Review of Gintama
This is a review of just this season of Gintama. It’s not Zura, It’s Katsura. Understanding how I feel about Gintama is difficult. Explaining how I feel is even more difficult. It manages to combine some of the most hilarious jokes and self-referential humor with some of the most interesting character arcs I’ve seen in a shonen show, and somehow jumps between these two things in the same episode without it feeling jarring. It manages to combine sci-fi, comedy, historical drama, action, slice of life, and parody into one tight bundle. I suppose the only real way to explain this show is to not try. It’sweird. It knows exactly what it is and embraces that to the fullest. It isn’t trying to be anything else. And for that, I’ve got to give it credit.
The overall story is very much a background element of the show, more there to set the stage than anything else. Edo is invaded by aliens that advance their technology to the point that otaku culture has become the norm. But none of that even matters. If that sounds strange, it is, but Gintama makes it work wonderfully. One of the most refreshing things I found about this show was that unlike most long-running shounen anime, the arcs here are so short and standalone that the series can almost be viewed as a collection of smaller stories. It isn’t quite episodic, as several of the arcs end up lasting 5-6 episodes, but those are the longest and are often the more serious ones [though not always]. Because of this semi-episodic structure, the show never feels like it’s treading the same ground. The stories are always fresh and unique, and more often than not exist to make fun of other shows as well as itself. Unfortunately, not all of the stories offer the same level of quality, and there are a few arcs that felt a little bit unnecessary and drawn out, but these are few and far between. The majority are excellent.
The art here is tricky to score. On one hand, it does it’s job well, conveying some of the strangest faces and emotions I’ve seen in anime. The backgrounds are decent, the effects are decent, and generally things look just that... decent. While I’m not going to penalize the show too harshly for the art direction, given the nature of it’s story, it is something worth pointing out. It’s nothing bad, but it doesn’t strive to go anything beyond expectations.
The characters are one of the highlights of the show. While most characters are completely off-the-wall bizarre, they all feel strangely relatable. The characters that get the most screen time are well fleshed out and developed, and even the characters that don’t end up being used as self-referential jokes, making fun of the fact that they have only been present in a handful of episodes. Most of the characters are completely aware that they are in an anime, and this leads to some of the most comical moments of the show. But despite the goofy premise and mood, the characters can all get serious when the time is right, and I found some of the more tense character moments to be genuinely enthralling and moving.
The audio design does it’s job well enough. The sound design is nothing too special, though there are a few standout sounds that are used as long-running jokes. The music is also decent. Nothing spectacular, but it gets the job done. Some of the more comical songs on the soundtrack lend to the mood perfectly, but at the end of the day it’s still the clever writing that does most of the heavy lifting in these cases.
The most important thing that Gintama does right is that it understands how to make comedy fresh again. There were basically no jokes in all 201 episodes that missed the mark, and they were all cleverly executed for their specific moments. Even the jokes that get reused are given new comedic life as they become their own joke because of the reuse. Only in a show like this could you have an entire episode (multiple times) of a static shot of a building while the characters inside discuss what to do during the episode just to waste screen time.
Gintama is truly an anime for anyone (with a sense of humor). The references to other media are always a treat, the serious arcs are always well paced and executed, and the characters carry it through episode by episode. While not every story arc is perfect, the show as a whole is very enjoyable and perfect to just throw on when you feel like turning your brain off for a bit.