4 out of 5

Everyone: it’s happening. Or at least it feels like it’s happening. The conclusion to Golden Kamuy. A giant showdown with Sugimoto and Tsurumi. Big, pivotal changes. The main story pieces in place – who’s doing what and why; the MacGuffin(s) secured – and Noda-san getting down to absolute business in a nigh free-for-all scuffle to leave, hopefully, our heroes still standing.

Every single character converges on a military fortress, and it’s man-to-man with constant shelling from off-shore and snipers doing their sniping. Appropriately, while Golden Kamuy is never completely without humor – volume 30 doesn’t smile very often. And it’s pretty brutal. The violence hurts, even if Sugimoto continues to live up to his nickname. Topping that feeling is that Tsurumi becomes a full-on horror villain, which he has certainly been at various points, but this is his Michael Myers can’t-stop-him moment, which obviously makes him a good pairing against The Immortal Sugimoto.

But: things are very confusing at first. Golden Kamuy has struggled with its unwieldy cast at various points, and now Noda has a tight space in which they all must operate, and the story really can’t get a handle on that in the tankobon’s first few chapters. The action is also so compressed at points that Noda – normally excelling at choreography – misses some clear cues to help us keep straight what’s happening. However, this course corrects fairly quickly, as Noda shortly starts to employ more frequent high-level maps and reminders of where everyone is, and the action resumes its as-usual breathlessly awesome depictions.

I… suppose it’s always possible this thing is going on for another twenty volumes, but I kinda hope not. So many pivotal, how-can-they-get-out-of-this moments occur here, that it would be a shame to drag it on too much beyond this.