two panels might as well be the fracture between them.

On the bottom we see Kiro’s reaction to Wilk’s world. Wilk’s words only upset Kiro further.

It’s meaningful how we see only the top of his head, his hands holding it, everything shaded by a swirling shade, hinting at the many thoughts that should infest Kiro’s mind in that moment.

It gives me the feeling Kiro feels his world too is wirling and he’s desperately trying to keep it together, to make sense of it and can’t.

Wilk is the person he loved, trusted and admired the most and now Wilk comes out with... this? How is that even possible?

Kiro reminds Wilk of how his birth village disappeared and his people died due to them being forced to leave the land.

Wilk is unaffected by this, he’s sure since they know why the first time things went wrong, they wouldn’t make mistakes this time.

Sure, failed immigration attempts plague us in moder times as well but Wilk would have managed to magically solve them all, Wilk could do everything better, Wilk knows.

WILK CAN YOU PLEASE COME BACK DOWN ON PLANET EARTH FOR A CHANGE? YOU AREN’T THE GOD OF A BRAVE NEW WORLD, YOU DON’T KNOW HOW TO SOLVE IT! YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW HOW TO MANAGE YOUR LITTLE REBELLION OR HOLD CLOSE YOUR ALLIES OR PERSUADE THEM YOU’RE RIGHT! EITHER YOU’VE A SECRET BACK UP PLAN OR HOW YOU’LL SAY TO KIRO YOU’LL ACCOMPLISH IS BEYOND DUMB AND NAIVE! PLEASE, STOP!

Ahem... okay, back with the story.

Kiro then points out how the Uilta wouldn’t be able to continue their lifestyle as Hokkaido is too warm to keep reindeers so they can’t protect their culture in Hokkaido.

Wilk waves the problem off, saying they would accept only who wants to move there.

In short if the Uilta don’t want to move because this would mean to change their lifestyle… well, their problem.

So yes, it’s a betrayal of their cause, their cause that was about protecting all those minorities and their lifestiles.

Wilk belonged to a group, a group who wanted to take care of all those minorities. He can’t just arbitrarily decide that some of them don’t matter and it’s their problem.

It would be different if he had said ‘let’s fix the Hokkaido Ainu, let’s start from here and then spread, we can’t help the Uilta RIGHT NOW, but once we’ve consolidate our forces we will, we’re postponing, not giving up.’

Instead he’s giving up.

He should have talked with the others, he should have proposed Hokkaido as a starting point, not as the solution. Let’s free Hokkaido, strengthen our defences there and then move to free the rest... as Tsurumi is planning to do.

For Tsurumi is first Hokkaido then Vladivostok.

For Wilk it could have been first Hokkaido then Karafuto, then the rest. A step at time.

It was still an utopia but it wouldn’t be betrayal of his teammates and they could have accepted it. It would have made sense.

Instead Wilk didn’t discuss things, he just decided them behind his companions’ back without talking with them because he’s Wilk and knows what’s better to do.

Really, I see a lot of parallels with Sugimoto because I’m sure Wilk too is persuaded he meant well... but he’s actually deciding things arbitrarily for others, looking more at his own advantage than at theirs.

Kiro accuses him of not caring about the Russian minorities because Wilk’s goal is now merely to protect his daughter’s future as she’s an Hokkaido Ainu.

Wilk insists his method is just the most realistic.

This part is again well constructed as it again represent the split between them.

Below the image of Wilk saying that only who wants to immigrate should do it we’ve on one side a panel with Kiro, accusing Wilk of selfishly caring only about Asirpa.

On the other we’ve two panels, one of Asirpa and one of Wilk, Asirpa’s panel taking most of the space.

Although Wilk insists he’s taking the most realistic path, it’s clear Asirpa weightens a lot on his decision... and in the future Asirpa is there to listen how she ultimately caused the division between those two friends just by... existing.

At this point though, the discussion takes a really ugly turn.

Kiro, who back then likely wasn’t married yet, remarks that it’s Hokkaido who actually has nothing to do with them, and that Wilk is caring about it merely because he now has a lovely family there.

The page is split in two. On one panel there’s Kiro and Wilk, this time together, on the other there’s Asirpa who’s ‘listening’ to the discussion they’re having, who’s called to hear of their actions and judge them.

And we make a break because we’ve a problem here and I wonder if Asirpa has caught up with it as well.

I stand by Kiro when he says Wilk’s plan is a betrayal of the other minorities and of his companions and therefore a pretty dirty move.

But they were planning to buy their freedom by using the Hokkaido Ainu gold. Now, unless they planned to steal from them, the Hokkaido Ainu should have mattered as well, they have something to do with them, they’re a minority too who deserves to be protected and of whom they wanted to use the resources and the support.

Hokkaido has everything to do with them if they want to involve it in their war and not just profit from it... which probably was exactly what they, deep down, meant to do since both Kiro and Wilk didn’t come to Hokkaido with the most honest intentions but disguised themselves among its people to try and find info about the gold.

So the discussion reveals that below those men’s oh so pure ideals, there’s something else, something else that’s not pure and selfless at all.

Self interest.

And Trurumi translates this in words for Asirpa.

Right from the start both Kiro and Wilk had two goals.

One was the noble one they presented to the world, protect the minorities.

The other was the more human one, protect whose they loved.

More often than not, expecially when interacting with a story, people tend to think other people/characters are moved solely by ONE SINGLE GOAL.

That’s not really true, people is usually moved by multiple goals.

both goals existed in both Kiro and Wilk but they presented to the world only one, the noble one, and kept the other hidden in their heart.

That’s because the world could understand and support the noble goal but would scoff at the other goal... yet the other goal is probably much more important to them than the other one.

In fact things are breaking among them EXACTLY due to that other goal being denied.

Their priority is that other goal, the noble goal exists... but comes second best and will never come first.

Tsurumi’s words reflect his own situation as well.

He too has a noble goal, to conqueer Hokkaido for the men of the 7th... a goal that to him is real and that he wants to reach... but he also has a much more private goal, which is tied to the loss of his family.

The existance of this goal doesn’t deny the existance of the previous goal. They both exists, it’s just he presents only one because only one would be considered acceptable and give him support... and also because the other is personal, private.

Something that holds in his heart but doesn’t dare to voice.

Tsukishima, outside of the room, hear all this and is impressed (we can see that on his face there aren’t anymore signs of anger) as he likely understood this can be applied to Tsurumi as well.

Tsukishima has naively believed Tsurumi has to have only one single goal, either he was fighting for the men of the 7th or he was fighting due to his own family but that’s not the case.

Tsurumi can as well fight both for creating a military state in Hokkaido for the men of the 7th but also for the people he loved and while the people he loved would be his main motive this wouldn’t make his second reason untrue.

Kiro, in an agry and distraught face reminds Wilk of how Sofia is still waiting for them in Russia, before attacking Wilk, who fight him back.

While back then it was all about what moved Wilk, now this page is all about what moves Kiro. He loved Sofia, not just the minorities.

He can’t bear the idea to sacrifice her, he’ll fight for her.

For her he’ll fight Wilk whom he admired and loved so much.

Asirpa understands all this.

While his father wanted to protect the minorities but, ultimately, prioritized her, Kiro too loved and wanted to protect the minorities, he was angry on their behalf but, more than everything, he loved and wanted to protect Sofia, Sofia, who was the last word he said before dying.

She explains Kiro’s feelings to Sofia and it’s so terribly sad to think back at how Kiro killed Wilk for her, because Wilk would just dump her and yet Sofia was still so in love with him when she met Kiro again she slapped him because he killed Wilk.

