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goldenkamuyhunting · 5 years ago

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Ramblings and crazy theory time about GK chap 238 “For The Person You Like”

So we reach a chapter where we’ve bonding moments and important decisions are taken for the sake of a noble motivation.

Yeah, our entertainment.

But let’s go with order.

Although the captain of the boat is pissed off his boat got damaged and therefore they can’t move anymore he’s willing to buy Shiraishi’s words that they weren’t the pirate’s allies but went there just to capture him as long as they leave asap.

As Shiraishi speaks with the captain, Sugimoto is holding Boutarou’s under control by threatening him with his rifle.

Now… one might say Sugimoto isn’t really good with it, so it’s probably not that big of a threat but I take at such close quarters even Sugimoto can hit something so I guess it’s enough of a treat. Besides Boutarou has no idea of Sugimoto’s problems with rifles.

Boutarou for once is not cheery and, as Sugimoto begins to talk, he turns his eyes away from him only to discover that Sugimoto, without asking his other team members’ opinion as usual, has decided to join hands with Boutarou.

Well, to be honest he had talked with Shiraishi about joining forces with him (it was Shiraishi’s idea actually and it was aimed only at getting info) but this was prior to Boutarou trying to kill them.

In fact Shiraishi and Asirpa are clearly surprised, Boutarou seems doubtful but then put up a smile and asks if it’s to get info out of him, and how he changed his plans once he heard Wakayama’s story.

Sugimoto says that no, he wants to keep on searching for the tattooed skins, at which Boutarou points out how he doesn’t believe they can solve the tattooed code.

Sugimoto claims he has understood Boutarou’s reasons but there are two groups who own the majority of the tattooed skins and whose are lead by Hijikata and Tsurumi. Since Sugimoto correctly judges them as sharp, he thinks if they do something, this something must be a good idea so he want to follow their lead as well, even though he has no idea why they��re following such plan in the first place. Basically his idea is that if two clever people toss themselves off a cliff, it’s surely a good idea to blindly jump off that cliff because they can’t come up with a wrong plan.

Shiraishi thinks that’s a good point.

Honestly I’m not so sure (especially considering Sugimoto doesn’t know WHY Wakayama gave up, a info Hijikata and Tsurumi also probably don’t have and that might have pushed them to continue thinking it was possible to collect all the tattoos… never mentioning Sugimoto doesn’t know if they are still collecting the tattoos or they too had dropped the idea) but okay, doing what smart people do without knowing the reasoning behind their actions could be a bet safe enough if it wasn’t for a little detail.

Finding the skins was never Tsurumi and Hijikata’s priority.

Let’s think at it for a moment. Before Abashiri who was the one who has found more skins?

Sugimoto.

He led the race with 9 skins.

(You need to add to the ones shown in the image the one of Toni Anji of which he later got a copy)

Second place for Hijikata with 7

(You always need to add to the ones shown in the image the one of Toni Anji of which he later got a copy)

and third with Tsurumi with 4.

Now who had the overwhelming advantage in terms of manpower and information gathering among the three?

Tsurumi with his 100 men plus the men he could gain from Yodogawa, plus Koito senior support, plus is ability as intelligence expert and likely a network in Hokkaido plus a spy in the Sugimoto’s group, Inkamart.

Second Hijikata, who also had a spy in the Sugimoto group, Shiraishi (albeit Shiraishi was actually not being faithful to him), money to get himself men, direct knowledge of some convicts, secondary knowledge of some other convicts through Ushiyama and Ienaga, an ally in Abashiri, Kadokura, and a group made by Ushiyama, Ogata, Nagakura, Ienaga and Kantarou (and the guys who helped him at the start and disappeared later on in the story for unknown reasons as they didn’t all die).

Sugimoto counted only Asirpa, Shiraishi and Kiroranke with Shiraishi being the only one to get info (by himself or through the Hijikata network) and completely in the dark about the other two groups’ moves.

So why is he the one who collected the most of the skins?

Skipping the Doylist answer ‘because the author said so’ the Watsonian one that Noda handed us is clearly BECAUSE TSURUMI AND HIJIKATA LET HIM DO IT IN THEIR PLACE.

Let’s recap their moves.

