Review of Gintama

[This review is for the whole series, 265 ep so far] I just love this. Definitely the best anime I've ever seen. It's an anime that makes me laugh like crazy for half of the time. It has some of the best fight scenes that I have seen. It has made me cry - even with a standalone episode that concentrates on the side characters... The characters are wonderful - each given a personality of their own. The whole series - the humor, the emotionalilty, the action - is standing on the shoulder's of those wonderful characters and once you fall in love with thecharacters you'll fall in love wtih the series.

Gintama's biggest weakness is the slow start. It requires time to get to know the characters and to get used to their continuous parodies of other anime series (and everything else). Watching Gintama also requires some prior knowledge of anime/manga because many of the jokes don't open if you don't know the reference. But maybe it's because you get so familiar with the characters by time or because you get used to the humor that Gintama is one of the only series that seems to get better and better all the time. The action in the later episodes (150-) is even better than the action in the few serious arcs before that.

As Gintama is mostly composed of short stories (from 1 ep to 8 episodes), the quality of the episodes is not very consistent. Some episodes are so hilarious I've watched them 5 times in a row while others can be boring or weird. Nevertheless, I think going through some of the more boring episodes is a small price to pay for all the awesomeness I've gained from the series.