Golden Kamuy

Episode 20

Asirpa's blue eyes have stood out as distinctive for a while, but I never expected them to be the key to solving a murder mystery! She gained them from her father Wilk, who is revealed by Inkarmat this week to be of Polish descent as well as Sakhalin Ainu, giving him an uncommon recessive trait. Since he managed to pass this on to his daughter, it might be the key to finding out if her father is still alive as Nopperabo.

The murder mystery takes up a huge chunk of this week's story, revealing much about our characters and their allegiances, but there's a lot else this week, including some surprisingly sexy content. This is facilitated by the sea otter meat an Ainu man gives Tanigaki and Inkarmat, assuming they are a couple and telling them to eat it together. They're quickly chased by a swam of locusts, leaving the women in the group out on a boat and the men inside—to combine that sea otter meat with some surprisingly gay hijinks.

The aphrodisiac properties of sea otter seem to overwhelm any preexisting trepidation over experimentation, leading all these seemingly-straight dudes to become consumed with lust for each other and start stripping. For a second, I thought they were all going to wind up in a gay orgy, but instead Sugimoto suggests a sumo match. Maybe it was a bit of both, given the framing of the "wrestling" scenes and the guys' admonishment to each other to never speak of what transpired. The whole thing leaves Tanigaki laying in the house, partially undressed, which puts him in the perfect position to hook up with Inkarmat when she comes by. I don't know about you, but that particular pairing has been a long time coming. It's all the more fun with the campy build-up, like an appetizer before the main course.

Before she finds her man, Inkarmat has an important conversation with Asirpa. Our heroine wants to know everything possible about her father, so Inkarmat tells her about their acquaintance when she was younger. It's clear that Inkarmat had a crush on Wilk as a teenager, but she was too young for him to return her feelings. She's still brokenhearted about that when Asirpa brings up her mother. Inkarmat then tells Asirpa that she does not believe that Nopperabo is Wilk, and that Kiroranke killed him. This leads to a fight later between her and Kiroranke, who insists that Nopperabo is Wilk and that he didn't murder him, but Inkarmat claims to have proof in the form of fingerprints. Unfortunately, those fingerprints also link her to Tsurumi, who we know is not to be trusted. Inkarmat says she was the one toying with him, but it still throws a serious wrench into her loyalties.

For the record, I believe Kiroranke about this. There are simply too many arrows pointing to the idea of Nopperabo having a preexisting connection with someone in our cast, and it seems most likely that it's because he's Asirpa's father. Having her father be so deeply connected to the search for the treasure, half the cast's backstories, and then turn out to be some random half-Ainu, half-Polish dude who kicked it years before the story took place would feel like a lot of foreshadowing for nothing. In the best case scenario, Inkarmat could easily be blinded by her crush on Wilk and determined to believe he's not a killer. As for the worst case, I've been suspicious about both Kiroranke and Inkarmat's loyalties for a while, and she's just too shady for me to buy that she's only doing this as an Ainu woman protecting her culture, especially given her connection to Tsurumi. It seems as though Asirpa's also closer to believing Kiroranke's side of things, but she wants to be sure. I guess we'll know for sure when we find out if Nopperabo has those famous blue eyes or not.

Wilk's potential motivation is also just too interesting to leave behind. He was a freedom fighter on Sakhalin, as desire for freedom from the tsar's oppression was something that united both sides of his family. His father was likely there as a convict, which is where he met his Sakhalin Ainu mother. I like the way that they unite in a common cause from opposite ends of the gigantic Russian Empire. My own Polish ancestors came to America around that time in history for similar reasons, so perhaps I'm a little biased. But in general, I like it when Golden Kamuy ties its characters' personal struggles into the broader historical forces shaping everything around them. It's excelled so far in showing how everyone was devastated by the ravages of war; now it's tying everything into the global struggle against imperialism, which had conquered the globe in the years before World War I. The Hokkaido Ainu themselves were fighting against Japan's attempts to get into that game.

So our characters march forward to Abashiri, which could present its own challenges. The road ahead seems treacherous, and once they arrive, the prison will already have Lt. Tsurumi's moles among its warden ranks. This new enemy is surprisingly strong, straight-up killing baddies sent to take him down. Nothing will stop him from finding the answers his boss seeks. It will be fascinating to see how our ragtag band, divided over Wilk's "murder," will stand up against these new challenges. Episode 20 is a good demonstration that no matter how dark things get, Golden Kamuy can keep up its delicate mix of tones by delivering a serious murder mystery with some laugh-out-loud comedy on the side.

Rating: A-

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.