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chibivesicle · 5 years

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Golden Kamuy chapter 186. Ogata is a deeply conflicted man, revenge will likely hurt Tanigaki and Koito needs to do something differently

Aw man the much awaited chapter 186 translation posted last night for me here in the mountain time zone. I read it and then decided I needed to just go to bed and sleep on it before making any sort of statement on it. Having some coffee helps!

The roller coaster of emotions in this chapter is still quite high and I personally am not surprised by Ogata’s current actions, but I was deeply disappointed by Tanigaki’s and I’ve got some mild scolding for Koito.

This week I will again start from the easier points to address and then work myself to the more complicated ones.

First off, Koito. He proved that he could kick some serious Russian convict bum by cutting a nice pie sized wedge of the man’s skull and brain out with a few quick cuts from his sabre. We have seen his skilled swordsmanship in action. Yay! He then checks in with Tanigaki as a superior - good. But then he starts yelling for Tsukishima and wanders off without ordering Tanigaki to come with him.

Argh, goddammit Koito. All you needed to do was tell Tanigaki to come with you as you looked for Tsukishima. You are in the middle of a snow squall on an ice flow, you know that separating your party is a bad idea. Just one sentence was all you needed to say; “Private First Class Tanigaki, good job, now let’s find Tsukishima.” eoaiutognaotualgnorugzlkmaotualdgaewoiagl! This is how i feel about him leaving Tanigaki slightly behind him, and Tanigaki doesn’t move to follow him either. *sigh* Leadership fail.

When he does find Tsukishima he then scolds him for dealing with Svetlana, even though Tsukishima tells him who she is. Besides Tsukishima’s connection to her based on his own life events, he’s thankful that her family saved him and everyone else. Yet, Koito doesn’t even think that it would be a good idea to help her as her family helped him. Koito, her family gave you nice tea and pastries and you just want to ditch her. Sigh.

I really hope this means that Koito will learn to become more compassionate of others or to “pass it on” aka kindness to just be a good person. I’m rooting for you to learn this lesson Koito . . .

Let’s move onto Ogata and Asirpa now. I think their conversation is much more nuanced than pointing a finger at Ogata and yelling “liar liar, pants on fire!” etc.

Ogata has his rifle ready, and Asirpa is concerned and asks if someone is following them. We get some internal dialogue from Ogata where he realizes he’s in not situation to fight so he has to do another course of action.

Again Asirpa hears Sofia calling to her and she tells Ogata that the should return to the others.

I love the zoom in on the panel focusing on Ogata’s face, he’s on guard, he’s ready for action, it is hard to tell how much he is thinking to give a reply and how much of it is him going on auto-pilot to a threat.

But ultimately, he yields to Asirpa’s words and realizes he needs to tell her more to get his point across. So he has to play another card since his soft and honest conversation wasn’t enough for her. His mouth is covered, perhaps he is hiding his face on purpose or perhaps he wants to look defensive to show Asirpa he’s protecting him.

What I find most interesting is after he says that Kiro made a signal, Asirpa blushes! She has this soft look, like I don’t know, maybe she realized that all of this revolves around her? Inkarmat told her that on the roof but she was super upset about them being shot, so I don’t think she would have been like “Oh am I the center of attention? Tee hee”. Okay so that is a bit over the top, but I think the blush is her realizing that she really is the key to this entire crazy/bloody/violent quest for the gold. Ogata has been trying to talk to her for like 3 chapters now! She’s got to realize that he is trying to say something important. Then he grabs her as he tries to keep her separated so that he can keep talking to her. She seems a bit shocked when he grabs her but not hurt, more surprised.

So now he’s running off with Asirpa . . . He tells her to hurry, this show how important this action is to him and how he wants to keep talking to her is. Finally, while running away, she finally realizes that she has a question. Her “???” indicates that after the surprise of being pulled away she’s able to ask Ogata another question. She goes from blushing to sweating again as she begins to try to piece together what Ogata is saying. I think she in part is nervous about she she is about to hear from him.

