Golden Kamuy Final Season

Episode 53

Hey, why did anime as a medium stop doing the thing where the end credits song bleeds into the closing of an episode, and technically starts before the end credits animation? I know JoJo's Bizarre Adventure did it better than anyone ever could or will with “Roundabout” in parts one and two, but this episode does that with Ken Yokoyama's “The Ballad,” and it is SICK AS HELL!!! Hearing this song kick up as Asirpa and Sugimoto are ripped apart made that moment of desperation and determination hit so much harder and turned a good episode into a great one!

To start from the beginning, though, episode four of this season of Golden Kamuy focuses on the main and supporting cast all fleeing from Sapporo now that every tattooed prisoner's skin has been claimed by one party or another. Botaro finds Sugimoto and Asirpa in the burning beer factory, immediately attacks Sugimoto, and steals Asirpa away for himself. While Botaro has been loosely aligned with Sugimoto's party for a while now, this twist feels earned, as he was only working with them as it served his own goal of tracking down the gold. On a larger storytelling level, it's also interesting that one of the tattooed prisoners would bide their time and wait for an opportunity to strike like this, with so many of the ones prior being more immediate threats or obstacles for the main cast.

However, the status quo of Golden Kamuy has long since evolved past one person being able to do much against all of the players on the board, and Botaro immediately gets his shit rocked by the 7th Division. He regroups with Sugimoto and Shiraishi, and they give chase to Lt. Tsurumi, which ultimately results in Botaro's death and Tsurumi seemingly kidnapping Asirpa to use her to decode the tattoo map. I know this summary of events makes the episode seem fairly straightforward, and it mostly is, but Golden Kamuy throws in more than enough fun moments and unexpected developments to keep things interesting. Nikaido using the chopstick dispenser in his prosthetic hand to daze Asirpa is a great long-con gag, and Sugimoto realizing that he has a past relationship with Kikuta mid-fight is as disorienting and intriguing a revelation here as it was in the manga. Seeing Sugimogo going from mid-murder rampage to his usual, affable self as he began to recognize Kikuta shows off the multitudes built into his character, and this development makes Golden Kamuy feel even more like an interconnected web of relationships and competing desires.

While I think the animation could be a bit more inspired, with the musical cue hitting as hard as it does at the end of this episode, I can't complain. This episode is another twenty-three minutes of everything that makes this series amazing, and I can't wait to watch the next episode. Golden Kamuy is rapidly becoming the anime I'm most excited to watch week after week, and I love that it's finally earning the flowers I've longed to shower it with.

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The immortal Lucas DeRuyter (no one's been able to kill him yet, at least!) is an entertainment writer with a focus on anime, video games, and other forms of niche media. A sampling of his past work is available on his portfolio and you can keep up with him on a weekly or daily basis by checking out ANN's This Week in Anime and his Bluesky account, respectively.

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Golden Kamuy Final Season is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.