Golden Kamuy

Episode 11

Episode 11 of Golden Kamuy puts us into new territory with new groups of characters. Sugimoto, Asirpa, Shiraishi and friends are off to find Noburabou, now that they know he's really Asirpa's father. They'll need some rest along the way, so for that they come to a creepy Psycho-esque hotel. This episode could have been fun and quirky, taking the best from the hotel-slasher genre of horror films—but instead, it embraces its inspiration's worse tropes.

This storyline's new character, Ienaga Kano, indulges in an unfortunately common and wildly-offensive trope: the evil beauty-obsessed trans woman. She is an attractive woman who our characters used to know as an older man, a cannibal who imprisons unsuspecting guests in order to eat their body parts. Her philosophy is that eating one part of someone's body makes the corresponding part on your own body fresher—which doesn't make much sense in reality, but it does seem to be working out for her. Kano usually targets men who find her attractive, which is how she manages to get Shiraishi into her torture chamber. Of course, she doesn't discriminate if she finds a body that has what she wants, so she also tries to eat Asirpa's blue eyes until Sugimoto finds her out.

Golden Kamuy does try to make Kano slightly more complex, as the source of her villainy isn't being trans directly, but more her obsession with eternal youth. The characters don't express any more surprise over her secret than they might over any other mistaken identity, with none of the exaggerated disgust you usually get from guys finding out the object of their affection "used to be a dude"; Ushiyama in particular seems no less deterred in his quest to have sex with her. Still, Kano remains the only trans character in this story. It's one thing if you have several trans characters and one is a murderer, but when that's the only representation they get, viewers are bound to connect these traits even if their correlation is not explicitly made by the story. The core problem is that Kano's villainy revolves around her obsession with enhancing her own body, which ties into the hypersexualized fascination that cis people often have with trans people's surgeries and other aspects of transition. There are just too many transphobic overtones to Kano's motivation to excuse it, even if the story attempts to humanize or validate her in other ways.

The problem with this particular trope is that it goes beyond merely ignorant to play into misconceptions that hurt people in real life. The idea of trans women as sirens who lure unsuspecting straight men to their deaths is something that gets real trans women killed, and only a few states have banned "gay/trans panic" defenses in court. Then there's her behavior toward Asirpa that plays into the idea of trans women as "predatory" toward cis women. This is the basis behind "bathroom bills" that force trans people to either out themselves at work/school or risk medical complications, despite no pattern of trans women attacking cis women in bathrooms (in fact, it happens more often the other way around). These fictional stereotypes can do real damage when lots of people come to believe them. In 2018, there's no excuse for this, including in Japan. LGBT rights, including trans rights, are already changing over there, and we have a wider array of affirming portrayals of trans characters to choose from in anime and manga, from Wandering Son to The Bride Was a Boy. Even a full decade ago, Paradise Kiss was a successful manga with a positive depiction of a trans woman as a major supporting character. Kano's character is an artifact in what feels like a largely disposable episode, in terms of how it affects our main cast.

I'm by no means saying that this story can't have LGBT villains, but the framing is what matters, and unfortunately Golden Kamuy fell on the side of irresponsible stereotyping this week. This is especially frustrating for a series that has been thoughtful in its portrayal of other marginalized groups like the Ainu, and it's frustrating because there are other aspects of this episode I liked. Ushiyama became a far more intriguing character, with great potential for future comic relief. There are some more great Asirpa faces when she encounters Japanese curry. The show continues its absurd obsession with dicks, as Ushiyama waxes poetic about how they reflect a man's character to the point that Asirpa names him "Dick-sensei." I also liked the attempt to shake things up with a stylistic switch to old horror films, but that's no excuse for replicating that genre's more offensive tropes.

Beyond Kano's characterization, the greatest problem with this episode is how ultimately unnecessary it feels. There's something to be said for "breather" episodes that take us away from the main conflict, but this episode's standalone elements are more baffling or uncomfortable than fun, and if it weren't for how it slightly develops Ushiyama's character and introduces Kano (who is probably still alive), this episode would be fully skippable. Unfortunately, we'll probably be seeing Kano again, so I can only hope she doesn't drag the show down any further.

Rating: C-

Golden Kamuy is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Rose is a Ph.D. student in musicology, who recently released a book about the music of Cowboy Bebop. You can also follow her on Twitter.