Ogata is glancing around, he’s got puffs of his breath around him, his stress lines under his eyes are intense. I personally love how we get Ogata’s point of view when he tells Asirpa that Kiro waited for you to confirm that Wilk was Nopperabou before saying that “and then he had a sniper shoot him.”.

I really like his line here. It shows so much about where Ogata potentially stands in the hunt for the gold. Oh this line is so open to interpretation! It is so cleverly written. Ways that I could interpret this as a reader i.) based on Kiro’s signal, he was working with someone to kill Wilk. That sniper was not me. ii.) Kiro wanted Wilk dead and was working with someone else. No indication of partner. iii.) Kiro signaled a sniper. It was me, but I can’t actually say that but I want you to know that. Asirpa you are smart, you know what this means.

I personally like number iii. since Ogata then follows with him not knowing what happened between Kiro and Wilk but that the gold lead to a falling out between them. His statement is highlighting that the gold leads to conflict and nothing good. I love how he’s not looking at Asirpa but his eyes are open so wide and the stress lines are there. He’s feeling something here, is he looking back on his actions to get him to this point? That his continued involvement will likely lead to more pain and suffering? I don’t know but he’s distressed by what he just said.

The conversation then moves back to Asirpa taking charge again. She’s still sweating and she asks “Why [pause] Why didn’t you tell me before?”. She’s looking up to him with such open but concerned eyes. But he gives her a straight answer now, ask he just said the hardest part to date. He mentioned the sniper [him] directly to her. He seems to have regained a bit of his composure as he answers her, telling her that now she knows the key to the code. By mentioning the sniper his line of “I thought it was necessary to work with Kiro” is a way that he’s giving for his actions and almost stating why he thought it was okay to kill Wilk b/c he was under the indication that the only way to solve this was to work with Kiro.

His statement about keeping quiet makes sense, I think he’s being honest there. I think he also rationalizes shooting Wilk by his following statement “I was fine with anything so as long as I got some of the gold . . .”. It is as though after he shot Wilk something changed and now, he’s not fine with doing whatever it takes to get the gold. It is very interesting that he doesn’t complete this statement and instead shifts to the danger of working with Kiro. I think he’s not ready to verbalize why he’s not fine with doing whatever it takes anymore. But it could be implied it is linked to Asirpa and his Yuusaku fever dream. Those are some very interesting statements from Ogata though.

I think his statement that Kiro may get rid of her, Shirashi or Ogata is an accurate concern and she needs to look at her father’s friend in a different light. Now that Kiro and Sofia revealed how Wilk truly acted and that both of them were impressed with that “resolve” it is concerning for Asirpa, Shirashi and Ogata. If they aren’t dedicated to the partisan cause they aren’t useful to Sofia and Kiro. I really hope Asirpa is putting this together in her head. It would be incredibly difficult for her to question Kiro - since the beginning she’s cared about him as an older male role model and he gives off an “uncle” vibe to her.

I don’t think Ogata is holding her hand in a forceful way, almost like he’s afraid to lose her but she’s not fighting back either b/c she needs to have this conversation with Ogata as much as he needs to have the conversation with her. It as though both of them are passively going along with each other b/c they need to have these conversations. They are likely the two most emotionally closed characters so I think deep down they both need to start facing their own problems. Asirpa needs to realize what Kiro’s intent actually is. Ogata needs to come clean that his “do whatever it takes method” comes with a cost that I think he’s aware of now.

Finally, Ogata again asks her to tell him the code. He’s desparate and the two things he’s holding onto are his rifle and her. This has got to mean something - are these the only two things he can trust? His rifle will not let him down and he needs her support? The next panel then returns to her sweating face - has she figured out he just admitted to shooting Wilk?