The pain Kiro should have felt in that moment... he just took the slap and didn’t counter, didn’t say anything. He killed Wilk FOR HER, it hurts him to kill Wilk and yet he couldn’t tell any of this...

... and, at the same time, he didn’t regret any of this. For her he would kill Wilk all over again.

Meanwhile, in the flashback we can see that the winner of the fight is Wilk... which was predictable enough, not because we knew Wilk was the better fighter (we didn’t) but because Kiro attacked him in blind rage, while Wilk managed to stay calm and, apparently, catch him in a strangle hold, suffucating him and causing him to lose consciousness.

That’s why Wilk walks away all bruised while Kiro, despite ending up on the ground, seems in better conditions.

Asirpa suggests her father might not have said the truth to Kiro because he knew Kiro loved Sofia.

It makes sense but it’s not a great justification because it’s the admission Wilk knew he was betraing them.

Kiro was allied with Wilk for a reason, Wilk knew that reason and so he tried to do things behind Kiro’s back because he wasn’t going to respect the deal he had with Kiro and Sofia, knowing Kiro wouldn’t agree to it.

Now... okay, as I said before it’s possible that Wilk is actually in an alliance with Tsurumi as well, or that he suspects Tsurumi has spies in his group so he’s serving Kiro a fake story but let’s assume he’s being sincere.

Wilk might claim and claim this is more rational, and maybe he even believes he’s doing all this because it’s more rational and not for his daughter, maybe he’s in denial about his own true reason so really, he thinks he’s choosing the best option... but the fact he knew Kiro wouldn’t accept it, hints at how deep down Wilk should have known it was betrayal.

Yet, it’s still possible Wilk wasn’t consciously aware of it, that he was lying even to himself.

We’ve seen this kind of betrayals through the story, with the character doing the deed not realizing he was betraying the other party but thinking he was picking up the best option for everyone.

Sugimoto sold Asirpa to Tsurumi, demanding money solely for himself and not caring about Shiraishi’s fate. By doing so HE BELIEVED he was protecting Asirpa (he wasn’t) and that Shiraishi should have just spontaneously given up to his own share of gold. Sugimoto could have realized this, but he preferred to think he was doing the right thing for everyone.

Asirpa decided to join forces with Hijikata because she believed it would be a better option for them. By doing so SHE BELIEVED she was chosing the better option for everyone as an alliance would give them more chances of success and Hijikata has a better future in mind, but in truth she basically demanded from Boutarou to give up on his goal as Hijikata’s goal and Boutarou’s are mutually exclusive. Asirpa could have realized this (though I tend to give her a pass because she’s young but really, Boutarou pointed out he wanted to fulfill his goal too many times to miss it, and even if she still were due to her young age, Sugimoto and Shiraishi should have realized and give her a head up), but he preferred to think he was doing the right thing for everyone.

Tsukishima, for most of the story, is not fighting Tsurumi’s orders but just agreeing with Tsurumi’s methods of deception of the other characters, because HE BELIEVED they will lead everyone to be saved. Practically he’s lying to Koito and denying Tanigaki the chance to opt out, attempting to force everyone in the 7th to betray Central. Tsukishima could have realized this, but he preferred to think he was doing the right thing for everyone.

Long story short those people didn’t see their behaviour as betrayal but as pursuing the better option for themselves and the others, expecting the others to just agree with them.

Wilk’s behaviour, the fact he insists he’s picking up the better option as if he’s trying to persuade himself more than Kiro, reminds me of them, of people who were stubbornly thinking they were doing the right thing, they were picking the best option, when they actually were walking all over their friends, neglecting them and their goals in favour of a goal they prioritized.

But, back to the story, as soon as Asirpa tells Sofia that Kiro’s problem was that he loved Sofia so he couldn’t just leave her behind, Sofia lowers her head, her eyes wet.

She loved Wilk... but, in her own way she loved Kiro also, whom she saw as a little brother. It should pain her greatly to know in the end she was the reason that pushed Kiro to kill Wilk, that caused the split between them... even if this isn’t all true. As said, the goal to protect the minorities still existed in Kiro... but Sofia was the drop that broke the camel's back.

Also I get Asirpa meant well, she wants to deliver Kiro’s feelings and, at the same time, defend her father’s actions but that wasn’t probably the best moment to deliver Kiro’s feelings since Sofia was already shaken by how she was facing Tsurumi/Hasegawa... as for defending Wilk’s actions... honestly she only end up as painting him as calculative.

Because Wilk knew Kiro wouldn’t have agreed with his plan, he worked behind his back. I’m not sure Asirpa realizes though, she likely is buying the narrative in which Wilk’s choice was mainly for the greater good as well as her, while the order of the things was completely reverse and the plan was so dumb I can’t believe Wilk came up with it.

Anyway as a battered Wilk walks away we can see a Kiro tied to a tree coming to his sense with a murderous expression on his face.

Kiro sees even the fact Wilk has left him alive as a betrayal, not as of regret that he has actually betrayed his friend and can’t just bear to kill him.

Kiro tells himself the Wilk of the past would have killed Kiro, since Kiro was an obstacle to his purpose. Yet Wilk has left him alive which, to Kiro, proves Wilk has changed and isn’t anymore the Wilk he loved.

This makes me wonder if Kiro actually would have preferred to be killed, if this could have made him swallow the bitter pill Wilk betrayed them, if, in his furious mind, this would have been a proof that Wilk really believed they couldn’t do any better than conquer Hokkaido and then relocate everyone there.

Kiro has said he blindly trusted the old Wilk.

In a way the fact that Wilk, whom he loved and admired so blindly, betrayed their cause and tried to work behind his back should have hurt him terribly. That betrayal is the fall of a hero and, in a sense, Kiro tries to compensate by ‘denying that new Wilk’.

The ‘new’ Wilk is no more the Wilk he loved, therefore he’s no more Wilk, his friend. It makes sense he decided to kill that Wilk, who has turned into a stranger to him, no, worse, into an enemy, an enemy of their cause and an enemy who would sacrifice the people Kiro loved for his own goals.

So, clearly Wilk had to die because he betrayed their cause... but, since we’re talking of people doing things for more than one motive, I wonder if it’s also possible Kiro wanted him destroyed because Wilk wasn’t Wilk anymore, as if the new Wilk killed the old Wilk he loved.

This kind of remind me “The Return of the Jedy”

Luke Skywalker: Ben! Why didn't you tell me? You told me that Darth Vader betrayed and murdered my father.

Obi-Wan: Your father... was seduced by the Dark Side of the Force. He ceased to be the Jedi Anakin Skywalker and "became" the Sith Darth Vader. When that happened, the good man who was your father was destroyed. So, what I told you was true... from a certain point of view.

Luke Skywalker: A certain point of view?

Obi-Wan: Luke, you're going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view. Anakin was a good friend. When I first met him, your father was already a great pilot. But I was amazed how strongly the Force was with him. I took it upon myself to train him as a Jedi. I thought that I could instruct him just as well as Yoda. I was wrong.

Luke Skywalker: There is still good in him.

Obi-Wan: He's more machine now than man. Twisted and evil.

Luke Skywalker: I can't do it, Ben.

Obi-Wan: You cannot escape your destiny. You must face Darth Vader again.

Luke Skywalker: I can't kill my own father.

Obi-Wan: Then the Emperor has already won. You were our only hope.