Tsurumi, at the start, had only collected Tsuyama’s skin. Then he meets Sugimoto and thinks they could let him do all the work,

clearly planning to reap all that Sugimoto sow when Sugimoto were to have enough skin to make worth the effort. When he and Sugimoto met up at the herring boss’ home it wasn’t because Tsurumi was actively searching Henmi, what Tsurumi really wanted were funds from that guy. Henmi would have been a bonus.

It’s worth to remember Tsurumi’s plan was ‘for the orcas to kill each other and then feed on their corpses’, Sugimoto and the convicts being represented by the orcas.

Tsurumi will move for a skin only two other times, when he learns a convict was buried (corpses decompose and a decomposed tattoo can help little), and when it’ll turn out Sakamoto is in Otaru, while Sugimoto’s tracks had been lost at Daisetsuzan range and he has probably learnt from Inkarmat Sugimoto is trying to get at Abashiri.

The copy of Shiraishi’s skin was just a bonus Tsurumi got as Shiraishi ended up being caught by the 7th by mistake.

The Abashiri attack happened in September. The story starts late in February, but Tsurumi clearly was searching the convict from before that date. Anyway from February to September Tsurumi was hardly focused in getting the tattoos, more hampering his opponents moves by preparing fake skins and setting up the attack at Abashiri, spying Inudo and collecting funds and weapons as well as Koito senior’s help.

It’s clear that the tattoo search was merely a sideplan for Tsurumi, what he really aimed at was sweeping Abashiri, getting his hands on Wilk and forcing him to tell him where was the gold by threatening Asirpa.

Ogata killing Wilk and Kiro taking Asirpa away likely pissed him off beyond belief but at least as a bonus he got all the skins Sugimoto collected and Ienaga, rising to a total of 13 skins collected, more than a half of the skins needed.

It’s only then, and likely after he learnt that Tsukishima’s group also got Gansoku’s skin, that he gave a serious look at the skins and…

...continued to plot on his own. Even the next skin he gets, the Sekiya one, if more out of coincidence than anything as he’s more focused in planting a spy in Hijikata’s group and confusing him with fake skins.

His real goal is Asirpa, clearly more for personal reasons as it’s implied Wilk killed his own daughter than anything else as he hardly search to get her cooperation. Even when he believes he has her, he’s not in a rush to find the skins in fact he plans to hold her captive for only God knows what, not to stage a mass search to immediately find the missing skins as he busies himself with other tasks.

And even now that there’s the possibility of a skin in Sapporo and the whole Hijikata group might have gone there he doesn’t rush there with all his men to sweep the skin and the Hijikata group as well. He remains in north Hokkaido and sends just two men to check for the situation… because he likely thinks a code that could be solved by Asirpa, a kid, could be solved also by someone who has enough skins.

Tsurumi isn’t investing all he has in searching the skins, the skins are just a sideplan at which he’s devoting when he doesn’t have to spend too much resources.

After all Tsurumi doesn’t just want to find the gold, he aims at creating a dictatorship. Getting the gold would make things easy but in the meantime he’s still carrying on his plans.

What about Hijikata then?

Hijikata is a bit more focused on the skins than Tsurumi, but only partially.

What Hijikata really wants are allies, in fact he doesn’t skin the convicts, he tries to persuade them to join hands with him. We see first him going to Ushiyama, and roping him in his plan, getting Nagakura’s support, hiring 8 young punks, trying to get Shibukawa’s support, collecting funds by robbing a bank, searching for Asirpa, hiring Shiraishi as an accomplice so that he can use Shiraishi’s ‘underling’ to collect the tattoos through Sugimoto (Hijikata too likely thought to let Sugimoto collect them and then sweep them from him). Then Hijikata will join hands with Ienaga, Ogata, Sugimoto himself and Toni Anji as he prepares himself for his battle hiring newspaper writers and photographers.

Hijikata believes the tattooed convicts, who aim to get the gold, might merely become willing allies and dangerous foes for Tsurumi, and if they bring a tattoo as a bonus it’s even better.

He only starts seeing more need for the tattooed skins when, after Wilk’s death and Asirpa leaving for Karafuto, Tsurumi gains Sugimoto’s skins, making him the owner of so many skins he might manage to solve the code with them.

