Review of Gintama
Most people say the same thing when introducing others to Gintama, like you have to go through 52 episodes to finally get it, that it has a lot of dick jokes, that it actually never gets good... Well, let me tell you something: Gintama is the greatest media I have ever consumed and I'm really mad that there's nothing else like it. I'm going to be honest, it is not brilliant from the start, but it is fun. And that's what consuming media has to be about: having fun, enjoying it and no other anime does this like Gintama does. Now, Gintama is not for everyone.If you watched some episodes and you thought it was bad and bored you to death, then move along, what you saw is what you'll be getting: characters breaking the fourth wall, being absurd, cracking some dick jokes, dealing with misfortune. But if you do enjoy it... You're going to love it. Trust me on this.
At first, it was a hard story to get started to. First, because I’m not a fan of comedy and second, because I don’t like stories set in the samurai era. Because of that, I dropped it a few times but kept coming back to it in hopes that it would spark my interest (a lot of people were praising it— I had to see for myself what was it about). Long story short, I fell in love with the found family trope Gintama has going on and that led me to enjoy the characters’ relationships in the beginning. Thanks to that, I could stay through the comedy and (seemingly) pointless chapters to find something that would stay engraved in my heart forever.
Gintama is a beautiful story about growth. It is all told in an unconventional way. Telephones, aliens, samurais, all of those things don’t make sense together… Yet the story ends up conveying you that they do. It is hilarious, it is weird, it is fun, it’s a tearjerker (trust me on this one), it is beautiful. I've yet to find a story that makes me laugh and cry at much as this one did. The characters are well written and they are all fun and quirky. The “serious” arcs are easily some of the best ones ever written on its genre.
I doubt that there would ever be another story written in the way Gintama is. We start feeling happy, thinking that it is just pointless fun about a man who can’t pay rent, jokes about his penis and loves to read manga but we end up falling in love with a soul that sparkles with a sophisticated shine, just like silver. That’s what Gintama is.
“Inside me, there is an organ more important than my heart. Although you can't see it, I feel it going right through my head and down to my legs, and I know that it exists inside me. It's the one that lets me stand up and walk forward. So that I can walk forward, without ever trembling. If I stopped here I feel like it would break... My soul would break. Even more than if my heart stops beating, to me that is the most important. Even if I become senile and my back gets bent, I still have to walk forward."