It wouldn’t be Golden Kamuy if chaos wasn’t thrown in the middle of all of this. Everyone is tied to a side, with Sugimoto & Hijikata cooperating at this time. It is quite ironic that because of them cooperating, Ogata doesn’t have a side to belong to. Hijikata would absolutely prioritize Asirpa over Ogata. Ogata is alone here. However, one would argue Ogata being alone and the wildcard is where he is the scariest. Thankfully, Vasily is around, keeping him in check to a degree.
Kikuta does have a point about Asirpa wanting to learn more about the Ainu incident, but it is clear now that she cares more about their future. Though Kikuta’s information about the gold coins matching the tattoo skins sounds legit, though. Very Golden Kamuy fashion, where we had the silliness of the guys in the beer factory drunk and moving about while switching to the conversation between Kikuta & Asirpa. How the tone shifts back and forth between these two scenes and doesn’t lose the impact between them is incredible.
This episode covered chapters 249-253. Overall handled pretty well. The only panels that were skipped were the brief flashback from Keiji Ueji. Tbh it is not a huge deal.