Hijikata too, like Tsurumi, clearly consider the gold a mean to boost his plans but he’s not investing everything in searching the tattoos for the sake of the tattoos. For him too the tattoos are a sideplan meaning they’re considering the tattoo plan might fail, they’re just keeping open all the possibilities.

And they both have much more resources and men than Sugimoto.

And it’s also worth to note that, even if they weren’t able to collect all the tattoos, the tattoos for them are still a safer bet than for Sugimoto. Tsurumi could use his military powers and illegal means to get a code breaker to help him crack the code even if his tattoo collection wasn’t complete and Hijikata could probably pay one or get one through his connections.

Sugimoto simply doesn’t have their resources nor their time (wait long enough and curing Umeko might become impossible or require a full eye transplant) and the idea he could steal their skins with the meager forces he has is pretty ludicrous.

Long story short, as he’s not in the same position as Hijikata and Tsurumi, at this point for him trying to chase after the skins is still a poor idea.

Sure, Sugimoto is the main character which comes with a plot armor strong enough to last through all the volumes of ‘Golden Kamuy’ but as he isn’t supposed to be Genre Savvy and know he can’t die till the end or that the plot has to revolve around him somehow and he can’t get lost somewhere in Hokkaido searching for skins while Tsurumi and Hijikata find the gold without him being present.

He has been presented with an explanation on why searching the skins isn’t a good option (I actually listed in the past rambling other reasons why it isn’t) and why searching the hiding place for the gold would be better yet he focuses on the skins and all he says to excuse is choice is Hijikata and Tsurumi are doing this too, without realizing they aren’t really going all out in this.

On the other side Sugimoto here might be merely a stand in for the author who’s trying to remind us of the Bellisario's Maxim: ‘Don't examine this too closely’.

Sure, realistically speaking it was very unlikely all the 24 convicts could be traced and traced in a relatively short time but this is a story which revolves around tracking them down so OF COURSE they’ve to be found and this whole scene is merely Noda telling us ‘Yeah, it has low chances to happen but it will happen for… reasons (namely supporting the plot of the story), so stay tuned and let’s go on tracking the convicts’ skins even if normally it would be a dumb idea.’

I don’t know, overall I still think that the motive ‘we’ll do this because Hijikata and Tsurumi do’ is weak and not really supported by a plan.

But whatever, let’s go on.

Shiraishi asks him if he’s starting to feel sympathy for Boutarou.

We see Sugimoto’s eyes now completely black before he claims that’s not the case.

Honestly I want to believe THAT’S EXACTLY THE CASE, and that Sugimoto’s eyes went black because he was reminded of the pain that killed him inside when he watched his family die, not because he wants to kill Boutarou, but that he’s just not willing to admit it so as not to look weak.

He then goes and claim they were at a huge disadvantage in the battle for the tattooed skins but now that they had met Boutarou he feels that if they can figure out the region in which the gold was hidden they could turn tables instantly.

But then Sugimoto claims that if they were to torture Boutarou to get that info they couldn’t rely on the info they would get. Honestly I think it’s more Boutarou wouldn’t talk not even under torture. He looks like a tough guy and he probably knows that a guy who’s such a bastard he would torture you to get you to talk afterward wouldn’t have qualms to kill you once he learnt what you know so it’s not like talking would save his life, just put an end to the pain.

And, okay, I like to think the story won’t let Sugimoto torture anyone but whatever.

The sum of this all is that Sugimoto decides for everyone they’ve to cooperate with Boutarou.

Boutarou lowers his head and comments “I see” (なるほどね ‘Naruhodo ne’).

He’s a clever guy so he’s probably also reasoning on things. Does he too feel sympathy for Sugimoto as their pasts were similar? He seemed to like him and be sorry he had to kill him… plus Sugimoto saved him… on the other side Sugimoto killed Heita and might get in the way of his dream. I think it’ll make for an interesting series of points to ponder for Boutarou.

Ultimately Boutarou switches back to cheerful and friendly claiming he’s sure the actual reason is that Sugimoto feels sympathy for him...

and that now the plan is that they will collect all the tattooed skins and then AFTERWARD Boutarou’ll tell them the info he knows… JUST TO BE SAFE.

In short the deal is much better for Boutarou than Sugimoto.

