Gintama'

When you REALLY love a certain anime and hear it's going to end, you weep a little inside. So is Gintama, and the news of the new season were salvation to many sad Gintabros all over the globe.
That's right. The #1 show is back - and I am damn excite, son.

To any of you who haven't watched the first season, please do. but if you wouldn't want to commit yourself to a 201 episode show, feel free to just skip ahead to season two and try an episode or two. The storyline's arranged in inconsistent arcs, meaning you can pick it up from any arc ... - as long as you get an explanation on the origins of the different characters.

I assume all of you know the general setting - a Samurai who lives in a modern era in which aliens are a part of our (humans) daily lives. There's an ongoing ban on swords, so being a Samurai is obviously forbidden by law.
Though there's no rule against a wooden sword, is there?

In the last year, our friendly studio Sunrise had enough time to stack up material for a long-lasting second season, while our beloved mangaka had time to improve and write arcs which without a doubt - have the Gintama effect. Holding tears in your throat, and two minutes later laughing like a maniac - only to be in tears again a few minutes later. The long touchy speeches are back, the unexpected plot turns are back, everything we longed for in this Gintama-less year, is back.

It might be important to specify the fact that Gintama is now well funded, and is in HD. Can you imagine seeing Gintoki pick his nose in 720p?! Insane!!!
The first arc is the comeback we all wished for, every character you knew is making an appearance, though you should ready yourself for a surprise - they've all changed.

I promise this - starting at the first 15 seconds up to the end of the 24 minutes of awesome, you'll be smiling, laughing, perhaps even crying if you're touchy. Enjoy.

Unlike the original series, which I think is for everyone, the rating you give this season will depend very much on you and what you do/don’t find funny, and if you get the references or not. If the humour lands consistently and the ‘comedy’ arcs are funny to you, then you will probably get a lot more out of this season than I did.

For me, there were 2 arcs in this entire season worth watching that I would willingly rewatch. One of them, however, is the Renho arc, which is a Gundam-themed arc. If you are not like me and have not watched all ... of the 1980s Mobile Suit Gundam series and films, then you will probably get nothing from this arc, outside of some fun with Elizabeth and Katsura. For me, this arc and the Four Devas arc make it an 8/10 season, but if you are not a Gundam fan, then, being objective, this is a 7/10 season, carried mostly by one really strong arc.

So let's talk about the best arc of this season, the only one that I would say is a mandatory viewing, and one of the only arcs of this season that isn’t skippable or forgettable:

The Four Devas Arc

This arc finally gives us some much-needed development of Otose, as well as expands on her relationship with Gintoki. This arc is often cited as the turning point where Gintama fully embraced prestige-level drama, while still retaining its humour. And I can see why.

The three main characters of this arc (Gintoki, Otose and Jirocho) represent three types of broken people, each with different coping mechanisms:

• Otose: compassion
• Jirocho: violence
• Gintoki: disengagement that hides loyalty

Jirocho and Otose are 2 of the 4 Devas that are the pillars of the Kabuki District. And each symbolises a different “ecosystem” within Kabuki:

• Otose – Strays and the poor
• Jirocho – The old yakuza and the violent underbelly
• Saigō – The misfits who built normal lives
• Kada – The operator of all the gambling outfits in the Kabuki District, preying on the weak but also giving people an escape and providing for the economy

When one pillar (Otose) is targeted, the city cracks. Community is made of imperfect, damaged people who choose each other anyway.

But the concept of the Four Devas and the politics are only the backdrop for the real meat of this arc, the story of Otose, Gintoki, Pirako and Jirocho, a story about parenthood, legacy, and cycles of violence. Jirocho’s relationship with Pirako is critical; she wants validation through violence, whereas he wants to protect her from the life that ruined him. This dynamic represents the generational trauma cycle: when Children inherit the wounds their parents tried to bury.

