Review of Gintama

(Note: At the moment I am reviewing this I have completed every single seasons of Gintama so I am reviewing the Gintama as a whole series not just Season 1.) Its finally time to write my first review. And what will be more better than reviewing my personal favorite show of all time. I am bias towards Gintama but I will not let my feelings make an unfair argument here. So lets start. Have you ever seen an anime that jokes about and makes fun about not only other anime but even itself ? Have you ever seen anime wasting first 5 minutes so that it won't catchupto its manga and character themselves admit they are wasting time ?
Have you ever seen an anime where the characters talk about how hard it is to make fillers episodes ?

Sounds bizarre right ?
And what will happen if a certain someone take all the bizarre ideas all around and try to create an anime with those ? GINTAMA will be the result.

GINTAMA is the anime series adapted by studio Sunrise in April 4th 2006 based on the Manga by the same name written by author Sorachi Hideaki in Dec 8th 2003 and was recently ended it June 20th 2019. Gintama was published in Weekly Shounen Jump at the same time when ( The Shounen's Big 3 aka. Bleach , One Piece and Naruto ) were dominating the charts. But still Gintama was able to create its own place at that time and was able to run for entire 15+ years even tho it probably had offended thousands of anime fans and even other authors through its parodys. Which is pretty huge feat of its own.

# The Premise.

Gintama is set in Edo period of Japan which was invaded by the aliens called Amantos and even after the full attempts of the samurais they weren't able to stop the Amantos which results in pretty much ban of swords and spirit of samurai. Even after that there is 1 guy who still carries the spirit of samurai named Sakata Gintoki a reckless dude with a sweet tooth who also is the founder of Yorozuya aka Odd Jobs. As name suggest he will do anything as a job. Later, Gintoki is joined by Shimura Sinpachi a young Dojo owner and Kagura a member of universe's strongest clan Yato a species who carries super inhuman strength but also are weak against sunlight. Our 3 odd jobs together with the help of many many other characters makes all sorts of crazy and bizarre plays all around the Edo.

After giving short synopsis lets talk about its PROS.

*The Characters.
By far the strongest aspect of the Gintama is its huge yet varied cast of characters and character interactions. Not just wide and varied but are insanely interesting and funny.
As Gintama 90% of the time is comedy anime. The characters plays major role in the comedy being hit or miss. But finding one uninteresting , boring character in Gintama that you will hate is more difficult than finding One Piece. The main problem I have with the most shounen anime is that it stops focusing on its side characters and only focuses on the main cast and waste the potential of the supporting characters. But Gintama is rare case where the side character are all nearly freshed out as much as the main cast if not equally. The chemistry between our 3 protagonist is perfect. Shinpachi is a straight man of the group and always seems to talk through reasons and logic but other 2 all sums up as Kagura being reckless , violent girl and Gintoki being just a cashless bump who don't pay rent to the landlord and salary to his 2 friends and spend days reading Jump and Drinking but also is heavily deep character which also makes him my favorite anime character of all time. And as I have already mentioned before not only the 3 main casts but every characters in Gintama are lovable and has own interesting personality to them. The cast can varies from a mayonnaise addicted police officer to stalker ninja to idiot Joi rebels to stalker police officer to even author himself ( Author himself is an minor character of the series.)which has awesome chemistry between each other. These characters won't work on most of the anime but it does works on Gintama. Why ? Because absurdity is the first nature of Gintama.

*The Comedy. ( Parodys and References.)
Many people consider Gintama to be the pinnacle of comedy anime and more likely god of comedy and parodys. Even tho I too agree on that one but is that objectively true ? Ofc not but it is an arguable opinion.
Gintama for the most part is an comedy anime that makes fun about almost anything they can make of. From making fun of author itself to making fun of the voice actors. Madao (a major character) wears a sunglasses and have a same voice actor as Gendo from NGE so guess what they will make a Gendo joke. Take nothing seriously in Gintama, if you do you will regret. They will fake its ending for more than 4 times in most emotional way and then at last they will reveal it and say f**k off its all joke and make fun of viewers themsevles.
Gintama uses the wide variety of the humor from poop jokes to some simple usual light hearted gags. They will spend one whole episode about mind games of deception on sharing foods with each other.
They will spend whole episode on how to make people pee on the exact place of the toilet.
They will spend whole arc on the result of the popularity pool.
They will spend whole episode about a guy running around universe just to buy cigarettes and guess what he will beat Breeza and will go to search for Slippery Balls to revive Grillin. (DBZ reference)
Fights using dialogue boxes and all the bizarre ideas you can think off.
Gintama uses parodys to its finest. It will parodys popular shounen like Bleach , Naruto , games like Dragon Quest, historic pop cultures and many others.

