It interesting to read your analysis or meta ( even though I read it 2 am while being stress ). I want to ask since I do remember you didnt really like how the story ended Ogata, so how do you think that it might be better ? The way it end he think that he always blessed feel weird for me but I do kinda like that what he do all those time it's just that he's thinking what broken person would do. Though this might contract about my first point about he always blessed, in the end what you become is always the choice is yours not always because the aspect from other people (I do found interesting fan comic what if Yuusaku and Ogata swap place). Sorry if it's going random or you actually the answer already in one of your post. Thank you once again š
Sorry for the late reply, I'm glad you enjoy my meta!
As usual WARNING as this is not a Noda praising fest.
Yes, I've ranted in the past about how I didn't like how Noda handled Ogata in his last 11 volumes but I don't mind repeating it.
The whole 'Ogata was ALWAYS blessed because maybe for a moment Hanazawa loved his mother' felt like very poorly constructed.
The ability to feel guilt isn't tied to your parents loving each other or not, but to plenty of other factors... and anyway it's pretty difficult to prove Hanazawa ever loved his mother and it wasn't just in Tome's head and he merely wanted her for sex.
We heard how Hanazawa spoke of her, without a shred of love.
I don't know if this is due to something in Japanese culture but to me, tying Ogata's ability to feel guilt to Hanazawa loving his mother feels like tying two completely unrelated things together, a leap in logic I can't follow.
I'm not sure how, at this point, the story could have handled Ogata. He was left useless for 10 volumes and then the last gave contraddicting info on his past and, basically, ends with a repeated the situation on Vol 19 only to have Ogata kill himself. At this point it was better to murder him on Vol 19 because... beyond the fact he was a popular character, the story had no need for him to survive (same as Vasily, really).
It's something I stated back then in Vol 19, I was interested in Ogata, I liked him as a character, because he was interesting. The moment Noda made him uninteresting because he gives 0 contribute in carrying on the plot, I see no point in having him in the story.
Not even his death affects the plot because in the end he murders himself on his own so the guilt for his death doesn't truly befall on Asirpa and whatever wound he gave to Sugimoto is of no consequence to the battle nor is his stalling them.
The most he did was to cause the drivers of the train to die (in the magazine version)/to escape (in the volume version).
Both moves feel stupid as he ends up on a train no one is driving when he could have just said he was one of Tsurumi's men and went aboard just the same (he's wearing an army uniform).
But Noda needed the drivers to get off so he used him to do so, though everything else would have been fine. They could have been distracted by the explosion and this would have allowed the bear to end up on the train and the bear could have caused them to escape.
It would have made more sense.
So my options to make the whole thing better are two: either write him off in Vol 19/20 or rewrite the last 11 volumes to give him a role in them. As the second option is way too complex and would end up creating a different GK I think the first one is the best one.
Let Ogata die in Vol 19/20, the story doesn't need him anymore and his faceoff with Asirpa back then had more impact than the last one.
His death could be used to push forward the discussion if it's all right to kill or not instead than... just happening.
And if Asirpa really need to show she's willing to kill someone to save Sugimoto she can shoot/try to shoot a arrow at Tsurumi instead than just aim at him and not shoot.
On a final note... GK wasn't a story about the importance of your choices but since this is still very discussed in the fandom, I want to toss in that the idea that we become what we chose is an over simplification.
What we become is the result of a combination of genetic, education, opportunities and personal choices.
We can make our choices solely among the opportunities we're offered, which might be plenty or just few or none at all, and we decide according to our physical/mental abilities and knowledge and understanding of the world.
Ogata had clearly a flawed understanding of the world due to the way he'd been raised, and a very limited number of choices due to his social and economical background.
His chances of becoming a second lieutenant like Yuusaku are so low they can as well not exist, his chances to get Hanazawa to love him are even less.
Ogata couldn't choose to become (someone like) Yuusaku, even if he wanted to. That choice was never on the table.
And, since his understanding of the world was flawed and he never managed to correct it, he took some objectively VERY BAD decisions to try to become someone he would never be allowed to become and, without even realizing, made his situation even worse instead than improving it.
