As we continue with the showdown of the gang against Tanigaki & Tetsuzou. Sadly, the one mistake of Asirpa is evident. Of course Sugimoto & Shiraishi look at Asirpa as a child because they’ve been to the Ainu village. Of course, for someone like Tanigaki, who has seen her in action and knows that underestimating her could be his demise. After all, the topic is the strongest out in the wild survive. Of course only Asirpa knows this area of Hokkaido well, as he falls in a trap to get poisoned. Of course Tetsuzou mainly cares about hunting Retar.
As it moves toward the clash between Tetsuzou & Retar, it takes an interesting turn. More than likely, if the match between the two was an honorable 1-on-1, Tetsuzou would have killed Retar. But Retar’s mate clashed, which led to Tetsuzou’s defeat. Of course, seeing that Retar has a family is what led Tetsuzou to fall back. His words were that one survivor of a species can’t save them from extinction is true, but killing one who had a family would be too far. They retrieve Tetsuzou’s skin. The fear Asirpa has of Retar becoming an evil god is void since a family would give him a purpose.
As they head back to the village to get Tanigaki patched up, they learn a more interesting detail. The gold they are after is far more than the gold they are after. It would be the equivalent of 800 billion yen; an amount at that level is insane. If that information comes out, more and more people will be after that gold. Tsurumi was the first one to learn of this information, and the 7th division suffered through the war because their head of command wanted to gain credit, disregarding what happened to his men. It is quite fucked up that the commander killed himself and that his men were to blame. Thus the 7th Division is a group of men who were outcasted, and you can understand why Tsurumi sought to go after the gold and forge a military government. Of course that doesn’t stop Sugimoto and co. from still going after it.
Following that, you had two clashes in town. The first was a diversion to a planned robbery of the bank. The first was Hijikata’s men robbing a bank to acquire the Izumi-No-Kami-Kanesada. Curious what makes this sword special. The other is the countless encounters of Shiraishi & Ushiyama, as Ushiyama knows how dangerous Shiraishi is as an escape artist. Which leads to speculation: Is Shiraishi a rat?
There is a nice flashback for Sugimoto regarding his love for Umeko. Tbh the fear that Toraji must have is that his best friend, who he knows Umeko loved first and who is better than Toraji in every way, could take his wife. Though there is a reason Sugimoto loves Umeko the way he does. That is when Umeko mentions to her husband she would stand by him. Sugimoto had his chance, but now she has a family and husband. For saying that to support her husband, you have to give Umeko some praise and respect.
As the volume ends, Hijikata brings up the name Kazuo Henmi. Who is another one of the escape artists, but he has no interest in the gold? But rather his desire is more in killing. As Asirpa’s uncle went to the area where Henmi is, that gives the group urgency to head there. As they go whale hunting, we see that Sugimoto drags up Henmi, and the question to be asked is, how does he continue forward in the next volume?