*The Serious Arcs and the change in tone.
Gintama is mostly comedy anime but it has good amount of dark moments. It is balanced between its serious and comedic arcs. What really appeals to me about Gintama is more of its serious arcs then its comedic ones. When the comedy episodes of Gintama are insanely hilarious the serious arcs are mindblowingly amazing.
The serious arcs in Gintama focuses on the growth of the character and their backstories which helps in knowing the character better than ever. When comedy episodes are full of comedy and top tier humor. Serious arcs are full off epic drama , epic action scenes and not to mention the emotional moments that will hit you hard.
Gintama can change the tone very efficiently.
Gintama can make fun of the character and make poop jokes and kill him in most emotional way in the very same episode without looking forced.
How author changes the tone of the story is worthy of the praise. And not to mention author was able to maintain the same amount of balance between serious arcs and comedy arcs for so long makes it even more worthy of praise.

*The Sound. (Voice Acting , OP,ED)
Gintama has probably the best voice acting in my opinion as the voice acting perfectly fits with the personality of every characters.
Openings and Endings in Gintama is really good and yes all of them..
As it is Gintama it won't even spare OP and ED from its jokes.
Some openings are total hype and some are aesthetically creative (for example op 13 , 14 , 16, 17 etc). But some are the results of Gintama's absolute absurdity.
Sometime Gintoki will demand to start the opening as opening wasn't played for 8 minutes inside the episode. And sometimes the opening will have lowest quality possible because someone killed the mangaka. (watch op 8 to be exact).
The other OST's in Gintama perfectly fits it as well. For instance for comedy moments Hata's ost perfectly fits. While for emotional moments OST 4 , 1 and 18 are some of the best OST I have ever heard and believe me or not I will tear up everytime I hear those OST's.) Soundtracks in Gintama is absolute 10/10.

Seems like I have given some reasons on why Gintama is good.
Even tho Gintama is my favorite anime and I rated it 10/10. Its still far from perfect. I can still think of some of its cons. As no anime is objectively perfect. Its time to point some CONS of Gintama.

*Lackluster animation in starting season.
First season of Gintama has cut corners probably due to low budget.
Its not of a big deal for the most of the time as Gintama is mostly comedy and comedy doesn't relies on the animation quality. But in the serious arcs it becomes a massive flaw of the series which needs to have good animations for the fights and action scenes. Sometimes the fights in Gintama uses near still frames. Animation quality rapidly increases as time goes on but the animation of first 201 episode is massive flaw of the series that's pretty hard to outlook on.

*Slow and boring start.
While I personally do enjoy Gintama from the very beginning. I must agree that the first few episodes of Gintama is boring and slow. And took around 60 episode to actually show serious arc and was filled with gags and parodys. Which I can try to defend by saying that Gintama has hell'a huge cast and slow start about 60 episodes serves the purpose of introducing and freshing out the character and show their relation with our main casts. So in my eyes it is pretty reasonable for it to have slow start but its just my opinion. But I will say its one of its cons.

*Hit or Miss jokes.
As Gintama is massive 367 episode anime and having perfect consistency in its comedy is impossible not every episode can have perfect consistency. So Gintama do have some incredibly boring episodes filled with jokes with no sense of humor. But again I do want to defend it. Gintama is a Japanese anime and anime fans are all around the world. So Ginatama has many jokes and references about the Japanese culture that only japanese people can get. And non-Japanese fans won't get the joke or reference and will just look like its trying to be funny but it is not funny. And also as Gintama is full of parody and parodys every anime they can think of the newcomers who haven't watched the anime that Gintama is parodying then they will probably won't find it any funny.

#Final Thoughts

GINTAMA in my eyes is greatest anime ever made. Everything from its characters to fights to drama to soundtracks everything in GINATAMA is memorable. As GINTAMA is pretty high rated in this site. First 5 seasons of GINTAMA are placed in 3rd , 5th , 7th , 9th and 11th spot. And has rated higher than classics like Galactic Heroes , Cowboy Bebop , Monster , Gurren Lagann , Evangelion etc. Does GINTAMA really deserves all of those ? I can't say for sure and I wont say Gintama is flawless Masterpiece if anything Gintama is odd and weird anime to watch and to get into with lot of flaws and cringe comedies. But still how much I enjoyed this and how much I learned from the characters easily makes it my favorite anime and I am proud to call it my favorite one.

So combining everything I just said and even including its cons and how much I enjoyed it . GINTAMA is easily 10/10 for me and something that everyone should experience.

Thanks for reading. Have a good day everyone.