Kiro is Obi-Wan, who believes Wilk ceased to be ‘the Wilk he loved’ and became ‘that Wilk’ and when that happened, the good man who was Wilk was destroyed so, like Obi-Wan, he thinks ‘that Wilk’ has to be killed (by Luke/Ogata).

Contrary to him, Sofia is more like Luke Skywalker. She didn’t agree with Kiro’s idea they had to kill Wilk and slapped Kiro for what he did.

In all this though, it’s interesting Wilk left Kiro alive.

I’ve mentioned that other situations, similar to this one, happened in the story but this is the first in which the two parties confront each other BEFORE the deed his done. It would be interesting to know if his conversation with Kiro affected him, it made him realize his best option wasn’t so good and so right after all.

Wilk was still in time to change his mind, to go back on being the Wilk Kiro loved... or at least fix his plan so that it would include Kiro’s goals as well hence he might not have wanted to ruin everything by killing Kiro.

Wilk was still in time to try and patch things between them so maybe, albeith he had to leave right then, he left Kiro alive because he wanted to make up, to fix things between them, because he realized he wronged Kiro and didn’t want that.

But well, this is something we’ll discover in the next chapter.

On a sidenote is interesting how Kiro ties the fact that Wilk has changed to Wilk being irrational. The old Wilk was rational, the old Wilk would sacrifice companions because it was rationally the best choice and Kiro believed him.

This new Wilk leave him alive, which is not the best choice, therefore he’s being irrational, he’s being motivated by emotions, therefore even his choice to care only about Hokkaido is motivated merely by emotions, is not rational and shouldn’t be trusted.

It’s surely a convolute mental gimmik but it’s interesting because it’s totally a reasoning a person can do, especially when burning with blind rage... but well, Kiro is being emotional himself and, probably, not even realizing it.

Noda made great characters with them... but their situation is so sad it hurts and even mroe so because we know is hopeless.

Kiro will kill Wilk and will never get to understand his side and neither of them will ever manage to make peace with the other. Such a long friendship ended up in ashes and all for something that should be supposedly positive, the fact they loved someone.

It’s sad.

It’s sad that their friendship ended, it’s sad they didn’t manage to respect each otehr feelings and come up with a solution that would make them both satisfied.

It’s so very sad...

[goldenkamuyhunting]

Wilk and Grisha Yeager from Attack on Titan had the same goal: to liberate their races from oppressive regimes. But their parenting styles were radically different. Zeke resented Grisha because Grisha raised him not as a child but as the prince and future savior of Eldia since his birth. Asirpa, on the other hand, remembers Wilk fondly and shows no signs of being raised as a tool and weapon. Why did Noda portray Wilk differently from Grisha as a father and a freedom fighter?

Well...

I’m not really a fan of “Attack on Titan”. I recently tried watching the first series and I loved the animation (I so wish GK could benefit of such an amazing animation!) but, for some reasons, it still didn’t really intrigue me that much even if I could see it was a well constructed story with lot of interesting characters so I ended up stopping there.

Maybe I should give it a second chance when work isn’t draining me.

Anyway, back to your question I can’t really compare Wilk’s raising methods to Grisha‘s because I didn’t manage to see Grisha’s methods yet... but still the answer to your question is pretty simple.

They do things differently because they’re different people/characters written by different authors for different purposes.

Not all the fathers and not all the freedom fighters are the same so it’s not like Noda and Isayama HAD to forcefully represent them as the same. Sure, sometimes in stories authors chose to go for the same tropes, so you meet father figures who act the same but this is not a given. You can also have authors who chose to defy those tropes in favour of different portraials.

Even if we consider GK, who has two fathers who’re also 2 freedom fighters we see how Kiro and Wilk raise their children differently.

Wilk views Asirpa as a future leader of the Ainu and seems to count on her to reach his goal where Kiro wants to be the one who’ll reach his goal for his children.

Wilk started to train Asirpa when she was really young... while Kiro left his children safely at home and didn’t involve them in the gold hunt.

Even in the way in which Kiro and Wilk handle Asirpa they’re different.

Neither of them taught her to kill or encouraged her to do so but Wilk, in chap 137, entrusted her with the task of murdering a bear when she was really small (even though, truth to be told, he was there to cover her back)...

...while Kiro, when they were facing a bear in chap 68, told her to stand back.

Kiro wanted Asirpa to be educated on the minorities outside Japan and to learn about the risks all the minorities were facing as well, where Wilk preferred her to learn about Ainu culture and go to a Japanese school.

This reflects the fact they’ve different views on how to raise children and on how to introduce them to their cause.

They’re not the only ones who, despite being fathers in similar situations, act differently.

Thinks to Ueji’s father and Koito’s father.

Both had a right to be disappointed in their children as they were performing poorly at school but Ueji’s father insisted he was disappointed with him and, officially, gave his dog away so as to force him to focus on his studies where Koito senior instead first let Koito be (probably also due to him suffering depression due to his son’s death) continuing to spoil him without scolding him and then acted supportive when Koito decided to switch from the navy to the army (even though navy and army had poor relations ans this could be a problem for him).

And then we’ve Hanazawa who pressured his son into becoming an idol for the army.

Fathers, and even more characters, come in any flavours in Golden Kamuy. They don’t have to be all the same or follow the same rules because their goals are similar.

So, back to Wilk, I think he loved Asirpa and put value in showing his daughter that love. Maybe he was a loved child, so he learnt to pour love to children from his parents, maybe it was Riratte who influenced him by giving him love.

It’s also clear Wilk wanted Asirpa to be involved in his cause... but I think he also wanted it to be her own choice, not something he forced upon her because there’s nothing that makes you more devoted to a cause that the fact YOU decided for yourself that’s what you want to pursue.

So he gave her an aducation of which she would benefit once she were to decide to become a partisan... but didn’t introduce her to partisans, didn’t pressure her to hate Japanese or educate her to murder people.

Ultimately what Asirpa will do with her knowledge is Asirpa’s choice.

Truth to be told though, Wilk seemed so enamoured with his ideals it could be he believed Asirpa’s choice would come naturally and she wouldn’t need to be forced into it.

It’s hard to say.

It’s also worth to mention that, in truth, we only have small fragments of what Asirpa’s life with Wilk was. As she loved her father and lost it when she was a little above 6 it’s entirely possible that, if she had some unpleasant memories of him, she subconsciously removed them and kept only the good ones.

Long story short it’s really hard to judge how Wilk was as a father because there’s little material and all of it is seen through Asirpa’s eyes.

He clearly came out as an odd father in Ainu’s eyes as the education of Ainu children at the time was very gendered, with the boys going with the fathers and learing how to hunt and the girls remaining with their mothers and learning female works so Wilk, teaching Asirpa how to hunt, surely came out as odd... and he would have looked even odder if it turned out he wanted Asirpa to lead the Ainu... so his actions aren’t just moved by his love for her.

He clearly has a goal for her.

But back to your question what’s interesting though is that his goal for her is not to be a tool or a weapon in his hands, is to be a leader. Somehow Wilk didn’t want Asirpa to be an instrument but the master of her own destiny. If anything he hoped she would surpass him as a partisan warrior and become what he couldn’t be.

The one who would lead Ainu... gaining what he couldn’t get, freedom for the Ainu.

Fathers who view their children as weapons or tools often instead want to be the one who’ll become something or who’ll gain something, with the kids being merely pawns in their games, not masters of their own destiny.

In a way it’s a matter of trust and ambition.

