Golden Kamuy is easily one of the best Seinen series out there. Aside from being tightly scripted and immensely entertaining, what sets Golden Kamuy apart are its characters, especially its villains.
With season 4 of Golden Kamuy ongoing, anime-only fans are only now beginning to notice who the primary antagonist of the show might be.
The main villain in Golden Kamuy is Tokushiro Tsurumi, the 1st Lieutenant of the Hokkaido 7th Division. He is the overarching enemy of protagonists Sugimoto and Asirpa, and the master manipulator who influences the entire narrative. He’s the ultimate foil and the final boss.
Golden Kamuy is overpopulated with “villains” since there are no inherently “good” characters in the series. Everyone is after the Ainu gold, whatever their personal motivations might be.
With so many morally ambiguous characters, what sets Tsurumi apart? What about other villains like Ogata and Hijikata? How does Tsurumi’s villainy surpass theirs?
Why is Tsurumi the main antagonist in Golden Kamuy? What makes him such a great villain?
Tsurumi is the main antagonist in Golden Kamuy because his goals and his methods of achieving those goals directly conflict and oppose that of Sugimoto’s.
He claims himself to be Sugimoto’s personal Shinigami and proves to be his worst nemesis during the final battle for the gold.
1. Unpredictability
Tsurumi is the most dangerous character in the entire series. He’s a sociopathic visionary, driven by revenge like any other villain, but revenge for what, nobody can tell.
For the most part, Tsurumi’s main motivation seemed to be gaining the gold to annex Hokkaido in an effort to eventually help Japan flourish.
But the Russo-Japanese War also resulted in the deaths of his Russian wife and child, whom, as it turned out, he genuinely loved, so his goal might have been to avenge them.
Speaking of, he kept the finger bones of his late wife and kid as a souvenir. Tsurumi is terrifying, creepy, and totally crazy. He’s unhinged, literally, having had part of his brain blown away by a piece of shrapnel during the Battle of Mukden.
He blames his rage and acts of brutality on his brain damage, and wears a porcelain enamel head plate to keep his cerebrospinal fluid from leaking down his face.
The fact is, Tsurumi is very much anchored to the past, and it is this, rather than his brain damage, that makes him so unpredictable.
His affinity for torture and suffering shows that he doesn’t care about causing pain and death, although, he does seem to show certain levels of sympathy for his subordinates. He tries to convince Nikaido to eat and even provides prosthetic limbs for him.
But this is Tsurumi we’re talking about – there is always a possibility that he has ulterior motives.
Tsurumi’s moral compass is not just skewed; it is wild and chaotic. He is cold, funny, violent, psycho, and sometimes even downright likable.
But, at the end of the day, this is a guy who regularly bites and dons human flesh, grinning as he massacres several prisoners. He might know what is right and what is wrong but doesn’t exactly care, because, well, he’s insane.
2. Manipulating Mastermind
The worst/best part about his psychotic and twisted personality is his intelligence, charisma, and understanding of human behavior. Tsurumi is equal parts crazy and calculating.
He spent years manipulating Tsukishima, saving him from death row, lying to him saying that his loved one, whom Tsukishima believed dead, was still alive, just so he could use him as a tool.
Tsukishima later found out that his love was actually dead, and then was again manipulated into believing that she was alive, and Tsurumi had only faked her death to get him off death row.
In the end, Tsukishima is just satisfied with the fact that Tsurumi has endowed him with a sense of purpose, whether or not his love is actually alive.
Tsurumi also had Koito kidnapped, and then pretended to save him so Koito is indebted to him. Due to this, Koito, who is actually a pretty decent guy, is tricked into killing people to pay Tsurumi back.
Tsurumi was also instantly able to deduce who Sugimoto really is and what his intentions are by manipulating him into revealing his identity.
He’s also clever enough to recruit taxidermists to make fake convict skins to confuse the others hunting for the gold using the skin maps.
Tsurumi knows he’s not a great physical fighter but he uses his charisma and eloquence to sway and brainwash powerful people.
Incidentally, his speech in chapter 31/ episode 7 draws multiple parallels with Hitler’s speech, Triumph of the Will. Hitler, as we know, had a grand personality despite being completely off his rockers; Tsurumi’s likability and charisma is not unlike that of Hitler.
3. Overpowering Determination + Chaotic Evil
Will is something that is often associated with heroes but it is an equally villainous trait. Without the determination to follow his goals – and the faculty to make that possible – Tsurumi wouldn’t be as good a villain.
As revealed from several characters’ flashbacks, Tsurumi has had quite a backstory. Without going into it in detail, he’s served as a spy, lost his family, lost a piece of his cranium, brainwashed soldiers, and orchestrated several coups and ploys.
These flashbacks give a glimpse of the pragmatic insanity that is Tsurumi. Even though we can’t pin-point why exactly he does what he does, we can’t help but see some sense in it.
Tsurumi’s determination and craziness is most evident in his dealings with Asirpa.
Asirpa immediately tells from her first meeting with him that Tsurumi is crazy and negotiating with him is impossible.
Tsurumi makes Asirpa the target of his revenge after Ogata kills Wilk, Asirpa’s dad and the person Tsurumi blames for the death of his family.
His determination to destroy her psychologically and physically is evident as he wears Wilk’s skin as a face mask to torment her and later, obsessing over her instead of focusing on defeating Sugimoto in the end.
Tsurumi is the polar opposite of Sugimoto who, although he may resort to killing, is overall, lawfully good. Asirpa and Shiraishi also fall in this category.
But Tsurumi is the epitome of chaotic evil. He grows evidently more sinister and cruel as the plot thickens around acquiring the gold, and only loses in the end because his determination to avenge his family takes over his aim to get the gold.
Why aren’t Ogata and Hijikata not the main antagonists?
Ogata and Hijikata are great villains but do not make the cut to form primary antagonists. Tsurumi is a more well-rounded character, with a fuller personality, while the other two seem a bit unidimensional.
Ogata is a worthy contender with a good backstory. The problem is that he spirals out of control, his goals just an excuse to prolong the narrative conflict rather than the reason for his personal motivation.
Compared to Tsurumi, who positions himself as a revolutionary leader, Ogata and Hijikata come across as mere puppets.
What’s more, both Ogata and Hijikata come to view Tsurumi as the antagonist as well, and it is clear that when it comes to villainy, it is Tsurumi who triumphs.
About Golden Kamuy
Golden Kamuy is based on a manga series written and illustrated by Satoru Noda. It was serialized in August 2014 in the seinen magazine Weekly Young Jump. The manga concluded in April 2022 and has been collected into 31 volumes.
The plot revolves around Saichi Sugimoto, who is a battle veteran from the Russo-Japanese war.
He is in desperate need of money, he decides to go on a quest, when he hears a story about hidden Ainu gold. A young Ainu girl, Asirpa, joins him.
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