GK though, wasn't the sort of story that was interested in this kind of aspect so, if you like stories that instead dig more into personal choices and their consequences, I recommend reading "Umineko no naku koro ni" (the manga as the anime is SO HORRIBLE they never finished it and the last chapter of the visual novel was poorly handled and Ryukishi basically rewrote it for the manga version).
Just keep in mind it's a mystery horror with some gruesome scenes... though since there are gruesome scenes in GK too, those might be not a problem.
Thank you for your ask and sorry again for the late reply!
to "anonymous" March 16. Noda has denied himself many times. Ogata's own storyline was debunked and ignored so much that all doubts and "mysteries" of his character were abandoned by leaving him to die. ultimately Golden Kamuy ends up with Sugimoto and Asirpa staying together. and this is a fact that he can deny as much as he wants but it's there
Sorry for the late reply.
Should I warn people this reply isn't a 'Noda praising feast' or it's obvious enough? Whatever.
At this point I'm not really sure what went on with Noda and GK.
Very early in GK we've Huci asking Sugimoto to marry Asirpa.
Noda though, said, until the end, that Asirpa wasn't meant to be seen in a sexual way, because she's young and because he's uncomfortable when women are seen like that...
Noda: I wanted to make absolutely sure that Asirpa would not be seen in a sexual way, by either the readers or the other characters. Thereās a lot of perverts in the story, to be sure, but I didnāt want her to sway in that direction. Her being a young girl is part of it, but I was always uncomfortable with women being shown explicitly sexualized to begin with. [Noda Satoruās interview with Asahi Shinbun, translation courtesy of @piduai]
...and that she had a crush on Sugimoto, but that their relationship wasn't romantic.
Q: The relationship between Sugimoto and Asirpa could only be described as āpartnersā, with no romantic elements, until the end. Did you plan to keep it like that since the very beginning, or was it a natural development?
Noda: I decided from the very beginning that I would not show Sugimoto and Asirpa as romantically involved in the end. Asirpaās crush felt natural for the character so I included it, and since it was related to the later events, it was part of my calculations. [Nodaās interview for Yomiuri online paper translation courtesy of @piduai]
However he deliberately set the relationship between Umeko and Sugimoto to fail right from the start so that Sugimoto could stay in Hokkaido with Asirpa.
Noda: If Umeko had not remarried and her eyes werenāt healed, the story would have needed a few more chapters, which, considering that it was post-climax, would have made it drag on needlessly. The reason for that is Toraji told Sugimoto to get together with Umeko before dying, and he is not the kind of guy who could have ignored that and return to Hokkaido with Asirpa. Besides, Umeko remarrying has been hinted towards at a few points throughout the story, so it was a foregone conclusion. [Nodaās interview for Yomiuri online paper translation courtesy of @piduai]
Where all this lead us to?
Well, clearly as far as Noda is involved, he believes he ended up GK with Sugimoto and Asirpa not being together in a romantic situation.
Asirpa, after all, should be around 16 when the final chapter takes place and, even if back then she was considered of marriageable age (and, if I'm not wrong, girls of 16 can marry in Japan if they parents allow it), she's still awfully young.
However they don't have a father/daughter relation, Noda himself describes them as 'partners' (ēøę£ 'AibÅ').
The volume version includes a scene in which Sugimoto admits to himself he previously was never able to truly acknowledge Asirpa as such but now that she has (attempted) to kill Ogata, he believes she's the one who will fall with him in hell (it's a tentative translation, I'll have to wait till June for the official translation in my country as Vol 30 was just released and for much, much longer to check the English translation) which seems to imply he finally sees her as his partner.
So now of course a part of the fandom can speculate that, although Sugimoto has such a close bond with Asirpa and she has a crush on him that lead her to go so far for him, she'll always be friendzoned to him. I personally hope so.
