English Dub Season Review: Golden Kamuy Season Four

Overview

The race to obtain the lost Ainu gold is nearing its peak, as even more formidable ex-prisoners are set on keeping their tattooed skins intact. Saichi “The Immortal” Sugimoto and Blue-eyed Ainu, Asirpa can finally move forward together, but Asirpa’s time with Kiroranke and Ogata Hyakunosuke has slightly altered her ambition and strengthened her determination. As their party leaves the Russian territory, they gain a peculiar follower.

Meanwhile, Toshizou Hijikata’s crew makes major moves to get invaluable skins, falling into the poisonous trap of a dangerous convict. Although each group possesses a strong advantage over the others, even First Lieutenant Tokushirou Tsurumi—the most powerful and ruthless contender—cannot advance without Asirpa’s help. However, his ominous plans for when they will inevitably meet remain a mystery.

On the technical side, season 4 was done by Brains Base animation studio of “Baccano” fame, replacing Geno Studio. With Hitoshi Nanba this time around, the chief series director, while Takumi Yamakawa replaced Kenichi Ōnuki as character designer. Noboru Takagi returned to write the scripts. Understandably, it was announced that the seventh episode of the season and beyond would be postponed due to the death of a main staff member. The opening theme is “Never Say Goodbye”, performed by ALI featuring Mummy-D, while the ending theme “May everything be there”, was performed by The Spellbound.

As somebody who went into this series blind, I was surprised by how much this show got me hooked. In preparation for Season 4, I spent 2-3 weeks binge-watching the first Three Seasons and looking beyond the wacky humor, homoerotic undertones, and sex jokes this series is often known for, it remained consistently compelling in terms of intrigue, drama, humor and unexpected brutal displays of violence in combination with a level of sophistication, heart, and the excitement of discoveries. And keep in mind much of this is realistically indicative of the period this story takes place which is Japan’s equivalent to the Frontiersman/Gold Rush Era of the early 1900s during the aftermath of the Russo-Japanese War.

Unlike Season 3 which was mostly spent on Sugimoto getting back to Asirpa, season 4 somehow manages to top that with a lot of soul-searching about what Asirpa wants to do with the gold once they find it. The internal conflict has been extremely interesting since she feels conflicted after finally solving the tattoo code. Yet not wanting this adventure with Sugimoto to end once they reach their destination of the gold. Finding more tattooed prisoners along the way to further unlock the mystery of where the gold is. We had many emotional moments this season with many characters separated now that they’re back in Hokkaido.

It wasn’t all perfect of course. Sugimoto as a character had to come to terms with everything that’s happened since they reunited, and to realize what he wants in life after they find the Gold together. It also didn’t help that it took 6 months to further continue the series due to the unfortunate passing of one of the show’s animators in November of 2022 and later picked the plot back up with episode 7 around April 2023. While part of me was excited, it kinda threw me off a bit since not having it continue between that time inevitably caused me to have a bit of a disconnect with some of the story. I can appreciate the effort that they made a solid attempt to flesh out the backstories of certain side characters and villains during its proceedings, this attempt was also the subject of controversy as it retcons already established backstories in the prior season.

As for the animation, Brain’s Base did okay in continuing Geno Studio’s legacy, as they did with Season 2 of To Your Eternity, I was hoping less for the sudden studio change because of the long legacy of the work involved, despite virtually having more or less the majority of the same staff team with the studio replacement. They at least did a great job with what they were given…

Overall, this is in no way a bad series, but you’d have to watch it from the very beginning to connect the narrative dots and get the full experience. Not to mention specific parts of the story (including post-credits scenes) require actual subtitles since certain characters speak Russian, yet they don’t bother translating anything they say in the Dub for some reason which also would’ve been essential to the plot. There were so many great moments in this season like in other seasons, met lots of new and interesting characters and had some great developments for old ones, and with this season’s ending things are starting to come to a final stretch. And with the 5th and final season announced in the post-credits, we could see a three-way war in full extent coming later down the line, and I look forward to seeing how it all ends!