Wilk didn’t aim to lead the Ainu for himself and trusted Asirpa to be able to do a better job than he would, other fathers just want to reach something for themselves and don’t trust their children to be able to reach goal without them ‘leading/directing/using’ them.

We see it in the Hanazawa/Yuusaku relation, where Yuusaku is a pawn, meant to inspire Hanazawa’s troops and not make his father look bad.

And it’s interesting because Ogata too expected Asirpa to be a pawn in Wilk’s game and didn’t quite understand why he hadn’t taught her to kill... whcih Wilk should have done if Asirpa were meant to be just an instrument in his hands.

Wilk instead wanted for her something more than just that.

Said all this, I don’t mean Wilk was an awesome father.

In his love for his own cause he still influenced and directed Asirpa’s growth toward the destination he wanted. It was much lighter manipulation than the one children were normally subjected back then (back then fathers were to chose a child’s future job and, possibly, also who they would marry) but it’s still manipulation.

He might have been blind to it, thinking he was doing it for Asirpa’s well being... but he still forced her in a situation that was pretty dangerous and manipulative.

Long story short I think Wilk wanted to be a good father... but that ultimately he still prioritized his goal over what Asirpa might want in the warped idea Asirpa would surely want the same as him.

But well, that’s just me so I might be wrong.

[goldenkamuyhunting]

Ramblings and crazy theory time about GK chap 254 “Cornered rat”

New chapter in which we can admire Asirpa's swing...

…and hope many other swings will follow.

But anyway we start with a colour cover, showing Asirpa crouched down and taking an arrow, looking firmly yet calmly ahead of herself, the wind moving her hair and fur coat. Her predominant colours are purple and blue, colours who remarks her calm status.

A smaller Sugimoto in full charge toward us readers, running while holding his bayonet, scarf fluttering high and angry expression is superimposed over her. Although Sugimoto’s coat is normally blue we can’t really see it. He’s wrapped in a red background and red tinges also his image making it his predominant colour, red like anger, passion and blood.

Sugimoto and Asirpa’s images clearly strike a visual contrast, in terms of colours (the calm blue vs the passionate red), size (Asirpa’s image dominating the page while Sugimoto’s is much smaller) and the direction they’re looking at.

Although they’re both staring ahead of themselves and both attacking, this is one of the few images in which they aren’t going toward the same goal. I hope this is a prophetic image, which will mean Asirpa will focus more on her goal (saving the Ainu) while Sugimoto will continue on his way (finding the gold to give it to Umeko).

The writing above it, despite probably being written by the editor and not by Noda himself, seems to point at this reading “Even if I’m not there in the future you envision… I will keep moving forward”.

We know the sentence is meant to be said by Asirpa because for “I” it’s used ‘watashi’ (私) the “I” Asirpa uses instead than ‘ore’, the “I” (俺) Sugimoto uses.

So, even though in the previous chapter when Kikuta said she could put in danger the people around herself and she worried about Sugimoto only (the image we’re shown is one from chap 241 by the way, I finally managed to track it down so she was thinking to her walk with Sugimoto among the Ezo cherry trees), maybe Asirpa is slowly getting ready to let go of her crush for him.

We’ll see.

We start the chapter with Ogata running inside the brewery. He seems to be in a good mood, possibly due to having successfully escaped from Vasily while managing to get a new rifle or because he thinks he has discovered why Sugimoto’s group wasn’t acting more on guard about him, because they now have a sniper, although he wonders who the guy could be as skilled snipers are rare.

Honestly I’m a bit confused by this.

First of all he’s giving Sugimoto’s group too much credit. They had never been that cautious about him, we saw in Karafuto how Vasily managed to surprise them as they carelessly strolled around and we saw them wandering around equally carelessly. Ogata could have easily targeted them when they had that run in with Hijikata but also when they were in disguise searching for info.

Vasily after all isn’t there to protect them, it’s there to murder Ogata. He wouldn’t care if Sugimoto or Asirpa were to get shoot, they’re baits no better than the Russian guards.

But whatever, let’s assume Ogata believes there’s a deep bond between Vasily and Sugimoto’s group or, at least, enough care he wouldn’t use them as baits. Honestly I would like it if Vasily had managed to get fond at least of Asirpa, who saved him from the Amappo.

The real problem of this speech is it seems Ogata realized only now they had a sniper on their side… which makes me think again that adding Vasily to the plot was a spur of the moment idea because Ogata knows someone with a great aim shoot to a Japanese soldier in Karafuto from a boat which is coincidentally the  boat on which Sugimoto, Asirpa and Shiraishi escaped.

Back then he pointed out how the person doing the shot had to be skilled and now he remarks how skilled snipers are few.

However back then he didn’t wonder at all about a random sniper suddenly and conveniently showing up to shoot a Japanese soldier allowing Sugimoto’s group to escape. Actually the fact he found that soldier which was apart from everyone else prior to Tsukishima seemed to imply he was keeping things under control. In short he should have assumed that the soldier’s death was connected to Sugimoto’s escape and wonder BACK THEN who killed him and if Sugimoto’s group had a sniper among them.

After all he knew Sugimoto’s aim is very poor so he couldn’t have done the shoot and, even if he were to assume Tanigaki escaped with them and Tanigaki is not bad with a rifle, we were never been told he’s that skilled so it seems weird he assumed the one shooting the soldier back then was Tanigaki…

It would have been different if he just had found that soldier without knowing it was killed by a skilled sniper but as he did, it makes no sense he apparently forgot the incident.

Plus, when he wonders over who the sniper could be he doesn’t think immediately at that incident and connects the dots, he just immediately thinks at Vasily but, at first, discharge the idea he would have never come all the way to Sapporo.

Then he drops his smile and mentally reasons he would if he were in his place, he would chase him until one of them were to be dead.

Is Ogata that competitive he would do something like that as Vasily is chasing him merely to prove he’s better? Or he’s wrongly assuming the reasons who would move him to do the same thing Vasily is doing are the same that would move Vasily?

I don’t know, but, due to this, Ogata decides he has to find a place from which he can counterattack as getting rid of a dangerous sniper set on killing him becomes, with good reasons, the priority for him. And of course, since a good place would be a high observation place, Ogata starts climbing stairs to find the best observation spot.

We go back to Ostrog/Jack who in the previous chapter spotted Asirpa pretty close to him...

...and who is currently chased by Hijikata’s group.

Now… since Ostrog/Jack can hear them talking I really don’t understand why Asirpa, who was pretty close to him, didn’t overhear them and move toward them (especially since they’ll be noisy enough as they’ll also shoot) and instead merely disappeared from the scene.

Anyway, while Asirpa is nowhere to be seen and Hijikata’s group is trying to shoot and encircle Ostrog/Jack, the guy conveniently discovers he’s close to straw wrappers and set them to fire forcing Hijikata’s group to retreat and allowing him to run away, likely after Asirpa as we see him raising his head and smiling as if he had seen something.

Someone else is in the brewery running around, Kadokura and Usami. Kadokura had the wrong idea to try to escape Usami by going up some stairs. Considering he’s an aged man who’s not really into running sport this was an especially bad decision as, at a certain point, he can’t just run anymore and Usami immediately reaches him, claiming Kadokura has no stamina.

Actually the guy showed an impressive one for his age but whatever.

Kadokura claims it’s no use to catch him as he knows nothing and Usami gropes his large belly, claiming it’s shameful… but then he correctly guesses it’s actually a tattooed skin Kadokura is holding for Hijikata as it seems Tsurumi told his men Hijikata would split the skins among his men so as to reduce the loss should one of them got captured. This actually clashes with what Hijikata did in Abashiri, where he handed all his skins to Nagakura (in fact Ienaga had none apart from her own).