Both from it get manpower but Boutarou, who was a prisoner is promoted to the rank of ally and keep for himself his own info.

Besides Sugimoto’s reasoning that with Boutarou they turn tables because they can find the area in which the gold was goes promptly down the drain because Boutarou will reveal such an info only when they’ve collected ALL the tattoos, and if they were to collect all the tattoos they would have already turned tables on their own.

Plus really, in theory the code shouldn’t need additional info to be solved unless Wilk’s Chessmaster’s ability was as such he predicted Boutarou would try to find the hiding place using that method and would somehow pass the information to Asirpa.

Note, I find great Boutarou joined the gang but I think the gain for Sugimoto is minimal so his plan is better be moved by sympathy because if it was moved by gain… well, I’m not even sure it’s worth it.

And now there’s something noteworthy.

Shiraishi warns Sugimoto not to regret it as Boutarou could take the gold for himself once they find it.

Honestly, from when they had met Boutarou, Shiraishi has acted as if he didn’t really trusted him much, as if he deemed him a bad guy, despite Boutarou apparently liking him and acting like a fair guy.

Shiraishi isn’t a guy who’s prone to blindly trust people but, normally, he’s confident he can handle them and he’s not shy to make allegiances.

Does Shiraishi has some reasons to be wary of Boutarou? Is he merely teasing Sugimoto? Or was he affected by Kiroranke’s plan so he’s gotten a lot more wary? Honestly I’m not sure.

I personally like Boutarou, he seemed overall fair and not needlessly greedy or set on hurting people for no reason but I barely know him and, in a way, he’s an hard to read guy because he appears almost perpetually cheerful and friendly, which makes him likable and pushes people to lower guard with him.

On the other side, Boutarou wants to become the king of an island.

It means he requires a slice of gold bigger than Sugimoto, gold which is supposedly of the Ainu, gold that Asirpa wants to be used for the Ainu but she wasn’t even asked an opinion and they hadn’t even set a share.

Boutarou needs money to fulfill his dream, the dream that had kept him alive. While I think he wouldn’t steal all the gold, he surely would want his part to be big enough to fulfill his dream or the play wouldn’t be worth the candle.

I particularly dislike how Asirpa chimed in to ask Shiraishi if he’s talking about himself when he says once they find the gold Boutarou might take it all for himself. Really, poor Shiraishi has done his best to help them, he stayed with Asirpa even when it was dangerous, he just tossed in the water to help Sugimoto… Her attempt to counter Shiraishi’s veiled criticism to Sugimoto’s idea by blaming Shiraishi feels rather mean, as if to say Shiraishi is the one who’s unworthy of their trust.

And there’s also something else Asirpa should concern herself with, despite she’s supposed to be there to take care of Ainu interests, she’s cut out from all the decisions.

I’m sure she didn’t want Boutarou to be killed so she probably prefers to join forces with him than skin him but she got no voice whatsoever in the whole decision process. Sure, she could have probably spoken up but overall I get the feeling she would back up Sugimoto more due to her crush than out of genuine belief he’s choosing the right path.

Anyway Shiraishi switches topic claiming Vasily is drifting toward them. Thankfully he doesn’t shoot Boutarou… and I’m not really sure why he doesn’t as he couldn’t know they were on friendly terms now but whatever, I’m glad Boutarou stays alive. The group then moves on Vasily’s boat and they navigate a little farther downstream planning to reach Sapporo.

Sugimoto asks Asirpa what she’s doing and it turns out she’s preparing a pole to attach to it the tip to turn it into something with which they can fish. Sugimoto remembers she used it when hunting whales and she claims she’s impressed he remembers. Sugimoto wonders if she wants to catch a sturgeon but doesn’t seem to feel confortable with the idea and I don’t see why.

A sturgeon isn’t a cute, helpless little animal you befriend with like, let’s say, a Shima-Enaga...

...and they need to eat after all.

Asirpa confirms this asking him if it isn’t true Sugimoto wants to eat everything that’s in season. Honestly Asirpa shouldn’t spin her wishes and narrative on Sugimoto. She’s the one who wants to eat everything, there’s plenty of things on which Sugimoto would pass.