This arc also tests whether Gintoki’s present identity (lazy, goofy, non-heroic) can stand when the world returns to war. His fight with Jirocho is metaphorical; they’re two relics of the past era, and their violence is a reminder of the trauma that shaped them. And their fight in the graveyard in the rain is one of the most intense moments in the series. While both are flawed, their ability to protect Otose shows they are still capable of choosing good.

You are not your past, but you cannot outrun it – you can only decide how you use it.


Next, I’d like to defend a favourite of mine that might not be for everyone:

The Renho Arc

Often incorrectly dismissed as pure parody, the Renho Arc is a layered story that mixes absurd comedy with sharp satire.

While wrapped in a Star Wars/Star Trek and Gundam parody, this story is about identity confusion and the fear of the world changing without you, worrying if you are still needed. Katsura’s confrontation with Renho is essentially him confronting his own irrelevance, as he starts to feel replaceable after losing Elizabeth, questioning his own purpose.

Elizabeth has always been a silent, comedic mystery figure, but in this arc, Gintama reveals that even a joke character can carry emotional weight. Elizabeth chooses his bond with Katsura over biological and hierarchical ties. Family is chosen, not assigned, and this arc tells us that well, while developing both Katsura and Elizabeth as characters.

However, if you are not a sci-fi enjoyer and haven’t at least seen 1979's Mobile Suit Gundam and possibly some 1980s Super Robot series, the setting and format may not land for you as it did for me. And if I were to be objective and not view this show from my massive mecha-enjoyer bias, then realistically, this arc is 100% skippable unless you are a diehard Katsura fan.


Speaking of Skippable, that is what I can say about the rest of this season. However, there are a few that may be worth watching once, but probably will be skipped on rewatch.

The Thorny arc has its moments, the email jokes are funny, and Hijikata gets one cool scene where he impales someone with a sword and cuts a bullet, but apart from that, the arc was pretty forgettable for me.

The Jail arc was also pretty decent and had a nice conclusion, despite having a really roundabout way of reaching it.

The Scandal arc was also quite funny, and even had me trying to figure out what was going on and presented a comedy/mystery story. However, while it was humorous, it was in hindsight quite horrific what they did to our protagonist, and I don’t know if he was ever deserving of that, or if such a horrendous ‘prank’ is in character for his companions or not. I am honestly torn, as I found it funny, but it was also kind of too far.

But aside from that, most of the other arcs I remember are ones I did not enjoy and wish I could forget. Please note, this is from my own experience. If the gags in these arcs landed for you, then I’m happy for you; they just didn’t for me.


Here are some of the arcs I didn’t enjoy and wish I had skipped this season:

Jugem Arc

An arc about a monkey with a ridiculously long name that throws poop at people. If you like childish toilet humour and a repeat of the same gag 20000 times in the span of an episode, then you might enjoy this arc, unlike me.

Love Choriss Arc

While funny at first, the gag wore off very fast and started to become too ridiculous and played out for my liking. Which is a shame because if they had tackled it just a little bit more seriously, they could have addressed the unhealthy obsession people have with the internet, false reality and virtual girlfriends/friends.

Vacation Arc

As I have said in my previous Gintama reviews, I have never found the Shogun episodes funny; the gag of him being so stupid and unaware of everything is just so unbelievable that it becomes irritating to me. He has no personality, and I wish they would stop showing me him nude all the time. I don’t want to see him, and hearing the same gag 237 episodes into the show with no changes from when he was first introduced just made me sigh instead of laugh.

Host Club Arc

If you like the stupidity of a comedy show like Grand Blue, then you will probably enjoy this drunken mess of an arc. I myself do not, and honestly just wanted it to end. I do not like or care for Kyoushirou Honjou, and watching him ‘flirt’ with people for work reminded me of the kinda stuff high school girls would watch, like Ouran High School Host Club (which is not what I am looking for in Gintama at all).

Timeskip Arc

The initial concept for this arc could be quite fun, but unfortunately, it was just too uncomfortable seeing stuff like Otae being married to her stalker and pregnant, or Sadaharu being a human??? And it was all caused by some parasitic, boil-like alien?? Just too stupid for me.