Anyway Kadokura denies it but Usami, in a rather rapey scene, rips his clothes away to find the tattoos… and he does, only it’s a copy.

Sandflow helped me realize the kanji on the copy we see matches with one of the Kanji Ushiyama has on his skin so we should assume the copy is the one of Ushiyama’s tattoo.

Is a faithful copy or it’s actually a wrong copy, kind of like the fake tattooed skins? We don’t know.

Usami, who for reasons I can’t fathom beyond making the scene look even more rapey now has his uniform jacket open, molests Kadokura further, spanking his naked ass and ripping apart more clothes, claiming Kadokura should have more tattooed skins, the visual depicting him in an even more compromising position with his crotch apparently against Kadokura’s naked ass.

As far as I’m involved it’s pretty gross but it might be just me.

Anyway as Usami does so he notices something that greatly surprises him, his eyes widen and a sweat drop appear as it leaves him speechless, able only to say a quiet ‘…huh?’.

As we saw Kadokura naked in the past (chap 174) we know he doesn’t have a full tattoo.

To be honest though, we weren’t shown his back, just his lower end...

...and his back is what Usami is staring at, so he can have a tattoo like Hime did (therefore not necessarily related to the gold hunt although one related to it would be welcomed as well)...

...or an impressive scar there (we know Kadokura’s house got burned down, did he go burned as well?).

We don’t get to see what it is though as Usami hears someone running up the stairs.

Realizing someone is coming Usami stops, hides the copy of the skin in a pocket inside his coat then turns on Kadokura again, likely planning to do something to him.

We don’t know if he manages to do so as Usami’s actions are hidden from our view when Ogata runs into the room and immediately spot Usami even though Usami is in his blind side, likely thanks either to his good hearing or to a habit to check the room he enters in even when he’s in a rush.

Maybe Usami has managed to do something to Kadokura before he entered, maybe no, we don’t know.

Now, people wondered why Ogata hadn’t heard Usami sooner but I think the answer is, once Usami noticed whatever he had noticed, he had quieted down so when Ogata had moved closed enough to hear him… well, actually there was no loud noise anymore, the sound of his footsteps covering the small noise Usami was making. Plus sound might travel differently in the place, carrying more easily the sound Ogata does to Usami’s place than vice versa.

As for entering more cautiously, not only Ogata is in a rush but really, there was no reason for who’s not a sniper, to run upstairs as upstairs would be a dead end for who wants to escape and therefore there’s no reason for Ostrog/Jack to run upstairs.

Anyway Ogata’s apparition forces Usami to focus on him, basically rescuing Kadokura who, despite claiming he has bad luck, in truth often has impressive good luck and doesn’t realize it.

Usami kicks Ogata on Ogata’s side then tries to stab him with his bayonet. Ogata, with an agility proper of a cat, bend his back so that the tip of Usami’s bayonet hit the wall. As it’s just the tip the bayonet would likely not remain stuck in it but Ogata uses this at his advantage, hitting the bayonet with the back of his rifle to break it down.

Breaking Usami’s bayonet is good for two reasons.

Without its tip the bayonet has less stabbing power (Sugimoto explained a bayonet is usually not sharp, being made for stabbing only, his being an exception due to Asirpa demanding him to keep it sharp for Citatap purpose... by the way I wonder if Ogata also was instructed to keep it sharp...) but, what’s more, if they start fighting using the respective bayonets, in a stabbing duel the one with the longest weapon is at advantage, ergo, since Ogata still has his bayonet whole and we saw in the past he’s not hesitant to use it, if Usami’s bayonet is broken he’s at advantage.

Usami should just discharge the bayonet and go for a hand-to-hand fight since we know he’s good at that, likely much, much more than Ogata, but Usami has often tried to attack people with his bayonet so he might be reluctant to do so.

Anyway we’ll see as the scene switches to Asirpa who, unaware of all the noise Hijikata’s group was making and of the fire Ostrog/Jack has started, reaches a dead end and is then reached by Ostrog/Jack.

The guy is interested in her, thankfully not for murdering purpose but because she’s an Ainu and he heard a story about an island populated only by Ainu women who were being able to get pregnant just by letting the east wind hit their bottoms.

This story touches him till the point of tears as he clearly believed it to be true.

We get a short flashback in which Asirpa remembers discussing this story, told to her by her aunt, with Wilk while they were doing Citatap. Little Asirpa, who’s missing her frontal teeth as to imply she’s very young, wonders if that’s how she had birth.

Actually I wonder if Asirpa was named as such prior to become 6 since her dirty name is never used through all the story. Mind you, losing frontal teeth is something that happens to children of around 6 but we already saw Asirpa having her in all her previous interactions with her father in which he called her Asirpa. This means Wilk didn’t left her short after she turned 6 but remained with her for a while, enough for her to grow her teeth back.

Anyway Wilk tells her she wasn’t born this way but because Wilk and Asirpa’s mother, whom she FINALLY learn is called Riratte (リラッテ), ‘uworamkotte’.

The flashback ends here so, in the remote case you hadn’t read the chapter yet, I’ll let you wonder for a while what ‘uworamkotte’ means.

Asirpa asks Ostrog/Jack who told him that story (really, I hope it wasn’t Wilk) and he, with a half crazy half delighted expression claims their bible too has the same kind of story in it regarding the Virgin Mary...

...which makes me wonder which kind of bible Russian people had at the time (Ostrog in real life was Russian) because the Virgin Mary wasn’t turned pregnant by some wind and, not only it was one single case in the world, but it happened for a special reason, giving birth to the son of God, and wasn’t meant to happen at random. No, okay, jokes put aside, this is crazy.

As Asirpa figures this crazy foreigner is Jack, Ostrog goes on claiming that’s why the women he killed were wrong and he had to absolve them of their sins with holy water… and, as he says so, we’re shown an image of him masturbating as Ostrog evidently has a peculiar perception of what holy water is… while his words also seems to imply their sin wasn’t selling their body or having sex but having children after having sex.

Anyway I hope Asirpa hadn’t understood what Ostrog meant with ‘holy water’.

Still our girl is pretty upset and asks if all those women really had to die for such a meaningless reason.

Ostrog/Jack, who clearly doesn’t think his reason is meaningless and demands for Asirpa ‘to let the east wind hit her bottom because he wants to know for sure that it really can make a child’ because she’s an Ainu and so she surely was born like that and there would be nothing wrong in her showing her backside to a pervert and making her pregnant just because ‘he wants to see her do so’ and so, as she’s just a woman, of course she could humour him and get pregnant for his own pleasure. Really, I’m disgusted.

Anyway I’ll make a break here and be very honest. I don’t like this interpretation of Jack The Ripper story.

At this point is not anymore just because Michael Ostrog wasn’t the Ripper but a swindler who was in jail in Paris when the murders took place and therefore couldn’t be Jack, but because his motive doesn’t make any sense.

Let’s sum up what we’re given as his motive for becoming ‘Jack The Ripper’ in this fictional universe (since in the real one Ostrog wasn’t ‘The Ripper’).

Ostrog read of the Virgin Mary in the bible and of how she gave birth without having sex. Evidently he understood nothing else but this of the whole story, how Mary was supposed to be special because she was going to give birth to God’s son and therefore she was going to be impregnated but the Holy Spirit and how no, this wasn’t meant to be the normal way in which women give birth. Normal women who aren’t meant to give birth to the son of God all would have to have sex to give birth.