The panel ends with more internal dialogue form him as he’s nervously glancing around. Asirpa should realize that he’s deeply concerned about things and he’s as panicked as Ogata has ever been. I really want her to ask in the next chapter if Ogata shot Wilk. if you want more meta on Ogata’s behaviour that I really agree with check out this by @goldenkamuyhunting here. I agree with the idea that no one can make a crazy change overnight and that slow changes are much more realistic.

https://goldenkamuyhunting.tumblr.com/post/181976423378/whaaat-how-did-ogata-go-from-blushing-boy-to-liar

I’ve said what wanted to say about Ogata and Asirpa for this chapter. I don’t think he was lying, he was trying to admit he did it in the most awkward but soft way possible, while panicking in a snow squall on an ice flow.

Now to Kiro and Tanigaki.

Tanigaki notices Kiro coming up from behind him after he ejected the used rifle shell. Tanigaki and Kiro then proceed to beat the living crap out of each other with Tanigaki slamming into Kiro at such a force that he knocks his ushanka off and breaks the ice behind him. Since Tanigaki has the Murata rifle, he hasn’t had time to reload it, so he’s forced to jump Kiro. This is a very brutal fight. Kiro hits Tanigaki in the head with a block of ice two times and the second time the ice breaks on impact with his head here.

Tanigaki has a concussion at a minimum by this point and brain damage if it is worse. Kiro goes to grab his remaining knife as he’s straddling Tanigaki on the ground. We see he’s in rough shape and then Inkarmat’s smiling face in a black shaded box (past tense/flashback indication).

We then move to the next page. We see Kiro over Tanigaki and Tanigaki’s shoes/boots facing us. The sound effect is “thunk”. I want to know exactly what this thunk means. It first looks like perhaps Kiro stabbed Tanigaki with his knife. I have to admit I had the help of others to realize that the thunk has to do with Kiro being stabbed. Pan out to a Kiro sweating and breathing heavily.

He looks down at blood on his right hand. He stands up off of Tanigaki. He then starts sweating a lot as he looks down at himself.

Boom the next page zooms out to show his short knife stabbed in his gut and he never was able to draw his other knife. Kiro is screwed. He’s got a gut injury, in the middle of a snow squall on an ice flow.

The final panel is Tanigaki reminding him of him hurting Inkarmat and he reveals his purpose to join the group was to get revenge on Kiro for her.

This is not good for Tanigaki, nor is it good for his future. This has proven that 1.) he has learned nothing from his quest for revenge in regards to Kenkichi. 2.) if Kiro dies, he has killed a tiger (as pointed out by @goldenkamuyhunting) and Sofia prevented the other Russian convicts from shooting the tiger to prevent future misfortunes 3.) he’s still running away from his problems.

The entire time that Tanigaki has been trying to bring Asirpa home to Huci has always felt like he cared less about Asirpa as a person and more that she was a goal of a quest to avoid returning to Ani. Yes, he’s found Inkarmat and Cikapasi along the way but he’s still aimless or refusing to face the fact he should go home. But we now know his major reason for heading to Karafuto was to kill Kiro. That isn’t going to solve his problems. I feel that the panel showing Inkarmat in the flash back is a bad sign, that by likely killing Kiro, she will also die.

Lastly, I want to touch briefly on Sugimoto and Shirashi. I think that b/c Sugimoto is still driven by his need for revenge and his anger at Ogata and Kiro and hasn’t faced his own problems in regards to Umeko and Toraji. Additionally, he has his need to talk to Asirpa but he always thinks the only way to save her is through violence that he’s being stalled by karma currently. Since he’s linked Asirpa to Umeko and Toraji he needs to 1.) de-couple this and 2.) rescue Asirpa though a non-violent means. So since his karma is say constipated, he’s unable to actually reach her until he does something to examine his own thoughts and actions. So now he’s stuck on a piece of ice with Shirashi and Ryu. Irony at its finest.

#golden kamuy #gk meta #golden kamuy chapter 186 #koito otonoshin #tsukishima hajime #sveltana #ogata hyakunosuke #asirpa #tanigaki genjirou #kiroranke #sugimoto saichi #shirashiyoshitake #emotions

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