Boutarou asks Sugimoto what’s his relation with this ‘Ojō-san’ (お嬢さ�� “Young lady”). Sugimoto, after a moment says she’s her guide to Hokkaido.

Boutarou immediately reminds him how he overreacted attacking him because he could have hurt ‘Asirpa-san’, giving away she’s important to him while Asirpa’s ears gets all red, a sign she’s flushing at the idea of being important to Sugimoto because she is still crushing for him badly.

This simple exchange is actually meaningful.

Sugimoto’s reply was plainly stupid considering how he acted and also dismissive. If Asirpa were to merely be a guide she has no voice in the gold hunt and she’s only entitled to a small share if they hadn’t agreed to pay her daily already.

If he only has said she were a friend or a companion or someone he owns his life to, his overreaction would have been more acceptable and Asirpa would have had her role in the group better defined.

Now I guess he wanted to be dismissive also to protect her so that Boutarou won’t realize she might be connected to the code… but Boutarou should have met Wilk and if he was sharp enough to observe Sugimoto’s behavior and draw conclusions he can also realize Asirpa has Wilk’s eyes and she’s the ally they were meant to meet once they had escaped.

So really, if he wanted to lie, he should have thought of a better lie.

It’s also worth to mention he’s acting as if he’s in charge of their group. I wonder what Boutarou is thinking of this as previously he supposed it was Shiraishi the one in charge and Sugimoto merely his henchman.

Short later the group is dealing with the sturgeon.

Boutarou and Shiraishi are warming up, a sign they might have gotten wet in attempt to catch it. There’s a discussion about sturgeon’s eggs and then Asirpa explains him Sugimoto can also have the brain and she wants to serve it for him but the skull is hard so he has to wait. Sugimoto tells her to hurry but he could help instead than waiting there.

Honestly, if Noda himself hadn’t stated Sugimoto likes salted brains, I wouldn’t have believed it and assumed he talks as such merely to make Asirpa happy.

Sugimoto’s expression is almost always weird when he has to eat them, nothing like when he eats something he claims delicious.

As Shiraishi, Sugimoto and Vasily (yeah, Vasily for once is shown with them) are around the camp fire, Boutarou asks Asirpa is she likes brain. As she replies affirmatively he comments that it sure is nice when she gets the person she likes to enjoy the things she likes. The reference to Sugimoto is rather obvious as Boutarou, like Ogata, figured out Asirpa’s feelinsg for him.

To silence him Asirpa fills his mouth with black sturgeon eggs which Sugimoto and Shiraishi are also enjoying eating.

They aren’t alone.

In Otaru Sofia and her men, possibly still on a boat, are enjoying sturgeon’s eggs mixed with vodka. However, as the men ejoy themselves, Sofia moves a little on the side wna looks to an old photo with a burned corner. She remembers it was done in Hasegawa’s shop and was tossed into the fire.

In the visual we see that Hasegawa’s house already has the windows broken

It’s the photo in which she’s together with Kiro and Wilk. Sofia’s gaze turns dark.

I wonder when she recovered the photo and if she was the one doing so.

When they dropped at Hasegawa’s house he was burning the photos. He tells them to go, the secret police arrives and they catch one of them which claims he went there to arrest Hasegawa.

At this point we’re shown Hasegawa’s fireplace in which the photo was burning.

The next we see is that a battle ensues, a battle that will have Sofia leave the home and, later, discover Olga and Fina’s bodies. As they left short after Sofia supposedly didn’t get a chance to get inside the house, house that Tsurumi burned afterward. Sure, it was possible for one of them to save it from the fire and then hand it to Sofia but that photo made me thought of the initial scene of ’91 Days’ and made me wonder if it was possible that Hasegawa/Tsurumi sent it to her when she was in prison.

Probably not, likely it’s more that she managed to grab it before the fight started. After all if she’d been too slow it would have burned down.

Or maybe it was Kiro who grabbed it for her and then sent it to her. Hard to say and possibly not relevant.

Yet in the visual we see how Hasegawa’s house already has the windows broken, a sign the battle had already taken place when someone retrieved the photo from the fire.

Did they went back to that place to get it?

And so the chapter ends with Sofia either wondering something about the photo or plotting revenge over Kiro’s death or both. Hard to say but it’s interesting how photos become a part of the plot.