Anyway, due to this, while in London he starts killing prostitutes because… they’re having babies in the wrong way. I mean… prostitutes, not mothers. Because prostitutes apparently, according to him are having sex because they want babies, not money (yeah, the women killed by The Ripper in London  were also mothers but Jack clearly didn’t check if the women he is killing now are mothers or he would have not approached Kantarou, and not all the women can have babies so again, it makes no sense).

For some reasons his killing spree is forced to stop and he moved to Japan, Yokohama, where he tries to resume it but he’s arrested immediately after killing a prostitute.

He’s carried to Abashiri, escapes, wait a year doing only God knows what than resumes killing.

While in Japan he hears an Ainu story about an island populated solely by women who get impregnated by the east wind.

Now… I couldn’t find info about the east wind being a Kamuy, although in a book about Ainu and their folklore winds were referred as air demons, but whatever, I’ll say they were probably seen as Kamuy or Oyasi and Ostrog ended up thinking they’re the equivalent of God.

Still, evidently he got a very summarized, very basic version of the story which you can read here and that involves the women on the island having vaginas with teeth during a certain period of the year so that’s why they can have sex and get impregnated by the east wind. They also kill the male sons, however, when some males conveniently show up on their island, they keep them, wait for the period in which they shed their vaginal teeth, sleep with them and make babies with them and then send them away when their vaginal teeth regrow.

Long story short those women too have sex and they had babies in a different way merely because forced.

Still, Ostrog assumed this story, which is not related in the slightest to the one of the Virgin Mary apart for the part in which women get impregnated by something that’s not a man, is absolutely real and confirms his beliefs that women should not have sex to give birth to babies so… keep on killing prostitutes trying to mimic the modus operandi he had in London for… reasons (recreating his sacred place? Maybe.) and then he masturbates on the places in which he kills because in this way ‘he absolves whose women from their sins with the holy water’?

He’s the one who sinned in those spots by murdering them, they didn’t give birth to anyone there nor had sex there! They aren’t even around!

Then he sees Asirpa and, even though the story clearly said the women being impregnated by the wind lived on a peculiar women only island and he knows about this part, he assumes she too was born this way because to him all the Ainu are born this way, not just the ones who lived on the women island and asks her to get impregnated right there because he wants to see it.

This makes no sense whatsoever, it’s just a mix of warped random religious beliefs from the west and the east carried out of contest to excuse random murders of whores that follow no logic!

There’s normally a logic even in insanity and this rule was followed for all the previously insane guys introduced in the story. They suffered trauma, they worked in their mind an insane copying method to deal with it and then start to act following a now flawed logic. Henmi persuaded himself his brother’s death was beautiful so he murdered people in hope they would fight back and give him an equally beautiful death, Sekiya was traumatized by his daughter’s death so he told himself he wanted to understand why God kills so he started killing in a certain manner, although his goal in truth was to get punishment so he could again make sense of God’s logic, Edogai was a taxidermist traumatized by his mother’s abusive behavior and by her sudden death so he started to surround himself with stuffed corpses, Heita was traumatized by his family’s death due to a bear he inadvertently drew so he developed multiple personalities included the one of the bear. Ogata’s mother couldn’t accept Hanazawa left her behind and deluded herself into thinking he would come back. Usami as a teen developed an obsessive and possessive crush on Tsurumi and, fearing Tomoharu would steal him, he killed him.

They’re crazy but they follow a logic.

Unless we’ll get more of it, Ostrog’s motive for doing what he does makes no sense whatsoever.

This whole thing seem a huge attempt to throw in the Virgin Mary in the story and compare it with Asirpa as well as toss in some Ainu folk tale. At this point I would have preferred if this convict weren’t Jack but a guy targeting mothers with a regular schedule for his murders.

Of course this is just me and Japanese readers might have been delighted to have ‘Jack The Ripper’ tossed into the story along with some random western religious references and bigotry.

And so okay, Ostrog is the third to win the prize of character from Golden Kamuy I really want to kick out of the story. With the plus side that Ostrog isn’t just disgusting, as far as I’m involved it’s not even a character I find well written (Ueji is disgusting but he seems better written as a character).

Asirpa at this point is feed up and I share the feeling. She explains she was born because her mother and her father ‘uworamkotte’, which doesn’t mean they had a sexual intercourse, that’s ‘ukocanupkor’ (ウコチヤヌプコ口)… (remember the Anehata arc?) or any sort of genital penetration ‘ociw’ (オチウ).

No, Wilk used ‘uworamkotte’ which means “joined hearts with each other”, in short, because they loved each other.

Well, Wilk evidently is a romantic who wasn’t ready yet to explain her about the birds and the bees but there’s to say I like how, in front of Asirpa, he always, ALWAYS insisted he loved her mother.

As he went in Hokkaido to find the gold a side of me always get suspicious he married Asirpa’s mother to get clues or a position that would allow him to find the gold but, due to Wilk’s insistence in how Riratte was important for him and spoke of her lovingly, I like to hope he ultimately fell for her and theirs was a marriage out of love and not out of interest.

Anyway, after stating that she’s born out of love and not out of a wind impregnating her mom, Asirpa reaches for something. Although it seems it’s her arrow, Asirpa pulls out (likely from hammerspace since it didn’t seem she normally keep it into her quiver), her sutu, the punishing rod Ainu use to beat the criminals (maybe I should says he pulled it out from sutuspace?) and use it to beat Ostrog.

First she hit his right knee, forcing him on his knees then with a full swing that would make baseball players proud, hit Ostrog’s jaw, making his hat fly away.

Go, Asirpa, go! Don’t let him escape like Ushiyama did with Ueji!

For once I’m absolutely not against the Sutu being used to beat someone down.

Anyway with this scene the chapter ends.

The chapter had some great moments… even though I think it also had two weak points.

One is Ogata being surprised by how Vasily is with the Sugimoto group, forgetting he supposedly knew already there was a good sniper with them and reinforcing my belief Vasily was a late and unplanned addition.

The other is the fact I can’t make sense of Ostrog’s motive although often Noda prefers to flesh out the reasons for the convicts to do what they do in the volume version so maybe that’s why I’m not pleased.

So I’ll wait and give Noda all the time he needs but, for now, I’m not impressed.

On the other side I love how we could have been hinted there’s a secret tied to Kadokura’s back as I’m still waiting for his backstory and at the beginning of an Usami/Ogata fight. If the fight turns hand-to-hand Ogata is at disadvantage against Usami who strongly hates him, but a fight between the two might lead us to have more flashbacks of the past of those two so I’m totally welcoming him (and LOL, while everyone wonders if it will be Ushiyama or Sugimoto who’ll defeat Usami I wouldn’t mind if it was Asirpa who were to defeat him again as she always win against rabbits).

On a weird sidenote instead I would have been mildly interested in seeing Ogata face Ostrog since he murders prostitutes blaming them for giving birth to babies by making sex and Ogata’s mom was accused to be a prostitute because she gave birth to him.

Back in the Anehata arc Ogata pointed out how it was men who couldn’t contain themselves from having ‘ukocanupkor’ and he knew that, while his mother loved Hanazawa to the point of madness, the latter used her just for sex so I’m curious to know how he would react toward someone who, instead than the man, blames the woman. But whatever, it’s probably not meant to be.

I’ll definitely look forward to the next chapter hoping Asirpa will do a short work of what remains of Ostrog/Jack. No, I’m not so cruel I would want her to kill him, I would be fine with her pulverizing any bone in his body and skin him alive before kicking him out of the story.

