Golden Kamuy Final Season

Episode 60

This is the most torn I've been on an episode of Golden Kamuy's fifth season in a minute! With scale never having been a strength of this anime, the limits of the team at Brains Base behind this anime were unfortunately on display in this eleventh episode. This episode is the beginning of Lt. Tsurumi's assault on Sugimoto and Hijikata's forces in Fort Goryokaku. As you'd expect from this kind of battle, there's a lot of action happening simultaneously as an entire company of soldiers descends on the fort, and a similar number of combatants attempt to defend it. However, this episode isn't great when it comes to having multiple people moving simultaneously, which undermines the episode's core focus.

Groups of soldiers are shown repeating the same tilted animation loop while charging, wide shots of soldiers repositioning seem to be quick and dirty CGI animation, and often, characters that aren't the focus of a shot will be awkwardly still for most of their time on screen. This isn't the worst animation we've seen from Golden Kamuy, but it is distracting enough that it deserves to be called out. I fully believe that this issue will get better in future episodes when the action starts to focus more on single characters and skirmishes, but it's really frustrating to see here as it works directly against one of Golden Kamuy's greatest strengths, writing interesting fights.

The way this episode weaves history and military strategy into the buildup of this conflict makes it feel both grand and like it could actually happen. Now that Tsurumi knows about the deed to the Ainu people's land, he can't just flatten the fort with naval artillery and instead has to mount an invasion that rapidly turns into a bloody tug-of-war for battlefield positioning. Even as he has to send his men into a meat grinder to make a path into the fort, Tsurumi has every advantage until former Shinsengumi member Nagakura can start sinking the ships using a cannon they hid in the hills during their occupation of the fort decades ago. This episode does such a great job of creating an ebb and flow to the power dynamics of this battle, while also feeling grounded in how this kind of assault would play out in an actual military campaign.

Not to mention that there are some great character moments for Tsurumi in this episode! He's always been quietly bloodthirsty during combat, but seeing him play things faster and looser than ever with the lives of his men, with his goal so close, makes him feel especially visceral in this episode. Animation issues aside, there's a lot to love in this episode, and I hope future installments manage to look as good as this caliber of writing deserves.

Rating:

---

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.

---

Golden Kamuy Final Season is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.