However many of us come from years of seeing manga/anime set up those situations to imply that, ultimately, the two people involved will become romantic partners in the future, which is why a part of the fandom feels like we got a SugiRipa ending, regardless of the two not being yet in a romantic relation. We feel like it's just the next step, the one that's not shown but that we're meant to figure on our own. From what I know, many didn't like this implication, many wanted Noda to just deny any possible implication Sugimoto might end with Asirpa, which could have been conveniently done if Sugimoto were to remain with Umeko... or were to marry Umeko and then move to Hokkaido with her.
Actually, even leaving Shiraishi to live with them would have helped to give more the impression they were a group of friends than showing them together, going back to Huci's home.
So who says the ending isn't a SugiRipa one isn't technically wrong, as the two aren't together... but who feels the ending is a SugiRipa one isn't wrong either, because the ending seems to hint that's how the characters will end in the future and Noda is old enough to know that's how it would be perceived as he too should have seen plenty of such implications in other stories.
As who read this blog knows, I hated the idea the story could end pairing them up from day one. I hate the implication this could be their future even if, by then, Asirpa will be older.
So I'm not happy with the ending, not even when Noda says they aren't together right then, because that's not where that ending seems to lead.
I won't even go into how unhappy I am with the handling of Ogata, or of Koito, Tsukishima, Tanigaki, Tsurumi and so on because I've already discussed way too much about it.
Which is what had lead me to pull out of the GK world. I still have lovely memories of the first 2/3 of the story and I like to talk about some parts of it but... that's it.
So if you also are displeased with how he was handled, I fear we're on the same boat.
Said so, I'm happy for who's instead happy with how the story was handled. At each it's own, I guess, just let's respect people's views on it and remember everyone if you see something you don't like the back button and block button are your friends.
Hello, I've been reading Golden Kamuy for three weeks now and yesterday I read the final chapter. Today I woke up and I started reading your blog and your metas, and it's been helping me mourn the great story that I believe didn't deserve such a wasteful ending. I feel like the characters' journey was for nothing. Just like you, I despise that the Sugiripa pairing is being implied to be canon, and I really wish Asirpa had never developed a crush on Sugimoto. In my opinion it seriously muddied the overall story and the consequent actions it would take. Ogata's death felt meaningless at this time of the plot. It's funny how one of the themes in the story is that each life has a purpose but it felt like most of the characters lost theirs in the final arc. I know I'm a bit late to the party, and the time I invested in the story was nothing compared to the people that had been following the manga for years, but I needed to get these words off my chest. I'll try to remember this series as the masterpiece it was for the first ~200 chapters.
Welcome in the world of GK and I'm sorry to also welcome you among the ones who didn't really enjoy much the final arc.
Now... should I warn everyone who's going to continue to read that this isn't a let's shower Noda with phraises feast? And that if you don't like it, the back button is your best friend? I hope not, but just in case, consider yourself warned. So...
In regard to the SugiRipa... I would have been fine if it had been handled as a phase, something Asirpa has to grow out of it.
I wouldn't have liked it much but I would have accepted it if the whole thing being at least... postponed. Sugimoto leaves her, years go by, he comes back, she's an adult now and since he hadn't seen her in years and she's an adult now, he can look at her with different eyes.
Noda had seemed to imply that Asirpa was of such a young age because she wasn't meant to become a tropy for the hero to get at the end of his adventure (like it happens to way too many female characters in stories targeted to male audience), but if the SugiRipa ending was planned from the start... well, at this point Asirpa could have had just been made of the right age from the start.
Asirpa had a quite interesting motivator for her actions, which was the well being of her people, this isn't really such a recurring goal for heroines, but in the end the Ainu were sidelined because she makes clear her priority is Sugimoto (she claimed she would kill to protect him, not the Ainu and, ultimately, she shoots Ogata to protect Sugimoto) and the Ainu take a backseat.
I've nothing against characters moved by love... but since Asirpa has something more intriguing that could have lead her actions, prioritizing her crush for the hero felt like a downside.
Of course this is just me, I know there were people who had pushed for SugiRipa from the start and even the anime seemed fornd of it (and completely erased Umeko as a love interest for Sugimoto).