Because really, I hate very few characters but when I do, I’ll do it with a passion. Shame on me.

Also... Shiraishi and Boutarou are still missing. I hope those two are all right anyway we’ll see.

[goldenkamuyhunting]

Chapter 206 depicts Riratte (Asirpa's mother) with a bow and arrow. Was she a huntress like her daughter or something else?

Well,

...while not impossible it’s unlikely as among Ainu females have strict roles which didn’t include hunting and Ainu protested when Noda made Asirpa a hunter.

Huci is clearly against Asirpa being a hunter so I don’t know if she would have let Riratte try being one.

And in chap 5 Asirpa implied she was the one to go with her father in his hunting trips because she didn’t have any brother, hinting how she was aware if she had some they would have been the ones expected to go with Wilk, not her.

So well, it’s possible Riratte was an unusual Ainu woman but chances are low.

[goldenkamuyhunting]

Hi! This questions just pops up while I read your rambling for chapter 267.

- Where's Asirpa's mother?

- Is it possible that Ariko's father killed the Ainu?

- Did Ariko's father lie about Kimuspu? Like he didn't say about the gold and such.

- Is Ariko's father alive?

- Wonder why Ogata choose to team up with Kiro? How he convince the cat? Why choose Kiro over Hijikata?

- When Kiro and Wilk part ways?

- What division Karo part in? Does Tsurumi know and spy on him?

- Is it possible that Kiro is a spy for Tsurumi, like for a moment? And then like Tsurumi offers Kiro to kill Wilk in seductive mapulative way. Lol.

- If Kiro was a spy for Tsurumi, do you like this was the reason why Ogata team up with Kiro? Ogata lie that he and Tsurumi are still allies.

- Do you think Tsurumi want to kill Wilk in his own hands?

Lol, while reading the chapter I saw Kiro and it's black background. Oh flashback. I guess the cat was not is this chapter. And then I was about to read the next panel, oh boy. . . Ogata was like SNEAK 100. I loled. And Noda sneakingly teasing us.

The joke is scary and comedic at the same time.

I chucked and laughed when you said Ogata is Luke. And stop and rest for a minute and said WHAT? Dude it's Sofia dude. Are you lonely (me too) that Noda is keeping hiding the cat from us? And continue reading and you quickly redeem yourself, lol. You had me there lol.

I'm kinda more convinced that maybe 40 to 50 percent that the sniper battle will occur. Like is it really relevant or how? Lol maybe Sugimoto will saw Vasily, Sugi will like, you will save Asirpa, right? right? or like lie that Ogata's there, and he will be, lol. Idk.

What if Ogata is doing like he do in Abashiri Prison. Like in almost most end (no show) he shot someone and slick his hair. Although it will bad for writing but I'm still asking.

And another question, is Tsurumi and his men knows that Ogata is here or like beware of the cat? (Idk I feel like I'm so bias, and I am, like Ogata is the BIG villain lol, like he's always somewhere, idk)

What if it's not Vasily but Nikaido v. Ogata? Lol. Sorry, I always looking for the cat and now my expectations are how will Noda will keep hiding the cat and the sniper battle (if there is one).

Thank you always for your ramblings!

Hi! Thank you for enjoying my ramblings!

Now, for your questions...

- Where's Asirpa's mother?

She died of an illness soon after giving birth to Asirpa. [Chap 12]

- Is it possible that Ariko's father killed the Ainu?

Honestly I’ve a hard time thinking 1 Ainu could manage to kill 5 and force Wilk to escape but it’s not impossible if he poisoned them or attacked them while they were sleeping or were unarmed.

But Ariko said his father was a gentle person so I’m not sure he would do it.

- Did Ariko's father lie about Kimuspu? Like he didn't say about the gold and such.

We don’t know yet. For now all we know is what Ariko’s father said, that he met him but the other refused to give him info.

- Is Ariko's father alive?

In present time? No, he died too that night as far as we know. He was one of the Ainu killed in Tomakomai in the Nopperabou incident. [Chap 207]

- Wonder why Ogata choose to team up with Kiro? How he convince the cat? Why choose Kiro over Hijikata?

We all wonder about it. The general speculation is that Ogata was already allied with Kiro PRIOR to him joining forces with Hijikata and Ogata merely joined forces with Hijikata to spy on him. This assumption is based on the fact that Ogata might have wanted to invite Sugimoto’s group to Edogai’s house as a way to inform Kiro of those development and set the road for an alliance between the Hijikata group and the group Kiro was in.

People also wondered if this scene in chap 81 is meant to imply they exchanged a nod.

If Ogata was in a long term alliance with Kiro it might come out from what Sofia might reveal about what she knows on the incident.

- When Kiro and Wilk part ways?

I’ll say in this chapter 267. Wilk left Kiro tied to a tree and Kiro clearly didn’t take well Wilk’s betrayal.

- What division Karo part in? Does Tsurumi know and spy on him?

Kiro, being in Hokkaido, was part of the 7th division which is the Hokkaido division. He however served under a different Lieutenant and not under Tsurumi [chap 48], whcih is confirmed by how Tanigaki didn’t know him [Chap 50]. He was ia combat engineer. [Chap 49]

Honestly I don’t think Tsurumi knew about him being in Hokkaido at the time of the Nopperabou incident or of the Russian war, though I might be wrong. He likely found out when Inkarmat reported him about the men with Asirpa... though it’s also possible he speculated on Kiro being there since he knew he was Wilk’s friend. However, since he left him be for years and didn’t try to threaten him using his wife and children I like to think Tsurumi had no idea of Kiro’s Ainu identity and of where he was hiding.

- Is it possible that Kiro is a spy for Tsurumi, like for a moment? And then like Tsurumi offers Kiro to kill Wilk in seductive mapulative way. Lol.

I honestly don’t think so. First of all because I don’t think at the time Tsurumi knew of Kiro and because, even later on, Kiro doesn’t seem to know Tsurumi or how he’s Hasegawa.

Also, Wilk’s murderer at Abashiri went against Tsurumi’s interests as he wanted him alive.

- If Kiro was a spy for Tsurumi, do you like this was the reason why Ogata team up with Kiro? Ogata lie that he and Tsurumi are still allies.

Honestly no. If Kiro were to be a spy for Tsurumi he would have to submit regular reports and this would cause him to tell that Ogata was with him. Plus Kiro genuinely wants the independence of the Ainu of the far east, therefore his goal is in direct contrast with Tsurumi, who wants to use the gold for a military nation in Hokkaido that cares little about minorities’ needs.

- Do you think Tsurumi want to kill Wilk in his own hands?

I think he first wanted to squeeze out of him the info about the gold. Then he might have enjoyed killing him... or, to return the favour, kill his daughter in front of him and let him understand how painful that is. But maybe that’s just me. Tsurumi is hard to predict.

Sure I wish Ogata were to be back but I understand the story takes precedence and I want to hope Noda is holding back Ogata for a good plot reason.

I’ve no idea about the sniper battle. So far Noda hadn’t really used Vasily, which was disappointing to say the least because Vasily had a lot of potential as a character. I keep on hoping he’ll put him to good use but so far no luck. Maybe this will be the right chance.

What if Ogata is doing like he do in Abashiri Prison. Like in almost most end (no show) he shot someone and slick his hair. Although it will bad for writing but I'm still asking.