Summary

It’s honestly quite hard to rate this season, and I guess it depends on how high you rate the highs and how low you rate the lows. For me, the Four Devas arc is genuinely one of the greatest arcs in Gintama and cannot be missed, and as a diehard mecha and sci-fi enjoyer, as well as a big Katsura fan, I adored the Renho arc. But outside of that, a lot of this season was either decent or not enjoyable.

Our fun, lovable cast is still here, as is the tone, and in better quality animation, too. But compared to the outstanding quality of the previous season, this one does not look as strong, but it is still enjoyable.

This series should have been called Kintama instead of Gintama, due to how terrible it is. Why did I give this second season a 3/10, but gave the "vastly inferior" first season a 6, you say? Well, little Johnny, there comes a time when a man realizes that he has went through so much bullshit, to the point where he just stops looking for the small hidden gems in that pile of bullshit, and just gives up. If I were to describe my experience with Gintama metaphorically, I would compare it to a man who works for days in a mine just to find that ... one little ring, I would compare it to an unhappy marriage where one of the married couple is in it for the money. You see, Johnny, Gintama has these good things about it, but it also has these bad things about it too, and the negatives are far too obvious for me to say that this deserves all the praise it gets. Gintama can be good if you force yourself to enjoy it, shut your brain off and endure the boring parts as well just to get to the good parts.

Story - 4

Gintama's story was never interesting to me and never hooked me in, just a bunch of filler episodes with no plot or substance, some of the episodes in the beginning were good, the vast majority weren't. I had to force myself through sixty hellish episodes for the first serious arc to show up. I've said it many times and I'll say it again, if a show takes 60 episodes to start getting interesting, then it is a failure of a show. The story during the first season was generic at best, it had these boring episodes that were 20 minutes long, but felt like a movie or a lecture, and had uninteresting side characters who magically showed up to ask our hero Gintoki for help. It also became a bit interesting and emotional at other times, with good written characters who had unique qualities about them and gained some form of character development (mostly the main villains and the Shinsengumi). The narrative was all over the place, Gintama had a serious arc that made you cry at first, but the next episode was all about poop jokes and toilet paper. I'll give the show credit for having interesting arcs, even though it had no continuity and was random. Those interesting arcs that made me cry in Gintama's first season were not present here, the funny episodes were not present here, the boring and stupid episodes were though.

Instead of having one good episode at the very least, this season insults your intelligence by presenting you with characters who come out of nowhere and are still unfunny (insert the same lame joke used by Sarutobi about her love for Gintoki, or Zur- I mean Katsura saying "Zura ja nai, Katsura da" for the millionth time), gags that did not make me laugh one bit (Oh no, another lame DBZ parody) and villains that were laughable at best (Insert loser ninjas who wanted to kill Sarutobi and lame empress who wanted to take over Gintoki's town). With the first season, the parodies were actually funny at times, since they were actually well made and had a good premise and buildup to begin with. An example of this would be Gintama episode 119, which was one of the funniest episodes in the series, and it managed to do a DBZ parody the right way. This season also had no good serious arcs, villains just show up and then are magically beaten by our annoying mary sue MC and his very annoying sidekick (you know which sidekick I am talking about). Characters are shown to die, but are healthy and alive, standing atop of buildings the next day! Wow! Gintama might as well insert the Dragon Balls into the show as an explanation for this amazing plot armor, that would actually make sense and would be funny. The story is just uninteresting, cheesy and another generic shonen at this point, the only difference is that filler is said to be canon here. Nobody dies, heroes win in the end and the plot moves at a very slow pace.

Art - 6

The art became more detailed this time, and the quality improved over the previous season, but you can only go up when you are already at rock bottom. Some of Gintama's characters look stupid, Shinpachi is an example of looking boring and bland with nothing interesting about him. Shinpachi's sister, Shimura Tae, is a carbon copy of Shinpachi but with no glasses and with taller hair (Gintama even makes a joke about this, most characters are based off of Shinpachi's bland design). I gave the art a 6 because some of the characters had good designs (My lovely Kagura, Kondo, Hijikata and Sugo).