As for Ogata, as far as I'm involved, it's not just that his death felt meaningless, his whole partecipation to the fact post Karafuto was of no consequence whatsoever for the story. He didn't affect the plot, neither with his life, nor with his death which is such a big clash with how, previously, whatever Ogata did seemed to spin the plot in a direction or in another.
So, as far as I'm involved, it would have worked a lot better if he had died in Karafuto. Even the whole thing with Koito, in which he shared info with him that lead Koito to figure out how Tsurumi manipulated him, was ultimately meaningless as Koito and Tsukishima still did Tsurumi's bidding till the end, and wouldn't have still be capable to follow him due to their wounds, so the whole thing ended up being meaningless. Again, this is just me.
And I guess I could go on, actually I wanted to write a whole post on why for me the series finale was such a disappointment, but ultimately I doubt someone would be interested in it.
Who still wanders in the GK tag is likely there in search of positivity so a post of what didn't work for me is probably not what people would be interested in reading.
Again, I'm sorry to hear you also didn't enjoy the ending. It doesn't matter if you started reading a story long ago or just yesterday, it's always sad when something that you were enjoying reading stop being a source of fun and pleasure.
Please, keep enjoying the first 20 volumes as I and other people do and still welcome among the GK readers. Also, thank you for your ask!
I appreciate Ogata GoldenKamuy for being catboy representation for the kind of cats that make people hate cats.
This man is here to piss on your carpet and knock over every single full drinking glass he can find. If you touch him wrong, he will rip your face off. Sometimes he gets hairballs and he only hacks them up where he knows you'll be walking. He won't stop catching birds and rodents and leaving them in your bed. You are not getting your security deposit back because of him and he fully intends to eat your corpse when you die.
How would you rewrite Vasily to make him work better? Hard Mode: You can't alter anything before the Bear Man arc like making Ogata kill him
Well...
...as usual we need an obligatory warning. As people could have guessed from the ask this isnāt a āwe all love what Noda did and we wouldnāt change a single dot of his whole workā. So if youāre solely into posts that praise Nodaās work, this is the moment to hit the back button. Fast.
Now that we got this out of the way... weāve a problem here. Anton Chekhov, master of the short story, gave this advice: āIf it's not essential, don't include it in the storyā and the problem is if this was the story Noda was meant to tell, the best way he could do for both Ogata and Vasily was to cut them out of the last arc because theyāre both totally and completely unnecessary.
They donāt contribute to the plot.
Ogata is dragged in solely to be killed by Asirpa because, according to Noda:
"Back in Karafuto, Asirpa didnāt kill Ogata because she lacked the resolve of taking a human life. After she reunited with Sugimoto, she was reassured in how important he is to her. If itās about protecting Sugimoto, she decided that sheās ready to go to hell. Seeing her determination, Sugimoto also resolves that heās ready to take the VIP seats to hell with Asirpa. Which is why Asirpa was able to risk her life taking the land deed back. Ogata had a very important role in facilitating this whole process.ā ( Nodaās interview for Yomiuri online paper )
...which Iām not even trying to explain because Iām not really sure how it fits with the story we got, even after Noda improved it in the volume version.
So basically all Ogata was needed in the plot for, was to be there so that Asirpa could attempt to kill him in front of Sugimoto to protect him.
Noda could have her do it with a random 7th soldier and we wouldnāt have noticed the difference.
And all Vasily was there for was to build up tension in hope of a Ogata/Vasily duel that could rival to the one in Vol 17 and give Ogata an excuse to fight someone and therefore seem like he has something to do in the story, so Vasily is dragged in the final part solely because Ogata is too... only Ogata has 0 investment in Vasily.
He discovers Vasily is in Hokkaido solely on Vol 26 and his reaction is merely to avoid him so that he could continue with the gold hunt. Then he proceeds to ignore Vasily exists until Vol 30, in which he takes him out before continuing with the gold hunt, which is Ogataās only focus.
If we compare Vasily with Nikaidou, itās easier to relate with Nikaidouās reason for wanting to kill Sugimoto (Sugi killed his brother) than with Vasily (apparently itās just because he considers his fight with Ogata still ongoing)...
...so unless youāre not among those who want Ogata dead, itās hard to empathize with his reasons for wanting to kill a man.