Well, I’ve no idea what will happen but this gold hunt is a war so I wouldn’t be surprised if he were to try to shoot his enemies, same as I wouldn’t be surprised if Tsurumi, Sugimoto or Hijikata were to do the same. Killing the opponent is sadly the whole point of the fight.

And another question, is Tsurumi and his men knows that Ogata is here or like beware of the cat? (Idk I feel like I'm so bias, and I am, like Ogata is the BIG villain lol, like he's always somewhere, idk)

Tsurumi might know that Ogata is back as Ariko might have reported about him being in Hokkaido to Kikuta... it’s up to speculation if Kikuta reported it to Tsurumi. They know from when they left Karafuto though that Sugimoto had a sniper in his group, Vasily, so they’re careful about being sniped. Also Tsurumi saw Usami being sniped but we weren’t show if Usami managed to tell him the sniper was Ogata so Tsurumi might believe it was Vasily.

Usami though was sure Ogata would show up so I think Tsurumi too might be sure Ogata is around.

What if it's not Vasily but Nikaido v. Ogata?

I like to think Ogata and Nikaido won’t come to fight because they were part of the same rebellion group and Ogata saved Nikaidou’s life when the latter was attacked by a bear, risking his own.

But one can never tell.

We’ll see.

Thank you for your ask!

[goldenkamuyhunting]

Weird question maybe, but do you think Noda is trying to set up Sugimoto and Asirpa as a couple? I’m RLLY hoping he isn’t, but with Asirpa having a hinted crush, and this last chapter talking about “joined hearts” or something, I’m worried Sugimoto and Asirpa might become a couple :(

Well...

I genuinely don’t know and since I’m STRONGLY AGAINST THIS I fear I’m not really the best person at whom to ask hoping in an objective answer.

As who read my ramblings probably already knows, I’m in the camp of those who hope Sugimoto will go back to Umeko (and I hope for him she’ll take him back, although she’s not obliged to do so) and that believes his bond with Asirpa, due to the respective problems had turned into a toxic relation so it wouldn’t be okay for them to become a couple, not even if Asirpa were of the same age as Sugimoto... and the idea of them getting together is even worse considering Asirpa is actually so young... so that it kind of makes me furious when instead the anime seems to ‘romanticize’ it, or underline it, often at the expenses of Asirpa’s other relations (with her father, Shiraishi, Ogata...) or even her lack of belief in prophecies and dreams.

Still, I can try my best to give my two cents about it in the most objective and respectful of other cultures I can manage. Forgive me if I might fail but this is something I’m really passionate against so it’s not really easy for me to keep distance.

Also warning for adult topics which might make people uncomfortable.

Read at your own risk.

Something I’m confident enough and that I feel is based on an objective enough belief is that, if Noda were to consider planning to make them a couple, it wouldn’t happen right now but the story would just have a timeskip and then we would be told that years has gone by, Asirpa has grown up and they’re a couple now.

Why am I confident it can’t happen right now?

I know there are debates in the net about which is Asirpa’s age (just so you know she’s hinted to be 12/13 but my personal bet is she’s 12 at the start of the story) and if the culture of the time would allow her to get a man and how important is to be historically accurate or how historical accuracy should be tossed away when it involves something we find morally repulsive, or, and this is more important but few mention it, physically and psychologically harmful for the child involved.

Said this, my personal belief is that Noda wanted to be as historically accurate as possible and yet tell us, without any shade of doubt, that Asirpa was currently off limits and Sugimoto (or anyone else) wouldn’t look at her like that through the gold hunt.

How?

Asirpa is drawn as a prepubescent girl, which means when Noda draws her he avoid drawing her with developed secondary sex characteristics (in the specific case breasts and hips).

The majority of heterosexual men from all around the world and from all around the times are drawn to females who have developed secondary sex characteristics.

Currently the number of men who are instead drawn to prepubescent real life females is estimated to be lower than 5% among adult men and those men are the ones who, according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, are considered suffering of the pedophilic disorder.

In the far past, even when it was allowed marrying prepubescent girls because selling off a daughter, no matter her age, was an easy way to make allegiance, in many cultures the marriage wouldn’t be expected to be consumed until the girl was pubescent.

That’s because not only the husbands weren’t turned on by their child brides, but also because, even if in the past they couldn’t work out how psychologically harmful it would be for a child to be forced in a sexual situation, they had, at least, managed to work out it would be physically harmful... so not only you would considered abnormal if you were to do it, but there were cultures in which it was actually forbidden to touch a girl who hadn’t hit puberty even if you were legally married to her.

So really, there’s no way whatsoever Noda drew Asirpa that way, only to have the main character, who’s supposed to be a good guy who cares about her, be attracted to her.

Even a drunk Ushiyama, who normally tries to hit on every female in sight Inkarmat included and can be rather forceful tells Asirpa she has to grow up before picking a man.

Long story short, there’s no point in searching if in Japan, in that time period, a girl of Asirpa’s age was allowed to get married or not, as long as Asirpa looks prepubescent we know Sugimoto, who’s AGAIN supposed to be what we would call a good guy, is SURELY not meant to do so much as consider to touch her.

That’s why Huci can tell Sugimoto to marry Asirpa without meaning any harm to her, because she expects him not to touch her until she’s physically ready because, as said before, in the past girls got sadly married at way too young ages, often withou people bothering to ask for their consent (or the one of the husband as he too often was ‘married off’ by his family) but husbands weren’t expected nor interested in having their ways with them immediately.

And that’s also why, since Sugimoto just can’t see Asirpa as that kind of partner and they’re not in a situation in which they need to marry for some reasons (marriage was also used as a tool back then, we saw how Svetlana was told to marry so that this would allow her to get out of prison and how Wilk married Riratte and, due to this, got Japanese citizenship, while others would use it to get economical protection or other things), I’m confident there will be no marriage between the two of them in 1908, the year in which we currently are in GK or becoming a couple or whatever.

They’re just partners in the gold hunt, he’s just not meant to be interested in her physically nor in need to tie her to himself legally through marriage so for now I like to think nothing will happen between them.

So, long story short, many of us who’re against Asirpa and Sugimoto becoming a couple, can have a collective breath of relief at least as far as the story remains in this year, as I’m pretty confident Sugimoto isn’t meant to like her like that right now.

Said all this... nothing stops Noda, as I said before, to have a flash forward to when Asirpa will reach puberty and, likely, also adult age and AT THIS POINT have Sugimoto fall for her at that point.

We see how Umeko’s mom is all happy at the prospect of a man of more than 40 marrying her likely around 24 daughter (I assume she’s around Sugimoto’s age) so no one in the story will question if a 24 Asirpa were to marry a 36 Sugimoto and there are various stories in which the story starts with the man in the couple just viewing the female as a mere child to then develop genuine feelings of love for her when she grows up (one of the most famous manga in the genre is “Glass no Kamen” in which Maya is 13 when the story starts and Masumi is 11 years older than her... and an even bigger age gap there was probably between her teacher Tsukikage Chigusa and her lover and mentor Ozaki Ichiren).

So to sum it up... I’m confident that Asirpa and Sugimoto won’t become a couple right now... but I can’t say if Noda is setting them up to become a couple in the far future.

For that we can only wait and see.

Sorry if I’m not really trying to make a prediction on what could happen in a flash forward but I fear I wouldn’t be capable to be objective since I’m currently so against it.

Also sorry if I had to touch pretty uncomfortable topics when answering, or I explained them poorly but I thought they were relevant and I didn’t really know how to put them better.

Thanks for your ask and sorry if my reply came late.