[SeijiSensei]

None of them appear to know that Heita is tattooed. I assume he will die so they can harvest his skin. I don't think any of Asirpa's quartet would murder him, even Sugimoto.

Aspira's dedication to her people and the Ainu culture shone through again at the end of this episode. That's clearly much more important to her than gold or anything else. Though Sugimoto is stuck having to deliver some lame observations about how terrible greed is, the accompanying triptych of Hijikata, Ogata, and Tsurumi was memorable. Shirashi is obviously still mostly motivated by greed, but Sugimoto's feelings are likely more mixed. Asirpa holds the top rung in his mind above everything else including gold.

There was a stretch where the characters were very off-model. Luckily it ended before the most important scenes took place. Brain's Base had to cope with the sudden death of a, still unidentified, key staff member while this season was in production. Maybe they had to fill some slots and shuffle responsibilities as best they could. The rest of the episode lived up to the overall quality of their work on this series. I may be biased because I've liked Brain's Base for a long time, but I think they've carried forward the high production standards that characterized Geno's work on the first two seasons. Facial expressions are a significant aspect of the art of Golden Kamuy and a feature of both anime adaptations.