Noda once said: "I think the quality of a work has slid down if ābad charactersā stay bad characters until the end, if it portrays characters with labels stamped on them. I feel like āChange!ā āPlease make the characters undergo more complicated change!ā [Noda Satoru from Kono Manga ga Sugoi! interview with Noda Satoru, January 2016]
"I donāt intend to write Golden Kamuy as a manga thatās mainly about solving the gold mystery. I write it thinking of it as a story of each person searching for their role in life. Because I write it like a drama with multi-protagonists, I feel that I have to write each character with some depth, or else the work would end up half-baked." [Noda Satoru from Yukimura Makoto x Noda Satoru Interview: Part 2]
Itās a pity he didnāt follow his own advice with Vasily and had him change or gave him some depth.
But, I guess, thatās not what you asked. You wanted to know if thereās a way to make him work better... which would actually require giving him more characterization, more interaction and a more developed character arc than just āIāll chase Ogata and see if I can kill him or Iāll have to get killed by himā.
So what could have been done?
Well, for example Noda could have put to good use this bit.
Sugimoto said he thought Russians didnāt feel pain, that they were different from Japanese. Asirpaās travel in Karafuto was all about discovering over natives were a bit alike and a bit different from her. Sugimoto too could discover Russians are like that, humans a bit alike, a bit different, and he could discover this by interacting with Vasily and getting to know him, which would mean we would know him too.
Noda could have also played with comunication problems and, credits when itās due, he tried to use it a little at the start.
Sugimoto and Vasily try talking through pictures, and itās fun and constitutes interaction, even if Sugimoto fails to deliver well his point.
I think originally this was one of Nodaās goals because later on he also had a gag in which Sugimoto and Vasily fail to comunicate correctly.
Sugimoto tells him not to shoot but Vasily understands to shoot... because Sugimoto says ādame daā (ćć”ć ādonāt do itā in Japanese) and Vasily likely understands only ādaā (āŠ“Š°ā yes in Russian).
Or he could have developed the fact Asirpa saved Vasilyās life by making him develop some sort of care for her or, at least, the wish to return the favour.
Or Sugimotoās plan could have backfired. He dragged Vasily along in hope Vasily would protect them from Ogata but Vasily could have still shoot one of them the way he did with Shiraishi, in an attempt to drag there Ogata.
Of course in all this thereās a huge problem.
Not much after Vasily joins the group, Boutarou also joins the group. Boutarou bonds with Sugimoto over a common tragedy (their family dying of illness) which parallel with how Sugimoto bound with Vasily over them both having been shoot by Ogata.
Even though Asirpa didnāt save Boutarou, Boutarou somehow was friendly with her and understood her.
Lastly, Boutarou turned against Sugimotoās group because they basically ignored whatever Boutarou wanted in favour of what they wanted (Boutarou wanted to use the gold to buy himself an island but Asirpa would hand it to Hijikata for his own republic... I really canāt get why theyāre surprised when it turns out Boutarou isnāt going to play along with their plan...) so if Vasily were to also decide to just use them as bait to get Ogata, shooting at one of them, the two arcs would become to similar.
So an arc that could have been given to Vasily actually ended up being passed to Boutarou... and if they were to have similar arc, Noda would need to place them in such a way they would parallel yet contrast with each other.
Since Boutarou is presented as sympathetic, Vasily could be presented instead as cold. Boutarou doesnāt kill Sugimoto and has sympathy for Asirpa (and later for Shiraishi) while Vasily, who actually in the past used his companions as baits and is moved just by the wish to kill a rival he couldnāt defeat, could be presented as cold... and we could have an explanation for this, he could implement the same excuse Sugimoto gave, that since he fought them, he saw Japanese as soulless monsters and no matter if they acted kindly or not, he just couldnāt accept to view them as different.
War has ruined him that much and thatās why heās taking a personal crusade just to kill a man who yes, has scarred him permanently but solely because Vasily and his companions attacked his group first.
