Review of Gintama

Gintama has become somewhat of a favourite amongst many in the anime community, as evident to anyone who views the Top Anime on MAL. However, does popularity directly correlate to quality? With a 5/10 rating, it's obvious my answer is no, but why exactly is that? The series has a good start with it's interesting setting being a mix of Japanese history and sci-fi with a cast of colourful characters. After the first few episodes of character introductions, however, the story can be hit or miss at times...when it shows up. The plot continuity tends to be quite thin, with what is the main story onlyshowing up every dozen or several dozen episodes before being succeeded by episodic comedy arcs. This leaves the series feeling disjointed when it takes so long for what appears to be the core narrative is given a background seat constantly and the comedy dominates the series. It also doesn't help that when the serious arcs crop forward, the story seems to borrow too heavily from Rurouni Kenshin in many narrative elements, particularly concerning Gintoki.

This would be fine when the series brands itself as a comedy primarily, if not for three major factors. First would be the scope/length of the series. Pushing the main plot back somewhat in order to make the characters more entertaining would be fine if it was a short and concise series that got to the point. When your series is going on for several hundred episodes whilst building up several plot events and constantly shifting to a more serious tone when doing so yet taking too long to deliver, however, it's quite an inexcusable problem when most of the comedic arcs weren't essential for fleshing out the plot or characters.
The second major flaw would be what the comedy consists of; referential humour. Whilst I got most of the references, even some of the more niche ones, and got a laugh out of them, I can't say it really makes for quality when by nature referential humour is directed at a select few and serves more to just advertise another series, which tends to make a series inferior to the one it's referencing by default due to the joke purely relying on the latter. The humour was fine for the first 40 or so episodes, where there was far more of a reliance on slapstick and the references were very subtle. When you get to characters exclaiming things such as "Isn't this Dragon Ball?" or calling out the reference in such an explicit manner lacks creativity and overall ruins the joke. Moreover, the constant need to make fun of other Shonen Jump titles comes off as quite a double-standard when the series is fine with overusing many Shonen tropes in the serious arcs such as power of friendship. It even comes off as bad world building when the vast differences in this world with aliens and Edo Period customs merged obviously wouldn't produce the same origin for ideas for many manga and therefore makes the references something that shouldn't be anything similar to what they were.
This would be a poor nitpick in a typical comedy series that doesn't take itself seriously, but therein lies the third major flaw in the comedy, being tonal whiplash and inconsistency. When you go from a series that constantly changes reality through breaking the fourth wall that will all of a sudden become entirely serious and oblivious to such a fact about their comedic universe leaves the series inconsistent.

This isn't the only comedic element of the series as the character interactions are quite funny at first...until the running gags get repeated far too much. It's fine having the joke of Kondo being a stalker repeated one or two times. Doing so about fifty or so times is annoying. The characters could make up for this with their personality and the writing behind them if not for the fact that, aside from Gintoki and perhaps Kagura, the main cast tend to only have one or two main character traits to remember them by whenever the arc isn't serious. Even for the more serious arcs, what character development occurs is never a permanent thing. An arc where Sougo learns to treat Hijikata with more respect? He's back to aiming a bazooka at him the next arc. An arc where Shinpachi is given the opportunity to grow as a person? He's going to be treat as just a pair of glasses in the next episode. The sexual tension between Gintoki and Tsukuyo in particular is quite the perpetual pile of nothing with neither taking the initiative, especially when the two are adults in their late twenties at least and not middle schoolers with a crush.

As far as the superficial aspects of art and sound go, these are very good. The art and the usage of it's animation helps offer a lot of comedy from the purely physical gags as does the excellent voice acting with the seiyuu having such distinctive voices that their characters have truly become a part of them. The soundtrack is also great in it's variation that always manages to set the tone of the scene. Despite all that, these are just superficial aspects that don't act as much of a saving grace for the series.

So, overall, Gintama is a series that had many elements that could have been good had the execution of it's pacing and comedy been executed far better. Unfortunately, this didn't improve as the series went on and whilst the series is fine as pure entertainment, it certainly isn't the 10/10 many would hail it as. At least this first series is still better than the sequels to succeed it.

As for alternative recommendations, if you want a parody series that doesn't take itself seriously at all and remains dumb fun throughout, there's the series that likely inspired it Dr. Slump. If wanting a comedy series that offers more food for thought than a few jokes and have good pacing, there's The Tatami Galaxy and Great Teacher Onizuka, the latter of which does referential humour well by having a setting that would make it seem natural and doesn't overuse it.