Characters - 5

There are really well written characters in Gintama, and then there are the one dimensional annoying pieces of filth in Gintama. The good ones I already mentioned countless times above in this review, the Shinsengumi. The Shinsengumi are the ones who made me endure more than 200 episodes of this show. Hijikata was funny in every gag he was in (2 of my favorite episodes involved the guy), his backstory and his development were brilliant, and his shining moments were fun to watch. Sugo was amazing as well, his character was by far the most developed in the whole show, his backstory was emotional and made me cry, and he had his bad-ass moments too. These characters did not only feel real, three dimensional and brilliant, but they also had an interesting chemistry between them, seeing them interact with each other was the best part of this show. Kondo was also a good and interesting character, though he did become annoying at times. Ito and Housen were one dimensional villains at first, but slowly became more developed as their arcs went on, and their goals and ideals started to make more sense by the time their arcs concluded. Kagura by far has the best backstory of the bunch, and episodes involving her were so sweet to watch, her relationship with others, and the contrast she has with her brother made me want to see them meet and interact (Unfortunately, I dropped the show, sorry Kagura). Gintoki is a good character, having him be a grown up loser was interesting to see when all you find in shonen are these optimistic happy go lucky young protagonists, though the fact that he can beat any character through plot armor annoys me.

Okay, these were all the good characters. Now unto the awful ones. Shinpachi, this guy is so bad to the point where even some fans don't like him, he has to be the most annoying character I have ever seen in all of Anime. If he is not screaming in your ears every 5 seconds, or explaining the joke to you and ruining it in the process, be certain that he is doing another equally annoying thing to piss you off. Shinpachi is a creepy character and a big hypocrite, he has this fan club where him and his Otaku followers obsess over a pop singer called Otsu, he tells his followers that they should not love any other girl, instead their love should be devoted to this pop singer, who will not even look them in the eyes. Shinpachi is not only satisfied with being a creepy weirdo as we can see, he also goes next level and becomes infuriating when he beats up his Otaku followers for having normal relationships with other females. He's also a hypocrite because he does the same shit, yet nobody beats him up.

"Oh, but it's a just a gag and it's funnay!!!" - Random Gintama fan who thinks poop jokes are funny. Listen, if you think that being a creep and an asshole who beats up others is comedy, then I just feel sorry for you.

Katsura is a character who can be funny and unpredictable at times (Episode 110), but he's sort of one dimensional as a whole. His entire character is not developed in the first 201 episodes of the show, so I just gave up on him becoming an actual developed character. Instead, he became predictable. Whenever Katsura shows up, all he does is say his iconic phrase, call Kagura boss, do something stupid and place bombs on the Shinsengumi. This is what his entire character boils down to. I want to like Katsura as I have found moments where he's shown actual development, and episodes where he's made me die laughing, but until now he's not a good character. I dropped this second season at around episode 21, and Katsura still had not developed by then.

Sarutobi is also a character who is committed to one unfunny gag, predictable. Tsukuyo is introduced for fanservice and for the shippers to ship her with Gintoki, I find her to be more annoying that Otae, that's an accomplishment in itself. Otae is a bully, though her relationship with Kyubei was certainly executed well, and she had a bit of depth and some funny moments.

Enjoyment - 5

Had some interesting arcs, good characters and funny episodes. Also had boring arcs, annoying characters and unfunny episodes. My enjoyment was a 5. Whenever Gintama surprised me with three or five good episodes, and I finally was beginning to think that the show was starting to become consistently good, it came back to punch me with three or five terrible episodes. Whenever it surprised me with a well made, exciting and tear jerking arc, it came back to disappoint me with a boring arc I had no interest in. A show that is good for only half of it's entirety, does not deserve the praise it gets.

Overall - 4

This season was bad, I thought maybe Gintama's second season would develop some characters or have a death or two, maybe avoid plot armor and become a bit more well written? The writer instead kept writing generic arcs with bad villains instead of good ones this time. And no I'm not going to watch more episodes for it to become "good"