And even if Noda mostly stopped caring about the theme of guilt, it would lace with it well, because it would drive home even more the point that if you canāt see someone as human, you wonāt feel guilty for killing him. Noda could further push it by having Vasily see only Asirpa (who had saved him) as human, and therefore generating a contraddiction in his thinking as sheās Japanese YET human.
Or he could have gone for a route in which Vasily changes, the cold smiper who used his companions as baits and is chasing a man is allowed to indulge spending more time creating art and being apprecciate for it instead than for his killing skills and, through it, recovering his humanity. Vasily makes friends with Asirpaās group and protects them because they helped him to go back in touch with the best part of him instead than just using him as a way to keep Ogata away (which doesnāt even work as Ogata doesnāt know Vasily is with them).
Or Noda could have focused more on the reason why he put Vasily in the cast, his fight with Ogata. He could have had Ogata recover sooner a rifle and his sniping ability, while he was still on Karafuto, and figure out sooner that Sugimotoās group has a sniper along them (Ogata noticed someone shoot a 7th soldier but somehow he never assumed Sugimotoās group has a sniper with them until, at the Sapporo breweries, Vasily failed at killing him).
Ogata could have been actually invested in getting rid of Vasily and Vasily could have been actually busy trying to deal with Ogataās attacks, making himself more useful to the group and making us more involved in their battle because now it becomes an integral part of the plot, not something on the sidelines to fill pages with.
They could have played their sniper chess and we could have gotten to get inside Vasily and Ogataās heads and see what they would come up with and it could have been interesting and a way to get to know how Vasily thinks.
At the very minimum Noda could have had Vasily interact with Sofia and discover her goal is something more worth to risk to die for than his idea of killing Ogata. After all Vasily has deserted, meaning he didnāt really care much about the cause he was working for. He could switch fully and become a partisan.
Or there could have been a deeper reason for Vasily to be so hung on Ogata, something tied to the war, something that would give Vasily a backstory.
I guess I could go on and on, playing with ideas as Vasily is, in a way, a white board because he was so underused and underdeveloped he could become anything and be used for everything but I think one of the key problems here was if Noda ever had some plans for him, ultimately somehow he gave up on developing him, to the point he even forgot to draw him in some chapters... and, if I donāt remember wrong, the cast didnāt even bother to search for him when they left Sapporo.
Vasily manages to reach the Goryokaku because he takes Tsurumiās train... and somehow evidently he got on a destroyer because Tsurumiās train stopped at Muroran and they used the ships to reach Hakodate.
Even this could have used as a way to develop Vasily, Tsurumi could have recruited him in his lines (Tsurumi could talk Russian so he could easily reason with him)... this could have been used to show there was no loyalty in him for Sugimotoās group and he was there solely for Ogata and even willing to shoot Sugimotoās group if this were to help his goal... or he could have refused helping and Tsurumi might have tried using him as a hostage... but thereās no mention of this either.
And I could go on and on and on.
There were plenty of things that could be done with Vasily... but in the end, nothing is really done.
And so, if this was really all Noda needed him for, I would have preferred Noda to leave him in Russia.
He didnāt have to kill him.
He could have let us known he was still alive by having him trying again to attack Sugimotoās group because he thinks the emperorās murderer is still with them, discover Kiroranke is dead and go on with his life as a border guard. Maybe be discharged due to his wounds and start his life as an artist. Or he could have met Svetlana and joined in her adventures with Gansoku.
But again, none of this happened.
I like to think, maybe naively, Noda had better plans for him than what we got when he decided to spare him... but those plans somehow went unfulfilled. Maybe he realized this would mean to stretch the story too long and he didnāt want to do it.
The post Karafuto part is, after all, in a way pretty different from how the manga was before so I donāt really know what happened.
Noda said āI am very grateful to my editor, Ookuma Hakkou, and the rest of the editorial team for allowing me to end this story when I wanted to end it.ā (Noda Satoruās interview with Asahi Shinbun) so it can be there was pressure for him to stretch Golden Kamuy longer, and reintroducing Vasily was part of those plans... but ultimately Noda managed to end the story when he wanted to... which ended up making the changes that were made to further stretch the story pointless.