Well, anyway this is all for this chapter, see you to the next and...

...

No, okay, this chapter hasn’t ended here, there’s still a part only…

Well…

Anyway it’s night in Sapporo and Kikuta and Usami, in nice, rather elegant clothes, are at one of the scene of one of the murder crimes carried out by Jack the Ripper… I mean by this new convict.

Kikuta says the idea the killer might come back there isn’t bad but, they don’t know where the culprit is and they can’t spend there all the day, besides there are two crime scenes so can’t they just interview a prostitute?

In reply Usami… well, I wonder if Noda knows English because the method Usami chose to find our ‘Jack the Ripper’ wannabe is... well.... to jack off.

Visually it seems almost as if this turn his lower part in some sort of detector… more likely, since he’s sure ‘Jack’ masturbated on the crime scene, he’s trying to reconstruct that scene. Which spot would have ‘Jack’ chosen to indulge in such... activity? That’s what Usami is trying to discover.

In the end he figures the key to the mystery lies below a building so he crawls under it and find something, calling Kikuta too to see it.

Kikuta, grossed out beyond belief, thinks what Usami has found is just his own semen but actually Usami has found the culprit’s one, or so he claims, and this proves his theory that ‘Jack’ would come there to masturbate is true. Then he analyzes the semen with the interest Asirpa put in analyzing animals’ excrements, grossing Kikuta further.

This allows him to establish ‘Jack’ comes there every two days and last time he came there was two days ago meaning he would be back that night.

After labeling Usami ‘one hell of a semen detective’ Kikuta is rather shocked at the thought Tsurumi might mean this when he said Usami would be of some use to him.

I don’t want to know how Tsurumi discovered Usami’s ability and, more importantly, I DON’T WANT TO KNOW WHEN. Hopefully now when Usami was 16 and started talking with him about his ‘sacred place’.

Anyway while Kikuta is still a mix between grossed out and surprised Usami decides to recreate the scene in order to determinate how tall and how old the criminal is. I guess Sherlock Holmes would be proud. Me, I join Kikuta in being grossed out.

However, as Usami is busy… ‘recreating the scene’ he finds someone else who’s… ‘recreating the scene’, someone who’s dressed like ‘Jack’ was dressed in chap 225 and that notices him coming closer.

His face is still heavily shadowed so we’ve no idea who he is. Hopefully it’s ‘Jack’ and not Kadokura, who also likes to play detective, attempting to… ‘recreate the scene’ as well… though a meeting between him and Usami would be interesting.

Well, I wonder why Noda isn’t showing this convict’s face even now. Are we meant to stay in the dark and this arc is meant to be a mystery? Or is he someone we’ve already met (like the weird policeman of chap 225)?

And why he’s not killing more often?

I mean, he’s been out of jail for more than a year by now, even if he were to kill once each month he would have killed at least more than 13 people… while it seems for now is total is 2.

Is he moving around like Henmi did? Why is he risking to cause such a huge commotion? Does he have a suicidal wish? Something happened? Hard to say.

Anyway this was all for this chapter.

Overall, skipping Usami’s method to investigate things the Jack The Ripper arc might turn into an interesting mystery. On the other side… while I’m glad Boutarou joined the gang… well, somehow I find Sugimoto’s group as not really working that well.

There’s no communication, Sugimoto just decides things and the other follows but his plans are poor and moved by personal feelings. They got themselves 2 allies who, at the moment, aren’t really trustworthy and yet Sugimoto and Asirpa blame Shiraishi, they aren’t really planning things for the future and Asirpa is cut out of the decisional line, her role relegated to the one of guide. Boutarou, who’s clever and here shows it again, figured out there’s a special connection between her and Sugimoto… and I can’t help but think Asirpa’s crush doesn’t make her objective and this could be a goddamn trouble for someone who claims she wants to protect the Ainu, especially considering they’ve no plan whatsoever for how to do this.

Oh well, we’ll see.

#Golden Kamuy #Sugimoto Saichi #Asirpa #Shiraishi Yoshitake #Vasily Pavlichenko #Oosawa Fusatarou #Usami Tokishige #Golden Kamuy Ramblings and Theories #Michael Ostrog #Kikuta Mokutarou

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