So whatever plan there was for Vasily went cut to the bare minimum and the same applied to Ogata, and we got a final part that ultimately hacked away all the things that were introduced to stretch it longer (the tiger curse, a potential arc for Koito in which he opposed to Tsurumi, the 24th convict, Central and Kikuta and Ogataās role as Central spies and so on...) so that Noda could stick to the plot he had in mind prior to all this, which was basically revealing the truth behind Wilk, having Asirpa tell the code to Tsurumi, everyone moving to Goryokaku with giant battle there and, finally, the train ride of hell.
At least it feels like it to me.
But well thatās just me.
Thank you for your ask and sorry for the long post, I hope at least one of those scenarios for Vasilyās development fits your tastes!
"I like to think, maybe naively, Noda had better plans for him than what we got when he decided to spare him" Good morning. I like the attempt to make sense of an ending that not only many of the fans did not like, excluding the majority of lovers of the Sugimoto / Asirpa / Saichi trio, but which seems to have little logic. Vasili probably had his own Ogata-related plot. Ogata had too much background whose closure / explanation was too much for the manga's schedule. Brutal cut Ogata with a quick pseudo motivation and leaving everything that orbited around him unexplained. Consequently, the presence of Vasily also loses meaning. it would be nice if one day Noda honored a character who eventually got more attention than the two protagonists. As for the author's statements about the end, I think it's the opposite. Noda thought of managing everything within the time agreed with the author. When he realized that some characters would take much longer he simply cut and patched up a plausible explanation by eliminating them or adapting their story to the times of the manga's closure Ogata, I repeat, had a series of pending elements that were too big to explain in the agreed times. . if not at the expense of other characters. Vasily himself lived, albeit to a lesser extent, the same fate. Curious fate since it is no longer seen but leaves a painting (dated 1940) that should represent Ogata found ... dead? I live? I don't know. in the end there is no certainty even in that. Just as Noda left Tsurumi's potential survival open, the same can be said of Ogata. The painting "death of a wild cat" 1940 could very well indicate death on that date. After all, the "painting" represents an intact and serene animal ... far from a being heavily injured and fallen from a moving train ...
I share this analysis, like others. unlike this author on the elimination of Ogata's character I would have much to say even more than what I have already written.
But it's a personal nuisance.
Otherwise the ending is disappointing also in light of the various "signals" sent during the development of the manga.
Where many readers had created expectations of a certain type. Expectations all go disappointed.
Especially those on the path of redemption where one would have expected something very different from what happened. Since none of the selected characters have had much redemption. No matter how hard we try, none of them ended up "well". First of all Sugimoto who throughout the narrative path has remained the same as himself. If karma exists for story characters, he should find himself on a similar path again as throughout development he has remained fundamentally unchanged and practically stolid. So much so that it looks more like a supporting actor than the protagonist.
As much as I disliked some characters from Tsurumi's group, and Tsurumi himself, I have to admit that the "bad" or alleged villains (since in the end they too were victims of a "stepmother" life) had a better development than that. of the protagonists. Asirpa herself, who can be forgiven for being, in fact, a victim of life and little more than a child, did not have a particular emotional growth during the narration. As someone (I think @GoldenKamuyHunting) the development of the manga transforms the relationship between her and Sugimoto into a relationship of subjection. Asirpa says, Sugimoto does.
Rather disappointing as a closure for two characters who are the protagonists but who in fact remain, for me, crystallized and without major developments.
Ā Developments that are expected in a story so full of dramas and reasons to make the characters review their existence in the light of the various discoveries that history poses.
So yes. I agree that GK, which I approached late, remains a remarkable manga set in a historical context very close to our time. But that on a general level he missed something by falling on the finish.
A final literally thrown away.
Ā I close by saying that although Ogata has been eliminated in a brutal and ridiculous way, he is taking revenge by being one of the most successful characters.
Curious as approaching the real term, in which scenes excluded from the last episode of the magazine will also be known, it becomes evident that the characters who most lacked growth and development were the protagonists. While the supporting actors have shown themselves almost all as more complex and multifaceted characters. š¢
